Creation Moment 12/19/2025 - Are we living in a simulation?

"Are we living in a simulation? 

This question has garnered massive attention in recent years, with technology tycoon Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan speculating along these lines in a YouTube clip that scored over 10 million

views. Another prominent proponent for this idea is Nick Bostrom, a former Oxford professor and leading advocate for transhumanism (the belief that humans should transform their own nature through technology).

Recent research critiques these ideas, known as the “simulation hypothesis,” on mathematical grounds.

The introduction to Reality+ states, “The central thesis of this book is: Virtual reality is genuine reality. Or at least, virtual realities are genuine realities.” One way to argue for this conclusion is to equate

reality with human perception. But Reality+ adopts a different approach, recognizing that the regularities we perceive in the world suggest an external, objective reality must exist beyond human perception. Otherwise, we’d have to say that facets of the universe we haven’t observed don’t exist.

A Biblical approach to epistemology shows the simulation hypothesis to be self-defeating.
Christian philosopher Peter Williams argues that “the first physical event must have had a non-physical, personal cause outside and independent of itself (and this, of course, is a part of what theists mean by ‘God’).” Only a self-existent, atemporal, transcendent God possesses the attributes required for a self-explanatory stopping point.

Reality+ takes issue with the idea that God is self-existent, asking, “What explains the design of that designer, or of the whole system of designers? Someone might say that God is exempt from explanation, but this looks like special pleading.” 

Special pleading is an informal logical fallacy that unfairly fails to treat similar things or individuals alike by asking for an arbitrary exception for one of them. God, however, possesses unique attributes such that he is not similar to anyone or anything else, precluding special pleading. One of these unique attributes is that God, as the only necessary (or noncontingent) being, is self-explanatory by nature. God is the only legitimate stopping point for the infinite regress.

Noteworthily, Reality+ dismisses the idea that morality stems from God’s commands, on account of the Euthyphro dilemma. This dilemma poses a false dichotomy that either (1) God commands moral actions because they happen to be right, or (2) moral actions are right because God happens to command them. 

In the first case, the basis for morality is outside of God; in the second case, morals are arbitrary. 

However, a third alternative easily answers the Euthyphro dilemma:

Moral actions are right because they are grounded in God’s omnibenevolent character. Again, Christian theism readily withstands the proffered objections.

God’s Word assures us that not only does truth exist, but he also has a name: Jesus (Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6)." AIG