Simulation Creationism

Simulation Creationism is a form of Creationism that links Creationism and Simulation Theory in a new way. It centers around the idea that the universe did not emerge on its own. According to the concept, the creator of our universe, God, has designed and programmed our world. He was able to create our universe because of his superpower, which is an advanced supercomputer. Simulation Creationism is, in fact, part of Old-Earth Creationism (OEC).

A Brief Background of Evolution and Creationism

We are often confronted with questions about evolution; ask if God is really a Creator or are we only a product of evolution. These are not simple academic questions, as they penetrate deep into the meaning of human life. We ask questions like “Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do I go? Why am I here? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the meaning of reality? Why is there anything at all? Can the depth of the human spirit be truly understood through matter and the physical process” Are all these questions seeking a basic human understanding of the self and reality?

More than 150 years after Charles Darwin’s revolutionary book, “On the Origin of Species”, a critique of evolution is an everyday topic. The fact that counter-evolutionary resistance has not been crushed is based on various worldviews. As in the second half of the 19th century, that there are many standpoints on evolution is equally true today, especially if one considers the theory in relation to one’s faith in God’s creation of the world and everything in it. This opens another set of questions: What does faith in God’s creation mean? Is it possible to theologically explain God’s intervention in nature and its processes in the context of biological evolution? Is it possible to connect religion and evolution?

What does the Bible say about creation?

In the first page of the Bible, it says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit was hovering over the waters. (…) Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds”. And it was so. (…) God said: “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky”. (…) God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…” (…) So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them” (Genesis 1, 1-2; 11; 20; 26-27). 

What does “creation” mean for the believer? In the Old Testament, the term “creation” means the world and everything in it has a foundation in God alone. The philosophy of creation is substantiated in the Second Maccabees “I beg you, child, to look at heaven and earth. See everything in them and know that God made these things from nothing, and created humankind in the same way (2 Maccabees 7, 28). Genesis is not primarily an account of creation of the world with plants, animals, and humans but also a report on creation with a clear message of salvation. Biological creation is not the primary focus at all.

Everything we see around us, including human beings, is made by God’s omnipotence. Creation happens through God’s word and not by any physical act. This is akin to how God made a covenant with the chosen people: Israel was made by the word of covenant, spoken by God Himself. Also, after every day of creation, we read, “God saw how good it was”. 

Thus, creation is good, but not in terms of any in dualistic cosmology. The creation of the world was oriented toward humans. A human is a true partner in dialogue with God since he was made in His image and is now His representative on Earth. The world is given to men to manage in accordance with God's will. Let’s look at an analogy between creation and covenant. Both have a history, and we know that history is not static and is always developing. Creation is covenant and its fulfillment in the history of salvation. Exactly due to the history of creation and salvation, God’s creation is not something that happened once in history but endures even today, and it will exist in the future as a continuous creation.

The New Testament offers an explanation of this: salvation comes through Jesus Christ. He can be the Savior because he is also the Creator, due to the proclamation in the beginning of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning. Everything came into being through the Word and without the Word nothing came into being” (John 1, 1-3). Saint Paul also says: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the one who is first over all creation. Because all things were created by him, both in heavens and on the earth, the things that are visible and the things that are invisible (…) all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1, 15-16). In the Biblical context, creation finishes not in the material life of a human; it finishes in leading humans to salvation in Jesus Christ.

Christian theology understands the account of creation in a pictorial fashion. According to mainstream theories, ancient people used metaphorical images and texts to depict perceivable reality. Anthropomorphic images and texts had great potential for adaptation, social acculturation, and personal understanding. They are always partial images and texts; grammar and semantics are not free from contradictions and distant objectivity. 

These are not definitions but possibilities. They are poetic ways of depicting the creation, which is otherwise expressed in cold scientific narrative. There is a danger in seeing God as similar to man, as a physical being with far greater power, acting in the universe in a mere pantheistic way and using His power to create things. We would need to understand creation in a human way, and as such, creation would necessarily ask for materials. This is the image of God the Potter, where clay as a material is a metaphor for creation. But theology teaches that creation is ex nihilo: from nothingness and without the use of any physical material. Creation is not a thing nor an event that happened long ago. When creating, God makes things without change; there is only an existential dependence on God at the very foundation of being.

A brief note on evolution

The literature in the field often mentions Darwin's Theory of Evolution. It is, however, not a single theory but a range of theories. It doesn’t seem constructive to think about Darwin's evolutionary concept without differentiating the various components. It involves five major theories: (1) Evolution by itself, i.e., the world in continuous change and organisms that change in time, (2) Common ancestry, where all microorganisms and species of animals stem from a common ancestor - the single source of life on Earth, (3) Multiplying the number of species, a theory that explains the existence of huge organic differences, (4) Gradualism, a theory that argues for change through gradual but not revolutionary population change, (5) Natural choice, a theory that explains evolutionary change through the profuse production of genetic variations in every generation. A relatively small number of individuals survive with a better combination of genetic material and are a source for the next generations. These five theories Darwin worked together initially; but in time, many evolution theorists made substantial changes and refuted some of them.

