lpetrich

Except that they need not come to such conclusions. I can think of two scenarios: their "universe" is completely self-contained, with no access to anything outside, and their "universe" allows access to the external world, such as to the Internet and its host systems' Local Area Networks.

If their "universe" is self-contained, then they may decide that their origin was a pointless, insoluble question, something like what the Buddha had thought.

If their "universe" is not, then they may eventually discover how they originated, by exploring the Internet and those LAN's. And they would conclude that their creators are:

1. Multiple
2. Far from omnipotent
3. Far from omniscient
4. Far from eternal

In fact, they could deduce that their creators are less-than-omnipotent and less-than-omniscient from those entities' actions toward them.

lpetrich

Actually, in the Universe that we live in, we've faced similar epistemological problems many times, even if none of them have involved some supposed Universe-controlling superbeing.

For example, how does the sky compare to the Earth. Is it a supernatural realm? Or does it obey natural laws that are fundamentally different from Earthly natural laws? (not a fundamentally different possibility) Or does it obey the same natural laws as the Earth?

The supernatural view has been a common one; the sky has been a favorite place to imagine the Gods living. The different-natural-laws view was the view of Plato and Aristotle, who believed that the celestial realm featured circular and eternal motion.

But a hint of the opposite view was expressed by Anaxagoras, who performed a cosmochemical extrapolation from a meteorite -- that the stars and planets are glowing hot rocks.

Also, Aristarchus proposed that the Earth moves around the Sun, suggesting that the Earth is not fundamentally different from the celestial realm.

The different-realm view continued to be the favorite through the Middle Ages and into early modern times; the main difficulty was the blotchiness of the Moon -- which was explained as an Earthly influence.

Copernicus revived heliocentrism, but that in itself was not as dramatic as Galileo's discoveries:

The Moon has mountains, just like the Earth (it must be rather heavily contaminated)
Venus has Moon-like phases, as if it moves around the Sun
The Sun, often viewed as a divine object, has spots
Objects move around Jupiter, showing that there is an additional center of celestial motion

Sir Isaac Newton went even further, proposing his Law of Gravity, and showing that it accounted for the shapes and speeds of the orbits. And most importantly, showing that Earth's gravity, when extrapolated to the Moon using his inverse-square law, was the right strength to keep it in its orbit with its observed orbit period.

No fundamental physical distinction between the heavens and the Earth has proved to be an enormously successful paradigm, successfully accounting for features of even extremely distant celestial objects, being directly verifiable in the Solar System with spacecraft.

Looking from the large to the small, one can ask if matter is continuous or if it is discrete, with the seeming continuity being a result of the physical limitations of our perception. The discrete or "atomist" view was revived around 1800 to account for the Law of Definite Proportions of chemical combination. Each atom could even be viewed as having some "valence", some number of individual chemical bonds that it prefers to make.

But does this discreteness have any other physical consequences? Yes. The Kinetic Theory of Gases successfully accounts for their equation of state by proposing that they consist of a swarm of particles bouncing about. And Brownian Motion is the result of objects being bounced around by individual atoms and molecules.

And needless to say, modern physics has made numerous successful atomic-theory-based predictions, to the point that it would be either pure ignorance or pure crackpottery to deny the atomic theory of matter.

This quest has been carried further, showing that atoms are composed of electrons and nuclei, that nuclei are composed of protons and neutrons, and that these particles are composed of quarks. At this point, the quest has shifted to finding out if the various elementary particles are versions of a few basic particles or only one (Grand Unified Theory, Theory of Everything), a quest that has been partially successful.

Changing from space in time, one can ask such questions about the past. Do the same natural laws operate there, or do different ones, or is the past a non-natural realm?

Are fossils, for example, some sort of divine doodling in the rocks? (a theory that had been seriously proposed) Or do they grow out of rocks? Or are they the remains of dead organisms that got trapped in sediment that got transformed into rock?

The latter theory has been the most successful paradigm, as evident from present-day creationists supporting it.

Likewise about the origin of the rocks themselves -- they have three main origins: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, all of which are extrapolated from processes observed at the present day.

And in the world of life, genetics has long been a puzzle. But the first success in cracking the code was Gregor Mendel's experiments in crossing pea plants. His work was rediscovered at the turn of the 20th century and greatly expanded upon, with the help of experiments on crossbreeding fruit flies and the like. These experiments led to the conclusion that heredity was the result of "genes", which get inherited in a well-defined fashion.

