RE: Simulation Hypothesis: "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
And while we are on the topic of religion AND explaining everything that exists, there is something else that I wondered about for a while now... curious if this could be explained also.
So, was Satan just an angel that God banished to hell because Satan was jealous of Him or was Satan just as powerful as God and got banished to hell because God didn't like the competition? The reason why I ask is because the devil has so many names that I don't see listed in the Bible and can't help but wonder where people keep discovering all these names that are NOT in the book of God... Devil, Satan, Luficer, the morning star, Bealzibub, father of all lies, the unclean, the impure one and everything else you ever heard in any exorcism movie. So much stuff seems to be made up by the Faithful that it's hard to know what is faith and what is fiction...
If there is something bad to be said / to be implied by a name, you can use that as a description of the devil. The stinky one, the unclean. God, on the other hand, He is all that is good and pure and wonderful and marvelous and there is nothing bad that can possibly be said about God... So now the question becomes the following:
Does the Bible omit the part where it reads: "And on the 8th day Satan used his great power to create hell" or does it omit the part where it reads "God then created a pit of eternal suffering and evil and all things wicked and cruel and dastardly and all things so unspeakable that it is unthinkable to the human brain ...and when the devil got jealous of God, God sent the devil to that place which He has already created in all his glorious holiness" ...? Or maybe it reads "Satan was jealous of God so God banished the devil to Hell, a second paradise filled with daisies and rainbows which Satan, using only the power of an angel, turned into such a horrible evil place that the horrors cannot even be conceived of by the human mind... before becoming such a rival to God that all souls ever brought into this world will either return to God or go to this angel who was just as powerful as any other angel when he got banished to the second Eden God named Hell"?
TLDR version of the question:
Did God create Hell and all the evil that existed there before he sent the devil down there or did he "banish" (as in punishment inferred) the devil to a paradise where Satan then, with only the strength of an angel, turned it into such an evil place that all humanity now forever live their lives on a scale to see "Which one of these two beings will get my soul"? How did the devil become so strong that he basically rivals God to the point where all Faithful fear the threat of hell as much as they love the promise of Heaven?
Did God create Hell or did he give Satan the power to do so? Or are all angels as powerful as God? Remember, God is the maker of all things and everything that happens is HIS will... so did he give the devil his power and it was HIS will that hell exists and ruled over by the devil? Or do angels have godlike powers that they get all on their own with God being unable to take it away from them?
Or was hell invented just like the dozens of names the devil has but which are NOT mentioned anywhere in the Word or God? Kinda makes me wonder if the all knowing and infallible God first wrote the Bible then came down to a few scholars to add some notes He forgot to add in the first draft, to be distributed via word of mouth only... and spent a great deal of that time fixing the Bible focused on name calling the devil. Again, is hell something that the Faithful should believe in or is it pure fiction?
Simulation theory answer that! :D
Is that the theory that we are all actually in the Matrix as in for real? That nothing we know is real? Hmmm... and now to go Google it, finally! :)