Tag: virtual reality

From Last Stand, Sci-Fi Short Film Made with Artificial Intelligence

The nature of reality

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It appears we live inside a simulation created by an advanced post-human civilisation. Science sufficiently established several laws of reality, so if breaches in these laws occur, this is evidence of this world being fake. With the help of observations and induction, we can certify that these laws of reality do not always apply. The argument for us living inside a simulation thus hinges upon the following assumptions that appear plausible:

  • Science has sufficiently established a set of laws of reality.
  • The breaching of these laws is evidence of us living in a simulation.
  • There is evidence that these laws are breached from time to time.

Humans think they are unique and superb creatures, the apex of all that roams the planet. They attach great value to their inner selves and are unlikely to change their human essence once they can, so post-humans are likely to have similar motivations as we have. Hence, they might run simulations of human ancestor civilisations for research and entertainment.

The number of simulations for entertainment likely vastly outstrips those for research. It then follows that our most likely purpose is entertainment. The breaching of the laws of reality further suggests so. Simulations run for research are more likely to be realistic. Signs of control indicate that our universe is not a game but someone’s imaginary world. In a game, there is no need to control the outcome.

Being part of someone’s imaginary world appears to be our situation. This universe may come with a post-human owner we can call God. And God may use avatars in this simulation to become an ordinary human being.

Evidence of control indicates we are not sentient. We may not think and may not have a will. It could mean that we do not have intrinsic value to God and that God does not feel moral restraints when dealing with us. Bad things happen to people, and God could have prevented them from happening.

An individual can’t build this world alone or write out the script in every detail. It seems to require the use of artificial intelligence. We can already write scripts and make films in this way. So the owner of this world may only need to write the main storyline and the plot and leave the rest to the computer.

The simulation hypothesis sheds light on things that would otherwise remain unexplained. It makes a lot of sense. The strength of the evidence seems to outweigh the issues, such as a lack of scientific evidence for the paranormal, the limits of the human mind like attributing causes where randomness applies or seeing meaning when there is none, hindsight bias and the difficulties in establishing probabilities of meaningful coincidences occurring.

Featured image: From Last Stand, Sci-Fi Short Film Made with Artificial Intelligence

Book: the virtual universe

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Religions claim that a god or gods have created this universe. The simulation hypothesis explains how the gods might have done this. We could all be living inside a computer simulation run by an advanced post-human civilisation. But can we objectively establish that this is indeed the case?

There is sufficient evidence that we live inside a simulation, and it allows us to establish the most likely purpose of our existence. The book does not promote a specific religion. It goes along with science, but there are limits to what science can establish. God is beyond those limits.

The book addresses the following topics:

  • Why our existence is not a miracle that requires a creator.
  • Why the simulation hypothesis is not scientific.
  • How possible motives of post-humans can help us establish that we live inside a simulation.
  • Why there is no proof in real life, not even in science.
  • How our minds can trick us, and how to avoid pitfalls in our observations and reasoning.
  • How laws of reality can help us establish that we live inside a simulation.
  • Why evidence for the paranormal is not scientific but strong enough to count.
  • How to interpret religious experiences and miracles.
  • How to explain premonition, evidence suggesting reincarnation, ghosts, ufos, and meaningful coincidences.
  • How coincidences surrounding major historical events indicate that everything happens according to a script.
  • Why do many people see 11:11 and other peculiar time prompts.
  • What predetermination tells us about our purpose.


By reading the book, you will discover that the world makes perfect sense if we assume it to be a simulation created by an advanced post-human civilisation to entertain someone we can call God.

The book is freely available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. You can download your free PDF here:

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Alternatively, you can buy a Kindle or paperback on Amazon:

Mohammed receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel

Religious experiences and miracles

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The Jewish people still exist after 2,500 years, while they have not had a homeland for most of the time. That is a remarkable feat, most notably because the Jews are supposed to be God’s chosen people. It is also a bit of an enigma that Christianity replaced the existing religions in the Roman Empire. Somehow the message of personal salvation through Christ caught on. A pivotal moment was the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 AD. He made Christianity the favoured religion in the Roman Empire.

A few centuries later, a small band of Arab warriors created an empire stretching from the Atlantic to India, spreading a new religion called Islam. Is it a realistic scenario that the illiterate camel driver Muhammad became a crafty statesman after seeing an angel representing the God of the Christians and the Jews? We only know this world, so we cannot answer that question. Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same deity. Our universe could be a simulation, and God might be the best explanation. But who is to say it can’t happen without God?

