How to effectively critique New Age ideas?

[Zone]

I find it interesting how many scientists don't share Richard Dawkins' world view.

Science doesn't necessarily have to support atheism, DNA and genetics was discovered by a monk and Jesuit Priest first proposed the Big Bang. It's best to avoid arguements against God from science as educated theists know that there isn't really a conflict regarding the science we know and God. The conflict is when they claim knowledge of things science doesn't know without evidence. Also it's best not to fall into the trap of claiming to hold a "world view" implying you're doing the equal and opposite thing when you're not doing that at all, you're just abstaining from believing things for which there is no evidence.

[Confused Ape]

[Zone]

If this turns out to be true, evolution in this simulation would have been started by someone who is outside all this. He or she just wouldn't be a supernatural being.

A supernatural being or us would technically be anyone who exists outside of our universe where our laws of physics don't apply. If the creator of the universe isn't uncreated and eternal then they would need a creator as well and so on into infinity so you can't really do that. Gnostic Christians didn't believe that God and the creator were the same thing. The creator of the universe was either evil or incompetent and that explains how you can have a God and a human life that can and does often suck. The creator being was called the Demiurge and was associated the asshole Jewish God of the Old Testament. Jesus was an agent of the good God or Pleroma sent to free humankind of the creator Gods tyranny and the prison of physical matter, rather than sin.

[Confused Ape]

A supernatural being or us would technically be anyone who exists outside of our universe where our laws of physics don't apply.

Quoting Martin Savage again.

And so if we are a simulation, we’re probably a simulation from our descendants, right? So, as our universe evolves and becomes more mature, then somebody in that universe launches a simulation to simulate where they came from.

It would be no use someone running a simulation to simulate where they came from if the laws of physics in the simulation weren't programmed to be the same as in the 'real universe'. Whoever launched the simulation would be outside the simulation, though. This is why I said the simulation launcher wouldn't be supernatural. He or she would have evolved in the 'real universe' so couldn't be God. Which means -

Gnostic Christians didn't believe that God and the creator were the same thing.

Modern day Christians would have to go back to Gnostic Christianity if they wanted to keep believing in God. The Demiurge for this simulation would be a computer programmer in the 'real universe'. Christians could then give themselves headaches wondering whether the 'real universe' was directly created by God or had a Demiurge of its own.