Is simulation theory a valid scientific hypothesis, or is it a new religion? Simulation theory, first proposed by philosopher Nick Bostrom, is often cited, but the arguments in his paper are rarely described in a clear way. Bostrom’s paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” is a dense and fascinating piece. The hypothesis that we’re in a simulated universe, at first glance, seems novel: surely, this must be a truly modern idea, the kind of thinking that could only come from a culture in thrall to computers.
Nick Bostrom is the philosopher who first proposed that our universe might be a computer simulation. In his paper, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Bostrom puts forward three possibilities:
(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.
According to Bostrom, if (1) is correct, then it would be fair to assume that the world we experience is not one generated by a computer. If, however, the human race survives long enough to evolve into a higher form of life, then we’re faced with either (2) or (3).
For (2) to be correct, a posthuman civilization must have radically different interests and concerns than their human forebears. Considering that such beings would be, in all likelihood, at a stage of technological and social development surpassing ours by millions of years, any prediction of their behavior would be pure speculation. But let’s imagine that they shared our fascination with the past—that their desire to keep records, to understand their origins and contextualize the time in which they live at least matches ours. In such a case, given their advanced state, posthumans would be far more capable of reproducing an exact picture of the past than earthbound, bipedal primates like us.
This leaves us with (3). Just a few decades after the invention of the computer, we’ve managed to create extraordinarily complex simulations. It only makes sense that a computer eons more advanced could simulate realities of such detail that they would be indistinguishable from the world we inhabit. Let’s grant that consciousness doesn’t depend on a flesh-and-blood body—that, instead of grey matter, a processor of sufficient power could generate it. The possibility of a conscious AI, we’re told, may be in our very near future. If technology continues to develop apace, our posthuman descendants will possess machines of staggering ability:
Such a mature stage of technological development will make it possible to convert planets and other astronomical resources into enormously powerful computers. It is currently hard to be confident in any upper bound on the
computing power that may be available to posthuman civilizations.
With such machines at their disposal, and assuming that they, like us, desire to understand their past, we must conclude that posthumans could create a far more accurate picture of earlier ages than any museum would provide:
A single such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind (call this an ancestor‐simulation) by using less than one millionth of its processing power for one second. A posthuman civilization may eventually build an astronomical number of such computers. We can conclude that the computing power available to a posthuman civilization is sufficient to run a huge number of ancestor‐ simulations even [if] it allocates only a minute fraction of its resources to that purpose.
Given its vast resources, and the “huge number of ancestor-simulations” that this proposed civilization runs, we are confronted, Bostrom thinks, not merely with the possibility, but the likelihood that the world we live in is not the real one.
Imagine that ten thousand computers are running an ancestor-simulation. And imagine that, in all of these ancestor-simulations, there exists someone with your consciousness, living your life, experiencing the world exactly as you experienced it in the physical world. If you were one of these simulations, you wouldn’t know it.
Assuming that there really are ten thousand of these simulations running, the possibility that you’re not simulated, that you’re the real you, is one in ten thousand.
Bostrom’s Simulation Theory: A New Gnosticism?
The idea that the world we live in is “illegitimate,” that we were crafted not by God but by some sort of intermediary being, is nothing new. In Gnosticism, an aberrant form of Christianity popular in the early centuries of the first millennium after Christ, this creature was called the demiurge. Like our supposed posthuman parents, the demiurge isn’t omnipotent. In fact, he’s either incompetent or malicious or both, which explains the sorry state of our fallen world.
The similarities between these two worldviews are not merely cosmetic. The ethical, even the cosmological implications in Gnosticism and Bostrom’s simulated universe are in many ways analogous. So much so, in fact, that one could call Bostrom’s hypothesis a repackaging of Gnosticism, updated for the Information Age.
Gnosticism has become cool again. In spiritual-but-not-religious circles, it’s the hipper, more enlightened version of orthodox Christianity. Given the many abuses committed by the representatives of organized religion, seekers of truth are understandably frustrated.
So-called “secret” texts like the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocryphon of John are believed to reveal the true teachings of Jesus, those that have been corrupted by the institutions of men. You’ll find plenty of TikTok videos asserting that the “real” Christianity has been hidden, and that these texts show a Jesus far different from the one you learned about in Sunday school. This Jesus, we’re told, offers a tolerant, New Age alternative to the strict, square teachings of your pastor.
These influencers make a compelling case. Unless, of course, you’ve actually read those texts.
As a doctrine, Gnosticism has as many variants as it has adherents. There are, however, a number of key elements that distinguish it from orthodoxy. We find two that feature in virtually all Gnostic thought:
(1) A belief that truth about the cosmos, its nature, and its creator, are hidden from the masses. And that one must receive “gnosis” (the Greek word for “knowledge”) in order to understand this truth.
(2) A belief that the material world is not just inferior to the spiritual, but wicked and illusory.
These ideas have been presented over the centuries in a variety of guises. More recently, they’ve been popularized in films like The Matrix and The Truman Show.
Both of these movies answer a theological question we haven’t yet explored, one whose answer forms another–and, in my view, the most important–element of Gnostic thought:
Who Created the Simulation?
