Sep 22, 2019 04:13 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 23, 2019 07:00 AM by C C.)
The twenty-third and final installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. The first installement is here: Did Bostrom Prove The Existence of God?
Simulator Showdown
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2019/0...rshowdown/
EXCERPT (Chris Sunami): . . . One of the most direct and widely influential lines of attack against not only Christianity but religion in general, is that religion is simply harder and harder to take seriously in the light of modern science and technology. According to this account, all religions reduce to worship of “God of the Gaps,” which is the name of a line of argument that “God” was always and only a placeholder explanation for all kinds of aspects of the natural world that we used never to understand properly. Now that science has demystified everything from the cosmos to biology, those gaps have largely been filled in, and we can see religion for what it really is, a collection of superstitions and fairy tales. As evidence for this, advocates for this viewpoint (which traces most directly back to the British historian David Hume, and includes many of the most vocal of the so-called “New Atheists,” such as biological theorist Richard Dawkins and journalist Christopher Hitchens) point in particular to the miracles scattered throughout the Biblical narrative. These suspensions of natural law, as manifestations of supernatural intervention, are held up to ridicule as being particularly scientifically implausible.
It is ironic, perhaps, that this promising line of attack is the one most directly invalidated by simulator hypothesis. If one grants the plausibility of the simulator, then it is clear to see that the production of miracles on our level of existence would be child’s play for anyone at the simulator’s level of existence. Even something as counter to all natural law as freezing the sun in place might be as simple for a simulator as pressing a pause button. Similarly, as we explored previously, even as great a disparity as the billions of years between the apparent, scientifically measured age of universe, and the seven-thousand-year span allotted to it by Biblical literalists is not outside expectations for a simulation. In fact, under the Yudkowsky concept that we might be individually simulated millions of times in order to predict our reactions, it might not be uncommon for a simulated universe that seems billions of years old to have existed only for a few minutes. In short, we must grant that miracles and other supernatural interventions are no less probable than a simulated reality. (MORE - details)
RELATED: ("Saints & Simulators" thread elsewhere on Scivillage): Young Earth Creationism & the minute universe
Simulator Showdown
https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2019/0...rshowdown/
EXCERPT (Chris Sunami): . . . One of the most direct and widely influential lines of attack against not only Christianity but religion in general, is that religion is simply harder and harder to take seriously in the light of modern science and technology. According to this account, all religions reduce to worship of “God of the Gaps,” which is the name of a line of argument that “God” was always and only a placeholder explanation for all kinds of aspects of the natural world that we used never to understand properly. Now that science has demystified everything from the cosmos to biology, those gaps have largely been filled in, and we can see religion for what it really is, a collection of superstitions and fairy tales. As evidence for this, advocates for this viewpoint (which traces most directly back to the British historian David Hume, and includes many of the most vocal of the so-called “New Atheists,” such as biological theorist Richard Dawkins and journalist Christopher Hitchens) point in particular to the miracles scattered throughout the Biblical narrative. These suspensions of natural law, as manifestations of supernatural intervention, are held up to ridicule as being particularly scientifically implausible.
It is ironic, perhaps, that this promising line of attack is the one most directly invalidated by simulator hypothesis. If one grants the plausibility of the simulator, then it is clear to see that the production of miracles on our level of existence would be child’s play for anyone at the simulator’s level of existence. Even something as counter to all natural law as freezing the sun in place might be as simple for a simulator as pressing a pause button. Similarly, as we explored previously, even as great a disparity as the billions of years between the apparent, scientifically measured age of universe, and the seven-thousand-year span allotted to it by Biblical literalists is not outside expectations for a simulation. In fact, under the Yudkowsky concept that we might be individually simulated millions of times in order to predict our reactions, it might not be uncommon for a simulated universe that seems billions of years old to have existed only for a few minutes. In short, we must grant that miracles and other supernatural interventions are no less probable than a simulated reality. (MORE - details)
RELATED: ("Saints & Simulators" thread elsewhere on Scivillage): Young Earth Creationism & the minute universe