Many in our time have begun to think that perhaps the universe our senses perceive is a sophisticated sensory simulation--an optical illusion of the greatest scale. Neil deGrasse Tyson (or as I sometimes call him, Neil deGrasse Lie-son) stands among the scientists who believe this possibility is very probable. Indeed, the notion is increasing in popularity and acceptance. But here I will not address the plausibility of this idea or launch into a detailed explanation of why we cannot confirm or refute such a concept. Instead, I want to explain some rather overt similarities between the simulation hypothesis and theism.
The simulation hypothesis refers to the hypothetical idea that the external world we perceive is merely an illusion projected by someone in the real external world. This could mean that I am a brain in a vat [1] with wires attached to me and a scientist or a group of them using the wires to simulate my sensory sensations that I am sitting down and writing this blog post, that I am in the Matrix having my energy depleted and harvested by sentient robots, that I am aboard an alien vessel as aliens confuse my senses to make me think I am elsewhere in the material world, that a powerful demon like the one imagined by Descartes is distorting my sensory perceptions, or it could refer to some other comparable scenario.
The intriguing similarity shared by all forms of theism and the simulation hypothesis is that, in both, the external world we perceive was designed by something outside our senses, fashioned for the intent of the creator(s). In our modern age the simulation hypothesis, like the multiverse, is sometimes invoked as the reason the universe appears so precisely designed. With a simulated universe, however, one does not need to credit God as being directly responsible for the illusions we perceive, as most versions of this hypothesis have creatures or beings within the actual material world responsible for our sensory deceptions. Though the idea of a sensory simulation could explain why we perceive the universe as it seems to be, it cannot explain the existence of the objective external world from which the illusion is foisted upon us.
Of course, even if I am in a simulation created by robots or aliens or scientists, whatever material world exists--be it the one I perceive or one I am unaware of--must still have a finite past, thus by necessity needing an absolute beginning and therefore an external cause [2]. And, ultimately, any simulation hypothesis is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable, at least at this point in the development of human epistemology. But at the core of their ideas, the simulation hypothesis and theism are actually quite similar, for both posit a designer and both hold that the external world we perceive was created with an absolute beginning. Though few seem to connect theism with the concept of a simulated universe, the simulation hypothesis certainly contains hints of theism.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/brain-in-vat.html
[2]. Someone can know with absolute certainty--with no way he or she is wrong--that any possible universe must have a beginning by using logic and math, both of which contain principles that are knowable a priori; that is, for certain components of them nothing more than brief rational reflection is required to understand the proof. It is absolutely possible count down from 5 to 0. This is obvious. A person could even count down from 6,000 or 13,000,000,000 (both the general opposing estimates of the age of the universe from different ideologies) to 0, even if it takes a monstrous amount of time. But no one can count down from infinity to 0 because it is impossible to do so without a fixed starting point. Otherwise the person would be forever counting and never reach 0. In the same way, it is impossible for any possible universe to not have a beginning because the present moment of time could never arrive. Nothing could ever happen in a universe with an infinite past because there would be no starting point to reach any particular event or moment from. Because the material world--the natural world--had a beginning and nothing can be responsible for its own creation, since self-creation is impossible because something would have to exist before it existed in order to create itself, the cause of the cosmos must by definition and logical necessity be supernatural.
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