When Islam arrived on the scene, there was widespread monotheism as Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians in the area believed in an all-powerful creator. Muhammad had met them on his travels, so he was familiar with these religions. Before that, Christianity had faced an uphill struggle. While the Roman state suppressed this religion, pagans left their gods behind and accepted the Christian God as the only true God. And they did so in large numbers.

That begs for an explanation, even though the conversion to Christianity was a gradual process that took centuries. The number of Christians increased 2-3% per year between 30 AD and 400 AD. Each Christian may have converted just one or two persons on average. Over time, exponential growth made Christianity grow from perhaps 100 followers in 30 AD to 30 million in 400 AD. There appears nothing supernatural about this process until you realise that the most often cited reason for conversions were stories about miracles Christians did.1

An early miracle was Jesus appearing to a few followers after his crucifixion. The New Testament tells of miracles the disciples allegedly performed. These stories may be inaccurate or exaggerated, but miracles are a consistent theme in Christianity until today. And so, there may be more to it than science can explain. On message boards, people tell stories about prayers heard and miraculous healings. Perhaps, many of these stories result from chance or other causes like a misdiagnosis. But chance or misdiagnosis is not always a plausible explanation. And it seems unlikely that Christians always lie about these matters.

A recurring event is the appearance of the Virgin Mary. Many people have seen her. For instance, she appeared several times in Venezuela. In 1976, she showed herself to Maria Esperanza Medrano de Bianchini, who received exceptional powers. She could tell the future, levitate, and heal the sick. In Egypt, Mary appeared at a Coptic Church between 1983 and 1986. Muslims also have seen her there. There have been many more Virgin Mary appearances. The most notable one was in Portugal at Fatima on 13 October 1917. The sun spun wildly and tumbled down to earth before stopping and returning to its normal position, radiating in indescribable beautiful colours. More than 50,000 people witnessed the miracle. They had gathered in response to a prophecy made by three shepherd children that the Virgin Mary would appear and perform miracles on that date.2

Jesus also appeared, but less frequently than the Virgin Mary. An intriguing account comes from Kenneth Logie, a preacher of the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Oakland, California, in the 1950s. In April 1954, Logie was preaching at an evening service. During his sermon, the church door opened, and Jesus came walking in, smiling to the left and the right. He walked right through the pulpit. Then he placed his hand on Logie’s shoulder. Jesus spoke to him in a foreign tongue. Fifty people witnessed the event. Five years later, a woman gave testimony when she suddenly disappeared, and Jesus took her place. He wore sandals and a glistering white robe. He had nail marks on his hands, which were dripping with oil. After several minutes, Jesus disappeared, and the woman reappeared. Two hundred people have seen it. It was on film as Logie had installed film equipment because strange things were happening.2

Latest revision: 11 March 2023

Feature image: Mohammad receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel. Miniature illustration on vellum from the book Jami’ al-Tawarikh, by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 AD. Public Domain.

1. The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World. Bart Ehrman. Simon & Schuster (2018).
2. How Jesus Became God The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee. Bart Ehrman. HarperCollins Publishers (2015).

The Virtual Universe

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Religions claim that God or gods have created this world. The simulation hypothesis explains that we might live inside a computer simulation run by an advanced post-human civilisation. But can we know that this is the case? The book The Virtual Universe: Evidence Demonstrating That an Advanced Post-Human Civilisation Has Created Us explores the evidence. A revised simulation argument may establish that we live inside a simulation. Using the information this universe gives us, we might even discover the purpose of our existence.

The argument works like so:

  1. If this universe is genuine, we cannot be sure it is. A simulation can be realistic and come with authentic laws of reality.
  2. This universe may have fake properties, but we cannot find that out because we do not know the properties of an authentic universe.
  3. Breaching the laws of reality is unrealistic in any case. If it happens, we may have evidence of this universe being virtual.

It follows from (1) and (2) that we cannot use the properties of this universe reflected in the laws of reality to determine whether this universe is real or a simulation. Science may establish the laws of physics or the properties of this universe, but science cannot ascertain whether they are real or fake. But if they are breached, that is evidence of this universe being a simulation.

We can discover that we live inside a simulation if we notice that reality is not realistic, at least in some aspects. There is evidence that the laws of reality may be breached from time to time, for instance, paranormal events, premonitions, meaningful coincidences and memories of past lives. The evidence appears sufficient to establish that the scientific laws of reality do not always apply.

