Cosmic God or Computer Programmer?
Some Symmetry Breakers for Chalmers's Simulator God Argument
If we live in a computer simulation, does that make our simulator our God? If so what kind of god would our simulator be? A perfect being, like the God of Christianity, or perhaps a mere mortal computer programmer, one level of reality deeper than us? In his book, Reality+, philosopher David Chalmers argues that, given simulation hypothesis, there is a symmetry between a more cosmic conception of God and a non-divine conception of a simulator. He seeks to break the symmetry by arguing that one of God’s essential attributes, ‘worship-worthiness’, is uninstantiable, and thus no cosmic God exists and we are left with a non-divine simulator. In this paper I will provide defeaters for Chalmers’s argument against a cosmic God, and then I will provide my own symmetry breaker from metaethical concerns, namely moral facts, status, duties, and knowledge, in favor of the existence of a Cosmic God.
You can watch a more popular-level video presentation of this paper on my YouTube channel btw:
Simulation Hypothesis and Teleological Arguments
There are many ways to argue for the existence of God. Over the years, different ways have blossomed into different families of arguments for God’s existence. One of the most prominent families today is the teleological argument family, i.e., arguments from design in the world to a designer outside of the world. Arguments in the teleological family range over every level of observability, from the inherent design in the animal kingdom, which is observable by the naked eye, to the complexity of the human eye, and encoded information in the human genome observable under various microscopes, all the way back out to the macro level of the fine-tuned universe and the cosmological constants necessary for life on earth. The key feature unifying this family of arguments is ‘telos’, or design. It’s argued that if there is design, then there is a Designer, who we call God.
But while theists have argued that teleological arguments provide evidence for the existence of a transcendent God, David Chalmers argues that these arguments can be coopted by simulation theorists in favor of a computer programmer who exists one level of reality deeper than us. Why is there design in the world? Because a rational being designed this world for a purpose. There is in fact a creator of our universe and that’s why we find design above us, around us, and all throughout our very own bodies. But is this creator our ‘God’? Well that all depends on what we mean by ‘God’.
Whose God Is It Anyways?
Chalmers recounts that on the Judeo-Christian conception, ‘God’ is creator of the cosmos and He is all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), and all-good (omnibenevolent).[1] Typically, this conception also includes the contention that God is present everywhere in His creation (omnipresent). Call the conjunction of these omni properties “omnicompetence”. So then God, on the Judeo-Christian conception is an omnicompetent Creator of the cosmos, or what Chalmers calls a Cosmic God.[2] On the simulation hypothesis, however, our simulator might just be the creator of our virtual universe, but not the whole cosmos, which includes unsimulated “base reality”.
Chalmers contends that the computer simulator would be a type of ‘god’ over the local virtual universe, the simulated reality, and thus would be a type of local god rather than a Cosmic God. The simulator would be our creator. The simulator would also be extremely powerful, even approaching unlimited power over the simulation if she had “access to the source code and the data structures” which governs the simulated world she created.[3] The simulator would also know enough about the simulated world to be ‘functionally’ omniscient, especially if she had what Chalmers calls a “Cosmoscope” which is “a device…which allows users to zoom in on any part of the universe and in principle come to know about anything happening there.”[4] Presumably the simulator could also monitor the whole simulated universe through accessing the data structures as well.[5] But while, the simulator would be our practically omnipotent and omniscient creator, Chalmers argues that she’s probably not omnibenevolent. He argues that many simulators will have many different reasons for creating simulated worlds and there’s no reason to expect a simulator, who is like us but exists outside of our simulation, to be wholly beneficent. So then, we can define Chalmers’s gods as follows:
Cosmic God: Omnicompetent Creator of the Cosmos and all the realities and universes therein—base or otherwise.
Simulator god (local god): local creator of the simulated universe we inhabit, not creator of the cosmos they inhabit; practically omnipotent and omniscient qua the simulated universe, but not omnibenevolent.
