Both beliefs are fine, but please realize the hypocrisy

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The "belief" we're in a simulation is more like a interesting idea than something people organize their lives around. Is it possible? Yes. Am I going to praise the great programmer every Sunday? No.
The belief in God in most cases is not just belief in some general higher power but a very specific deity with weird morality, silly mythology and bunch of scam artists behind it.
I think there's a higher power...
Ok...
that got mad at us for eating fruits but then impregnated a lady with itself and pissed us off so that we murdered him and he could say he's not mad anymore.
... WTF?
- I more or less agree, but you keep using "believe" when you ought to use "belief." Just FYI.
  
  Ups, thanks. Totally missed that.
  
  "Oops."
  
  Even more material for the "words you have been using wrong" thread.
  
  English is an endless deluge of that experience, because our orthography is bullshit. People have tried to fix it. Their clever rules were partly adopted and became even more exceptions and special cases.
  
  Yep.
  I just learned of the Shavian Alphabet yesterday. It's designed specifically for English and fits it well, except the sounds in it are so specific that when you write in it, you have to write in a specific regional accent. Fortunately it can't become a new set of special cases because it's an entirely new script not related to Latin.
  
  At that point, surely we'd use the International Phonetic Alphabet instead.
  
  The letter shapes are a lot nicer and they can all be written easily with a single stroke. IPA is really ugly IMHO.
- Could an all powerful, loving God be real? Sure. Why not?
  Could a powerful, all loving God be real? Yeah, seems realistic. In many ways, I am a God to an ant.
  Could an all powerful all loving God be real?
  Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no.
  God is either inept, indifferent, or a straight up ass. None of those items are something I care to worship, even at the threat of the eternal damnation.
- By their own book, the bad guy thought the stupid naked people should have a bit of an education and the good guy punished them for trying to improve their knowledge base. Serpents rule!
  I was taught in school that the real battle in the universe is between chaos and order. They gave it a fancy name, Entropy, but that was the gist.
  So Chaos is God and Order is Satan. Live all hunter gathering under God or just go to the Supermarket under Satan, and spend the rest of your time doing other things, like making art or scientific theories.
  Even now the Church is against progress. Don't let them Gays get married for fucks sake, the world will explode.
  Hail Satan.
- God is a programmer. That explains a lot actually. I guess he's still working out the bugs (features)
  
  Maybe the rapture is actual just the update to reality.
- This argument conflates belief with religious practice. The core similarity of both beliefs is that the universe is intelligently designed. And you can believe in the idea of a God without participating in any kind of formal religious practice. That "most" religious belief is wrapped up in a particular religious tradition is ancillary.
  
  Religion's weakest argument is the claim that the world was intelligently designed. When it so clearly isn't.
  Simulation theory doesn't claim someone designed all this. They built a simulator where all this evolution and history happened, like emergent gameplay on steroids. It's not the same kind of "design" we're talking about.
  
  Intelligent design is a broad, vague, and intensely mutable concept. It isn't helped by the fact that there's multiple kinds, with the pseudoscientific kind touted by the religious right in America and the more generic, very fucking old "teleological argument" which is also intelligent design at its core. To give a specific example of intelligent design philosophy that isn't directly tied to a belief in a deity as an active participant, you can look at the deists, who believed that the universe's fundamental laws were engineered by a kind of "clock maker" deity who left the universe running under its own principles but doesn't have a direct, guiding hand in individual events. This is still a form of "intelligent design" and closely corresponds to simulation theory. At this point, you are redefining terms to suite your argument. Also, you can't really say the world is or is not intelligently designed, as you have no evidence for either. The only truly "logical" position to hold for any of this is straight agnosticism.
  
  The core similarity of both beliefs is that the universe is intelligently designed
  The hypothesis of simulation does not address intelligence. Intelligence abstractly is something that exists inside the simulation, it may value nothing outside the simulation. You thesis is lacking evidence.
  
  The theory of simulation does not address intelligence. Intelligence abstractly is something that exists inside the simulation, it may value nothing outside the simulation. You thesis is lacking evidence.
  I think you mean "it may value nothing inside the simulation." Because what you wrote doesn't make any sense as it's written. In either case, my "thesis" is not a thesis. It's an observation of similarity. Both beliefs presume some kind of external motive force behind the universe's existence. I never made any argument about the intent or abstract values of whatever that thing may or may not be or how it perceives the universe it "created." I think the only thing lacking here is your reading comprehension skills, as you're clearly adding unfounded assumptions onto my observation independent of what was actually stated. Also, I posted that like a fucking month ago. Either you're necroing dead threads looking to pick a fight or whatever instance you're posting to fucked up its syncing with its federation.
  
  It's an observation of similarity. Both beliefs presume some kind of external motive force behind the universe's existence. I never made any argument about the intent or abstract values of whatever that thing may or may not be or how it perceives the universe it "created."
  The universe just getting created by an external force, and your phrasing that it is "intelligently designed" has no similarity. You are just escaping from what you had stated. You yourself assumed that the core similarity is intelligent design. There is nothing to observe here. The only one lacking in reading comprehension is you, or you are probably trying to find the little ounces of loopholes you think you can find because you're just so disappointed by your thirty-day-old opinion but you also just can't admit to it, or whatever else the situation may be.
  Simulation theory does not share any core similarity with creationism. Just simulating a universe does not mean it is intelligently designed.
  
  You're getting caught up on phrasing and nothing else. Let it go. "Intelligent design" as an ideology and describing something as "intelligently designed" are not the same thing. The core similarity is what I've already described. You want me to mean something beyond what I've stated because you're incapable of accepting what you read at face value. I have no interest in speaking further with someone without the intelligence to do something basic as understand the words they read.
  
  You're getting caught up on phrasing and nothing else. Let it go. "Intelligent design" as an ideology and describing something as "intelligently designed" are not the same thing.
  They are different things, and I am not taking the phrasing in an ideological context. Something being intelligently designed and just being designed, are not the same thing either. Your previous reply elaborates the phrasing of yours that I quoted in a broader way that only you can come up with, because the phrasing simply had an entirely different meaning. I am also uninterested in having any discussion with somebody who throws up words on the internet, expects to be taken seriously, but is bereft of the mental competence to even phrase their words correctly.

241 comments