Scientist Suggests We Explore 'Universe is a VR Simulation' Theory

holy_calamity writes "A New Zealand physicist has written a paper saying that physicists should seriously explore the possibility the universe is a giant virtual reality simulation. He says that the existence of quantum phenomena could be due to the underlying digital nature of the simulation and also claims his VR hypothesis can explain relativity, the big bang and more. It should be possible to perform experiments to prove the hypothesis too. He reasons that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual."

Comments

1637 called, they want their idea back.

[SatanicPuppy]

In a word: Crap.

Philosophers have been pondering this nonsense for centuries, and have gotten nowhere...It's an argumentative blackhole, a solipsim. It's not testable...his "testable" experiments are like the sort of thing you see an idiot do to try and demonstrate that they have free will (e.g. "See? I just punched myself in the face, no way would anyone make me do that, so I must have free will!") If our reality is virtual, then all data is suspect, and it would be impossible to trust any sort of experimental data. Even if you come up with a clever test that would pierce the illusion, one would have to assume whoever maintains the illusion would simply fix it so that didn't work a second time. Nothing would be repeatable.

It's just not a useful avenue for speculation. This guy brings nothing new to the table except the kinda crap the ID people bring..."Hey, if the universe was a simulation, it would explain why everything tastes like chicken!" Just because there is no currently workable theory for some occurrence, there is no reason to invent a wild explanation that just makes it go away.

Without some compelling proof (which he lacks) this is nothing more than a conversational topic over a bag of weed.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[somersault]

Yeah, you could explain *anything* by saying "it's this way because it's programmed to be this way". It's the same convenience of saying there is a God (sure I believe in God myself so I'm not slagging beliefs, but this guy is just saying in a different way that he thinks that some superior beings made the universe).

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[explosivejared]

So how would we be able to tell if our universe was a simulation? Whitworth says that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual. But he falls short of suggesting what this might be.

This is the failure of reconciling the metaphysical with the physical. I agree with you completely. There is no way for us to remove ourselves from the universe at large to observe it. Whitworth is not a scientist when he speaks of this. He is a philosopher exploring metaphysics and ontology.

I can come up with a number of theories about reality myself, and without being able to experiment on them they are just as valid. Therefore I propose that the universe we experience is really just the eye of an aether system. Once you get beyond the aether, it really is turtles all the way down. That's just as valid, without relevant experimentation, as the universe being a vr sim. Metaphysics is cool and all, but just don't call it science or its practitioners scientists.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Raindance]

I completely disagree. The calculus on the simulation argument is surprisingly solid when you think about it (Bostrom, for instance, has some pretty good arguments for it). You say, "It's just not a useful avenue for speculation. This guy brings nothing new to the table except the kinda crap the ID people bring." Did you read the paper? This guy Whitworth says some interesting stuff... personally I think the most interesting part of his paper is near the end, where he compares "Virtual Property" with "Physical Outcome".

Diversity of effort in science is good. This guy has a diverse approach to trying to understand the universe. He also says some interesting things and is looking for predictive qualities in his theory. That's good.

The problem is that we know nearly nothing about what simulations "have to be" or "cannot be" in the case of a system advanced enough to simulate our universe. So he might have a long road ahead of him. But it's an approach worth pursuing, if damn difficult to do so.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[inviolet]

It's just not a useful avenue for speculation. This guy brings nothing new to the table except the kinda crap the ID people bring..."Hey, if the universe was a simulation, it would explain why everything tastes like chicken!" Just because there is no currently workable theory for some occurrence, there is no reason to invent a wild explanation that just makes it go away.

I would not be surprised at all to learn that reality is a simulation. Many of my brethren seem to be bots, executing fairly simple scripts and never really introspecting.

They were probably put here, by me or whoever, to make the game more interesting. (We'd have to temporarily forget that it was a game in order to keep it fun.) Indeed, any sufficiently advanced intelligence is going to achieve such a level of safety, comfort, and (eventually) immortality, that they will then need to invest a simulated world in which they can once again experience peril, uncertainty, risk, and death.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Ours]

I'd go beyond saying that thing wouldn't be repeatable. If you discover a bug in the "simulation", then why not fix it and then "rewind" back to the time just before this guy found the bug. That way in our time-line we never saw the bug. In that same mater, if this was a simulation, retroactively delete this guy before he was conceived,and all of the sudden he never existed or wrote any theories. The only way a simulation scenario would be found is if the simulation allowed for it (simulation QA, ancestor philosophical/psychological research, The Sims 40'000).

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[kebes]

A notable difference being that this scientist is proposing means by which one could potentially distinguish between a "simulation reality" and a "real reality". That is, he is presenting a theory that makes falsifiable predictions. In his abstract he puts it as:

It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve.

He also readily admits that the idea is "strange" but says that it is still worthy of investigation:

This article argues that the idea that our physical world is a virtual reality, which is normally a topic of science fiction, religion or philosophy, should be considered as a possible theory of physics. Whether this is true or not, the reader is asked to keep an open mind, as one has to at least consider a theory to reject it. ... The paper asks if a world that behaves just like the world we live in could arise from a VR simulation, and whether physical data from this world supports (or denies) this possibility. The first considers if VR theory is logically possible, and the second if it explains known facts better than other theories.

Now having said all that, I'm not convinced that his idea is really sound. Fundamentally he is arguing that if our reality is the result of information processing, then there will be effects that cannot be computed/simulated within our reality. He says:

a VR processor cannot logically exist within the virtual reality its processing creates. It is logically impossible for a processor to create itself because the virtual world creation could not start if a processor did not initially exist outside it.

I'm not sure I understand or agree with this. The reality we see appears to arise because of the 'laws of physics' acting on certain 'initial conditions.' Simulating the entire universe would require precise knowledge of those initial conditions (location of every particle at the big bang) but it is possible (but as yet unproven) that the laws of physics are quite simple and computable and could be simulated by a (quantum) computer within our universe. I think this would hold whether reality is real or virtual (you can simulate a universe inside reality; and a computer can simulate itself).

A much more lucid and convincing discussion of these ideas is presented by Max Tegmark in his paper "The Mathematical Universe" (preprint available here). In it, he discusses this idea of whether we could detect being inside a virtual reality and provides arguments for why there may be no meaningful difference between a "simulation of reality" and "reality itself". His overall argument, that the universe may be fundamentally mathematical, is quite interesting, and again he provides some means by which we could determine to what extent his arguments actually apply to our universe. Worth a read.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Bogtha]

Even if you come up with a clever test that would pierce the illusion, one would have to assume whoever maintains the illusion would simply fix it so that didn't work a second time.

Not necessarily. As a developer, when you run a bunch of testcases, if you find a bug, you don't halt everything in the debugger and fix the bug immediately, you just wait until it's all over, fix the bug, and re-start the test run. If this guy's theory is correct, then I would assume that any such flaws would persist until the end of our universe and then get fixed for the next one.

Personally, when I first read about the double-slit experiment, it reminded me of short-circuiting in if statements, so I can see the appeal of this line of thought. But I think it's silly to purposefully investigate it rather than simply wait and see what we can deduct from the ToE, if and when we figure it out.

Just because there is no currently workable theory for some occurrence, there is no reason to invent a wild explanation that just makes it go away.

Without some compelling proof (which he lacks) this is nothing more than a conversational topic over a bag of weed.

Er, that's exactly how science is supposed to work. You don't have a theory for some occurrence, so you invent an explanation, you don't have proof, so you perform experiments to get evidence.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[UbuntuDupe]

If our reality is virtual, then all data is suspect, and it would be impossible to trust any sort of experimental data.

False. You can do experiments within virtual worlds to determine the rules under which it operates, just like you can in the real world. For example, in second life, if you don't RTFM, you can still do scientific tests with your avatars to learn the internal physics of that virtual world.

Even if you come up with a clever test that would pierce the illusion, one would have to assume whoever maintains the illusion would simply fix it so that didn't work a second time. Nothing would be repeatable.

You shut off too soon. Take it further -- if the creators "fix it", would we notice? If, as I suggest in my other post on this article, we piece the illusion via overloading the system with computations it must perform, the creator may be forced to start "simplifying" the laws of physics in observable ways.

FYI: Someone mentioned the Bostrom argument, so rather than make another post, I thought I'd concisely summarize it here:

"If it's possible to make fully-real-seeming simulations, any civilization will eventually discover this and make on the order of thousands of them. Thus, only one out of 1000+ real-seeming worlds is real. From a Bayesian perspective, then, GIVEN that the world seems real, there is only a 1 in 1000+ chance it is real."

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Kenshin]

Even if you come up with a clever test that would pierce the illusion, one would have to assume whoever maintains the illusion would simply fix it so that didn't work a second time.

That, or they call it a "feature".

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Thelasko]

I believe the generally accepted answer to this question was René Descartes'. Cogito ergo sum. "But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So, after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that the proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. (AT VII 25; CSM II 16-17)" I know I exist, why should I care if everything else is an illusion?

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[rhombic]

we piece the illusion via overloading the system with computations it must perform, the creator may be forced to start "simplifying" the laws of physics in observable ways.

When I'm running a simulation, I don't change the "rules" in mid-run if it goes wonky, I kill it & re-start after fixing the problem. So let's not run this particular experiment, m'kay?

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[ChronosWS]

Um, no :)

Assume that the Universe is a VR simulation running on some machine. What we experience as time is a sequence of calculations produced by this machine. We are only aware of those parts of the calculation which the simulation specifically makes us aware of. No experiment can prove or disprove this because the calculations which the VR machine makes need not be 1-to-1 with our experiences. For example, the VR machine could 'suspend' the reality simulation while it performs some complex task, and we would be none the wiser.