Creationism

Belief in creation was earlier defined as the belief in the literal truth of the history of creation, as described in Genesis. Not many modern exegesists involved in modern Biblical research would agree with this definition. Still, some creationists point to the fact that all human life came from divine intervention, together with the entire range of earthly plants and animals. Such a strong creationist theory refutes all possibilities of evolution They see a contradiction in the first and second books of Genesis; in essence, Creationism later went through many stages. 

Creationism came into being in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the United States, where the Puritan way of life had a large impact on both the political and public sectors. Church communities were less active in promoting creationism. In fact, it was the state that actively supported creationist theories within the law. Only in the 1970s did the theory of evolution come to be taught in schools, but it had an equal position alongside creationism.

Ten influential creationists in 1970 founded the Creation Science Research Center in San Diego with the aim of making creationism more scientific. Within this society today, more than 3,000 branches exist, with a huge record of publications and biological reader, Creation Science. The aim is to revive faith in creation as described in Genesis, which had been weakened by ideological evolutionary theory. Since many supporters of evolution are atheists or agnostics, there is no theological debate among them. Thus, creationists need to offer scientific proof for their claims. In the 1980s, such research was supported by acting president Ronald Reagan and other Republican presidents such as George W Bush. They advocated for the introduction of Intelligent Design theory in schools, together with evolution theory. Most theories are supported by evangelical, protestant, and free church denominations, while the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches are more reserved on the subject.

Theologian Karl Rahner thinks that the transcendentality of God’s act in the world cannot be thought of as static. It should be viewed as a constant act in the modern temporal sense.. Still, Rahner refuses the idea that humans are a product of evolution derived from the animal world, while the human soul is created by God. It is a dualistic and Platonic dichotomy that does not correlate with God as the transcendental foundation of all reality while being within the world. God’s act is not a single moment in our experience. This is akin to St. Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of the relation between God and the world. Namely, God does not participate on a categorial level but rather through the laws and processes of natural events; evolution could be one specific event. This understanding impinges on the question whether the creation of humans is a single event or not. It is an introductory question for many Christian evolutionary theorists and today one of the leading views of the Roman Catholic Church.

Various understandings of creationism and whether it was a single moment of creation according to the laws of physics and evolution can be summarized as follows:

Young Earth Creationism

Some people believe that the Earth and its lifeforms, including human beings, were created by God between 6,000-10,000 years ago. This is known as Young Earth Creationism. As the name suggests, it means that the Earth is young. In fact, the age of the Earth is calculated based on the genealogies of the Old Testament. These creationists assume that the genealogies in the Bible are complete, and the six days of Creation are literal 24-hour days. 

This belief stands in opposition to the scientific notion that the universe came to be 13 billion years ago while the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Young Earth Creationism is strongest in the United States, where some 40% of the adult population believes that the Earth is young. Until the new scientific studies in the 19th century, a majority of people believed this; and according to calculations based on Jewish and early Christian methods, there were about 4,000 years between the Creation of the Earth and the birth of Jesus. 

The primary goal is to oppose evolution, making Young Earth Creationists also stand against other creationist theories, including Intelligent Design that do not confirm their attitude about the Earth’s age and the identity of the Creator. The main scientific argument against the standard scientific calculation of the Earth’s age is that a radiometric date may not be accurate since the rapidity of radioactive disintegration is not constant. In short, it may calculate age incorrectly. They also argue that light traveled much faster in the past, thereby explaining the existence of stars so far away. According to this creationist view, all events in Genesis happened exactly as described.

Old Earth Creationism

Old Earth Creationism is a type of Creationism that says the Earth and all its life forms were created by a supernatural act of God many years ago. It is a relatively new idea as compared to Young-Earth Creationism. These creationists assume that the genealogies in the Bible are incomplete. The Creation's alleged six days may or may not be literal 24-hour days. The majority of people accept the conventional scientific age for the Earth as being about 4.5 billion years old, but they reject macroevolution because it is not biologically sustainable nor provable.

Old Earth Creationism, also called OEC, has various forms: Day-age Creationism, Gap Creationism, and Progressive Creationism.

Day-age Creationism

It states the six days of the Creation of the Earth and its all life forms were not of a 24-hour duration each. The theory says that the Hebrew word, Yom, mentioned in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible refers to the period, but not exactly 24 hours. Day-age Creationism defines each day of the Creation as an age. The theory affirms that the duration of these days was much longer from thousands to millions of years. Hence, it is more compatible with the current age of the Earth than the New-age Creation. It sees six days as mere frames, where God created for a long time: (1) Light, day and night; (2) Sea and sky, (3) Earth and vegetation, (4) Sun, moon, and stars; (5) Sea creatures, (6) Animals and humans. Some calculations of cosmic time warn that the universe was a trillion times smaller and hotter than today; and when the Big Bang moment is calculated in this way, 15 billion years had passed from the moment of the creation of the universe until today.

Gap Creationism 

It is also known as “ruin and construction creationism”. It has also been called the pre-Adamic cataclysmic theory. Like the New Age Creation, Gap Creationism also holds the statement that the six days of creating the Earth had a duration of 24 hours. This theory states that first God created the world, then Satan rebelled against God, destroyed the world, and left the universe void and blank. God once again created the world in six days, each having 24 hours. This theory asserts the existence of a tremendous time gap between the cataclysm and the recreation of the Earth. Thus, the theory can explain fossil records and the aging of the Earth.

