Old Style Evie/Why "gods" are bullshit.

[Edwardo Piet]

Sure, well... therein lies a contradiction. If they made the universe, they are not part of it. That is why I personally use the phrase "reality" (also it sounds cool). So I don't know what difference it makes if this is some sort of reality some guy made who lives in a different reality, to me making one in mine.

Wow... that's really profound! Thank you Rob. (No sarcasm, genuine enthusiasm).

I never thought of it like that. I never thought about how it's not really any more meaningful than us creating our own artificial reality, because, of course, whilst any deity must be part of existence itself and therefore it cannot create existence itself (because it, the deity, exists) it can create a reality, just like we can... and creating a reality is no big deal, creating existence itself is not only no big deal but is logically incoherent and therefore impossible.

(I consider creating THE universe and creating existence itself to be identical... although there be a multiverse of multiple universes I think the term "THE universe" should be reserved for the totality for all universes/the multiverse and thereby identical to existence itself and further thereby impossible to create).

Of course, the theist will then probably say "well that's not God", but as far as this reality is concerned, it is. And that other reality may be all there is, made by nothing. Which is why I find the word meaningless when it's simply a matter of which reality they are in. They might be really dumb, even if they can just about operate a computer program, and don't realise it's become self aware.

That makes a lot of sense.

Trying to define what is "really real" and what is not is something I have given up on.

Here's an interesting philosophical question for me "Does the imagination itself exist?" I know my answer, and it's not a simple "yes" or "no".

An artificial reality is real to its inhabitants and they can't tell the difference.

Exactly!

What "artificial" even means is troubling, since we have no basis to say anything in this reality is "real" because we have no comparison to make. An AR I make might be artificial with respect to this reality, yet this one might be artificial with respect to another.

Again, exactly!