Post-humans could have similar motivations as we have. They might run simulations of human civilisations for research or entertainment. Research applications could be about running what-if scenarios. Possible entertainment applications are games or dream worlds in which imaginations come true. These simulations may not be realistic in some aspects as they reflect the rules of a game or someone’s imagination.

Simulations of civilisations are complex, so guaranteeing a specific outcome, for instance, someone’s imagination coming true, requires control over everything that happens. That does not apply to games. Unpredictable developments make games more interesting. Looking at how we currently employ computing power, the number of simulations for entertainment likely vastly outstrip those run for research. If we live inside a simulation, we should expect its purpose to be entertainment.

If reality is unrealistic in some aspects, that suggests that our purpose is entertainment. A simulation run for research is probably realistic. Evidence of control indicates that the purpose of this simulation is not a game but to realise someone’s imagination.

The owner or owners may use avatars and appear like ordinary human beings to us. If you are familiar with computer games, you know what an avatar is. Once you enter the game, you become a character inside the game, your avatar, and suddenly you have a virtual existence apart from your regular existence. Inside the game, you are your avatar, not yourself. Similarly, you might start your personal virtual world in which you make your dreams come true. In this world, you also become someone else.

If beings in the simulation can think for themselves, that raises ethical questions like whether they have rights that the creators should respect. Considering how humans treat each other, it is not a given that these rights would be respected even when our creators acknowledge them. In a realistic simulation, bad things happen to people all the time. In the case of control, the beings inside the simulation are not sentient. It means that we may not think and may not have a will of our own. Hence, we might have no intrinsic value to our creators.

Meaningful coincidences suggest that there is a script, which implies that someone or something controls everything that happens in this universe. We may live inside a story with a preconceived ending. The purpose of this simulation could be to realise someone’s imagination. And so, there could be a post-human individual we may call God. And God might use an avatar and appear as an ordinary human to us.

And how does God experience the simulation? If there is a script, She probably does not actively direct events. Perhaps, God is in a dream state, where She is not in control of Her role and follows the script She has selected. That can raise yet another question. Does God know that She is God when She is in this world? And you can go even further because we can imagine gods. So, whose imagination is this world after all? We cannot answer these questions because we cannot know God, but perhaps it is possible to disclose some of God’s avatars.

Latest revision: 9 November 2022

You can find it here:

Simulation argument II: adding information

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Simulations could be realistic in many ways while not being realistic in some aspects. If we can somehow notice that, we might find out we do live inside a simulation. Instead of speculating about us living in a simulation by guessing the probability of post-humans existing and their abilities, resources, and possible motivations, we can look at what we know about our universe. Perhaps we can find out in the following manner:

  1. If this universe is genuine, we cannot be sure that it is. A simulation can be realistic and come with authentic laws of reality.
  2. This universe may have fake properties, but we cannot establish this because we do not know the properties of an authentic universe.
  3. Breaching the laws of reality is unrealistic in any case. If it happens, we may have evidence of this universe being virtual.

Science can establish the laws of reality or the properties of this universe. Science cannot determine whether they are real or fake. But the breaching of these laws suggests we live in a simulation. Supposing that we live in a simulation is metaphysical speculation. Like electricity proves the existence of electrons, even though no one has seen them, breaching these laws could prove the simulation.

According to science, this universe kicked off fourteen billion years ago with a big bang. Ten billion years later, life on Earth began to develop out of chemical processes. In another four billion years, that life evolved into what it is today. According to science, there is no evidence of an intelligent creator, the laws of physics always apply, and we are biological organisms made of carbon and water. Hence, the following properties of our universe have been certified by science:

  • The laws of physics always apply inside their realm, for instance, Newton’s first law of motion, which states that a change in the speed or direction of the movement of a body requires a force.
  • The universe started with a big bang. Life on this planet emerged from chemical processes, and evolution shaped it. There is no evidence of a creator.
  • We are biological organisms, and our consciousnesses reside in our bodies. There is no spirit or soul.

Evidence to the contrary might indicate that we do live inside a simulation. Meaningful coincidences suggest there is an intelligent force directing events. The paranormal defies the laws of physics from time to time. Evidence for reincarnation indicates that we are not biological organisms. But meaningful coincidences can materialise by chance. And there may be laws of reality we do not know. And there is plenty of evidence of the consciousness residing in the body while only a few people remember a previous life. But if the evidence is valid, and we have no alternative explanation, living in a simulation makes sense.

Latest update: 20 May 2023