Let’s imagine, for a moment, that we don’t live in a simulation. Let’s say it’s a real world, created by the God of orthodox Christianity. This God isn’t merely good–he’s the source of goodness itself, even of being.
This God, a God who the Bible says is love, is good in all he does and creates. Yes, we live in a fallen world, but it wasn’t made fallen.
After the fall, Christianity contends that God didn’t just walk away from the situation, leaving us in the mess we’d made for ourselves. On the contrary, He sent Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the very Logos through Whom He authored the universe. This immaterial Logos took on flesh and became man. He became human in order to elevate the material world, so that it might return to Him.
Maronite liturgy describes this beautifully:
You have united, O Lord, your divinity with our humanity
and our humanity with your divinity;
your life with our mortality
and our mortality with your life.
You have assumed what is ours,
and you have given us what is yours,
for the life and salvation of our souls.
To you, O Lord, be glory for ever.
But Gnosticism contends that the suffering and disorder in our world is a direct result of our creator’s incompetence, malice, or both. The God of the Jewish scriptures, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is, according to Gnostics, an impostor. He is the demiurge.
The Apocryphon of John calls this creature Yaldabaoth (the spelling varies in different texts). As briefly and as simply as possible, according to the Apocryphon of John, this is how the world was created:
The real god generated a number of divine beings and placed them in a hierarchy of heavenly realms. Sophia, one of the lower beings, sought to reproduce with this highest god. But the higher god did not consent, so she gave birth to a hideous creature, and cast him out of the spiritual world into the dark regions below:
And an imperfect product appeared from her, and it was […] not patterned after the likeness of its Mother, for it had a different form. When she saw (the product of) her will, it was different, a model of a lion-faced serpent. His eyes were like flashing fires of lightning. She cast him out from her, outside of those places so that none among the immortals might see him, for she had created him in ignorance.
And she surrounded him with a luminous cloud. And she placed a throne in the midst of the cloud in order that no one might see him except the holy Spirit, who is called the mother of the living. She named him Yaltabaoth. This is the Chief Ruler, the one who got a great power from his Mother.
This being, who wasn’t aware of the superior beings above, created his own, lesser universe of numerous realms. Yaldabaoth, unaware of the higher deities, commanded all the beings he made to worship him, and proclaimed that he was the only god.
Then he and his servants fashioned man. Yaldabaoth’s underlings encouraged him to breathe on the newly formed creature to give it life, and Yaldabaoth obliged them, and the creature moved!
It was Sophia’s power working through Yaldabaoth that animated man. But Yaldabaoth, ignorant as usual, assumed it was his own. Adam and Eve wandered in the Garden of Eden, prey to illusion.
The Gnostic Christ was sent to save us from the God of the Bible, who created a world of suffering, impermanence, and corruption. But he wasn’t the first one.
According to another Gnostic text, The Hypostasis of the Archons, it is “the female spiritual principle,” which can be identified as Sophia, that enters into the serpent, and confers wisdom on the first humans.
This represents a complete inversion of orthodox Christian doctrine. One scholar provides some illuminating analysis on the import of such an upside-down understanding of creation:
Freeing the divine element/spark from the imprisonment in matter, an imprisonment concocted by this jealous demiurge, is the general aim of many Gnostic tracts. In the Hypostasis of the Archons, wisdom from above, surprisingly often gendered as female, but not as embodied, serves as a redeemer figure, named Sophia. This has led to an exegesis of revolt in which Eve becomes the source of this higher Wisdom, strengthened by the serpent of the Biblical story of Paradise, who likewise symbolizes this higher Wisdom.
It is this this revolt against creation (creation that, in the book of Genesis, was called “good” by God) that is characteristic of so much Gnostic doctrine. To see the God of Genesis as incompetent or malicious or both, and the snake (often identified with Satan) as the good guy in this story, makes one wonder what spiritual forces were whispering into the ears of these ancient heretics.
And at its heart, Gnosticism ultimately draws us away from the profound and radical nature of Christ’s sacrifice.
Among the Abrahamic religions, Christianity has a unique relationship to the material world.
God, who is invisible and immaterial, took on flesh and materiality. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, a process of redemption began to reach its conclusion.
The reason we, as Catholics, eat the flesh and drink the blood of God is so that this perfect flesh, this precious blood, can heal our fallenness.
Christ is still embodied in heaven. His body is immortal and perfect–and, through him, ours will be too.
That’s why Paul says that “all creation groans as we await with eager hope the redemption of our bodies.” For human beings, eternity doesn’t occur in some immaterial realm. On the contrary, heaven and earth are remade, and the New Jerusalem descends from the sky, with Christ as its eternal king.
Our eternal life is spiritual, sure, but it’s also physical.
It is this element of the Christian faith that Gnosticism seeks to undo. The fact that Jesus, the image of the invisible God, really took on flesh, really suffered and really died, is the most profound expression of divine love.
If the physical world isn’t real at all, then Christ’s incarnation, and his suffering, were of little consequence.
Gnosticism, then, turns its adherents away from the God of the Bible, toward the serpent, and undermines the significance of the incarnation.
