Many atheists say the Bible is just a fairy-tale for kids. It is probably not only a christian problem, the same certainly applies for Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and other religions as well. Are atheists wrong? No. But also yes…

Fact or Fiction

The Old Testament explicitly says that the world was created in 6 days. WTF?? How do you explain dinosaur bones? What about radiocarbon method? The modern catholic explanation is simple – many chapters of the Bible (especially the earliest ones) are just stories and should not be considered historically accurate and I completely agree. Some atheists may be surprised with this stance, but yes, this is officially taught now. But that does not mean these stories should be put aside – while nowadays we are obsessed with technical details, people of the past probably had different point of view and thrived on hidden meanings in such stories.

Did the story actually happened? I bet not. But it is not important whether the race took place or not, it is the moral lesson that is crucial (do not sleep at work or something). I believe the same applies to the Bible. It does not matter whether water creation took 1 day or million years, there is the hidden message: We are here by design.

The earliest chapters of the Old Testament surely resemble fables. The New Testament is much closer to the storytelling we are familiar with, but stories are still present there (like numerous Jesus’ parables) and some parts are still quite difficult to grasp. That led me into thinking: If our way of thinking completely changed since the ancient times of the Old Testament (and still considerably in the past 2000 years), should we reconsider the way of thinking again? In other words – is our mind able to grasp the biblical concepts in new, previously impossible ways?

I believe so. Personally I am greatly influenced by information technology and I am using the concept of virtualization on daily basis. Also my experience with computer games is not negligible. So I attempted to create an amended theory and call it the Divine Programmer Theory.

Before I describe my theory I want to emphasize that I am not planning to create new religion or church, I just think people should consider this view to get answer for some difficult questions. I am also unable to change your beliefs, I just propose these ideas because I think they logically make sense. You can prove me otherwise.

The Divine Programmer

Ready to put your beliefs aside for a moment? If you are not open-minded, you are just wasting your time…

Here comes the theory: God is a programmer and created a simulation world similar to the Sims. He let us come to existence using some evolutionary algorithms and checks whether we fit predefined success conditions. Quite simple, right? Also juvenile at the first glance.

This is basically Nick Bostrom’s Simulation hypothesis and therefore nothing new (but I got this idea independently). I feel that the hypothesis and also associated Simulation argument are quite difficult to grasp and are dealt from a philosophical point of view (Does it make sense? How to prove it?) rather than theological.

First of all, this theory should help you understand how God might exist. If us humans can create and play Sims-like game, this could apply to upper level (our world) as well. Then, using this comparison, one can attempt to explain simple and complicated divine concepts and, quite surprisingly, succeed to provide simple explanations while maintaining the logical integrity. Let’s look at some of such concepts now.

Omnipotence

Can an omnipotent God create such stone that he will not be able to lift? If yes, he cannot lift the stone => not omnipotent. If no, he cannot create the stone => not omnipotent.

Ever heard of this argument? The solution in virtualized world is obvious: Of course God can create such stone, because God and stone would be present in different levels of existence and the word “lift” simply does not make sense. God can make the stone levitate, create his own avatar and then do “in-game lifting” or he may lift his monitor (displaying the stone) up. Redefine “lift” if you crave a different answer.

If you are familiar with Linux administration, here is one provocative counter-argument: Can root user (essentially an omnipotent user) create such file that he will not be able to delete? The answer is yes, with commands touch /tmp/a; chattr +i /tmp/a; rm /tmp/a. The trick is that root cannot delete the file now, because the file is marked as immutable. However, he is able to withdraw the immutable flag with chattr -i /tmp/a and thus get the delete permission again. You might ask again: Can root user create such file that he cannot put the immutable flag on? Yes, just implement a new flag that allows/forbids the immutable flag itself. We could continue ad infinitum…

Omniscience

#!/usr/bin/python3
import random
random.seed(1337)
for i in range(3):
    print(random.randint(0, 100))

If you ever programmed, you have probably come across a random number generator. You might have noticed that the seed value you use when creating the generator is very important – if you reuse the value, you will get the exact same random numbers. In the example above, you will get the same “random numbers” (79, 68, 90) EACH time you run the code, thanks to the seed of 1337. That is good for testing, but bad from randomness. God’s omniscience could be based on the very same principle – if he seeded the world at the beginning of the time, he might save the current state of the simulation (or create a snapshot, if you prefer), see what will happen in the next 100 years and then restore the saved world. So God might probably not be truly omniscient, but he certainly has a possibility to be omniscient enough.

Randomness is just a lack of knowledge of the matter, it does not truly exist. Now we might dive into quantum physics and talk about undefined states of particles prior to measurement, but:

1. that would be in-game measurement (from God’s point of view the states may be perfectly defined),
2. we do not know enough about the matter yet,
3. I get headaches from thinking about quantum physics, infinity and similar stuff.

Not happy about this save/load concept? God may also run quantum-style simulation with all options in parallel.

Who created God?

If God creates all things, who created God? is another popular atheist argument. Do not worry, it will crumble as well. This argument luckily already assumes that God is not part of the universe he created and can act independently. So far congruent with the proposed view.

In other words the argument says: If there is a God, there should be “chain of Gods”. Since it is difficult for a human brain to grasp the concept of higher God, let’s use the Sims analogy to think down the chain.

If we launch a Sims game, we are essentially creating new world and becoming its god (assume we are also the creators of the game so we have omnipotence). Now one of our beloved creations starts its PC, launches its own “Sims” game and also becomes (albeit lesser) god. New world is created, let’s refer to it as Sims². That goes on ad infinitum. We demonstrated that the God chain can exist. Now two options arise:

1. The God chain does not have a start – we have infinite number of Gods above us. That logically means our God does exist.
2. The God chain has a defined start. For traditional believers it would be God -> Us -> Sims -> Sims²…, for atheists Us -> Sims -> Sims²…, or the start is anywhere above. We do not know where the start of the chain is, therefore it is possible that God does exist and we are not at the top. Maybe we are, but have fun proving it…

Conclusion

In this post I described my way of thinking when dealing with advanced theological problems. If one person thinks about the problem for a moment, my mission is complete. I am not saying I am right, I just say that my version is possible and logically consistent. If you see a flaw in my logic, feel free to let me know, as I try to be as open-minded as possible. In the next chapter I will attempt to crack more known atheist arguments.