Further, since the sum of our existence is contained within the VR simulation, and it can be paused OR ALTERED at will, the VR simulation could self-correct for any flaw we discover by simply rewriting the memories of any experiences we had, or deleting and replaying that part of the simulation with different variables. Again, since our experience is wholly under the control of the simulation, we again would be none the wiser.

Finally, since all information within the VR machine is controlled by the VR machine, any experiment we design is itself fully under the control of the VR machine. All data we perceive is perceived because the VR machine has elected to let us perceive it. Ergo, no experiment we could produce would allow us to discern the reality of the VR machine unless it chose to reveal itself to us.

There is nothing new here.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[ChronosWS]

Any VR simulation of the Universe also controls every aspect of our experience of it. We will only experience that which the VR simulation allows us to experience, and *all* information in this Universe is fundamentally controlled by that simulation. No test can be constructed whose outcome is itself not wholly determined by the VR simulation. Further, any flaw exposed in the VR simulation could be corrected without our knowing, because our experiences, including our memories and even the flow of time, are also wholly within the realm of control of the VR simulation.

A VR simulation of the Universe is omnipotent in this sense. There is nothing that lies beyond its control, and against it you are utterly powerless.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Curtman]

Meh.. The Buddha figured this stuff out 2500 years or so before The Matrix.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Spazmania]

This is the failure of reconciling the metaphysical with the physical.

No, no! He's on to something. Consider this example:

When routing TCP/IP packets, the best available software algorithms are tree-based. You step down the branches of the tree until you find the most specific route known for the destination address. Its O(log n).

However, if you step out of the software universe running on a general-purpose computer, you can design a hardware device called a "TCAM." A TCAM is a special kind of static ram where a request is processed across all cells in the same cycle in order to produce the best match. Not only does it return a routing decision in O(1), it returns that decision in exactly one clock cycle.

Now, we could describe how a TCAM works within software and we could even simulate it but the simulation would run in O(n) because the simulation would have to activate each cell in sequence instead of activating all cells at once the way a real TCAM does.

So the challenge for detecting whether we're in a virtual reality is this: find a mathematical problem which is conceptually simple (e.g. factoring the product of large primes) but which we know to be hard ( O(x^n) ) and then construct a simulation of a finite ur-universe in which the problem is easy. The simulation itself won't run any faster than the best known factoring algorithms but it would be able to prove that given the physical rules of the ur-universe the factoring would have completed in O(1).

Successfully constructing such a simulation wouldn't prove that we're actually in a virtual reality, but proving that such a simulation can't be constructed would prove that we're not. Thus the theory is falsifiable. Thus it is science, not philosophy.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Chemicalscum]

A much more lucid and convincing discussion of these ideas is presented by Max Tegmark in his paper "The Mathematical Universe" (preprint available here [arxiv.org]). In it, he discusses this idea of whether we could detect being inside a virtual reality and provides arguments for why there may be no meaningful difference between a "simulation of reality" and "reality itself". His overall argument, that the universe may be fundamentally mathematical, is quite interesting, and again he provides some means by which we could determine to what extent his arguments actually apply to our universe. Worth a read. Yes, Tegmark's paper is essential reading. The VR hypothesis implies that the system that our VR resides could be another simulation at a higher level and so on. It then becomes "turtles all the way down". It is something we have had to consider since David Deutsch's reformulation of the Turing principle as:

There exists an abstract universal computer whose repertoire includes any computation that any physically possible object can perform

Nick Bostrom has also discussed the question of are we living in a computer simulation here:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/

and Sir Martin Rees has discussed the idea in a number of places so there is nothing really new in Whitworth's paper.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Jerry Beasters]

You're completely ignoring the fact that if your in a virtual reality it is absolutely, positively, 100%, in every possible situation impossible to trust the results of any test. Assuming it's a VR universe, the results are then VR. Knowing nothing of the specific design attributes of that which creates the VR, it could just as easily be designed to block the ability to run a simulation completing in O(1) so that you could not discover its true nature. It is an absolutely unfalsifiable premise and is therefore unscientific.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[sm62704]

I completely disagree. The calculus on the simulation argument is surprisingly solid when you think about it (Bostrom, for instance, has some pretty good arguments for it).

And the answer to the equation is, of course, 42.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Citizen of Earth]

could self-correct for any flaw we discover by simply rewriting the memories of any experiences we had, or deleting and replaying that part of the simulation with different variables. Again, since our experience is wholly under the control of the simulation, we again would be none the wiser.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster does this every instant of every day. This makes Pastafarianism logically sound while other religions are a mass of contradictions.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Admiral Ag]

I think you're taking it too far. What you say would indeed make the claim untestable. But on the other hand, it is testable given certain assumptions about the VR machine (that it does not engage in the blocking you describe, for example). While the test could not rule out all possibilities, it could conditionally rule out that we were living in that particular kind of VR world.

Where I think your argument fails is that no scientific theory can have the kind of certainty that would prove beyond doubt that we weren't living in any sort of VR machine, so no scientist qua scientist ought to be interested in that sort of test. On the other hand, a test that merely attempted to rule out that we were living in a VR machine that did not maliciously interfere with our experiments would be genuinely scientific, and we should grant the result the same status we would grant to any other scientific conclusion.

Part of the problem here is with misuse of the verb "to know". Plato claimed that to know was to have an infallible grasp of reality, and that definition actually makes sense in his peculiar philosophical system (I happen to think it doesn't make sense in any other), but unless you are a Platonist, you should treat that understanding of the term "knowledge" with suspicion. The problem is that it has seeped into our collective consciousness and caused us to talk a lot of nonsense, and it isn't just philosophers and scientists, ordinary people now demand ridiculous degrees of proof for all sorts of petty claims.

Perhaps we would be better off to listen to Wittgenstein, who argued that we should look at the way people actually use the word in non-philosophical contexts. In science, no sane person uses the Platonic definition of knowledge, because that's not the kind of knowledge that science yields. While philosophers are blamed for some of this ridiculous brain in a vat stuff, most philosophers I know are more inclined to the anti-Platonist approach. It really is unfair. Scientists berate contemporary philosophers for arguing in favour of Cartesian doubts, which is almost as accurate as philosophers accusing contemporary scientists of practicing alchemy.

On the other hand, much religious speculation seems tied to the Platonic definition (what's the point in supposing a God as a mere working hypothesis rather than an evidence transcedent metaphysical certainty), so the Wittgensteinian approach seems rather damaging to religious claims (although Witt. himself didn't think so IIRC).

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[Tollsen]

That is -- if anybody outside of our box still has any interest in us. Perhaps, our box is running on something the equalivant of a 386 running inside of af closet, collecting dust, and nobody remembers us. On the flip side, some of us might have figured out or invented something which was previously unknown to the outside (literally) world, and been applied there (that is, if the laws out there don't make it impossible) Then, of course, our universe might just as well be what we call a MMORPG. But back to the theory: Let's say some scientists will in a decade or two conclude we are indeed living in a VR: What are we going to do about it?

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[RobDude]

That implies that 'time' as we know it is the same in the 'real' world. When I run an emulator on my PC, the game I'm playing doesn't know that it is being run on an emulator. If I'm playing Zelda OoT and I step on a switch that opens a door that will remain open for 30 seconds...

And then I pause the emulator for three days of 'my' time; no time has passed in the game.

Given what we know about software and what not, first and foremost - assuming we are all just a VR simulation, intentionally trying to crash the system might be a really, really, really bad idea. If we're running with a debugger attached, and we do something that throws an exception - time as we know it would stop instantly. The developer/sys admin running us could take a week, month, year, or any unit of time to come back, fix the error and continue execution.

Or, we could simply 'crash', which would be the end of the world to all of us - to the developer, he'd fix a few lines of code and re-run us.

In a simulation, everything is simulated; including our concept of time. There wouldn't need to be any outside entity watching us in 'real-time' to 'instantly' fix us.

Re:1637 called, they want their idea back.

[SatanicPuppy]

For one thing, the fact that there could conceivably be an Operator standing by to adjust the results doesn't mean that we should suspect there is.

How about "The fact that the universe could be a VR simulation doesn't mean that we should suspect it is"? That's the real root of the problem; there is zero evidence the universe is anything other than it appears to be.

As soon as you start saying, "Well this could be a simulation" then you have to throw out all knowledge that comes to you through sense data. ALL of it. It's not trustworthy when you know it could all be manufactured. That leaves you with nothing outside of deductive logic, and you're stuck trying to prove the universe as we know it a priori, which is effectively impossible.

You're treating it like you'll be able to trust empirical experimentation, and that's just not the case. Even the possibility that the simulation is being gamed from the outside is enough to screw all your results, regardless of whether they're being changed or not. As for inconsistent results...I've run simulations before where things started going haywire; the most common course is to try and fix it, and if that fails, it's time to load saved game, and move forward from there, taking care to remove whatever screwed you up the first time.

Before we explore this theory...

[carpe_noctem]

Before I can explore this theory, I need to re-pack the bong...

*cough*

Ok, ready!

A question...

[Mr. Bad Example]

Do they give out Nobel prizes in the "Dude, I Am So Fucking High Right Now" category?

Re:A question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they give out Nobel prizes in the "Dude, I Am So Fucking High Right Now" category? It would seem so

Vacation

[Facetious]

I propose that we, the /. community, establish a vacation fund for New Zealand physicists.

bad idea

[syrinx]

Seems to me that if the universe is a simulation, then the obvious ending condition would be "when the residents figure out they're in a simulation". The creator of the simulation could be stretching his noodly appendages out towards the 'killall -9 universe' keys right now, now that this guy has gone and blabbed about it to everyone.