Thus with Chalmers’s conception of a local god in hand, the simulation theorist can affirm the apparent design in nature and affirm a designer but argue that the designer is a natural being like we take ourselves to be rather than a supernatural Cosmic God. But why even take the simulator god hypothesis seriously? Chalmers argues that it can uniquely resolve the age-old tensions between theism and naturalism—both are right, in a sense, after all. There is a creator, but the creator is a natural being, and thus naturalism is still true. Thus, it looks like we still have all the explanatory power of both theism and naturalism with less ontological baggage, i.e., no supernatural things.
So then we have an apparent symmetry between two rival explanations for the apparent design we find in the world, Cosmic God hypothesis and the Simulator hypothesis. How might we go about breaking the symmetry and getting to a best explanation for the creator of our universe?
Breaking Symmetry
In order to break the symmetry between the Cosmic God and Simulator god hypotheses in favor of the Simulator god, Chalmers gives the following reasoning, which is worthy quoting at length:
I find myself thinking that even if our simulator is our creator, is all-powerful, is all-knowing, and is all-good, I still don’t think of her as a god. The reason is that the simulator is not worthy of worship. And to be a god in the genuine sense, one must be worthy of worship. For me, this is helpful in understanding why I’m not religious and why I consider myself an atheist. It turns out that I’m open to the idea of a creator who is close to all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. I had once thought that this idea is inconsistent with a naturalistic view of the world, but the simulation idea makes it consistent. There remains a more fundamental reason for my atheism, however: I do not think any being is worthy of worship. The point here goes beyond simulation. Even if the Abrahamic God exists, with all those godlike qualities of perfection, I will respect, admire, and even be in awe of him, but I won’t feel bound to worship him…I don’t think any qualities can make a being worthy of worship. As a result, we never have good reason to worship any being. No possible being is worthy of worship.[6]
So, Chalmers follows the design arguments for the existence of a creator with at least qualified omni-properties[7] but doesn’t go all the way to a full-blown Cosmic God because a Cosmic God would be worthy of worship, which he thinks is impossible. Therefore, he contends that teleological arguments for God get us to a simulator god rather than a Cosmic God. I will formalize Chalmers’s full argument, which I will call ‘The Simulator god Argument’, as follows:
If there’s a creator of our universe, then the creator of our universe is either a simulator god or a Cosmic God. [premise]
Teleological arguments are sufficient evidence for a creator of our universe. [premise]
therefore,
The creator of our universe is either a simulator god or a Cosmic God. [modus ponens from 1&2]
If a Cosmic God exists, then He would be worthy of worship. [premise]
No possible being is worthy of worship. [premise]
therefore,
No Cosmic God exists. [modus tollens from 4&5]
therefore,
The creator of our universe is a simulator god. [disjunctive syllogism from 3&6]
As far as I can tell, there are at least four ways to attack the Simulator god Argument listed above. First, one could challenge the assumption of symmetry, which motivates premise 1, by providing a symmetry breaker that demonstrates that a Cosmic God is a better explanation than a simulator god. A second way one could attack the argument is to challenge premise 4 and argue that a Cosmic God would not necessarily be worthy of worship, but I’m not interested in this approach since I think the premise is sound. A third and fourth way to attack the argument is to provide an undercutting and rebutting defeater for premise 5. I will start by providing an undercutting defeater for premise 5, then a rebutting defeater. Then I will spend the rest of this paper developing my own symmetry breakers from ethical theory in favor of a Cosmic God, which will serve to challenge premise 1 and potentially provide another rebutting defeater from premise 5.
Undercutting Premise 5
An undercutting defeater is meant to undermine the support for a given proposition without providing evidence for its contrary. With this in mind, I offer the following distinction as a potential undercutting defeater for premise 5: Chalmers provides us with a weak epistemic claim for a strong modal conclusion, when a strong modal claim is needed instead. Chalmers says that he does not think that any being could be worthy of worship, and that he doesn’t think any qualities can make a being worthy of worship, but this just tells about his own subjective credences rather than about objective reality and modality. It’s quite a leap to go from “I don’t think any qualities can make a being worthy of worship” to “No possible being is worthy of worship”.[8] Firstly, it doesn’t follow from that fact that Chalmers’s doesn’t know of any worship-worthy qualities, that there are no worship-worthy qualities. Perhaps he is not the right epistemic position to see such properties. But further, why think that our credences about what we would or would not do in the presence of a Cosmic God would be all that good anyways? Secondly, the majority of the human race has been convinced that there are worship-worthy qualities, as evidenced by their actual worship throughout all of recorded history. Perhaps Chalmers is right in his contention, but given that the vast majority humans throughout history disagree with him, we have a strong reason to believe that Chalmers is somehow not in the right epistemic position to evaluate the ontological status of worship-worthy qualities. Whatever the case, Chalmers has not provided the right kind of support for the strong modal claim that “No possible being is worthy of worship” and thus premise 5 is under-motivated.
