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I've been agnostic, rather than atheist, for most of my life. My argument was that life is too complex, especially with how organs work, for there not to be someone planning it. I guess the best word for my beliefs would be deist, but I only learned the term recently.
Anyway, I just read an essay by Yudkowsky and I'm now convinced there is almost certainly no God. This depresses me because I want there to be a God.. which is to say, an unmoved mover at the beginning of time that is sentient. The idea that something at the beginning of time was unaffected by the rules of cause and effect is still plausible to me, but is there any reason left to assume it was sapient? I'd appreciate help with this, because I want to convince myself there may be a God.
Sure. Imagine you write a computer simulation, with little creatures running around, doing whatever. By your definition of god, you are the god of the universe you see on your screen.
Now, imagine you make your little critters carry some gene-like information that determines their physical characteristics and behavior, make them eat and die and reproduce, then add random noise to their genes.
Your simulation now has evolution; your code for reproduction (and the RNG) is exactly the "alien god" Yudowski talks about. That doesnt make you any less of the creator of these creatures.
You could even design your simulation such that you could put your finger on the scales, without it being possible to tell from within the simulation. Just add save states, or design some way of bending the RNG to your will. The "intelligent design" hypothesis is now true in the universe you created.
Finally, imagine that you make your simulation increasingly more complex - simulate cells, then molecules, then atoms, then subatomic particles, at greater and greater scales - until your simulation literally describes our universe. Your simulation still has evolution - in fact, at the point of convergence, the literal exact same evolution that we see in our universe - but you're still god to your creation.
Now, as the creator, you're omnipotent and could thus choose to manifest to your subjects exactly like the christian god, or any other god humans believe in. Hell, perhaps you decide to mess with the humans, and act as all known dieties at different times to different people, just to see what happens.
Sure, simulating out entire universe might not be possible with the physics we have at hand. But, just as while the physics in the first iteration of your simulation wouldn't permit one of your critters building an identical simulation-in-a-simulation, that doesn't mean that you couldn't do it - the physics in our universe are more powerful than theirs, so it was a simple task for you - so could the physics of a universe outside of ours make it possible to simulate our universe.
There's nothing about evolution that's incompatible with any god, by the very definition of 'god', because the god could just exist in a meta-universe where the physics of this universe don't apply.
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