2019-04-05

God Designed the Game of Life

Religion is making a comeback through the language of video games and computer simulation.

ZH: Religion And The Simulation Hypothesis: Is God An AI?

I do not think existence is a simulation, though from the perspective of God it might look something like a simulation. A better metaphor for God is game designer. VoxDay made a case for this in The Irrational Atheist. The article above actual makes a lot of arguments that fit with this idea. "Jesus saves" becomes literal. Question why God does something makes no sense anymore, because it's a game. Follow the rules. The Bible is the game guide. Just make sure you follow the right God and not all the trickster gods created by the Devil, your antagonist in the game. The Christian concept of Free Will makes sense because video game players prefer random and unpredictable events, not identifiable patterns. If you're God and have infinite time, you'll get bored if its a glorified version of Pac-Man.

Many people believe religion is in permanent decline, but cyclical theories including Socionomics, as well as human history, argue/show that religion adherence rises and falls. Science looked like a replacement for religion because science offered explanations for things like weather that had previous fallen in the category of unknown. Every step forward looks like a win for science and a loss for religion and even Nature, as Man increasingly dominates the natural world. (Aside: read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis to understand how this will end badly for Man in the end. Spoiler: Nature wins!) Yet as scientists increasingly abandon science for political consensus, "science" resembles prior failed attempts to displace God with Man. It looks like something new, but its a more effective version of that which has come before, Man trying to play God.

What's most fascinating is that there's really nothing new in the simulation and video game arguments. It is a different way of explaining religion. These articles and theories reveal how badly religious institutions have failed in the modern world. Many gave up and modernized in a suicidal attempt to keep their numbers up, but it turns out Vatican II is New Coke. The traditionalist sects are growing the fastest, modernist sects are gone within a generation and the most modern expressions of the religious impulse, such as simulation theories, lead one back to a very traditional understanding of religion. If anything, the simulation and game designer theories lead one towards the most fundamentalist versions of religion because it eliminates all wiggle room on the issue of sin.

Moreover, lately I've been noticing many signs of religion creeping back into life in disguised forms. For example, there is the "NoFap" challenge/movement. A search will reveal much more, but that website claims it isn't religious, isn't anti-porn and isn't anti-masturbation. And yet. Then there is "no meat Mondays" pushed by vegetarians and animal rights groups, and many schools have adopted this into their school lunches. Few look at that and see religion, and yet, how far is it from fish/fast Friday? Feminists have redefined sexual relations between the sexes to the point where it would only take a small turn of society to re-institute traditional patriarchy. Also, more than a few feminists have converted to Islam, which practices one of the most extreme forms of patriarchy in the world today.

In conclusion, not only is the religious foundation still there, but the superstructure is re-emerging in familiar patterns. The puzzle pieces are popping up all around and it will smooth the transition back to a religious society once the next higher-order Great Awakening takes place.

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