Rebutting Premise 5
Another problem with the Simulator Argument is that Chalmers never defines what he means by ‘worship’. Theologian John Frame explains that there are various senses in which humans worship God: a narrow sense and a broad sense. Frame says that the “narrow sense is public, corporate worship, what the Jews did in the temple, and what Christians do in their weekly gathering to celebrate the resurrection.”[9] Frame characterizes the broad sense of worship as a “worship that we perform all the time, as we seek to live godly lives”, claiming that “When we glorify God, it is a living sacrifice; it is true worship”.[10] Frame further claims that “‘Fear and trembling’ in Scripture is worship, the typical response of a human being in the presence of God.”[11] So worship, at least according to Frame, isn’t merely falling prostrate on your face before God, though that could be a particular form of worship, but instead it’s a much larger concept which includes particular actions like giving sacrifices, going to corporate gatherings to sing songs of praise, acknowledging and admiring God’s goodness, respecting God for His attributes, giving thanks for what He’s done, and dedicating one’s life to Him, some of which Chalmers’s unwittingly admits that he would do in the presence of a Cosmic God.
Chalmers insists that he would not be compelled to worship a Cosmic God even while admitting that “if the God Abrahamic God exists, with all those godlike qualities of perfection [he would] respect, admire, and even be in awe of him, but [he would not] feel bound to worship him.” Earlier on the same page he even says that he would be thankful to such a God.[12] But then what is left in his concept of worship if we remove giving thanks, giving admiration, showing respect, and even being in awe in the presence of God? It seems as though Chalmers is admitting he would worship an omnicompetent perfect being God, while refusing to use the language of worship. If he has limited his definition of ‘worship’ to merely falling prostrate before God, then that is not an adequate definition. Furthermore, that action often seems to be more of an involuntary, biological mechanism than a conscious choice. So perhaps he would not have a good intuition about whether or not he would fall prostrate before a living Cosmic God. But there is much more to worship than falling down, and Chalmers seems to affirm that a Cosmic God would be due respect, admiration, awe, and thankfulness—all of which are important elements of worship. So, it seems that by Chalmers’s own admission, he does think that there is a possible being who is worthy of at least a certain kind of worship, namely a Cosmic God like the God of Abraham. This point, if true, serves as a rebutting defeater to premise 5.
Metaethical Symmetry Breaking
Thus far I have given two defeaters for premise 5 of the Simulator Argument, but as I’ve suggested above, one can also challenge premise 1. Premise 1 operates on the assumption that there is a genuine symmetry between the Cosmic God hypothesis and the Simulator hypothesis as explanantia of the explanandum of teleology. But one could challenge premise 1 by expanding out the explananda to include other desiderata such as moral facts, consciousness, primordial creation of life, and existence itself. I will argue that once we expand our focus to include more items which cry out for explanation, the Cosmic God hypothesis wins out as a better explanation over Simulator god hypothesis. For the sake of brevity though, I will limit myself to a considering how each hypothesis deals with metaethical phenomena such as moral facts, moral status of persons, moral duties, and moral knowledge.
Moral Truth and Facts
There are certain moral truths which are true in every possible world, that is to say, they are necessarily true. Here’s a classic example of a necessary moral truth: <it is always wrong to torture babies for fun>. Even we live in a computer simulation and we are simulated conscious beings, it would still be wrong to torture the babies that we come into contact with. For if we actually do live in a computer simulation, then our simulator has figured out a way to create synthetic phenomenally conscious beings, because I don’t know about you, but there is definitely something-that-it’s-like-to-be me.