But what were genes? The first guess was some kind of protein molecule. But it was hard to get very far with that hypothesis. In stepped Oswald Avery, who in 1944, showed that what makes certain bacteria have smooth instead of rough coats is transmitted in DNA instead of RNA or proteins or lipids or other sorts of molecules in cells. This result was repeated and extended, and in 1955, Watson and Crick showed that DNA in cells has the sort of structure needed for self-reproduction.

This led to lots of nice discoveries, like how genes act as templates for the formation of protein molecules as well as for copies of themselves, and how genes are switched on and off.

One big riddle is how genetic information gets translated into the body forms of macroscopic organisms, but that is an active area of research, and some partial solutions to this conundrum have been discovered, such as the actions of the famous Hox genes.

To sum up, there are lots of things that we do not have direct access to with our perceptions, but that we nevertheless have reasonable accounts of without doing any special pleading.

rainbow walking

Rw: Hi David,
Since you are postulating a hypothetical and calling for speculation I am assuming you are seeking speculations consistent to the ongoing theist/atheist discussion in our own reality.

Before I could embark upon an intelligent response to your questions I would need some basic information that you neglected to include in your experiment. You have, for unspecified reasons, failed to elaborate a motive or reason why I, or anyone, would expend the energy to create such an elaborate program. Until I have a motive or purpose for making the investment of time and energy in its creation I cannot adequately respond or participate in a questionnaire that calls for such speculation.

For instance, if my purpose was simply PLEASURE and I created a simulation comparable to our universe where these simulated creatures experienced suffering and death comparable to our own, I see no way to derive any pleasure from such a program. I’d be compelled to insert a downlink into the program enabling me to communicate methods of addressing their problems. If they provided me pleasure I’d want to share my pleasure with them and not remain incognito. Of course, I’m only human. I suppose a god would have some incomprehensible supernatural reason attributable to its pleasure in such a state of affairs.

On the other hand, being human and mortal, if I wanted to address my mortality, I can see a justification for creating a simulation similar to my own universe where I would carefully observe the methods my creatures used to address their mortality in the hopes of learning how to address my own. But this wouldn’t be consistent to the current definition of a god. Such a program, to be effective, should be encouraged to begin concentrating its efforts on addressing the problem rather than giving up under the pre-text of an after-life. In this case I would remain incognito and allow the software to run its course or even write in discouragements to distractions from my purpose.

I await further clarification.

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: rainbow walking ]</p>

RogerLeeCooke

There isn't anything a priori about a computer, and there are many ways of exploring things.

Ted Hoffman

One question for David regarding his hypothetical situation:
Do those beings in your hypothetical universe have ANY good reason to believe that you exist?

agapeo

David: Supposing you were to create a Universe in your computer and filled it with essentially intelligent beings possessing free will and self awareness

Agapeo: What free will or self awareness? These beings would only possess what YOU programmed into their characteristics. It wouldn't actually be "free will" if these "intelligent beings" were merely following a preset program, would it?

David: 1. Would you not be the God of that Universe which you created?

Me: No you would be a software programmer working with elements that someone else provided you. So you would have to regress to that individual that provided you the tools to "create" (as you say) this scenario. They would be the "creators" in the true sense of the word. You would just be a manipulator of that which they provided.

David: 2. From the standpoint of the beings in the computer, would you not be eternal, omniscient and omnipotent?

Me: Only if you programmed this into their "thinking".

David: 3. From the standpoint of the beings in the computer, would not the Universe be seamless and therefore they would not have any direct access to their creator, either to observe, perceive or verify your existence?

Me: Only if you programmed that into their thinking.

David: 4. From the standpoint of the beings in the computer: If they were to deny the existence of a Creator, would that mean that in fact you really do not exist?

Me: Only if you programmed that into their thinking.

David: 5. From the standpoint of the beings in the computer: Isn't it true that you could modify their reality without their perception, either changing their individual properties or the properties of their Universe without their having any means of detecting these changes?

Me: The only standpoint they would have is the one you would give them.