Re:bad idea

[Blakey Rat]

He began to feel dizzy, and in his confusion he even started wondering if the old fellow was right, and he really was a computer. He felt a pang of worry about how he would tell Jill. The room around him was dissolving away. He felt himself flung into a void, and from somewhere close by, he heard someone calling his name, "Perry Simm...Perry Simm...P'ry Simm...Prisim...PRISM...PRISM..."

http://infocom.elsewhere.org/gallery/amfv/amfv.html

Re:bad idea

[Locklin]

Only human arrogance would lead one to believe that the [subject of the simulation] are humans.

Re:bad idea

[Floody]

Only human arrogance would lead one to believe that the [subject of the simulation] are humans.

Agreed. Although, perhaps, the "point" of the simulation/experiment is to evolve intelligence to a given (as yet unknown) level.

Consider that there are between 200 and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, 27 galaxies (IIRC) in our local group alone and (probably) over 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. That's a lot of opportunity for all kinds of interesting things to happen over 13+ billion years.

Still, as others have pointed out, it ultimately fails the falsibility test. One can always argue that the simulation has been set up to be undetectable and/or modified to that end.

Human beings are quite obsessed with "purpose." We know that the universe and physical laws appear to be deterministic, but this doesn't help much with advancing the "why" answer. Personally, I am a strong believer in the weak anthropomorphic principle: the universe is deterministic because it must be in order to exist. It's perfectly plausible within that framework that there is no specific reason or purpose behind its existence, no matter how uncomfortable that might make homo sapiens feel.

Re:bad idea

[darkstar949]

However, as another poster pointed out, the system could first place the simulation residents into a "paused" state, preform the universal state calculations, and once complete updated the residents of the simulation with the current universal state. Thus, the computation time to generate the state might increase, but from the perspective of residents the updates would be real time.

there is a scientific explanation for this

[circletimessquare]

it's called paranoid schizophrenia

Re:Hrm

[SatanicPuppy]

One of the strengths of science is that there are always people asking weird questions.

Granted, this one is a bit over the edge, but if you force people to bend to the orthodoxy in all things, then your science has become a religion. Either the current theory can withstand a dissenting voice, or the current theory sucks, and needs to be replaced.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[pezpunk]

We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?

- Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7 (Subject termination advised)

Re:Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[Joe the Lesser]

Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist.

Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

Proving that...

[techpawn]

is like trying to prove that there is no gravity, everything just continually expands at the same rate until they collide. You can't provide outside neutral observation, anything you try to observe it with will be part of the experiment. This isn't Physics it's philosophy. Sorry sir, but your cat is dead.

the Off switch

[WibbleOnMars]

To extend the hypothesis:

The entity[ies] running the simulation created it to find out whether their creations could work out that they're in a simulation. As soon as we come up with a definite proof, they will have achieved the goals of the simulation, and will shut it down.

Possibly.

Or they might just replace it with something even more baffling.

Re:the Off switch

[klovn]

Or they'll load the backup from last week and remove New Zealand.

not quite a paradox but..

[jessiej]

If "the universe is a giant virtual reality simulation", then this virtual reality must have been created somewhere, let's call it "the real universe".. but wait, what if that real universe is just a virtual reality simulation.. and on and on and on..

just an old idea with a simple scifi twist

Re:not quite a paradox but..

[multisync]

but wait, what if that real universe is just a virtual reality simulation.. and on and on and on..

Yup. Just turtles, all the way down ...

Re:not quite a paradox but..

[tompaulco]

If you paint a painting, should that painting expect that someone painted you? Assuming we were created by some being that exists outside our universe, it does not necessarily follow that the fact that we were created implies that the being was also created.
If you write a computer program with certain restraints, that certainly does not mean that those restraints apply to you outside of that program.

It will never work..

[LWATCDR]

Why?
Space is big, you may think it is a log way to the Chemists but that is just peanuts compared to space.
And just how we simulate the computer running the simulation of the universe in the simulated universe?
The price of RAM will go through the roof.

Re:So, God is a geek.

[Verteiron]

But if God is not a supernatural being, but merely a 5-dimensional mortal adolescent with a penchant for programming 4d universes in his spare time, is it still a religion?

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[Baron_Yam]

Actually, I don't think that's a valid point.

Just because you believe some programmer in a 'higher' level of reality created this one, doesn't mean you don't believe he did it with rules that we see as the Laws of Nature. You can still investigate those Laws and try to figure them out.

This is different from the ID crowd, who apparently feel that 'God did it' means you actively refuse to even think about the rules.

Yes, and this guy won!

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

The thing about all this is (preps Karma Shield) Who cares?

Ahhh good shield...
Uh oh detecting anomolies... Captain we need to reroute power from the phasers & the warp drives to the shield deflectors.
Make it so.
Ahhh it worked. Good job!

K now that my Karma is safe... Please understand what I mean.

Philosophical, unprovable arguements are by nature not worth more than discussion, and can not by nature lead to any outcome other than heated debate, War, or in this guys situation, a bad case of the munchies. I totally agree that this is like a conversation over a bowl of weed after watching the Matrix.

Personally, I believe in God because of certain situations in my life where I should have died or been seriously injured but was preppared by a "voice." But if god is just a program to inject thoughts in my head that save my life, then my belief in God is still valid, because from my perspective that program IS GOD.

Secondly if this is a VR sim, than there must be some Reality sufficiently advanced to where we could get replicated in RL from our VR selves after we proved our worth here! (another reason to be good!)

Re:Yes, and this guy won!

[Altus]

but, what if this is a simulation of a simulation.

This is just like playing virtual ski ball!

mathimatical basis for this...

[Connie_Lingus]

This idea is not new...mathematicians have been exploring this for years now, and the "theory" is based on these three ideas and how "true" they may be;

1. the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a posthuman stage.
2. any post-human civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof).
3. we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become post-humans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation.

It all breaks down to probability...if any "post-human" species with enough computer power to model our universe down to the quantum level decides to run Sim-like models, there would almost assuredly be many many simulations run. Now, it might require a computer the size of a small planet to run the estimated 10^42 ops/second that modeling our universe may require, but it is not totally unbelievable that 200-500 years from now we, as a species, will harness this type of computer power.

The real problem is...who cares? Even if it were possible to discover this "truth" what difference would it make in our lives?

Good for him

[roggg]

I don't know why people are hating on him. I think it's great that an IT guy has found an outlet for his creative side. Not sure when NS started publishing sci-fi, but it sounds interesting nonetheless.

I disagree

[jd]

I believe it is testable. All computers ultimately reduce to the Turing Machine. This includes neural networks and at least some classes of quantum computer. (Heresy, I know. Terrible. Now go find a medium-rare steak to burn me on.) However, not all problems reduce to computable problems. If there is a non-computable system that exists in the real world, then it cannot be the product of a simulation, no matter how advanced the computer is.

Do such problems exist? Well, chaos theory is full of them. You cannot have a system that is truly chaotic and computable at the same time - the two are mutually exclusive. Both are deterministic, but only one is predictable.

Re:I disagree

[roggg]

I believe it is testable. All computers ultimately reduce to the Turing Machine. This includes neural networks and at least some classes of quantum computer. (Heresy, I know. Terrible. Now go find a medium-rare steak to burn me on.) However, not all problems reduce to computable problems. If there is a non-computable system that exists in the real world, then it cannot be the product of a simulation, no matter how advanced the computer is. The problem with this is that computers, computability, Turing, and the entire field of theoretical computer science are fabrications made possible by the rules of the simulation we are running inside of. No correspondence to uber-reality is assumed or implied. You cant prove anything from inside the box.

Re:I disagree

[asuffield]

The Church-Turing thesis is unprovable even alone - it's a philosophical observation of something that ought to be true and appears to be, but it is mathematically impossible to prove that it is true (because it has an arbitrary self-referential definition in the middle of it). You do not need to posit that the universe is a simulation in order to question the thesis - it's just that nobody who has pursued that line of thinking has found that it leads to any kind of meaningful conclusions.

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the Church-Turing thesis is good enough for us to get on with working on things, neither more nor less.

Re:I disagree

[teslar]

All computers ultimately reduce to the Turing Machine.

And you can prove this, of course. Let's rephrase this to be more realistic and correct:
All currently known computers can ultimately be related to the classical Turing Machine

That being said, your general argument is of course an allusion to von Neumann's quote "Anyone attempting to produce random numbers by purely arithmetic means is, of course, in a state of sin." - saying basically that since the universe contains true randomness, it cannot be the product of a calculation. This is a fallacy, since you're making assumptions on the calculations and computations that can be performed in the world simulating our Universe ("their computational limits are the same as ours"), but you have no way of supporting that assumption. None of what holds true for our Universe might even apply out there. So no, you cannot test (better: falsify) the hypothesis this way.

Re:I disagree

[UbuntuDupe]

I agree, chaotic does not imply non-deterministic, just "really hard to compute for prediction".

As for your question, yes, there is a classic example of a deterministic-but-not-computable system. However, it is not chaotic. I will describe it anyway, just to be cool. The system is as follows:

Let A(n,s) be a random algorithm that operates on the input, integers n and s. Let t be number for the current state. (If you are on the 1000th iteration in time of the system, t is 1000.)

The system has one binary variable, s.

The state at any given time t is defined by:

If A(t-1,s(t-1)) halts, s=1 at time t; s=0 otherwise.

