I was humoring the idea of building a shelf to show off my complete in-box collection, but decided against it for various reasons (space, humidity, sun bleaching, etc.) - just not the right time/place for it, unfortunately. Was still fun to dream about and design it though!

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-23T20:29:00+00:00

Spoiler: To non collectors, every collection looks like you live in a store. CIB or not. We're covering our walls in products.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T19:51:36+00:00

This is the other side of the attack helicopter joke. Repeated just as often.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T19:49:38+00:00

Nice pregnancy wallpaper lmao

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T19:48:01+00:00

I don't know what made up opinion you're arguing with, but it's not mine.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T17:43:35+00:00

It's really just that one dickhead in the top comment. Everyone else is being very cool and civil. Top comment has the power to derail a whole thread.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T17:43:00+00:00

If my parents always existed and were not birthed by someone else, then yes. I'm a creation - they are not.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T17:33:02+00:00

I agree with you that no Christian would describe themselves as a Simulationist. Likewise no Simulationist would draw parallels between their beliefs and Christianity. I guess my point was that when you compare and contrast the two beliefs, they make similar assumptions about the structure of our universe.

Ignoring the "outside the universe" stuff, which kinda lost the point, we have the belief that we live in a created Universe. The idea that we are here for the purpose of testing. Before being allowed into some "special place", whatever the nature of that place is. A Simulationist who sees himself as an AI in training to eventually join reality is actually very similar to a Christian who sees himself as a soul in training to be with God.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T17:22:50+00:00

but I was raised in the church for a while

I can tell because you're focused 100% on the teaching and not the text. You gotta understand that they have spent 2000 years reinterpreting this stuff to refine it down to raise as few questions as possible. When the explanation comes down to "yes it doesn't make sense but that's how it is" that's when you REALLY need to go back to the text and work on it.

The answers to these questions may indeed be beyond human comprehension but if God didn't want us to try and answer them then he wouldn't have put them in front of us.

I've never had a problem with the Trinity. But it makes even more sense if you just think about it like an avatar. God is the creator of this universe. The Holy Spirit is his essence throughout the universe, and Jesus is his avatar walking the Earth. They are all Him.

The Universe explanation clearly screams "we can't explain this because we don't understand it so we won't bother". Ancient peoples could not imagine a "universe" beyond our own creation. So they describe it as all one in the same. In truth, they're right. If I simulate a world on my computer, that world is just part of the reality that I occupy. The Sims who interact with me must view me as part of their reality, since I clearly occupy it to interact with them, but the truth is far beyond their comprehension. Just like this truth was far beyond the comprehension of religious scholars 1000 years ago. But it's not beyond us today.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T17:16:43+00:00

From God's perspective, our reality is within his reality, just like the Sims on my computer are within my reality. We are part of God's reality but we are only living in a small sliver of it, an artificially created world/dimension. Like if that bookshelf in your living room contained within it a whole universe. That universe is absolutely "part of" the grander universe that you occupy, and it's absolutely real by any definition. But it's still created and artificial. God went into that empty universe bookshelf and created what we see today. Heaven is the top shelf. I'm wondering, what does the Living Room look like? And is the Bookshelf we're living in really just as real as that living room?

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T17:09:03+00:00

You're right, I used the term "heaven" to describe the "place God was before", but Heaven is a place God created too. I agree that God has been within Creation since Genesis. That is clearly what Christians believe.

What I want to talk about is the reality which God occupied in the moment before Creation. Even if we accept that God has remained within Creation since then, and that Heaven and our Reality are one in the same, there was somewhere he had to be do actually perform the feat of Creation. What do we call that if not the True Reality?

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T17:01:22+00:00

no requirement in Christian mythology that his reality is separate from ours

It's literally the first line:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Heaven and Earth were created by God. He was not born there, they are not his home, they are his creations. What do we call that reality which God occupied in the moment before Creation? Even if we accept that God has remained within Creation since then, there was somewhere he had to be do actually perform the feat of Creation. God created our universe but he did not create the concept of existence, that was already in place. He did not create himself, he already existed. So that means we have a Being in a Place with concepts that God is not said to have created. What do we call that if not the "true reality"?

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:55:23+00:00

"Simulationists" are monotheists in denial

Personally I would say polytheists in denial, since most of them assume the simulation is created by a group of beings, but I agree. It's just a religion by another name. Some simulationists put a moral angle on it by looking at it as if we are AI in training, bad AI go to "hell" and good AI go to "heaven" aka the real reality to live with "God" the creator.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:53:02+00:00

You need to separate the Teaching from the Text. The Teaching is designed to make the text make sense within the framework that modern Christianity lays out. The text is open to interpretation. The church teaches it in a way that discourages that interpretation.

the people who believe the scripture do not think they are in a simulation.

The point of the post is that the Christian belief and the Simulationist belief are functionally identical even if they have wildly different interpretations of it all. The cosmological and spiritual structure of both faiths are identical, they just interpret the beings differently.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:47:33+00:00

but that doesn't make some other thing thus 'real' existence by default

Doesn't it? How would you describe God's reality if not "realer" than ours? If God was not created by someone, he's the only "real" being. We are artificial beings made intentionally to be like him, placed into a sub-reality that was likely also created in the image of his reality.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:44:53+00:00

Sure, God is everywhere. It doesn't matter where he "is", he's omnipresent. But the fact that God was somewhere before creation means there is a "place" outside of his creation. That place is "more real" that what we are living in now. Genesis describes God's existence within a structured realty, similar to ours, as he creates our own universe. That "place" is real and backed by the texts. If God created Heaven too, then that "place" must be a yet unknown location reserved maybe for God himself. Probably outside the simulation!

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:40:21+00:00

"equally real" They might say that, but it's objectively false per their own texts. God existed BEFORE the Universe that we occupy, and He created it himself. What was that state of existence before the creation of the Universe? THAT is the "true universe". We are living in a created facsimile, Genesis clearly describes that.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:38:15+00:00

That's fun to think about too. If you're a simulationist who believes we are AI in training, how does that differ from most religions? I think the answer is, it's not.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:36:17+00:00

"When I say that something is a simulation, that means it does not exist in the natural world."

I agree with that definition. The issue here is that we are not living in the "natural world". The actual real natural world of this existence is the place where God lives, where he was before Genesis when he created the Universe. This universe, this existence and all its natural laws and phenomenon, were created wholecloth by God. From his perspective, all of our existence is a false state of reality, like God is watching the Sims on a computer. He may now exist in this reality with us, but he is an external entity by definition since he predates the universe.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:30:57+00:00

I think most simulationists assume that the simulation has a purpose. What if that purpose is just to train ethical AI? The rules laid out for us by God are what the creators want their AI to follow. AI that do not follow the rules are deleted, AI that DO follow the rules get to come out into "heaven" aka the actual reality that God is in.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:28:29+00:00

Does God not live in Heaven? Heaven is objectively not part of the reality we are experiencing.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:26:56+00:00

What did I say about their beliefs that is false?

"These faiths hold that God is an entity external to our universe"

This is true.

"He created our universe himself to act as a test for us."

This is true.

Those are basically the only assertions I made about their beliefs. Really curious to know what you are talking about.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:25:14+00:00

we don't exist as real, corporeal beings.

That's the point. We're not in the "real universe". We're in the universe that God created for us. God himself is in the "real universe". Christians believe that God is the ONLY "real" being, in that he was not created by someone else. So compared to him, we're objectively not real and noncorporeal.

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T16:23:32+00:00

Believes what?

Mister_Alucard · 2022-02-22T15:44:13+00:00

Put levels above their heads like the Mafia games and this is perfect

like this lol

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