Progressive Creationism 

It is also known as Process Creation. This particular version of Creationism suggests that God's Creation of living beings happened gradually over billions of years, thereby largely confirming geological and cosmological estimates of the Earth’s age, microevolution, and archeology. God created the world in numerous discrete events over billions of years. All life forms, including plants and animals, appeared in stages in a rapid burst. When organisms became extinct, God with His superpowers created new ones to take their place. Progressive Creationism states that between the extinct and new species, there was no common ancestor. Adherents do not believe in the transformation of new species/organisms from ancestor species/organisms. In essence,  it does not accept macroevolution, and is more compatible with geological and cosmological figures for the Earth's age.

Intelligent Design

Intelligent design is known as the Teleological Argument. Teleology means goal-oriented or purposeful. It is an Inductive argument that crafts the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas posited the argument of Intelligent Design when he said, "Wherever there is a complex design, there must be a designer who designs it. Earth is a complex entity. Therefore, it must have a designer." In Natural Theology, William Paley offered examples of purpose in organisms. He cited the watchmaker analogy when talking about God. Paley asked us to imagine a watch on the ground somewhere. Would we say that the watch appeared on its own, randomly and spontaneously, or do we say that the complexity of its parts came together in a particular order to serve a goal? The teleology of the watch implies the existence of a Watchmaker. Paley argued that the teleology demonstrated by a watch leads us to conclude that an intelligent creator designed it with a particular end in mind. Here, the teleology of the Earth, nature, and all life forms imply God's existence.

But this argument is refuted by the disanalogy that all elements in the natural world like the human body are dissimilar to watches. For example, why would God have designed eyes with a blind spot? Something in nature does not have a purpose like a blind spot or nipples on men. Another counterargument is the complexity and functionality the body displays because of mutation. The conclusion is that our bodies are designed and modified by natural selection. In the 18th century, Scottish philosopher David Hume pointed out that the creator posited by Paley had made many mistakes. For example: why are tissues like the breast, prostate, or colon prone to cancer?

The Simulation Hypothesis

Also called Simulation Theory, the Simulation Hypothesis suggests that our Universe is not an objective reality at all, but rather, we are living in an artificial simulation running on an advanced supercomputer. The question whether we live in a simulation was notably asked by the great innovator, Elon Musk: "This world feels real, but it seems unlikely to be true". This theory is surprisingly simple but also very plausible in its logic. 

Elon Musk talks about the development of video games in the last 40 years from simple 8-bit visuals to photo-realistic images with millions of people playing at the same time, while creating a virtual reality. Musk says that at the end of this game, one may not be able to differentiate between what is real and what is not. The games will be so real that one will not understand the difference between the game and reality. So, how do we know that we are not in such a game?

Many questions arise from this hypothesis. David Kipping, an astronomer from the University of Columbia, says there is a 50-50 chance that we are living in a simulation. The mystery of existence has confused many scientists, philosophers, explorers, and physicists from the dawn of civilization. In 2003, Nick Bostrom from the University of Oxford, wrote a seminal work, “Are we living in a computer simulation?” In explaining his argument as a trilemma, he says: (1) a simulated life cannot exist if the society is on the verge of extinction or if it is already extinct, and (2) There is no possibility of further technological development. Moreover, advanced civilizations are usually not interested in a simulation of reality, and lastly, (3) it may be almost certain that people live in a simulation at all times.

A Matrix-like world excites many philosophers. Dr. Karl H. Pribram from the University of Georgetown developed the theory of a hologram brain. Pribram thinks the human brain is a receptor of a hologram or infinite consciousness. Its nerves are alleys where impulses run with laser light, meaning that the brain itself may be a hologram. This theory explains how a human being can save tens of trillions of bytes of information in such a small space. It is close to Nikola Tesla who in one of his interviews claimed that the brain is only a receiver. There is a core in the universe from which we receive knowledge, strength, and inspiration. Tesla did not know what this core was, but he was very aware of its existence.

Some physicists believe, like Pribram, that the universe in which we live is a hologram. If they accept this presumption in their formulas, it is much simpler to explain big physical problems such as black holes, the unification of gravitation, and quantum mechanics. The laws of physics make more sense when written in two instead of three dimensions (the basis of the holographic principle). According to the Occam principle of scientific methodology, the simpler theory is usually more probable. James Gates, a physicist from the University of Maryland, who specializes in string theory, claims he has found codes for solving the errors in supersymmetry formulas. Another physicist, Hong Qin from the Princeton Physics of Plasma Laboratory has fabricated an artificial-intelligent algorithm that uses mechanical learning and automatically imparts knowledge through experience. 

These scientists based their work on the Simulation Hypothesis. The algorithm used is then adjusted to anticipate the behavior of plasma with the possibility of using it for other natural events. Qom thought up a computer algorithm that might lead to new discoveries in energy whose existence raises the probability that reality is, in fact, a simulation. Following Nick Bostrom, Qin believes he reached his algorithm as a working case study of the philosopher’s Simulation Theory. Such an algorithm should be simply defined as a discreet spatial-temporal web. The complexity of the universe comes from the huge memory and processing power of a “computer”, while the algorithm itself is very simple.

