So, let me get this straight…
This is an attempt to get around the teleological argument by making a teleological argument?
I’m pretty sure this argument (or similar) pops up pretty much all the time by stoned sophomores. The argument is nowhere near as smart as it appears to the person who made it.
Nick Bostrum who I linked to, and whose argument this is is a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, and he seems to have provoked some serious thought and debate with it.
People who post condescending comments without bothering to check supporting links often find there sarcastic quips are nowhere near as clever as they thought.
This is an awesome argument. Every religion can be right, but as long as at least one is wrong than God doesn’t look like what you thought he would and therefore as an atheist you are correct.
You have just gone from conceding one God to conceding many (do the the rest of the atheists know you are arguing on their behalf? They are gonna pissed.) Congratulations you are now a polytheist atheist! I think that’s pretty cool and unique. It must be a proud and lonely thing to be a polytheist atheist.
Ha
My argument is awesome. But apparently you are having trouble understanding it.
A religion is a set of assertions. If literally none of the assertions of Christianity is correct, aside from someone being really powerful somewhere, that’s not a point in favor of Christians.
Your position is nonsense, and being smarmy isn’t a suitable replacement for intelligent debate.
I’ve conceded nothing. You’re gratuitously asserting drivel and I’m pointing out that your thinking is muddy and incoherent.
I only speak for myself. And in that capacity, I point out that your position is fucking goofy.
No, I’m not. And don’t disingenuously congratulate me.
Again, nonsense assertions because you’re unable to follow the gist of the argument. This isn’t you winning. This is you standing, covered in shit, convinced that you just came out smelling like a rose.
For instance. 
It’s not my argument. It’s this guy’s
That’s a good objection. I’m introducing the idea here. Check the link and I think you’ll see this addressed. It’s a fun and interesting read.
I haven’t read through the thread yet, so maybe this has already been mentioned. Even if we did live in a simulation, what difference does it make? It’s not like Mario prays to me for protection at the start of the game, or something.
Ya, he is the king of the world, after all.
And, in that Titanic scene, his pose vaguely resembles Christ the Redeemer. That’s it, DiCaprio is Jesus!
If I don’t happen to believe in electrons, does this computer still work?
If I don’t happen to believe in computers, have I still written this post?
If I don’t happen to believe in Scylla, might he still read this post?
If I don’t happen to believe in who- or whatever made this supposed simulation, do I need to in order for the simulation to exist?
So…if I understand what the OP is saying, all reality is a simulation, so fine-grained that we are incapable of distinguishing it from reality. And the person running the sim is God.
So that would be an non-falsifiable thesis. And we would have no way of knowing any of the attributes of God, so any statements about him, or her, or it, would have no truth-value that we could determine.
Trinopus called it - the answer is “so what?”
Scylla, you know better.
You can’t just go eating any old mushrooms you find growing in the yard.
The problem with Scylla’s interpretation of the argument is that the actual paper only discusses ‘god’ in one paragraph, and only in passing an aside in the discussion of stacked levels of simulation. So, while it is proposed that the creators of the simulation we find ourselves in (a point I’m not willing to concede, but am willing to entertain for the sake of argument) represent ‘gods’ to us, as they would be able to manipulate the simulation in ways contrary to the laws internal to the simulation (again, not something that’s obviously true, but for argument’s sake), they themselves may only be simulations in a yet larger simulation. So while Yahweh(N) might be, to us, a god that loves us, cares about our eternal souls, and wants us to burn witches, Yahweh(N-1) might be a collection of psychically linked rainbow trout who were trying to create a really cool simulation of a babbling brook full of freshly hatched mayflies, but failed miserably because rainbow trout suck at writing code. And the TroutGod might have a god above them, and another, and another, 20 goto 10.
In other words, it’s simulations all the way down.
Funny, because that’s where he lost me.
To take the OP more seriously, the argument seems to require that a simulation be indistinguishable from the reality which contains it. And I can’t accept that as a given. The only way a simulation could indistinguishable from reality would be if the simulation contained the same amount of information. And how could a single reality contain a large number of simulations, each holding as much information as the reality?
More plausibly, the hypothetical simulations described in the OP would function like all other simulations have - they would only contain a small fraction of the information that the holding reality contains. Enough to fulfill the purposes of whatever entity is running the simulation but no more. An entity who wants to simulate having sex on the beach with supermodels doesn’t need to simulate the entire universe.
By their nature, simulations are just scaled down models of reality. So sentient beings contained within the simulation could search for and find the limits. If they look hard enough they’re going to run into a place where the simulation stops.
But we don’t know how much information is contained in the next-level-up reality. If it’s just a typical spacetime continuum like ours, with so many chemical elements, etc., then, yeah, there’s a problem. But it might be a nine-dimensional hyperfractal place with a vastly greater density of information. They are to us, as we are to an 8-bit game of Mario Brothers. We’re not only a sim, but a dumbed-down one.
It’s all nonfalsifiable nonsense, of course, but that’s part of the problem: we can’t really make any sensible conclusions about the land that is home to the simmers.
What if every atom is a universe? What if our entire universe is an atom in a giant’s finger nail? What if that giant is a bigger you and reality is one huge fractal? Then we’re all gods, man. Far out.
Since when is the runner of a simulation a god? I know some people rather admire him, but I don’t think Gabe Newell is a deity under most definitions. I fail to see how a god making a simulation versus making a universe helps the theist’s cause. What’s the practical difference that’s supposed to make atheists fall on their knees and shout hosannas? Aliens aren’t gods either.
As an aside, in these sort of debates it doesn’t really matter if the simulation is indistinguishable from reality or not. For all we know this is a shoddy, second rate simulation and reality is way more interesting and complex. How would we know either way? We’re just ignorant constructs who can’t step outside the program. Its fidelity only matters if you’re inserting people from reality who cares how faithful it is.
2003 thread on Bostrum paper: Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board
Also, Christian and Islamic doctrine says God is mysterious. So if there’s a creator it’s a win for theism, if not for dogmatism.
Might this, by Remus Shepherd, be the series you are thinking of? It’s in the form of a web-comic.
And then, like, when you transcend upwards, through the galaxies and higher scopes, you come back to where you were all along. Heavy, huh?
(Marvel Comics did that once. Pretty groovy trip. But, then, I’m still trying to grok their “Living Tribunal.” At least the High Evolutionary makes sense…)
If we had the technology and resources to run world-simulations, I think it would be also within our purview to plunk down “real” NPCs in there to handle the shitty jobs. Unless post-humans are really bored, I shouldn’t think people would want to play “slumdog non-millionaire slaving away 16 hours a day on 10 cents salary”, for example.
Of course, the point is we can’t know that any of the other human beings out there aren’t very lifelike artificial processes. But we can know whether or not we are (or assume we know, anyway - but if we’re just shell scripts thinking they exist then thinking about god, or anything, is sort of pointless). So ISTM that, assuming playing in the simulation is voluntary rather than a form of imprisonment ; and even assuming one has to agree to a mind wipe before joining the simulation for verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief, one’s life is a good yardstick for whether or not we are.
My life’s not crappy, but it’s far from awesome and there are no explosions or supermodels anywhere. Ergo, I am not in a simulation I’d have chosen to play. So y’alls probably aren’t, either.
Read about this a long time ago, about this bishop in Berkeley tripping this kind of shit. Made this dictionary guy so mad, he kicked a table and hurt his johnson. Maybe got the details wrong, college is kind of a blur these days.