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Comment by tathougies | Hacker News Reader

> I'm sure it IS much more pleasant to imagine the magic sky fairy will take care of all the world's problems.

The alternative of course is nihilism in the face of the inevitable heat death of the universe. My magical sky fairy seems pretty good right now.`

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I'm irreligious and atheist, and I'm also not a nihilist. Now what?

That's a ridiculous false dichotomy. I reject the wishful fantasy of religion and of the supernatural, but I am perfectly happy with meaning in other things.

I don't know much about religion but to call something like Christianity "wishful" feels wrong... I mean you have to forgo immediate gratification, marry one person and one person only and never even THINK about another partner, abstain from sexual acts deemed 'immoral' (of which there seems to be many), wish the betterment of all people including your worst enemies, take care of the poor, sick and needy, forego wealth and all things deemed "vain", and at the end of it all hope that you can stand in front of and answer to an ultimate Judge that can make you burn in hell forever...

If this religion was meant to be wishful, I think they could've done a better job. It seems much more wishful to say "nothing matters in the end so I can do whatever I want", don't you think?

It’s also somewhat telling that transhumanism and Singularitarianism, some of the more prominent post-religion religions, are about building magical sky fairies. In the face of the second law of thermodynamics, even purveyors of secular scientism seek to escape oblivion by inventing Asimov’s AC.

My favorite is the new 'scientific' idea that the universe is a simulation. It's like... if the universe is a simulation, then what are the simulators? It's buck passing all the way down.

It’s kind of hilarious if one was to regard primitive religion as a sort of science to explain natural phenomena. Zeus throwing thunderbolts causes storms and all that. Except in the modern world, in reaction to technology, to the idea of VR, computer programs, digital simulation, modern man goes and says “aha! If we can build that, why can’t the gods do the same?” So the simulation argument can become a sort of proto-religion (if taken seriously) in response to man-made phenomena.

I don't see how it can be not religious if taken seriously. If there's a simulator, there must be someone who programmed it. That someone is, functionally, God, who created the universe. There isn't a "religion" in the sense of having commandments or an organized church, but it says that God is objectively there - he really exists, and he created this universe.

I do find it humorous (in a pathetic way) that scientific atheists have wound up at this place.

If you think that th essential characteristic of God is being a creator, and the fact that religions usually attribute a moral-arbitration role to God is incidental, then, sure, the creator of a simulation would inherently be a God.

OTOH, if the essential characteristic of God is that His will is equivalent to moral correctness, then a simulation creator doesn't necessarily fit the bill.

Fair point, though I thought that "creator who objectively exists" should be sufficiently shocking to atheists who believe we're in a simulator.

But then, if this creator of the simulator is there, can he (or whatever pronoun you wish) use something like a debugger to change things within the simulation? Behold, miracles now fit into the atheist view. Could this creator of the simulator send messages into the simulation? Now you've got at least the possibility of moral law given by the creator.

It's really mind-boggling to me that atheists are going down this path.

> then what are the simulators?

The universe itself? It would be extremely weird, but modern physics is extremely weird.

Wow. You've independently come up with a stronger version of the uncaused cause argument, one of the many arguments Aquinas gives for the Christian God. Congratulations!

This is like saying "if the universe began with the Big Bang, then what came before it?" – it's not buck-passing if you define 'simulation' in a falsifiable way.

> it's not buck-passing if you define 'simulation' in a falsifiable way.

Okay, then define simulation in a falsifiable way, and we'll talk. The truth of the matter is, no one has defined this in a falsifiable way, so your statement is like saying 'religion is not buck-passing if you define God in a falsifiable way'. Without this falsifiable way you claim, it requires a belief in the transcendent.

Why would the second law prevent transhumanism? There is a lot of energy available (nuclear fusion, dyson swarms, artificial black holes, etc.) to whoever can make the technology work.

No I mean transhumanists and Singularity believers, like the conventionally religious, still fear oblivion, specifically in entropy and the inevitable heat death of the universe. So they too seek transcendence and the perseverance of the ego, except rooted through (speculative) materialist means.

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