The development of a simulated reality leads us to believe that the Simulation Hypothesis may be correct. Some technologies learn and mimic human Intelligence. Simulated reality is a kind of technology that mimics reality to such a degree that it is hard or impossible for the conscious mind to distinguish between virtual and true reality. Such a reality can be simulated with quantum computers. There is the probability that our ancestors or an ancestor creator might have fabricated a simulated universe with the help of advanced computers. We may well be living in that simulated universe.

Creationism and the Simulation Hypothesis

Creationism and the Simulation Hypothesis share similarities. All the theories mentioned above, i.e.Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, and Intelligent Design believe in a Creator of the universe, the Earth, and all life forms. They all say that the Creator is God. The Simulation Hypothesis also states that the universe did not emerge on its own.

Creationists say that God in his Divine Power created the Universe. On the other hand, Simulation Theory posits that someone (a programmer) has made a simulated universe, using an advanced supercomputer. A scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories thinks a clear connection exists between the Christian Holy Tradition and physics. He mentioned Saint Augustine of Hippo who might have been onto something when he described God in terms of the Holy Trinity. He believes the concept may be translated to computing, multiplying processing, and shared work. The notion of computers being both one and several things at the same time might lead to radically different computer designs in the future.

God is omnipotent. This work may be characteristic of developing computers, as a result of the technological revolution. With the ability to make many things at the same time, modern technology may be saying something about the triune God. According to Christian understanding, the Trinity is one person in three at the same time: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The three mark the one, and the one includes all three. If this trinitarian axiom is theologically adjusted to understand the physical process and computer simulation as artificial intelligence (which, accidentally, has divine attributes such as being infinite, plural, etc.), it is possible to equate artificial intelligence with an image of God’s mind.

God is the creator of everything that exists. God is necessarily bigger than anything else created, including nature, animals, and human beings. God is the absolute ruler of time and everything subdued by time, including the cosmos. God cannot be found in past, current or future experience, but in a segment of memory where human consciousness and rationality meet God’s superconsciousness and transcendentality. 

A computer is intriguing in itself through its conception and design, just like the Trinity. Thus, it may be possible to equate the Trinity with computer memory. Computers are necessarily artificial intelligence, while God possesses absolute intelligence. A computer as artificial intelligence has the capability to learn and accept new knowledge by saving and archiving this knowledge. Thus, the computer acts through knowledge, while God acts in the same way but through being and wanting.

Simulation Creationism

The theory that links Creationism and Simulation Theory is called Simulation Creationism. This type of creationism holds that “our universe had not emerged on its own. The creator of the universe, a.k.a God, has designed and programmed the world. He was able to create the universe because of the existence of a superpower - an advanced supercomputer.

This theory has three basic premises:

1. God may be a programmer.

2. The universe may be a simulated universe.

3. God's Divine power may be an advanced supercomputer or its software program.

The first premise is largely based on the ancient idea of the unmoved mover. In Aristotelian philosophy, it means the source of everything moves but is immovable. In medieval European scholasticism, the immovable mover is also known as the first mover (Primum Mobile), which again denotes the source of all movement as a perfect being. 

Saint Thomas Aquinas formulated five arguments for God’s existence. First, he used the proof of movement to assert God’s existence. Everything that moves has to be moved by something else; if something else is moved, it has to be initiated by a third mover. As an infinite number of causes is impossible, Aquinas concluded that in the end, we come to the mover not moved by anything, and that is God. Everything has a cause, and every cause has a cause. But, again, we cannot have an infinite number of causes, and there should be an uncaused cause that is God. The unmoved mover is self-sufficient and omnipotent. If we accept such a premise, widely understood as a truism in Christian theology, then we may characterize God as a programmer, an omnipotent being with a way to cause and move things, i.e., the whole of reality and everything we know. God has to have “a program”, according to which creation continues.

This sits well with the Big Bang Theory. When this theory was first conceived, it was met with skepticism, but not because it contradicted the Christian creation story but rather it appeared to confirm it. In the early 20th century, it was simply taken for granted by most scientists that the universe was infinite in time. Then, in the late 1920s, a shocking new theory of the cosmos was proposed by the Catholic priest and physicist, Georges Lemaître. According to him, billions of years ago, the entirety of our universe had expanded out of something smaller than the nucleus of an atom. 

Today, it is generally acknowledged that the beginning of the universe began with the Big Bang, i.e., the rapid expansion of the entire visible universe out of something smaller than an atomic nucleus. This was certainly a beginning, as we cannot access what came before (there was no “before” as there was no time). It was the beginning of the material cosmos, but the Big Bang does not describe something coming into existence out of nothing and therefore should not be mistaken for “creatio ex nihilo”. 

Creation out of nothing is the way many Christians explain how God created the material and immaterial world. The Big Bang Theory describes the early developments of a universe already in existence and is not a direct proof of God’s creation, nor is it in competition with it. On the other hand, it seems strangely providential that just when atheism was taking over the academy, we were gifted with the discovery that the whole visible universe has a single origin, becoming an icon of creation. It might not prove creation from nothing, but it is difficult to ignore that the universe might not have existed at all nor can it confirm its temporary infinite state. 

