Theology

This blog is a formatted voice transcript of me talking aloud to myself.

I’ve had an insane amount of free time lately (sarcasm), and my brain keeps wandering to questions about the nature of existence and God.

Two possibilities: God exists or God doesn’t. I’m going to remove the “God doesn’t exist” branch from this blog entirely. Not because I’m a believer, I’m mostly indifferent to whether God exists or not. It genuinely doesn’t bother me either way. But exploring that path doesn’t lead anywhere interesting for this piece.

So, for the purpose of this blog, let’s assume God exists.

Defining God

How do I define God? The classical definition: an all-powerful, all-knowing entity that created the universe and watches over every organism in existence.

But I’d like to think about it differently, through the lens of simulation theory.

The Simulation Branch

Imagine you’re playing a video game, but you’re so immersed that you can’t distinguish it from reality. Everything you engage with feels real. If someone created a one-to-one mapping of reality and turned it into a simulation, would you be able to tell the difference?

That’s the premise of simulation theory: we are a simulation running somewhere else.

If that’s true, who is God? There could be multiple gods. Each of us could be a character controlled by a higher entity, which would mean we don’t have free will.

I don’t like that. I want free will.

So I’m going to take the branch where simulation theory and free will coexist. If free will exists, we’re not being controlled by individual players. Maybe we’re just a system running on some powerful computer, an entropy creation machine generating randomness. Our entire existence could be encoded information in some higher entity’s machine.

Randomness implies free will. If there’s entropy, there’s choice. (assumption)

This leads to a simple conclusion: the creator doesn’t necessarily care about us. They have their own life, their own things to do. The creator made the system, and it just runs.

Can I prove this? No. Can anyone disprove it? Also no.

And who created the creator? No, no, we don’t ask that question. Out of scope.

The Classical Creation Approach

Let’s consider the traditional view: an all-powerful entity, or maybe multiple entities, gave birth to the universe.

Maybe the creator was just lonely. Wanted something to observe. Created existence, then stepped outside of it.

The creator lives outside existence. Creation only has scope within existence. The creator mostly observes but occasionally intervenes, manifesting through figures we’ve known through stories across time.

Why intervene? Maybe to nudge creation so it doesn’t die out from the randomness of existence. The creator manifests to guide creation onto a stable path, one where existence doesn’t self-destruct.

Everything Is The Same

This is where I keep coming back to Advaita Vedanta.

Existence and creation share the same building blocks, physical and spiritual. Since existence comes from a creator, existence contains parts of the creator. Which means creation contains parts of the creator too.

This mirrors Abrahamic religions: God created humans in God’s image. And Vedantic philosophy: Atman and Brahman are the same. Brahman is Atman, Atman is Brahman.

Maybe the stories of Krishna, Ram, Jesus, all of them are cultural expressions of the same underlying truth. The creator manifesting into existence to teach lessons humanity needed at that particular time. Spiritual messengers helping us navigate the physical world.

Probably superuser access into the system (fine I’ll do it myself, thanos,meme)

As humans evolved, the creator manifested again in different forms, for different societies, to remind us that everything and everyone is fundamentally the same. Separation is an illusion.

All religions might just be different languages describing the same reality.

Imperfection and Intervention

Here’s a thought experiment: if I had access to an all-powerful computer capable of creating programs that evolve, adapt, and have consciousness, a system that can multiply, replicate, and think, like Conway’s Game of Life but with free will.

How do you model consciousness mathematically? That’s an unanswered question. But let’s assume it’s possible.

If the creator is imperfect, the system would be imperfect. The creator would have to occasionally intervene so the system doesn’t sway from its intended purpose. Free will exists at the individual level, but the system as a whole needs to “remain stable”.

If the creator were perfect, the system would be perfect too. A perfect system with infinite resources would expand infinitely. But energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transferred. The system has constant, limited energy, it’s self-sustaining but finite.

The fact that it’s limited means the higher system providing energy is also finite. Also imperfect.

Imperfection all the way up.

So What?

I don’t have answers. Just thoughts that keep circling back.

Maybe there’s a creator who doesn’t care. Maybe there’s one who intervenes just enough to keep things stable. Maybe all our stories and religions are fragments of the same truth, filtered through culture and time.

Probably a lot of plot holes in this philosophy, but who cares?

Fin