Thus the simulator god hypothesis must account for the knowledge that I already have of the world if it is to count as an explanation of it. As such, it must account for the moral knowledge that I have of the proposition <it is always wrong to torture babies for fun>. If the simulator god hypothesis can’t account for propositions such as the one above, and the moral facts which serve as their truthmakers, then it cannot be an adequate theory. So how could one make sense of the fact that <it is always wrong to torture babies for fun> on a simulator god hypothesis? Did the simulator invent this truth? Well, no, as I stated above, this seems like a necessary truth, it’s true in every possible world. A contingent simulator couldn’t serve as the ground of a necessary truth; it seems like we’d need a necessary being to ground a necessary truth like that. Furthermore, a necessary being like an omnicompetent Cosmic God would be omnibenevolent, which makes for a much better explanation than a contingent simulator who is not only not omnibenevolent, but not even close if she is anything like us, which Chalmers contends she is.
A morally fallible contingent being cannot ground necessary moral truths like the truth that <it is always wrong to torture babies for fun> but a morally perfect necessary being like God can serve as the moral and metaphysical ground of such a truth. God’s morally perfect nature serves as the ground of the moral fact which in turn is the truthmaker for the truthbearer which states that <it is always wrong to torture babies for fun>. We can even ground the necessary truthbearer in the mind of God who could eternally contemplate its truth along with all other necessary truths as His occurrent thoughts. While these are all speculations, they’re warranted speculations given a Cosmic God, but nothing in the ballpark could be said of a simulator god. Thus, when it comes to grounding moral truth and facts, the Cosmic God hypothesis has much more potential for explanatory power than the simulator god hypothesis.
Moral Status of Human Persons
Human persons have moral status which non-human things do not enjoy. We recognize this fact. Thus, even if we are currently living in a computer simulation, it is true that we human persons, though simulated conscious beings, enjoy the moral status of human persons. If not, then our moral intuitions are so off base that one would have to wonder about all of our other intuitions, including intuitions about basic math like 2+2=4 and logical intuitions like the law of non-contradiction. If the simulator god hypothesis calls into question our deepest moral, mathematical, and logical concepts and intuitions, then surely it can’t function as the best explanation for the teleology considered above. Thus, let’s take the more charitable option and assume that if we are in fact conscious sims, then our moral intuitions about our own moral status human persons are accurate. Thus we’d have to argue that human dignity extends out (down) to simulated conscious human persons as well as base reality conscious persons.
So if we have human dignity as sims, what accounts for our human dignity? Is it that we are made in the image of the simulator? Why think that the creator of a simulated world would be the type of thing that could endow moral status on those made in its image? As Chalmers suggests, the simulator isn’t morally perfect, but is likely very morally fallible like us. The simulator is a contingent being who derives its ‘functional’ omnipotence and omniscience through the tools she has at her disposal, not through anything intrinsic to her own nature. The simulator has a beginning and presumably will have an end. By all accounts, the simulator does not seem like the kind of original thing which is capable of bestowing moral status upon us. Instead, it looks as though the simulator’s moral status, assuming she is a human one level of reality deeper than us, be it base reality or just another simulation, has a derived rather than an original moral status. If our moral status cries out for an explanation then so does the moral status of the simulator.
On the Cosmic God hypothesis however, God is omnicompetent, which includes omnibenevolence. This morally perfect being is the kind of rational, volitional, affectionate, and self-existent being who can serve as a non-arbitrary stopping point for a moral status regress. If we have moral status, then we can rightly ask “why?”. This “why” can trace its way all the way back through all the simulated worlds to base reality, even if there are simulated worlds nested within other simulated worlds a millions layers deep. We can continue to ask why simulator x has moral status until we get back to base reality, to the original simulator. At this point we can ask why the original simulator has moral status, to which a Cosmic God is the only explanation since we’ve run out of simulators. Once we have this answer in hand, we can utilize Ockham’s razor and excise all the simulators from our ontology since we need not multiply entities beyond explanatory necessity. And we are left with a Cosmic God as the best explanation for the moral status we take ourselves to have.