As you can see from the description, each state t is fully determined by the previous state, s(t-1). Therefore, it is deterministic. However, there exists no algorithm that can tell you if an arbitrary algorithm, for an arbitrary input, halts. (That is the famous Halting Theorem.) Therefore, you cannot compute it.

Okay, I might have gotten the system a bit wrong...

Re:I disagree

[rasputin465]

Do such problems exist? Well, chaos theory is full of them. You cannot have a system that is truly chaotic and computable at the same time - the two are mutually exclusive. Both are deterministic, but only one is predictable.

While this isn't the main point of your comment, I should call a red card on your reference to chaos theory, determinism, and predictability. First of all, I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word "deterministic". If a system is deterministic, then by definition it is, at least at some level, predictable. In terms of physics, the alternative to a deterministic system is a probabilistic system (which is the general interpretation of quantum mechanics). But even probabilistic systems are predictable to a degree (one can predict the probability of certain outcomes).

But when one talks of chaos theory, and a chaotic system, this has nothing to do with its predictability. A chaotic system is in fact predictable. The 'chaos' label refers to the system's sensitivity to initial conditions. But given a set of initial conditions, the later dynamics of that system can be computed.

Re:I disagree

[DragonWriter]

I believe it is testable. All computers ultimately reduce to the Turing Machine. This includes neural networks and at least some classes of quantum computer. (Heresy, I know. Terrible. Now go find a medium-rare steak to burn me on.) However, not all problems reduce to computable problems. If there is a non-computable system that exists in the real world, then it cannot be the product of a simulation, no matter how advanced the computer is.

How do you distinguish a deterministic system governed by a non-computable function without first finding a practical technique for solving non-computable problems?

OTOH, if any system for solving non-computable problems can exist within our universe/simulation, we can incorporate that system into any simulation we design, and thus such a simulation can feature systems which are "non-computable" in the Turing sense; and if a simulation in our universe can do so if our universe is not a simulation, a simulation that governs our universe could do so, as well.

Do such problems exist? Well, chaos theory is full of them. You cannot have a system that is truly chaotic and computable at the same time - the two are mutually exclusive.

No, they aren't. Chaos and Turing computability are not exclusive. Though, of course, a large chaotic system will be hard to compute in terms of practicality. But Turing computability isn't about pragmatics.

Re:I disagree

[Hatta]

Do you have anything to actually back that up?

It's called the Church Turing Thesis

They haven't even invented quantum computers yest, and if by "neural network" you mean livingbrain tissue, you're flat wron, and it's based on facts, not speculation. The brain is a chemical process using various mixes of chemical. Thought, sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, are nothing more than a complex chemical reactions.

Right, and all those chemical reactions are defined by laws of physics. The same laws of physics that govern the computers we all know and love. What is it that makes you think computers can't be implemented with chemistry?

If brains were turing machines than dogs could do math.

Wow. To paraphrase Charles Babbage, I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement.

First off, what makes you think that dogs don't do math? Just think about their brains controlling their muscles. Somehow they have to be calculating how much neuronal stimulation to apply to a muscle to get the desired amount of force. Isn't that math?

Secondly, what would make you think that dogs being an implementation of a computer implies that they would be able to consciously do math? You've got your logical levels hideously confused. Have you ever seen the animal simulation toy program "Dogz"? I don't think there's any question that that dog is an algorithm. But can it do math?

Re:I disagree

[Hatta]

But chemicals aren't electricity.

So? You can make mechanical computers, even hydraulic computers. The physical substrate doesn't matter.

And I imagine you could make a chemical computer, but it woudn't necessarily be a Turing archetecture.

You just don't understand Turing equivalence. Any algorithm anywhere ever imagined by anyone can be implemented on a turing machine. If you can express a process as an algorithm, as you can chemical reactions, then the same algorithm can be implemented on a turing machine. That is what the OP meant when he said "All computers ultimately reduce to the Turing Machine."

My brain controls my muscles but I don't calculate anything, I just point and it goes.

Right, so your muscles are executing an algorithm that eventually terminates and outputs the right signals to move your muscle. Hence it can be implemented as an algorithm that can be performed on a turing machine. The fact that you don't consciously apprehend that is irrelevant. (though it would be tremendously amusing to hear you explain why you think it is relevant).

I don't believe an abacus is a Turing machine, either, but it is in fact pretty much how a digital computer works (alveit decimal instead of binary).

No, an abacus is not a turing machine. But you can implement an abacus with a turing machine.

Re:I disagree

[x2A]

"But chemicals aren't electricity"

Err... actually it's pretty blurry, chemical reactions are the results of electrical charge between atoms, and the human brain is actually a lot more digital than you might think, with each neuron being not too dissimilar to transitors... they have gates that get opened, which allows ions to flow into the neuron, which changes its potential (overall charge). When its charge reaches a certain level, it will fire. Equivalent would be a transistor with multiple connections attached to each section instead of just one.

"but they lacked the rounding errors that haunt digital computing"

Quantum physics would seem to indicate that rounding does in fact occur everywhere, even things that appear analog, when broken right down, do go up and down in steps and cannot be divided indefinitely.

"My brain controls my muscles but I don't calculate anything, I just point and it goes"

You might not be conscious of it, but it's certainly happening. If someone throws a ball, you ccan predict that path it's going to take and 'calculate' where your hand needs to be to catch it. Sure, you might not be thinking about it in terms of x, y, times and divide, but remember, maths is just language, used to describe things that happen, not dictate them, and so can be expressed in a wide variety of ways.

"but it is in fact pretty much how a digital computer works (alveit decimal instead of binary)."

Binary is just how things are stored at the transitor level within the computer; a level of abstraction up, and things are generally processed in higher powers of two (logic operations can for example be used to manipulate individual bits, but it makes no sense for maths operations to be the same, so these operations work on larger units).

Don't let the complexity of millions of things working together confuse quite how simple the underlying components are by themselves. If you can simulate a single neuron perfectly, simulating a whole brain becomes just a matter of providing the processing power to support the extreme number of them you'd need to. The fundamentals are much simpler and much more attainable than they appear while looking at the big picture.

Not to turn this into a religious debate, but...

[VE3MTM]

You can't disprove this theory for the same reasons you can't "prove" that God doesn't exist with ontological arguments. There's no way to prove that we're not living in a simulation, because for every test you come up with, some weeny can say, "well, of course you get that result, it's part of the simulation!"

It's bad science. Hell, it's not science.

oblig alpha centauri

[Joe the Lesser]

We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?

Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7
Activity Recorded M.Y. 2302.22467
TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED

The only real proof would be...

[m4cph1sto]

... glitches in the system. Like one morning we wake up and gravity repels, and a BSoD message is written across the sky in clouds. Only then would I be convinced that our universe is in fact a digital simulation.

Trippy, duuude

[longacre]

"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather." --Bill Hicks

He is NOT a physicist

[quadong]

Brian Whitworth, the author of the paper, is a senior lecturer in information technology at Massey University in New Zealand.

http://www.massey.ac.nz/~wwiims/people/b.whitworth/

Here are his degrees: BSc (Maths), BA (Psych), MA (Hons), IS Doctorate
Masters Thesis: Brian Systems and the Concept of Self
PhD Thesis: Generating Group Agreement in Cooperative Computer Mediated Groups

He also suggests that our universe could be running on a "three-dimensional space-time screen", which doesn't make any sense given that space-time is 4 dimensional. The verbiage on page 2 of his paper continues to make it clear that besides not having any formal training in physics, he seems to only have a layperson's understanding of the modern physical concepts that would be needed to begin to make a coherent argument on this topic. The idea isn't total crap, but this guy does not seem qualified to champion it.

Oh great, we're doomed

[jayhawk88]

Tech: Sir, Universe #4598232 has achieved self awareness. Bringing up it's stats on the monitor now.

God: Hmmmm.....15.5 billion years? Took them long enough.

Tech: Yes sir. Shall I transfer them over with the other sentients?

God: What's the status of the species that figured it out?

Tech: They call themselves "Humans" sir, a bipedal mammalian race. They've been out of the trees for a few hundred thousand years so far, can control fission but not fusion, only live for about 100 years, and have just recently had unmanned spacecraft pierce their own solar system.

God: Good Me, is that it? What the hell have they been doing this whole time?

Tech: Mostly fighting amongst themselves judging by their media.

God: Yes, I see. Nasty little buggers aren't they? No, we can't risk contaminating the other sentients with this lot, schedule the universe for wiping and reload the OS. Let's go ahead and move this one from the mammalian test group to energy beings, it's looking like energy-based lifeforms might be the way to go, I'd like to get a larger sampling.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[somersault]

This is different from the ID crowd, who apparently feel that 'God did it' means you actively refuse to even think about the rules. Don't be stupid, plenty of scientists believe in God, me being one of them - though of course I'm primarily a Computer Scientist, but I find physics highly interesting. My uncle has a PhD in fluid dynamics and he's a Christian, and I know plenty of other Christians who defy your personal stereotype.

Not really.

[jd]

There are some valuable ideas that can be borrowed from such lines of thinking. First off, if someone made a computer simulation of you and placed that simulation in a restricted environment (and you in an identical physical environment), how could you determine which one of you was real? Is there a way to know?

The answer is yes - chaos theory can be simulated on a computer but it is not going to be as sensitive to initial conditions as something in an analogue universe. Thus, chaotic systems on a computer can be repeated. Real-world chaotic systems never can.

