If God built the Universe, doesn't that mean it's some kind of machine?

Question

Is our Universe just one big computer simulation?

Let's imagine that one day we manage to make a computer as intelligent as a human being, in the sense that it can improve itself through accumulating, processing and making knowledge useful. A self-building, self-sustaining machine whose main priority is to expand into the environment (solar system, galaxy, universe), learn about it and harness energy in order to fuel further improvements and expansion. It runs physics simulations of other Universes and how they would evolve based on certain initial conditions in order to better understand its own Universe.

Now imagine this machine was created in a different Universe than ours and our Universe is actually a simulation being run in one of these machines. Perhaps even those machines have also risen to existence within another simulation. A simulation within a simulation. Perhaps this is a window into fractal computing. Infinite computing power being the goal of the being(s) on top?

There is a digital-like nature to our Universe in the Planck scale/quantum theory. 

Maybe we're just part of God's Cosmic Computer. The GCC. Any thoughts?

lord is my shepherd · Accepted Answer

The Bible doesn's say it was built, God stretched out the heavens

Isaiah 51:13  that you forget the LORD your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth

Acorn · Answer

That's one way of looking at it.  Lots of writers have posited similar ideas, Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, most recently.

From our perspective, the universe is a thermodynamically closed system, though -- especially if you define 'universe' as everything that is, include massive amounts of empty space.  It gets no power from outside of itself.  (A theist of course would say that it gets its power from God, but it's still a closed system, since arguably even gasoline motors ultimately get their power from God in that sense.)

But it's interesting to think that if our perspective was an illusion perceived by individual smaller programs looking at the unified larger program simulation.

My own personal theology is not too far afield of that.  God makes us, individual programs so to speak, to expand out into the universe and to bring Him expansion too.  As we move through the world using our free will to make new realities happen, that adds to God's being too.  Only in my theology it goal is, increased love between us and God, and among us.

Which now that I think about it is a kind of "harnessing energy in order to fuel further improvements."

AbacusWizard · Answer

There is no god, but the universe can certainly be thought of as a machine.

Trending News

If God built the Universe, doesn't that mean it's some kind of machine?

3 Answers