The Big Bang is not just a physical explanation of reality, but it makes one ask why the world exists and who brought it into existence. Modern cosmology has revealed that our universe, like the Bible’s description of creation, is essentially historical and unfolds over time. Materialistic atheism, adopted by most of Lemaître’s contemporaries, would have led them to consciously or subconsciously prefer an eternal universe that did not raise the question of origin. This may very well have temporarily blinded them from pursuing similar theories. 

Such a program is basically made up of the laws of physics that govern our universe. The essence of the second premise is that our universe was not made from nothing  by itself, but it was created within a program of very nuanced laws. These laws fall into the category of Intelligent Design, where software “knows” what to do, how to do it, and how to simulate the ongoing creation through “learning by experience”. 

Intelligent Design, of course, has a handicap in explaining why not all things in  a simulation are perfect. This old philosophical question asks why God, being perfect, cannot make other things perfect too. In such a situation, a perfect God would not be perfect anymore: He would be a simple, ordinary being. As the program learns by experience, so humans learn by experience too. God gave humans artificial intelligence to learn, know, and keep the knowledge for future development. This development has one aim – to be God-like, which becomes possible at the moment when humans will be together with and in God.

A Christian understanding of reality consists of spirit and matter. While software (spirit) simulates reality, matter (computer) makes it tangible. This is the basis of the third premise, where God’s act is done through hardware, based on the program envisioned in the second premise. Such hardware is compatible with the laws that govern the creation. How does it work? Like all software, it starts with a predetermined notion. In many conversations about predestination and God’s act, two verses from the Bible are often quoted: “For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (Romans 8, 29-30). 

This explains what God does on our behalf: He is all-knowing and thus predestining, calling, justifying, and glorifying. These are stages or ways in which God brings his ultimate work of creation and salvation to completion in human lives. There has been considerable debate about the sequence and how to understand it. In the beginning, those who God foreknew, he predestined. The verb “foreknow” in secular Greek often means as “God knows something ahead of time”. He can look into the future and see what is to come. But in Biblical Greek and Old Testament scriptures, the language of knowing ultimately talks about God’s loving or entering into relationship with someone. 

The Old Testament directly says that Israel is the only nation in the world that God has known. Clearly, God knew all the nations of the world, but only with Israel did he enter into a relationship. Those who God set on the path to ultimate salvation are those he had decided to enter into a relationship with beforehand. In his love, He takes the initiative to call, elect, and choose people to be his own. Then he predestines, calls, justifies and glorifies. 

How does God do it? According to "Simulation Creationism", everything is predetermined (including our thoughts), so the observer (human, animal, etc.) is basically watching a predetermined, directed movie of life. The observer's consciousness contains his feelings (sad, happy, afraid, etc.), which are also predetermined. The observer "watching a movie” is the part of the simulation responsible for recording its emotional responses to the events experienced, with the ultimate goal of learning and reaching salvation. 

This idea may have a solid background in quantum mechanics. In Einstein’s theory of relativity and the idea of space-time as a unified dimension, there is no clear way to determine the present and clearly separate the future from the past. The notion of the present is relative to our position in the universe. For every observer, it is possible to imagine another who lives in their particular definition of the present but for whom the future is already the past, or vice versa. How can this make a deterministic universe? If we accept a unique reality for those other observers and accept their perception of the present as valid as ours, then the future is defined. 

This supports the philosophical stance of eternalism, the idea that all space and time exist from a God’s eye view,  outside both space and time. It suggests a deterministic universe where every slice through the block universe is completely determined by other slices and connected by unalterable laws of physics, not only in vast stretches of the universe but also in the tiniest parts. According to quantum mechanics, physical systems and parts of the universe evolve as wave functions. They are not well-defined realities but rather distributions of probability that describe all possible states where the universe could be as observed by God. This may be the way humans perceive the simulation, but randomness is far from an already predestined universe. 

Again, our physical teachings support this view. Newtonian determinism says that the universe is a clock that started ticking from the beginning of time, according to the Law of Motion. Albert Einstein was a determinist, just like Newton. The Law of Motion basically says that everything we will do, eat, and think has already been determined. In Simulation Creationism, we are the chosen ones put in the simulation by hardware called the universe and software called physical laws (or protocols). Einstein famously said that God does not play dice with the universe. 

Philosophically, particularly in terms of ethics, this poses a series of questions. It would mean that even mass murderers were predetermined long ago. However, we do have free will, according to the Biblical creation story. No one can determine future events given their past history as there is always uncertainty. However, this uncertainty is not God’s but humans’. God does not play dice, as he already knows what is determined, while humans do not. Thus, free will exists as a kind of simulation, an expression of uncertainty and impossibility to see what and how everything is determined. This simulation is indefinitely inaccessible or grasped, as understood by one of the most curious discoveries in recent times, the Mandelbrot set 

The Mandelbrot set, discovered in 1980, is an introduction to fractal geometry and a fractal universe. The t set is real and a thing that can be magnified forever with infinite precision, but it is not touchable. It has been called the thumbprint of God. This is because this discovery found a secret code built into numbers. We all know that material reality may be transformed into numbers, but we seldom think of God as the great mathematician who created numbers and codes, along with highly abstract and conceptual things. They exist in the mind; yet, they work outside it. The Mandelbrot set shows that a simple equation turns into infinity. It is not a physical infinity but a mathematical one, which makes it no less real. Math, after all, makes our computer programs and software untouchable, but very real. 