The next thing that can be drawn is a better understanding of the brain. It should be obvious by now that the senses do not link directly to the conciousness but rather are used to update a mental "virtual reality" construct within the brain. Thus, everyone is living in their own virtual reality in a sense. This is easily demonstrated - there are hundreds of psychological tests that show how the brain fills in missing information, which only makes sense if there is some internal model from which such information can be obtained.

On the other hand, people on the autistic spectrum have fewer mirror neurons and show abnormal activity in the pre-frontal lobes, according to fMRI scans. They are also well-known for having an astonishing level of focus to the point where activity beyond a relatively low level is painfully overloading. This would make sense using this VR idea, as their brains' internal VR would be skewed from experience, above a certain level of input, creating intense stress and confusion. Exactly what you find with people on the autistic spectrum.

Does this internal VR model mean that all of reality is a VR model? No. If it did, then the VR models could always agree even when there is a bottleneck or information degradation. Since this is clearly not the case, it seems reasonable to conclude that the brain's VR is a crude approximation to reality and not reality itself.

Doesn't the idea of the conciousness existing within a brain-level VR contradict the notion of experimental science? No. The VR is not what you experience, the VR - or whatever you want to call it - is simply a mental construct to allow the brain to anticipate and to act in advance of actual data, or act where actual data is too noisy to directly use. Processing sensory data is hard work and can't possibly be done in real-time all of the time. However, measurements are not made in real-time. You observe a system as it exists in a snapshot of time, and you can continue observing that snapshot all you like. Since that is the case, any momentary disparity between the internal VR and the external world should be eliminated.

Re:Occam's Razor

[mea37]

Trying to reason about whether the universe is real or simulated is only useful as entertainment. Not only is it philosophical, it's philosophically meaningless. The guy proposing the theory claims there's a way to test it, but he's merely given a name to the type of test he thinks will work, without considering whether such a test is theoretically conceivable. (And the author of TFA, in his zeal to discredit the theory, conflates the concepts of "describing" an algorithm and "executing" it, in an attempt to suggest such tests have already been run.)

Some of the speculation around the theory - possible ties to quantum physics and relativity, etc. - is entertaining and might make good sci fi. I've found myself wandering down similar lines of thougth at idle times. But I don't believe any true reasoning on the topic is possible.

In that spirit, here's what's wrong with your attempts to reason on the topic :)

Occam's Razor already negates the need for testing if the universe is real or not . . . the universe must be real, because they are equally capable of explaining what goes on in the universe, and one requires fewer assumptions.

For all the times I've seen Occam's Razor referenced on Slashdot and/or in pop culture, I've never once seen it used correctly in either place. This is no exception. Occam's Razor does not prove anything; it merely give guidance as to which of two competing theories is preferable to work with.

Or to rephrase that. Science is about the how, not the why.

That would be a false (or at least oversimplified) dichotomy. Speculative "why"s are often steps in reasoning that lead to more complete models of "how".

Further, if the universe was a simulation there would be no random numbers, only pseudo-random numbers.

If our world is a simulation, then you cannot know what technology exists in the "real" world. Just because we (in this world) haven't invented a true random number generator for a computer (yet) doesn't mean one can't exist, especially since we'd have no baseline for knowing basic physics in the "real" world.

Quantum physicists have to work with statistics and effectively random numbers

I question whether we know that variables in quantum physics are truly random vs. pseudorandom, but I'm a bit rusty in that field. But ironically, if they are truly random, then that suggests a perfectly sound procedure for making a truly random number generator for a computer...

with our current view of the universe, we can know every detail of every thing in the whole universe, and still not be able to predict the future

Yes, but if the universe is a simulation then any random number seeds would not be included in "every thing in the whole universe".

Run our own

[matt me]

It is difficult to take this seriously until we are capable of running our own simulated universes. Then real consideration would be needed:

What would our subjects think? Would they ask the question we do? Would they run their own simulated universe? Would their subjects ask if they live in a simulated universe in a simulated universe?

If you were to devise a test that our universe is simulated, and we were to test positive, you would never be able to test if our hosting universe simulated. It's turtles all the way down.

What is a non simulated universe like?

I think if we were in a simulated universe, our gods would be having much more fun messin' with us. By likelihood, we wouldn't be a scientific simulation, but in some curious kids' basement. Now that's scary.

Simulating the universe

[Tony]

Given a quantum storage tank the size of a large sun, I could simulate the universe on a 386. It'd just take a long, long time to run.

You don't need a computer the size of the universe to model the universe. You just need a computer the size of the universe to model the universe *in real time.*

No meaningful argument *against* simulism either

[mkcmkc]

What you say is (mostly) true enough, but it doesn't follow that Simulism is nonsense. It is non-testable, at least as far as we know from our perspective, and therefore falls outside of the realm of science. But it may nonetheless be true.

Not only that, but it seems like a distinct possibility. Who among us would not set up such a simulation if we had the capability? And who among us, watching the progress of technology over recent decades, seriously doubts that we will soon have the capability to set up such simulations?

Re:One thing I never understood about the Matrix

[exploder]

Who says they're simulating *us*? Maybe we're some unrecognized emergent property of the simulation of some problem that's of interest to "them".

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[skoaldipper]

and there is no evidence for the supernatural.

Maybe not universally shared by all at all times. However, I have personal intimate evidence of the supernatural. Ask anyone with "near death" experiences - on the operating table or similar. Something hard to explain to others, but very real nonetheless. I'll never forget my spirit trying to resync with my body as my chest pumped up and down. Two very distinct and separate entities. Surreal to say the least.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[richlv]

this has always puzzled me.
i can't see believing in god as something that can withstand simple questions.
i mean, if the life on earth is too complex to have originated on itself and somebody created it, then that how did that somebody come to be ? did somebody else create him (and why not her ;) ) ?
if somebody else, we get into a loop, where we still have to break out at some point.
if not, then there can be no scientific, critical thinking that could accept the "he just exists, you may not question that".
so how could a chain of logical arguments convince a person of gods existence ?

Will quantum technology end the world?

[tgibbs]

There doesn't seem to be anything particularly new or profound in the paper. None of the "tests" suggest any practical experiments, so it seems to me little more than amusing speculation.

However, along those lines:

The notion that the apparent quantized nature of physics could be an approximation--a way for a simulation to limit memory requirements--occurred to me some years ago. It has some potentially disturbing implications (at least if you take it seriously).

This idea is meaningful only if the simulation is embedded in a universe is not itself quantized. Of course, our universe could be an accurate simulation of a quantized universe, but then our universe's quantal nature is not any kind of evidence for our universe being a VR.

This leads to some concerns about the motivations of the creators of the simulation. Generally, one constructs a simulation to answer questions about one's own world, so we may speculate that the developers of the simulation presumed that quantizing reality at such a tiny scale would not be a major source of error.

Yet here we are, developing technologies that work only because of the quantal nature of physics, happily exploiting what are really "bugs" in the simulation. If the developers happen to notice what we are doing, they might not be too happy about this--potentially, the use of quantum technology to any major extent would undermine the validity of their simulation in terms of making predictions regarding their (presumably non-quantum) universe. What if they notice, realize that their simulation is faulty and decide to turn us off?

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[EllisDees]

>I'll never forget my spirit trying to resync with my body as my chest pumped up and down. Two very distinct and separate entities. Surreal to say the least.

I once had a very similar experience after drinking a bottle of Robitussin.

Re:Voyager 1

[Chysn]

> voyager 1 was launched in 1977 it is just now reaching the edge of the solar system = 20 years

That would be thirty years. But the Voyager craft were designed to explore the solar system, not to just get the hell out of it.

The reality of the reality

[caseih]

I don't think it particularly matters if we are in some kind of metaphysical simulation or not. If there is some sort of uber virtual reality, the simulation, and thus simulator, would have to be so large and so complex that it would also itself be reality. On a smaller scale, if you want to simulate every single aspect of a system (and I do mean *everything* about it), then you've pretty much created the system itself again, albeit in some sort of equivalent way. Supposing such a simulation existed, and it was in some sort of computer, for argument's sake, and being in a computer it allowed reality of size x to be modeled in a much smaller, finite space, then if you run multiple realities in parallel, that's pretty much the equivalent of the multiple universe theory. So as far as we're concerned it's the exact same thing!

Additionally, reality being some kind of "VR" begs all kinds of questions. Like how was the VR created (it's existence as a simulation implies it was created). What is the "reality" that the simulator resides in? If the VR was created, how was it created? Does this imply some sort of intelligence at work here? The only possible interesting thing that could come about if reality is some sort of simulation is whether or not there are glitches in the simulation. Everything else, if it ran perfectly, is irrelevant because the simulation would be indistinguishable from any form of reality.

A Quick Test to find out if this is a simulation..

[theJML]

Just say "Computer, Arch!". Damn, no arch. Must not be a simulation.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[EagleEye101]

Well fine. If you want to say that for God, how would it be without God then. You say its an infinite loop to explain God well its the same for explaining the universe. How did all this mass come into existence anyway...

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[OwnedByTwoCats]

So many misconceptions, so little time.

Yes, Evolution was banned because it contradicted the written word of God... in 1925. Evolution is right, not because it opposes religion, but because it has been repeatedly tested by comparing evidence with predictions of the theory.

Arguments that oppose Evolution also oppose verifiable observations, and must be discarded because they are wrong. You can claim religions persecution for being locked out of science class when you want to insist that the moon is made of green cheese, or that the sky is red at night and green during the day. Good luck with that.

The only fundamental difference between the two is that Evolution is a testable and tested scientific theory backed up by over a century of evidence, while ID is rehashed creationism, a religions belief contradicted by evidence and illegal (and unwise) to teach in public school science classrooms.

