This is a response (analysis of) to the trope touted by the personages of the LDM or, more accurately, the Hyde Park Corner, or in other words, Extremely Local Dawah Movement and their cronies. I suspect that if you’re watching this video, you would have seen some of the propaganda material that’s been shoved in peoples’ faces by people seeking to spread al-Saud’s cultural hegemony and export the Saudi Arabian status quo. Or you might have seen it seen it elsewhere, as this image shows*. First we need to understand what a game is as a game can mean several things.
*In the presentation I will show a still of the t-shirt from the video in the BBC article:
Fourth Portsmouth man Mehdi Hassan killed in Syria
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29771293
The protagonists from the aforementioned organization, and others, would have you believe that humans, and indeed the entire universe, are programmed to perfection, or in other words, finely tuned. So, I would start off by saying, that video games are also programmed, albeit sometimes not very well. Similarly, video games tend to have a set of goals and rules you have to follow. Often they will come with an instruction manual too. These are all things Theists argue life has. In fact, it is asserted that the Quran is an instruction manual (for life).
If you want to do well in a video game, in other words not lose, you have to follow the rules and try and attain the ultimate goal. It’s analogous to a test, really, because in many games (not all I should stress) there is a score or some other way to keep track of one’s progress. If you do well on the test of life you spend less time in hell, right? So, like a typical game, you need to get a good score. In the description below there is a link to an article answering the question: “Does the Quran say Muhammad’s believers are going to spend time in hellfire?” (Written by Answering-Islam).
So, if we assume that life has goals, rules and that humans are programmed to live in this universe, then it’s entirely possible that life is “just a game”. And I don’t think that is what the confederacy, funded in part by the al-Saud family in order to spread Saudi cultural hegemony, was intending when they ask the (rhetorical?) question: “Is life just a game?”, the emphasis of course being on the word “just”. Well, as I said before, a game can mean various things. And, I should add that, not all games come with an instruction manual or a scoring system or even rules.
A game doesn’t have to have set goals or rules in order to be considered a ‘game’. What is probably the world’s most popular video game at the moment, Minecraft, has no goals, rules or way of keeping track of your progress. Minecraft is what is known as a “Sandbox” game. In it, the player can do as they wish because the character has no predetermined purpose, other than to survive. In Minecraft, you create your own destiny.
Now we have a problem. Both Atheists and Theists can argue that life is “just a game”. So, is life “just a game”? Well, I would argue that humans are playing a sandbox game, not unlike Minecraft. Why do I say this you ask?
For a start, our universe is not finely tuned. The universe we live in is heavily influenced by choice and chance. That’s why there are such things as The Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory. What if the meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs never hit the Earth? What if Adolf Hitler decided not to invade the Soviet Union?
The universe, like a sandbox game, has no ultimate goal. However, we do know that it had a beginning - just like any game - and it’s reasonable to assume that it will have an end too. However, I am willing to claim that we live in a multiverse, and I support the increasing number of physicists who say that there are an indeterminate number of universes - likely more than there are ‘map seeds’ in Minecraft.
Multiple universes:
http://www.space.com/18811-multiple-univ...ories.html
In Minecraft, once you get bored of one map you can get the game to randomly generate another. You might get a map with a spawn area that’s easy to build on and lots of useful resources near you, or you might spawn on a barren desert. Minecraft maps are not created equal. I maintain that the universe we live in is a like the winning lottery ticket. Humans have adapted to the universe we live in. The universe was not created with humans in mind. It’s just too dangerous.
Something else to note is Third Party Software. Games can be modified – just like the universe. Soon humans will be making Luna and Mars habitable as they seek to mine them for resources and conduct research on them. They will terraform them – in other words – modifying them. According to world renowned scientist Michio Kaku, humans are close to being a “type one civilization”, a civilization that is in control of an entire planet, as they already have many aspects of what he calls a “type one civilization”. A “type two civilization” will exercise control over an entire solar system and, finally, a “type three civilization” has control over an even greater area than just one, or indeed several (a star system), solar systems.
Another thing to note is how badly humans have been made. In Minecraft, for example, most want to edit the player character, because, like humans, he is very crudely made. A human is something very basic you can modify, unlike entire plants and star systems, and humans have been modifying each other for millennia.
As a result of humans being far from perfect, money has to be spent in order to alleviate their imperfections. That’s why some people are forced to wear spectacles or monocles, undergo intrusive cancer treatment and have organ transplants. If there is a deity they have done an awful job at creating humans.
Just like life on the Earth, video games have come from humble beginnings. Ever since they first appeared, video games have been continuously evolving. I’m sure when Alexey Pajitnov was first programming Tetris at the Soviet Academy of Sciences he could never have imagined how influential video games would become, so much so that people wishing to export the Saudi Arabian status quo to other parts of the world would be using them in their analogies.