Moral Duties
I have moral duties towards other beings, especially other human beings. If we live in a computer simulation, then I am a sim, and yet I still have moral duties. What accounts for these moral duties on simulator god hypothesis? Could a simulator invent moral duties which are normative for her sims? What would make a simulator’s commands obligatory for her sims? Does her status as simulation creator establish a moral authority over her sims? We know that on Chalmers’s conception, the simulator is not a morally perfect being, or anywhere close, but what if she were a very depraved, wicked woman in base reality who created a simulation purely to watch her sims rape and torture one another? If she commanded them to rape and torture would the sims acquire an ethical duty to do so? What if she commanded her sims to torture babies for fun, would that become a moral duty for them? I think putting ourselves in the first-person position of the sim can help us adjudicate this question. If I find out that I am a sim right now as I am writing this paper and my simulator begins communicating with me in such a manner that I can be justified in believing that I am actually speaking with my creator, and she commands me to begin torturing babies for fun immediately, I would not acquire a moral duty to begin torturing babies for fun. Why? Because I know through my moral intuitions and rational moral reflection that the proposition <it is always wrong to torture babies for fun> is necessarily true. I have a duty to act in accordance with the necessary moral truth I know to be true rather than a command from my simulator.
However, a Cosmic God like the Abrahamic God of Christianity has no space between his perfect moral nature and His divine commands. On the Cosmic conception of God, God only acts in accord with His nature, and His nature is good. He can only issue good commands, and thus He could never command me to torture babies for fun. Moral duties, on many Cosmic God conceptions are cashed out as divine commands which human beings can know through special divine revelation in books like the Bible, but also through natural law, rational moral reflection, and direct awareness upon seeing morally praiseworthy or blameworthy acts and events.
Thus, moral duties are more explicable on a Cosmic God hypothesis than on a simulator god hypothesis.
Moral Knowledge
Finally, we can consider moral knowledge. On a Cosmic God hypothesis, a morally perfect God created human beings in His own image to know Him, to love Him, and to care for His creation. This kind of God would have every reason to create us to know His moral statues and our moral duties. On this hypothesis, we have justification for trusting our moral intuitions and conceptions to be generally reliable and lead us to moral truth. On the simulator god hypothesis, however, we don’t know the purpose behind the simulator’s choice to simulate us sims. The simulator is not a morally perfect being and thus is not bound by the same moral constraints as a Cosmic God to create us with moral truth tracking cognitive faculties. Moreover, there is a type of moral Benacerraf problem that arises for the simulator: how is it that the simulator has knowledge of moral truths if the simulator hasn’t been designed to know them herself? If there is no Cosmic God ruling over the simulator’s reality, be it base reality or otherwise, why think that the simulator evolved to comprehend abstract necessary moral truths? Why not think that the simulator has evolved to comprehend survival beliefs that mimic moral truths well enough to survive but not well enough to provide moral knowledge?
Whatever story we tell about the simulator, when it comes to explaining the moral knowledge we humans take ourselves to have, the Cosmic God hypothesis is simpler, more elegant, and much more plausible than the simulator god hypothesis.
Conclusion
I have given two defeaters for premise 5 of Chalmers’s Simulator god Argument, an undercutting defeater arguing that his strong modal claim is under-supported and a rebutting defeater arguing that Chalmers’s doesn’t clearly define the term ‘worship’ in his argument and unwittingly admits of various ways in which he would in fact feel obliged to worship a Cosmic God, thus rebutting his own symmetry breaker. I further argued for my own symmetry breaker from metaethical considerations, which if successful preempt premise 1 of the Simulator god Argument. If my arguments have been successful, then the phenomena of teleological arguments are better explained by a Cosmic God than a simulator god, and a more cumulative case style comparison of the theories further favors a Cosmic God.
[1] David Chalmers, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc. 2022), 125.
[2] Reality+, 128.
[3] Reality+, 126.
[4] Reality+, 127.
[5] Reality+, 127.
[6] Reality+, 144.
[7] I’m skeptical that qualified omni-properties is even a coherent concept. Almost-all-knowing? Kind-of-all-powerful? All-good-lite?
[8] Reality+, 144.
[9] John Frame, Systematic Theology, 1,037.
[10] John Frame, Systematic Theology, 1,038.
[11] John Frame, Systematic Theology , 814.
[12] Reality+, 144
.