One final clue: Evolution does not speak at all to the origin of life.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[Minwee]

It's watchmakers all the way up.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[porcupine8]

Maybe not everyone needs a "chain of logical arguments" to convince them that God exists? Or of other things - I don't have any logical arguments to convince me that my husband loves me. Logically, it's just as likely that having and raising children is very very important to him, and he believes that I will be an excellent mother, and so he wants to take good care of me and make me happy so that I will help him raise children. That could, potentially, be indistinguishable from him actually loving me, but still I believe that he does love me. Amazingly enough, being a scientist does not automatically meant that I must be 100% logical in all things - I am a human scientist, after all, not Vulcan.

You also do not have to believe "you may not question that" to believe "He just exists." You can easily believe that you can question it all you want - but a) questioning it doesn't make it less true and b) the fact that you can't get good answers to your questions right now doesn't make it less true. Maybe someday we'll know the answers to those questions, maybe not. Maybe our piddly little brains just aren't capable of comprehending whatever it is that created God, so we can physically never know.

Hmm

[jeffxbaker]

where do i click to change my wifes avatar

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[jcaldwel]

that life was created by random chance

Read much of evolution theory? Evolution is not fundamentally a random process. DNA Mutation happens all the time. Some put it at 17 mutations per person per generation. Pit that against billions of years of time, and the common-sense notion that some variations ensure their own survival (survival of the fittest), and voila, you have evolution at its grad scale.

May I suggest the book Climbing Mount Improbable for a better/more complete explanation.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[JWSmythe]

Ahhh, and you've figured it out.

    Hallucinations are hallucinations. It doesn't matter if they're induced by illegal drugs, abused products (like the DXM in Robitussin, the nitrous oxide in whipped cream cans, or other of thousands of abused products), lack of sleep, or lack of oxygen to the brain, they're all still hallucinations.

    A few that have been passed on to me have been...

    Are they giant purple lizards crawling along the roof tops, following you around?

    Separating from your body, having your spirit become one with the universe, being everywhere, and then thinking to yourself, "I had a body once. I wonder what that was like..." only to be slammed back into reality a few seconds later.

    The ceiling turning into a gridwork, then the cells of the grid being filled with green paisley patterns, which all began to spin simultaniously. The sound of the music turned into taste and color, and your body becomes one with the waves of music.

    Or..

    Lying in a bed, a dark spirit floats above you, with an evil face, and large tattered black wings, who simply says "it's not your time yet", and then disappears.

    Some people relate that when hallucinating, they are easily guided into their hallucination, either through ideas that have been impressed upon them before, or during the hallucination. "Are those ants all over your body??". We've all heard of the floating spirit hallucination, and the light at the end of the tunnel hallucination. Since those have been so impressed on us as the way it's going to be, it's very easy for that to be a driving factor in such hallucinations.

    In my only near death experiences, I saw .... black .... Lots of nothing. There's nothing in the great beyond, because I have no preconceptions to guide my hallucinations.

The obvious question is...

[jurt1235]

Does it run under linux?

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[khellendros1984]

I believe that life isn't too complex to have been generated by natural laws; on the contrary, said laws were designed by a creator with the express purpose of generating the life we see.

"He" is just a convenient grammatical construct to refer to a God, which I actually suspect is genderless. Appearing to a male-dominated society, "He" took on a male persona, which is how we now think of Him.

As to the question of how God came to exist, the Bible school answer would be "He just always has". Personally, I think that before the universe was created, time was undefined, so "always" loses its meaning. There wasn't some amount of aeons of time with God sitting doing nothing.....of course, I don't have any evidence that it's not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down ;-)

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Some apples are green, are all apples green? No.

Even the Vatican is starting to back Evolution. Not all Christ-lovers are insanely trying to get ID accepted as science.

Re:I can think of ways to test it.

[cnettel]

Detecting a well-implemented simulation is hard. It's like trying to determine for sure that you're in a VM from user mode, when you haven't even been told what a non-VM would look like. Arguments like timing assume that somehow we would still be simulated in real time. While possible, there is no reason to do it that way. If I write an explicit time-stepping scheme in a for loop, the scheme won't be affected if my code is swapped out and then loaded again. I can even hibernate the machine and start it up later, the simulated environment will be totally unaffected.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[jafuser]

What piss me off is people disbelieving in God's existence just because they can't scientifically prove it.

Why do you have to be "pissed off"? Why not just let people believe what they want and go on with your life?

God isn't threadsafe.

[C10H14N2]

See, you just proved God doesn't understand threading and has crappy exception handling leading to massive memory leaks, which should explain quite a few things about black holes, string theory and why all programming books insist on beginning with "Hello, world." /Creepy. My captcha was "Programs." Shudder.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[lgw]

OK, let's say that God exists. Which one? We've imagined about a million of em. Pick the wrong one and you go to Hell for sure.

Stipulating that some god or goddess or pantheon exists, please provide proof (or even a little evidence) that your religious views won't doom yourself and everyone who listens to you to eternal torment.

The thing about statements that can't be falsified is that they have 0 predictive power. True or false, it doesn't matter: no reason to care.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[tbg58]

There are reasonable people on both sides of the question of god's existence. In this case, the issue is one of causality. Specifically, the "it's watchmakers all the way up" fails because it posits an infinite series of causes.

We exist right now at a point in the series of causation. But an infinite series cannot be traversed, so the infinite series of watchmakers cannot lead us to any present we are part of.

This doesn't connote necessarily the existence of god. It does mandate at some point a cause which is uncaused, non-contingent and necessarily existing as the foundation of existence, but there is no purely logical reason that says a higher order universe cannot have these attributes.

The idea that what we experience as the universe is a VR simulation really doesn't advance the question about ultimate being at all, it just moves it down (or up) one layer.

Ultimately, though, since all we know and experience is both caused and contingent (including the universe itself) there must be something uncaused and non-contingent behind it. Non-being cannot give rise to being, so self-creation is out as well. Again, this doesn't on purely logical grounds have to be god, and even if one suggests that god is the ground of being this sort of argumentation doesn't come anywhere near proving the existence of any particular god.

In my own case I am a theist, but I have reasonable friends who disbelieve on reasonable grounds (I also have both theistic and atheistic friends who are unreasonable - I hope I'm not falling into that camp by this post). Hope this helps a bit at least to clarify the implications of the concept of causality.

Re:Ummm no

[Garridan]

Actually, the lazy god theory makes a lot of sense. In this model, God came into being at the same time as the universe. The infantile God watched as the universe exploded into reality, bedazzled by the show of shiny lights. This God bumbles around, putting conveniently-sized objects into its mouth -- leaving a trail of slime, germs and all manner of excrement; hence life on Earth. Perhaps the God is not lazy, but in some phase akin to "terrible twos" (or perhaps teen angst, it's hard to know the difference from our perspective), alternating between wanton destruction, bemused obeservation, and boredom.

Belief in God doesn't necessarily imply belief in ID. If the universe *were* a simulation, whoever had access to the machine that the simulation runs on would effectively be a god. This computer must have been designed by something intelligent, but that intelligent thing might not know about the Earth -- and won't unless humans effect a change in the universe so incredibly large that an outside observer can't help but notice and respond do -- perhaps we create a time machine, and send the energy from billions of stars towards a single point in space-time and cause something like a big bang. Or worse, we find and exploit a bug in the simulation, which causes the whole thing to crash (whoops).

Questions vs. assertions

[Dire Bonobo]

One of the strengths of science is that there are always people asking weird questions.

Yes, but asking them by way of sloppy logic and weird assertions is not a good way to do it.

Consider, for example, this excerpt from p.8:

One of the mysteries of our world is how every photon of light, every electron and quark, and indeed every point of space itself, seems to just "know" what to do at each moment. The mystery is that these tiniest parts of the universe have no mechanisms or structures by which to make such decisions. Yet if the world is a virtual reality, this problem disappears.

His argument is nonsensical. It's like asking how a hammer "knows" to fall if you lift it up and then let go of it. The standard explanation of this "mystery" is simply that the innate nature of objects makes them behave in a manner we characterize as physical laws. They don't "know" what to do, they simply do, and we describe the result.

He's mixing up causality; particles follow the laws of nature because the laws of nature are defined by their ability to describe the actions of particles.

Other examples of how a VR approach could illuminate current physics issues include:
1. Virtual reality creation. A virtual reality usually arises from "nothing", as the big bang
theory proposes our universe did (see next section).

Contrary to his claim, this solves nothing - it just shifts the "where did everything come from?" out of the simulation and into the real universe around it.

2. Maximum processing rate. The maximum speed a pixel in a virtual reality game can cross a screen is limited by the processing capacity of the computer running it. In general, a virtual world's maximum event rate is fixed by the allocated processing capacity. In our world, the fixed maximum that comes to mind is the speed of light. That there is an absolute maximum speed could reflect a maximum information processing rate

Argument from spurious similarity fallacy. It's like saying "the universe has a speed limit, and highways in my state have a speed limit, so maybe my state government is responsible for the universe's speed limit."

Besides, how does it "illuminate current physics issues" like he claims? His list doesn't "illuminate" anything - he's just listing in a vague, handwavy kind of way how computers and the universe might be similar. Putting that kind of list under the heading "A prima facie case that the physical world is a virtual reality" is nothing short of misleading.

Individually none of the above short points is convincing, but taken together they constitute what a court might call circumstantial evidence

And a scientist might call it data dredging. If you compare two huge lists (of properties, in this case), eventually you'll find similarities by sheer chance.

More powerful evidence is provided by cases which a VR theory explains easily but which OR approaches have great difficulty with. Two such cases are now given in more detail.

