Well yeah. It’s all kinda a semantics game. If we live in a simulation someone created it, it has some sort of rules or limits designed in, and it has some self generative probability. So the whole “we live in a simulation” thing is… well… there are these philosophical questions regarding reality- does it matter if something is real if it is real to you? Would your experiences in life be any less impactful on who you are- could you instantly overcome every trauma and forget every learned behavior if you “woke up” tomorrow and your entire life as you know it was a dream? Let’s skip that mess though and just say that in a practical sense it doesn’t matter much. Whatever the universe is and perception is it is what we know to be real and wether a dowry created it or it is all a random interaction of physics and chemistry or a complex simulation it doesn’t change the fact that the rules are what they are and we are bound to those rules.
So it’s all perspective anyway and the concept of some “simulation” isn’t exactly at odds with science or most religions. Most religious contexts have deities and semi deities as essentially administrators or creators or power users of our environment anyway. Often a distinction between where we exist and they exist is made such as “mortal realm” and “divine realm” or such- but it’s semantics. Often times death in the mortal realm is a potential ticket to the divine realm- which is functionally the same as leaving a simulation after logging out or such; or a form of rebirth which is akin to recycling code or resetting a program. Again- semantics. Devine text or revelation- well… it isn’t like administrators never leave notes or they can’t manually provide instructions to programs or message users.
So what if incompatibility of science? Well- that is perhaps one of the great misconceptions. At some point the popular concept became science was an independent entity- that it existed in opposition as a contender to the proper theory- that you could believe in simulations or religion or spirituality or philosophy or believe in science. What a foolish and dangerous idea.
Science isn’t a theology. It’s a system of study. Science is not an answer. It is questions. Science seeks to understand the way things work and how we can predictably and reliably use the laws that govern our reality to produce desired results or work within them to our goals. Science doesn’t define reality or anything else- it is merely putting name and structure we can understand to what is.
IF the entire universe is a dream of a giant space turtle- science doesn’t care. If that is what the universe is, then science would be the study and understanding of giant space turtles dreams. We run into problems because something like gods and such are outside the scientific method. They can’t really be studied in the frame work of science. Their general nature makes that prohibitive or the current rules and limitations of sciences do.
So there is a natural sense of antagonism between science and religion or spirituality since science seeks truth and it is most likely that not all spiritual or religious beliefs are completely true at once. So as science works through things it will sometimes touch in things that can contradict various beliefs.
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Science isn’t a theology. It’s a system of study. Science is not an answer. It is questions. Science seeks to understand the way things work and how we can predictably and reliably use the laws that govern our reality to produce desired results or work within them to our goals. Science doesn’t define reality or anything else- it is merely putting name and structure we can understand to what is.
So there is a natural sense of antagonism between science and religion or spirituality since science seeks truth and it is most likely that not all spiritual or religious beliefs are completely true at once. So as science works through things it will sometimes touch in things that can contradict various beliefs.