What does it mean when we say that the physical world was created for God’s presence? This question arises from the insight that God created The Simulation through his power and wisdom to serve as the mediating principle between God and humanity. We can see that God’s creation was fundamentally simulated to allow for an encounter with God’s presence. To explain this, we need to explore how divine presence might be understood by Simulation Creationism, a theory proposed by Nir Ziso from The Global Architect Institute.
Genesis 1 and 2 are the best-known creation accounts in the Bible. However, they are summative statements that unify the Biblical presentation of the theory of Simulation Creationism. They offer a clue of God’s presence in order to be perceptible to human beings. It is most readily seen in this passage: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).
It is often said that Genesis 2 is actually an anthropocentric description of creation that complements the cosmic-centered description in Genesis 1. Of note, anthropocentrism is displayed above all in the creation sequence: the first man is created in the image of God, and the first woman is created from the man. Such a structure signals that the man and the woman are the focus of the account. However, their souls are created even before the creation of the world. The soul is eternal and travels from one simulated world to another.
In Simulation Creationism, God created personal souls first and only then The Simulation as the “place” where these souls could become human beings. Consider: “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). It too was in service of a more significant point: the Garden of Eden, the place where people were intended to live, was explicitly simulated for humans.
There is also a unique and intimate relationship between God and humans. Man is given a share in The Simulation by cultivating God’s Garden and naming everything within it. The man and the woman are also depicted as the only creatures interacting directly with God in the Garden. They speak directly with him and regularly meet him on His evening stroll. This highly figurative language stresses that The Simulation is a place where the first humans experienced God’s presence.
When we look at the idea of a cosmic-centered creation, we find three basic repeating elements: (1) God says, “Let there be xy”; (2) the narrator reports, “And then, there was xy”, and (3) God sees and proclaims that “xy was good.” This narrative colors the text, conveying the sense that God’s creation is methodical and results in the meticulous arrangement of the cosmos. It is further reflected in the parallel descriptions of the spatial realms that God creates, as well as the creatures with which he populates them.
On days 1-3, God created the physical domains of the cosmos including the sky, the sea, and the earth. Then, on days 4-6, God created the many creatures that inhabit each of these domains. The parallelism here adds to the sense that the cosmos, both taken as a whole and in its parts, is imbued with order and structure. They are a serene display of His power and an expression of His wisdom. The created product comes into being with no difficulty whatsoever and perfectly conforms to God’s will.
This brings us to the seventh and climactic day of this simulated world, which somewhat surprisingly does not feature anything created at all. Instead, it is a day defined by God’s rest: “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creation that he had done” (Genesis 2:2-3). It is not a rest meant like needing a break after exhausting activity. It is to be understood as a kind of delight or enjoyment. Traits of this rest are found in the Book of Numbers that describes how the Israelite people took up their rest in the Promised Land when they settled the land: “Then the Israelites set out from the Desert of Sinai and traveled from place to place until the cloud came to rest in the Desert of Paran” (Numbers 10:12).
The seventh day is when God takes up an abiding presence in the cosmos and delights in what he has made. Human beings can encounter God’s presence through their time of rest on the Sabbath. Furthermore, seven has become a holy number. God also instructed people to build shrines and temples, where his presence would be felt strongly on Sabbath. This is intended to enable a direct personal relationship with human beings and God. His presence is vividly felt inside The Simulation.