He should, at the very least, cover this - his real argument - first, before launching into his little "look at all the similarities!1!" diatribe. Or just leave out the latter part entirely, and stick to the regular scientific practice of seeing how theories handle problems and predictions.

Unfortunately, his arguments on these two points are simply wrong. He claims that "VR theory" explains where the universe came from, but all he's doing is explaining where the simulation came from, and his theory offers nothing on how the entire universe (simulation+outside) came from. He's not solving anything - all he's

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[the_B0fh]

This brings up an interesting point - quite a few people attack muslims for not speaking out louder against islamic fundamentalists, saying it is their responsibility to do so.

I'm curious how that view is applied to ID christianity by normal (as in, non stupid, non-lying) christians - should it be their responsbility to speak out against ID as well?

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[geminidomino]

Pick the wrong one and you go to Hell for sure. Very basic set-theory tells you that you're going to hell anyway... Two fairly common "god-rules" see to that.

1. You shall have no gods but me.
2. Worship me or go to hell.

Pascal's wager won't help you here!

Not necessarily VR- Compressed

[flappinbooger]

There are a lot of people saying the universe is really something like 10 dimensions.

But, we live in 3, and are constrained in one direction in the 4th (time).

So, the universe is compressed, and the quantum weirdness is a (digital?) artifact resulting from the compression.

It's like we're an mp3, and it works well until you look too closely and then the weirdness and approximations start to show up.

I feel like I'm a .WAV living in an MP3!

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[the_B0fh]

What pisses me off is people thinking that their version of God exists just because they say so.

What pisses me even more off is people thinking that they can use stupid arguments (intelligent arguments are welcomed, of course) to *PROOF* that their God is the real one, and you should convert.

What pisses me off even more off is people telling me to believe in their God just because they asked me to - what is this, a fscking popularity contest? And I am just a weak willed brainless luser who'll believe you just because you said you're telling the truth? What if my next new best friend also has The Truth, but from a different God? Should I convert to the new religion and leave yours?

Buncha fscking moronic wankers.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[Theory of Everything]

this has always puzzled me.
i can't see believing in god as something that can withstand simple questions.

Many scientists are religious and find no contradiction between science and religion. As an excellent example, the Nobel Laureate Inventor of the Laser recently received the Templeton Prize for his writings about the convergence of science and religion (scroll down to the 2005 prize). The text of his writings can be found here.

I think "bugs" could reveal themselves

[lamer01]

What if the simulation had "bugs"? Those bugs could manifest themselves albeit temporarily. Once fixed they could rerun that part of the simulation but we should be able to temporarily detect weirdnesses in the known universe. I mean, this could lend some credence to "paranormal" phenomena.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[lessthan]

Even the Vatican is starting to back Evolution

This statement annoys me. I've seen it on various evolution websites, like it was news. The Vatican has backed evolution since the 1950's, but it seems that no one outside the religion got the memo. In the "Humani Generis," encyclical (a letter from the Pope to the rest of us) released in 1950, Pope Pius XII states "The Church does not forbid that...research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter." Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI (the current pope) have also made statements in support of evolution. The Vatican hasn't started to back evolution, it does and has for quite some time.

All research taken from Wikipedia.

And bugs in the simulation produce magic.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I completely disagree. The calculus on the simulation argument is surprisingly solid when you think about it (Bostrom, for instance, has some pretty good arguments for it). You say, "It's just not a useful avenue for speculation. ..."

Hear hear!

One interesting avenue for speculation: What if there are bugs in the simulation? Perhaps algorithmic, perhaps the equivalent of the "pentium floating-point bug" or the lack of denormals in the Weitek floating-point acceleration coprocessor chip that was used in the Sun4.

Bugs enable exploits. Exploits of a bug in the (simulation of the) physical laws of the universe would be the equivalent of magic: Do this incantation, get that result which violates the otherwise consistent physical laws in some radical way.

And if the bug is later fixed "the magic goes away".

Perhaps this has already happened. (What passes for the historical record a couple millennia or more back certainly seems at odds with a lot of science developed in the last 1500 years.)

And perhaps this might happen again.

(I have joked for decades that "The universe is a computer simulation and quantum numbers are as far as the machine takes the arithmetic." and had once done a plot sketch for a novel based on this concept - where a move of the simulation to a new machine with higher resolution changes the scale of quantization - somehow managing to avoid breaking the chemistry on which our lives depend but causing all the current semiconductor electronics to fail due to the change in bandgap and tunneling scale. This leads (along with the retooling of electronics) to the identification of the simulated nature of the universe and the successful hunt for simulation bugs that enable industrial magic and eventual communication with the operators of the simulation.)

Exploitable bugs could be very valuable.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Philosophical, unprovable arguements are by nature not worth more than discussion, and can not by nature lead to any outcome ...

However if the simulation is buggy it could lead to some useful special-cases in the (simulated) natural laws. "Special cases" that violate, say, conservation of momentum, or mass/energy, or a host of other stuff. Think of the technologies you could build on exploiting such bugs: Free power. Teleportation. Duplication of organized matter. Etc.

Such bugs might have a form that would expose the buggy simulation as a simulation. And a model that presumes "the universe may be a buggy simulation" might lead to searching for the bugs in different parts of the search space than one saying merely "the universe's laws may have some odd kinks".

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[Artifakt]

Your first paragraph is sadly, all too true. I'm sure many people have met some of these types.

Your second paragraph, however, does not follow at all. There's simply no need implied by science, to automatically ask who created God. If there was, then back when science took the Steady State theory seriously, it would have been automatically rejected as unscientific. Since there's no "before the steady state" in that model, there's no meaning in asking what that before was like. People ask what was before the universe now, because the Big Bang theory has a starting point and other finite properties, so questions about 'before' or 'outside of' at least may make sense. Modern variations on the Big Bang are treated the same way - they either drive the question "What happened before?", or like Hawking's brief history model, are specifically written to make that very question irrelevant/unmeaningful.
          If only things with starting points were allowed by science, then instead of relying on evidence (Penzias and Wilson's), science would have been able to automatically dismiss the Steady State theory before any of that evidence was even gathered.
        Now as for alien computers and geeks, both of those things as we usually define them are commonly assumed to have origins in time and space, so yes it makes perfectly good sense to ask where they came from (Well first, the mommy and daddy alien computer have to love each other very much, and then....). But it's just as legitimate to assume that God didn't have a starting point but was around forever, as to assume that about the Universe itself, or time, or mathematics, or many other hypothetical entities.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[Fred_A]

What are the odds that every living organism that is currently still here survived the thousands of required generations of revisions to be where they are today? That's easy, the odds are exactly one.

Flamebait mod unfair

[jcaldwel]

The flamebait mod of the parent was unfair. Yahweh would be a scary, immoral bastard if he were real. Thank non-god he isn't. Silly theists, myths are for kids!

If a book is of divine revelation, does that not mean that it has to be true in its entirety? Christians do not follow many of the practices talked about in the Old Testament, and, in fact, would be abhor many of them if they were to take place in modern times.

The fact that Christians pick and choose which verses to incorporate into their moral code, and which to ignore shows that their sense of morality comes from somewhere other than the Bible itself.

I invite anybody to check my references.

Numbers

According to the Book of Numbers, Moses commanded his people to kill all Midianites, except for the female virgin children, which the soldiers were to "keep alive for [themselves]":

Numbers 31:15-18 (King James Version) (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2031:15-18;&version=9;)

15. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

16. Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.

17. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

18. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

This passage implies pedophilia, rape, and genocide. Certainly this is not anything that we would condone today.

Judges

According to the Book of Judges, the same fate was sentenced to the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead:

Judges 21:10-24 (King James Version) (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2021:10-24;&version=9;)

10. And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children.

11. And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.

12. And they found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.

13. And the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of Benjamin that were in the rock Rimmon, and to call peaceably unto them.

14. And Benjamin came again at that time; and they gave them wives which they had saved alive of the women of Jabeshgilead: and yet so they sufficed them not.

15. And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.

16. Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?

17. And they said, There must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel.

18. Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters: for the children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife to Benjamin.

19. Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on

Re:Flamebait mod unfair

[ancientt]

Very simple points to consider:

1. Rules for running a nation or war are not the same as a moral code
2. Accurately recording history is not the same as endorsing immoral behavior

I don't feel this is the right place for a point by point examination, but it presents no arguments not already adequately addressed by Christian apologists in other places.

Re:Flamebait mod unfair

[tylernt]

If a book is of divine revelation, does that not mean that it has to be true in its entirety?

No, it does not mean it's "perfect". That seems to be a common misconception among both believers and non-. The Bible has many deletions, later additions, mistranslations, and deliberate tampering (which is, in large part, why there are so many different denominations all based on the same book). Doesn't invalidate the message though -- you can watch an old VHS tape of Dune with static, rainbows, dropouts, and tracking issues and still get the basic concepts of Frank Herbert's masterpiece.

Last thing I remember...

[SnarfQuest]

There I was, installing "Duke Nukem Forever" on my PC, and then suddenly here I am. And I didn't even get a shotgun.

Testability is irrelevant.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I've read your description of the "halting problem", which is fairly interesting, but it doesn't save you here.

Put simply, let's suppose you do prove that it's a simulation. You write a paper about it, and you publish it in a major scientific journal.

Fine, then the simulation notices. It subtly alters your results, inserting fnords (which really work, as they can directly control anyone's brain) into every published copy, and altering everyone's memory to suggest that your experiment had either failed utterly, or proved conclusively that the Universe was not a simulation.

That's actually more complex than they'd have to -- simply swoop in at the last second and change your results.