God is responsible for numbers, and they exist in His mind. The Mandelbrot set is just a  window into God’s infinity. Spirals and forms of the Mandelbrot set can be found all around us from galaxies to amebes and from gigantic structures to atoms. Interestingly, we have to use computers to see it in a mathematical sense, although we could do it manually. Many are fascinated by the Mandelbrot set, but more than all the shapes and forms it reveals, we are also fascinated by the laws of math that create it. 

But where do these laws come from? Do they evolve? Modern atheist/secular scientists say that very simple laws of math gradually became more complex over time, which is just not true. Two plus two is always four: it cannot evolve to be six. The laws of math worked perfectly well before people were around to describe them. Granted, we may consider that the universe behaves a certain way, and we call that math, but there are things in mathematics with no analogy in the physical universe. Math goes beyond the physical universe, something that many atheist scientists just cannot comprehend. 

In the Christian worldview, the laws of mathematics stem from the mind of God, and in their worldview, numbers make sense. These are conceptual (because God’s thoughts are conceptual), universal (because God is omnipresent), invariant (because God does not change with time) and exceptionless (because God is sovereign) entities. And they are simulations. 

Creation and Age of the Earth in Simulation Creationism

When compared to other theories of creationism, Simulation Creationism does not refer to nor ignore the six days of creation. Looking at the theory, it is irrelevant if the world and the universe came to be in six days or over a  long period. Certain laws govern simulated space, but they might have been created by a formula within a supercomputer. We do not know what laws existed before the simulation, as mainstream physics also accentuates.

Regarding the age of the Earth, Simulation Creationism is against most theories that accept the thousands of billions of years of the Earth’s existence. If the simulation is created for humans, as mentioned in Genesis, there is no reason why the Earth should be so old or millions of years were necessary for humans to evolve. From scripture, we know that humans did not evolve but were created in the image of God (Genesis 1, 27). It was a direct act of God and thus did not have to entail millions of years of the creation process. 

It does not say anything about the age of the universe, the preparation of a simulation nor the duration of six days. It is about ordering, managing, and structuring a simulation as we see it today. Arguably, there would be  24-hour days involved as in the Old Earth theory if this is logical for the Creator’s purpose. However, it is not as if the Creator – God – made space for humans. As Genesis clearly shows, God created the simulation of the universe, called Earth. It was for no other purpose than to be an environment for humans. Regarding the six days of creation, not all were 24-hour days. At least the first three are unknown because the sun and moon were created on the fourth day, and the time of the orbit around the sun would not have existed. We do not know the duration of the first three days. 

On the other hand, Simulation Creationism accentuates the human observer in terms of time. Time is relative and God is beyond time. Time is an invisible force that governs our world, seen as a progression of events that occur seemingly irreversibly from the past to the present and on into the future. Einstein’s theory of relativity states that the closer one is to the gravitational field of an object, such as the Earth for example, the slower time seems. Time will also flow slower if one object has a greater relativistic velocity than another. 

We see this through satellites and GPS. However, given its fluidity and somewhat counterintuitive nature, time seems to be nothing more than an illusion. The operational definition of time does not address its fundamental nature. It does not tell us why events can happen forward and backward in space when events can only happen forward in time. Mainstream physics today defines the space-time continuum through general relativity. Time can be distorted, particularly at the edges of black holes. In essence, time is an illusion. Quoting Einstein, the distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly- persistent illusion, or the human observance of events around us.

God has deemed it critical that man understand how short our own lives are with respect to time and eternity. God created a simulation of time – or an illusion that we experience as real – because time gives perspective to our lives. It also highlights the forethought in God’s plan. Jesus himself reveals the role of selecting and planning time as being under the authority of the Father. This is clearly visible in Galatians 4, 1-4, where time is appointed by the Father and then God sent to His Son when the fullness of time had come. Jesus came in perfect time through the forethought of God’s plan, precisely when God wanted it. Thus, God is in control of His carefully designed plan. Time also enriches the context of Biblical events and verifies the inspiration of the writers. Time magnifies the attributes of God, as God is merciful and patient. In many Biblical passages, God waits for hundreds and hundreds of years for people to leave their wickedness and only then punishes them for disobeying His laws.

Before God formed the world, He was everlasting. He did not work within the confines of time “before” creation. The Creator created time for the above purpose, as Ecclesiastes 3,1 says, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven”. Everything under heaven works within the confines of time and God’s purpose. Understanding this increases our understanding of what we read in Scripture. If God had to bring time to a place where it did not exist, we could truly start appreciating how one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day. 

The very first verse of the Bible explains it even further: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1, 1). While it is true that Creation is the beginning of all things terrestrial, it should be understood that it is also the beginning of time itself. The implications here are remarkable: when evolutionists try to impose a particular age of the Earth, it implies that the Earth had a beginning. Something had to predate the Earth – and the universe – and that something is greater than the Earth and the universe.

Of note, this is the perspective of Simulation Creationism, which rejects the Big Bang theory. The former has no specific age for the universe but adheres to approximately 6,000 years ago as the beginning of time, or the last time God destroyed the Earth.