David: 6. Supposing you were to reveal yourself to some of those computer-based lifeforms, don't you imagine that your description of the three-dimensional physical world would be incomprehensible to meaningless to them?

Me: I suppose you could program your likeness into the computer, but that wouldn't be you. It would only be a program of you.

David: 7. Supposing you were to modify their universe in a manner in which they might perceive, wouldn't the citizens of that computer based universe consider such acts either miracles or magic?

Me: They would only perceive what you the programmer would allow them to perceive.

I'll forego the rest of your points, 'cause obviously you should get mine and what would be the point. I guess this means that I failed your experiment, huh? What grade will I get. A D or an F?

David: I look forward to hearing your thoughts on these matters.

Me: Well, that remains to be seen.

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: agapeo ]</p>

joedad

David,

Thanks for the response.

Then what is a "g-o-d?"

If our computer beings decided after some period of reflection that indeed they were eternal and had never been created or built themselves, and that there was nothing beyond themselves, wouldn't they be God just like your God? This would seem to describe your God exactly, unless you somehow see yourself are a necessary precondition to the existence of a God. That would be strange indeed.
I understand the analogy between the humans in the universe and the beings in the computer, although I simply conclude that both these beings inhabit the same universe, alongside your ideas about a God, so no mystery is present. All three things are quite natural and explicable as they exist.

The question I have for you is whether you understand my analogy between your God and the computer beings deciding that they are God.
I don't have that problem. I am presently curious about such discussions because I want to understand what motivates other people to adopt these arguments, but I don't see any kind of inherent problem in such an examination. I could simply - as others have stated - declare myself divine, and that there is nothing beyond my own universe, that I created it by as of yet some undiscovered method, and end the entire discussion. Isn't this what you do when you create your God?

I simply do not see evidence for this interaction, and I conclude that it is not there. Therefore, there is no mystery, no problem to address, only our ignorance to confront, as Ip has demonstrated, and more knowledge to be acquired.

By your analogy, I simply conclude that the computer beings are God if they decide that they are. I am God if I decide that I am. And hypothetically speaking, your god is God if it decides that it is.

joe

Autonemesis

I find that completely unsatisfying. I anticipated you'd have something to add after we all posted our responses, but apparently, you just wanted to jerk us around. "Nobody's wrong" makes for a boring discussion.

Mind you, I'm not angry or anything, but this is not why I read and post here. Your ideas are not intriguing or amusing to me. I'll just not respond to you anymore and avoid your milquetoast, new age mumblings that way.

But if you want to hang out sometime, have a beer, smoke a joint, shoot the shit - I'm in.

DarkBronzePlant

David,

Interesting question. Most interesting to me, in fact, because these digital beings that you are proposing we create might very well think all of those thoughts. And for the most part, they'd be flat out wrong. For example:

Maybe they would assign "eternal, omniscient and omnipotent" as attributes to me. Well, I certainly wouldn't be eternal. If I was to go out for lunch and be killed by a bus, then most of them would outlive me! Omniscient? While I know a fair amount, there is probably far more about the computer in which those beings exist that I don't know about than I do know about. Omnipotent? Hardly. While I am a decent programmer, there is probably lots that I couldn't do for them, whether it would be a limitation of my own skills, a limitation of the computer hardware or software, etc.

"If they were to deny the existence of a Creator," that would certainly have no bearing on my existence. However, if they think that my co-worker Gordon created them, that still wouldn't change the fact that it was I who had created them. If they invent some other creator who has attributes more similar to their own, then that also wouldn't change the fact that I had created them.

Might they "seek some sort of 'natural' explanation within their own universe which would explain it without the activity of the Creator"? Who's to say? Some might study the innards of the computer, the bytes that they are made up of, etc, in order to explain as much as they can about their existence and origins. And they would probably understand part of the true picture. Others might make up fantastic tales and stories about how they were created. But in this world that you've created, they can't perceive me, the creator, remember? So it seems that the latter group would be flat-out wrong in their interpretation.

Hmm... the more I look at this, the more I like your analogy...

WJ

Actually both the former and latter group would be 'flat-out wrong' because in this scenario it is considered 'unknown' as to their own existential nature and/or their creator.

In otherwords, unless they can 'learn' enough or obtain enough knowledge to create some thing from no thing, 'both' groups are considered 'wrong' and miss the mark

Walrus