So, it's impossible to prove that the universe is not a simulation, because if it were a simulation, all "proof", in any form, is suspect. That's assuming the physics and math involved is sound.

Now, is it possible to prove that the universe is a simulation?

Depends on your definition of "simulation". After all, if you saw a character come out of the sky claiming to be the avatar of the Universe's programmer, that would be proof that either the Universe is a simulation, or that you are insane. But insanity, and dreams, could be described as a kind of simulation.

But I kind of doubt you could find any other proof. Wouldn't it always be possible to find another theory? For example: Suppose you claimed the movement of Mercury, being so unpredictable with regards to Newtonian physics, was "proof" that the Universe was a simulation. Well, it certainly proves Newton wrong, but we now have General Relativity.

So, in that sense, you can't poke holes in reality simply by finding something that doesn't make sense. You also have to have a corresponding theory which does make sense, and which makes testable predictions, and which is generally described mathematically.

That last part -- I don't have enough computer science theory to be sure, but I don't see how you can express "this is a simulation" mathematically.

Here's one

[DynaSoar]

> He reasons that if reality was to do something that information processing cannot, then it cannot be virtual.

Some of the material falling into a black hole escapes as Hawking radiation, and also adds to the mass, spin and and/or or charge of the hole, but there's no evidence these are increased by an amount equal to the infalling matter/energy according to E=MC^2. Disappearance of the time dimension at the event horizon also 'freezes' processing and any information there gets locked up.

Does information processing theory (by itself) provide a mechanism for complete loss of some information?

Even if the hole later 'explodes' and becomes a naked singularity (something I can't hold with) there's no indication that what's already in the singularity can affect what's outside other than by the forces noted above.

Suggestions

[JoeInnes]

There are four possible scenarios (simplifying a little):
o We are living in a VR and don't know it
o We are living in a VR and come to realise it
o We are not living in a VR and do not believe we are
o We are not living in a VR but believe we are

In case one: No problems.
In case two: Either the simulation ends, or the simulation is not geared towards working out how long we take to find out. Either way, there is no higher level of understanding in either, as we still wouldn't know the goal of the simulation, and there would be know way of knowing until the simulation ended, meaning we would not profit from it.
In case three: No problems.
In case four: We progress to trying to work out what this simulation is aimed at, failing miserably. The only thing wasted is time (and money, in the form of research grants).

As I look it at, it's no different to religion, really. Believe what you like; it doesn't really affect the environment in which we live.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[virgil_disgr4ce]

Come on, who modded this insightful? You can convince yourself of ANYTHING with very little effort, if you WANT to be convinced of something. What we need a "chain of logical arguments" for is to PROVE something. So if you don't care about proving the existence of god or your husband's love because you just know it, great! But you'll run into problems real quick when asked to prove those things exist. That's where those "chain[s] of logical arguments" come in really handy--at least with the love thing you seem to have some evidence to start with; I'm not so sure about the evidence of god.

Amazingly enough, being a scientist does not automatically meant that I must be 100% logical in all things What the hell kind of scientist is that!? Seriously, good luck with your research with that attitude. I'm not trying to flame here, but I'm pretty disturbed by that remark.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[lessthan]

Maybe I am misreading your statements, but to be literal, there are religions that threaten science. Many of the ones in the U.S. are Christian denominations. Science is threatened, because the meme of the literal reading of the KJV Bible is spreading to more denominations. The Bible, by definition, is not scientifically accurate, therefore depending on your point of view, either science or religion is wrong.

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[Plutonite]

Ssh, don't tell anyone! There are too many people here with preconceived agendas wherein science and religion are in conflict. It's going to disrupt their world view if they find out that, no, religion is not opposed to science and is in no way threatened by it. The reverse should also be true.

Preconceived my ass. Religion has always put God at the limit of scientific knowledge, and so was always threatened by scientific advance, and both Galileo and Darwin know a thing or two about that. The mysteries explained by science are the source of wonder that people are supposed to take as blinding evidence of bearded friends in the sky. Take away the mystery and you suddenly get a bunch of embarrassed preachers left holding their dicks and looking confused. I'm tired of reading this thread and seeing how everybody is making the astute observation that not all christians are "extreme" like ID nutjobs. Well guess what guys, your extreme is yesterday's norm. Every time science collides with some religious "belief" about the universe, it takes a while to convince the clergy to come up with some half-assed explanation of how "abstract" the biblical account actually is(we're not orbited by the sun after all, sorry) and how there really is no problem in the least. And the honest few who still cling to the words handed down to them (from people who are more religious than this generation, and who will go to heaven for believing in these ideas) are called "extreme". These are people who lived and died by the books you're talking about, and who would call YOU heretics. What kind of sick deity would think up this sort of scenario?

In fact, science has covered so much ground today that "rational" christians are forced to reduce godly activity to a bare minimum of meta-physical abstraction. They talk "first causes" and quantum behavior and other cute topics, because that's where the knowledge (god did it!) barrier lies. And as soon as the next breakthrough happens, the rhetoric will change.

I normally do not care to excite emotions by attacking the beliefs that make people happy. I honestly don't care if someone thinks we are here because a snake covinced a woman in a garden in the sky to make her man eat from a magical tree, or that the millions of other religions (and sects of those religions) are going to suffer eternal damnation in Hell because of technical differences in their version of the story about the deity that is playing The Sims with us as characters. Believe what you want. Have a blast. Drinks are on the house. That's what freedom is all about.
But all the nonsense posted here today needed reality check. You are trying to be more rational than the books you follow. Religion is at odds with science because religion depends on ignorance as "evidence" for its outrageous claims, and science has always suffered, and continues to suffer.

of divine origin != infallible

[reiisi]

The Bible is the writings of mortal (and thus fallible) men inspired by God, filtered through several episodes of hand-copying and translation.

Some of us don't claim that you can draw every word in it out of context and have God's truth.

I can't explain about the killing the enemies, at least not entirely, but I'll give it a shot. Bear with me, because I've heard all the arguments before, and if you're busy thinking up clever replies, you won't see the possibility (slim though you apparently think it be) of reason.

But if the clever reply is more important, by all means, go ahead. Ignore reason.

The world was a different place back then. At times, it was kill-or-get-killed. (Okay, there are still such times and places now, depending on where you live and what you do and when.) From the ten commandments, we have a commandment not to kill. Then we have places where Israel, when at war, was commanded to kill. We can profitably read that as telling us not to kill for fun and profit, but that killing may be justified in self-defense. (Very traditional interpretation, I know, leave that saw alone.)

So, you wail, what about the married women and the male children? (Not to mention the men.)

The Midianites.

Moses' father-in-law was a Midianite.

This was not the entire nation of Midian, but a group with which the camp of Israel had stopped to have a celebration that got out of hand. If it had been genocide, you would not read of Midianites later attacking Israel and taking control of parts of their lands.

What's the problem with a celebration getting out of hand? The group of Midianites in question induced many of the Israelites to commit sexual sins with them. What's wrong with that? you ask?

STDs, among other things. Yes, it was extreme, but remember, in modern times, we have penicillin, so we don't have to worry so much about the spread of STDs. We also have jails and police, to help keep problem cases under control.

So, Israelites who had joined in the "fun" were also killed, which, of course, you will call barbaric. Perhaps you will say that there should have been no cleansing, that the offenders should have been left alive to seduce and/or rape (and thus infect) others.

Yeah, if Jethro Tull had been either a Midianite or an Israelite on this occasion, we can be pretty sure he'd have been one of those condemned.

But sex is fun, right? So even in a world where there are no regular police to run to when someone wants to give you more intimate attention than you want, and no penicillin if you get unlucky in the process, this should all just be tolerated, right?

We do not have to assume "having" means raping, nor do we have to assume the girls in question suffered any more by force than they had suffered with their own people. Taking the young women with them might have been better than killing them, was probably much better than leaving them to die.

JabeshGilead (and Benjamin).

I wonder why you don't find fault with the Bible for the fact that Israel almost did commit genocide against one of their own tribes (Benjamin)? Anyway, in this particular case, the Bible doesn't say that they were commanded to do either of those things, whether by God or by a prophet. One of the problems of the times, mentioned in the Bible itself, was that was no authority at all, and the local governments sometimes found themselves doing things that weren't right.

This is an unadorned record.

Near as I can tell, it was left in as an example of the ways Israel tended to mess up without a king.

Judges 5: 30?

Are you serious? Have you even read the whole chapter, much less the story about Sisera getting his in the previous chapter?

Verse 30 is an imagined quote of Sisera's mother, imagining why that particular enemy of Israel was so long in returning from the battle. It was Sisera's mother supposedly thinking that Sisera and his army must be just doing to Israel what you are accusing Israel's God of commanding

Re: it's programmed to be this way

[james_gnz]

JWSmythe wrote:

In my only near death experiences, I saw .... black .... Lots of nothing. There's nothing in the great beyond, because I have no preconceptions to guide my hallucinations.

That's because Jesus is going to obliterate your immortal soul, you filthy atheist! You're so dumb, can't you see that there's absolutely no point at all in living if you don't live forever?! But if you live forever then there's an infinite times as much point as that! Isn't that great?! When will you realise that if you don't worship Yahweh, then you are an evil Satanist who deserves to be burnt alive while maggots eat out your eyes? It must be true, 'cause it says so in the Bible! But if you worship Yahweh, then he will graciously refrain from burning you do death! What a guy, eh?! He killed his son for you, remember? It's not just anyone who'd do that! Us Christians can only aspire to be so virtuous!

P.S. Jesus loves yo mama.