When considering the age of the Earth, we have to focus on the greater question of why God created time. We know from Genesis that God is a deity of organization and structure, as repeated in 1 Corinthians 14, 40: “Let all things be done decently and in order”. Order here translates from the Greek “taxis”, meaning a regular arrangement or fixed succession of things in time. A simulation cannot exist through disorder and chaos. God used it as an avenue through which He instituted arrangement and order in Creation. God also created time to highlight spiritual truths, such as that lives of earthly things can be measured (Psalm 90: 9-12). God teaches us to realize that our days on Earth have a number; they are measurable and not infinite, quite different from God (Job 36, 26). 

Another spiritual truth is the importance of repeating critical memorials like Passover or the Lord’s Supper on the first day of the week. Regularity is thus found in time. The power of God is displayed in signs, as in the miraculous event when the sun stood still (Joshua 10, 13), when the sun moved backward ten degrees (2 Kings 20, 10-11), or when God brought darkness over the earth for three hours (Luke 23, 44-45). All these events are evidence of God using our perception of time to highlight His power.

As we can see, God has a plan for humans, and simulated time is a dimension through which He shows his power and fulfills his aim. It is logical to assume that the Earth cannot be old and void of humans if it was for humans that God created the heavens and the earth in the first place. On the other hand, without the human observant position through time, we simply do not know how much time God had dedicated to the creation, as time did not exist as such. This is confirmed both by theology and modern science. 

Big Bang Cosmology

Simulation Creationism clearly rejects Big Bang cosmology. It partially focuses on the traditional usage of theological cosmology or the philosophy of nature. It is good to base a theory on this philosophy, as it prepares the cosmological proof of God’s existence. A correct understanding of it will help avoid negative teachings about God like atheism, which regards the universe as self-sufficient; materialism which finds a Prime Cause in matter; or pantheism and similar ideas that place God within the universe.

Apart from the medieval philosophical-theological reasoning of scholasticism, there is the basis of the modern disputation of the Big Bang Cosmology. Take the Kalam Cosmological Argument. All questions are based on the primary interest of cosmologists (and humanity at large) as to where the universe comes from. Is there a beginning or does it just go back and back forever. Naturalist scientists have said that the universe is just eternal and uncaused. 

There are good reasons - both philosophical and scientific - to doubt this. Philosophically, the idea of an infinite past is very problematic. If the universe never had a beginning, the number of past events in the history of the universe would be infinite. This leads to metaphysical absurdities. Infinity in such a material world exists only in the mind but not in reality, as confirmed by leading mathematicians of the 20th century. The number of past events must be, therefore, finite. This also means that the universe must have begun to exist. This purely philosophical argument has been confirmed by remarkable discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics. Now the majority of the scientific community agrees with this statement, but they must face the problem of a finite universe and its ultimate beginning. 

Some atheist scientists “believe” that the universe came from “nothing and by nothing”, which logically does not make sense. (Bertrand Russell famously said: the Universe is just there. And that’s all”.) This comes directly into a collision with the most successful ontological commitment in the history of science: the metaphysical principle that out of nothing, nothing comes. There must have been a cause that brought the universe into being. So, whatever begins to exist has a cause, and then the universe begins to exist; ergo, the universe has a cause. 

We see all around us that everything in existence has a cause and thus the first premise is correct, as purported by the Cosmological Argument. As for the second argument, thermodynamic laws confirm that the universe is slowly losing its energy. If the universe had been here forever, it would have run out of usable energy by now. The Second Law of Thermodynamics points to a universe with a definite beginning. This was further confirmed by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, Alexander Friedman’s and Georges Lemaitre’s prediction of an expanding universe, and Edwin Hubble’s redshift discovery in light from distant galaxies, which also confirmed that the universe sprang into being from a single point in the finite past. 

In 2003, Arvind Borde, Alana Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin asserted that “any universe which has, on average, been expanding throughout its history cannot be eternal in the past, but must have an absolute beginning”. This even applies to a multiverse, if there is such a thing.

Therefore, the universe has a cause such that n an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being created the universe. It must be uncaused because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes, and one must come to an absolute first. It must be timeless and therefore changeless because it created time. It transcends space, so it must be immaterial. This cause must plausibly be personal; how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect with a beginning like the universe. If the cause were just a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions, then the cause could never have existed if insufficient conditions were given. The Cosmological Argument shows that it is reasonable to believe that God does exist and made the universe.

A Big Bang universe, as argued by atheists, sits in disagreement with fine-tuning. The cosmology of the Standard Model of the universe contains one huge problem: the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. Our whole existence is balanced on extremely accurate and incomprehensible “fineness”. The universe’s fundamental parameters were delicately calibrated so that intelligent life could exist. But Big Bang Cosmology argues something else: the event itself is utter chaos and a random state of nature, where in a few seconds things were mish-mashed without plan or form. It is only due to the extension of time and some luck that an intelligent species came into being. 

But the more scientists studied the universe, the more they realized that the opposite is true. A number of initial conditions found by scientists point to a fine-tuning that allows for intelligent life. These are fundamental constants and quantities of nature. If the universe were differently simulated, it would have either expanded so rapidly that no stars could form or collapsed back in upon itself with the same result: no stars, no planets, and no life. Also, matter and energy were evenly distributed in the early universe, which is against the claims of Big Bang Cosmology. Without precision, the universe would have been hostile to life of any kind. Everything is, thus, precisely right for mankind to exist. 