If that’s not diabolical, I don’t know what is.
Simulation Theory: A Gnosticism Without Hope
In Gnostic systems, the material world is seen as illusory, often evil—a “false” imitation of the spiritual, higher realms. Let’s return to The Hypostasis of the Archons, to a passage in which Eleleth, “the great angel who stands in the presence of the Holy Spirit,” describes the created world:
Within limitless realms dwells incorruptibility. Sophia, who is called Pistis, wanted to create something, alone without her consort; and her product was a celestial thing. A veil exists between the world above and the realms that are below; and shadow came into being beneath the veil; and that shadow became matter; and that shadow was projected apart.
A shadow is an is a mere silhouette of its object—it is a copy, and a poor one, of the real thing. Similarly, in Bostrom’s simulation theory, the world we inhabit is a false one.
As in many Gnostic texts, “Are You Living in a Simulation?” offers a kind of speculative cosmology, a hierarchy of realms, each progressively closer to the “real” than the one below it:
In some ways, the posthumans running a simulation are like gods in relation to the people inhabiting the simulation: the posthumans created the world we see; they are of superior intelligence; they are “omnipotent” in the sense that they can interfere in the workings of our world even in ways that violate its physical laws; and they are “omniscient” in the sense that they can monitor everything that happens. However, all the demigods except those at the fundamental level of reality are subject to sanctions by the more powerful gods living at lower levels.
If we accept Bostrom’s third possibility, that we are almost certainly living in a simulation, there is presumably no way out. In Gnosticism, there is at least the possibility of salvation through gnosis (Greek for “knowledge”) of the truth about the material world, and ascent into higher realms. Simulation theory offers its adherents no such comfort.
If we’re merely lines of code, convinced we’re human, then there’s no means of escape into the real world. But Bostrom does provide for the possibility of an afterlife.
Further rumination on these themes could climax in a naturalistic theogony that would study the structure of this hierarchy, and the constraints imposed on its inhabitants by the possibility that their actions on their own level may affect the treatment they receive from dwellers of deeper levels. For example, if nobody can be sure that they are at the basement‐level, then everybody would have to
consider the possibility that their actions will be rewarded or punished, based perhaps on moral criteria, by their simulators. An afterlife would be a real possibility. Because of this fundamental uncertainty, even the basement civilization may have a reason to behave ethically. The fact that it has such a reason for moral behavior would of course add to everybody else’s reason for behaving morally, and so on, in truly virtuous circle. One might get a kind of universal ethical imperative, which it would be in everybody’s self‐interest to obey, as it were “from nowhere”.
This “universal ethical imperative” is, on the surface, quite similar to the fear of Hell and the hope of Heaven. These, we’re told by those who strawman religion, are the carrot and stick that cause people of faith behave themselves. But a dread of punishment, or an anticipation of reward, after this earthly life is only one (shallow) dimension of the believer’s motivation. Grace engenders a process of transformation that culminates in union with God. On the way, one avoids sin, as the Act of Contrition says, “not only because I fear the loss of Heaven and the Pains of hell,” but, much more importantly, “because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.”
The closer you get to God, the more you desire intimacy with Him. God is the source of all reality, all life, and one is most fully alive, most fully oneself, only in a state of perfect union with the divine. The consequence of sin is separation from God, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms:
The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.
The greater the separation from God, the greater the suffering. Eternal separation would be the apex of suffering, so a dread of acting in a way that wounds our connection to God would be synonymous with the “fear of Hell.” And “the hope of Heaven” is the love of God, the desire to ascend to greater and greater levels of intimacy with Him.
We have, of course, nothing like this in Bostrom’s bleak hypothesis. But one could argue to the contrary. After all, if we, as simulated beings, worship a simulated god (who may merely be a “dweller” at a “deeper level”), and if we are rewarded, after our simulated death, with an eternity in a simulated heaven, we wouldn’t know the difference.
Let’s grant that this is correct—that this false heaven would be just as real for us as the paradise promised in scripture. This would only satisfy a soul that has no taste for truth. A false heaven mistaken for the true Heaven is still a false heaven. The objective reality of Heaven, of God, would render any counterfeit, however convincing, wholly meaningless.
But just because we want something to be true doesn’t make it so. This applies to simulation theory as well as to Christian doctrine. “Our truth” is not the same as “the truth.” To distinguish fact from fantasy, there must be an objective standard (whether we know it or not, whether we’re capable of knowing it or not) to which we can compare our subjective experience.
That we are embodied, a fusion of the spiritual and the material, is a fundamental aspect of our nature. To call this embodiment an illusion, even one so subtle as to be undetectable, is to introduce a seed of nihilism. In a simulation, there can be no truly good or evil act, no heroism, no cowardice, no passion, and, most tragically, no true love. All our virtues and vices are simulacra at best.
One might argue that, from our vantage point, we can’t know either way. We see, after all, in a mirror dimly. But this article, I hope, has established one truth—that Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis is new wine in an old wineskin. In his paper, Bostrom himself does not objectively assert that we’re in a simulation. But the mind that disbelieves its own reality, no matter how carefully that disbelief is qualified, is liable to burst.