Given that these facts are beyond scientific doubt, atheist scientists rely on physical necessity and chance, while we can also point to the concept of simulation. The hypothesis of physical necessity says that the universe must be fine-tuned for life to exist. A universe hostile to life is impossible. However, not only is a life-prohibiting universe possible, but a universe without life is also far more possible than the one we know. Each of the parameters that governs the universe has a wide range of values that reinforces the improbability of fine-tuning. So, atheist scientists have suggested the role of chance. However, chance is again not an adequate explanation. 

The mathematical odds are simply too great to overcome. Instead of pure chance, they add the idea of a multiverse. Imagine an infinite number of universes, and we are in one of them. The odds would be in our favor. There is something deeply “religious” in the multiverse. It cannot be detected, measured, observed or proved, so scientists can only “believe” in it.

Freeman Dyson said, “The more I study the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.” The laws of cosmology are extremely conducive to human existence. The cosmological constant is one of them, and if it would change even the tiniest bit, humans would not exist. This fine-tuning or “design” points to an intelligence that simulated creation at the most perfect stage for everything to exist. God simulated the universe with an incredibly small cosmological constant. Otherwise, the galaxies would have been. The incredibly weak force of gravity was just right in the early universe to join the stars, planets, and galaxies together in a system. 

In simulated creation, one can almost see how atoms and particles join to form larger matter. The Big Bang Cosmology tells us it was chaos, but in fact both science and philosophy argue that it is impossible. 

Cycles of Ruin and Restoration

Simulation Creationism is not compatible with macroevolution. The idea of macroevolution involves evolution at or above the species level. On the other hand, microevolution is a change in the allele frequencies within a population from one generation to the next. Macroevolution includes the evolution of individual species and entire taxonomic groups over long periods of time. Biologists point to geologic evidence like the formation of rock layers and fossil records, with all artifacts seen in terms of their placement within Earth’s geological strata. Molecular evidence includes mapping and comparing the genomes of different organisms to look for similarities in genetic codes. While some forms of microevolution may be plausible, this understanding of macroevolution is contrary to the worldview of Simulation Creationism.

According to Simulation Creationism, every 6,000 to 10,000 years, there is a “ruin-restoration” process. In a catastrophic event, the world is destroyed and restored anew. The last catastrophe was the great flood, and we live in a restored post-flooding world. Thus, Simulation Creationism does not claim that the world is some 6,000 years old, but that the current simulation was made approximately 5,781 years ago, based on the Biblical perspective. Before this simulation, there were many before - often very different ones.

Traces from previous simulation cycles may be still seen in fossils and other geological findings. It may even include some archaeological evidence that seems impossible, such as advanced technology or written traces of the pre-flood world. In the Bible, we surely see evidence of different life than today. The lifespan was hugely different for one. The simulation allowed humans to live for hundreds of years, resulting in a very populated world. According to some, the pre-flood world could have had more than seven billion people. Some exegeses suggest that units of time have changed their meaning, but there is really no reconstruction that yields a consistently convincing result. 

The Bible is clear in wanting us to take these lifespans literally. After the flood, this changed dramatically, as Genesis tells us: “The Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years’: (Genesis 6:3).

The Bible and Simulation Creationism are supported by other religious traditions. The pre-flood world has been described in many Middle Eastern religions such as Sumerian in the epic Gilgamesh. The flood was a global event, and all the world regions have a historical and mythical note on the catastrophe. On the other hand, many religious traditions also confirm a cycle of destruction and renewal. The closest one is the Hindu idea of Yuga. In Sanskrit, it means age, cycle, or world era. The Yugas have a complex world-age doctrine of four Yugas, and they map the cycle of change within the universe and consciousness. 

For Hindus, it is a solid framework for understanding how we experience time and eternity, and how they are related. In Western civilization, the view of time is linear, seen in the idea of “waiting” for eternity in the afterlife. It counters the very idea of eternity that can only be ever-present in this moment yet also outside of time. Yugas are based on the system of Kalpa (aeon in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology). A Kalpa equals 4,32 billion years or a day of Brahma, the highest god in Hinduism. One Kalpa consists of 100 Maha Yuga or Great Yugas, and one Maha Yuga is four Yugas. These Yugas are Satya Yuga, the ideal or truthful age spanning 1,728,000 years; Treta Yuga, the age where virtue has declined by a quarter of Satya Yuga and spans 1,296,000 years; Dvapara Yuga, the age where virtue is reduced by half of what it was in Satya Yuga and spans 864,000 years; Kali Yuga, where virtue is reduced to a quarter and spans 432,000 years. 

It is commonly believed that we are in the middle of Kali Yuga. While the Hindu cosmology might not offer real Bible-based truths, the Yuga system easily explains Simulation Creationism’s hypothesis of the “ruin-restoration” cycle. Similar ideas are found in the Mayan religion, where huge spans of time end in a catastrophe followed by restoration.

The next catastrophe is already announced in the Revelation of John. The Second Coming of Christ will include the destruction of the current simulation and the arrival of the next one, which will continue for thousands of years.