>>226 I think about this a lot, but it depends on what you mean by “simulation” and “god”. The concept of a “simulation” wouldn't need to be “sci-fi”, it wouldn't need to involve a big computer - fire drills, earthquake and terrorist attack rehearsals and the like are simulations, but not in the computer simulation sense. We live in a real organic world which follows the laws of physics, but there's nothing to say there was or wasn't an entity which set the wheels in motion. I can think of many phenomena of our existence which could be valuable to understand, but difficult to really study since 1) we're living inside it, and 2) there are many many many variables. As a narrow anthropocentric example, think about how love works, how political ideologies compete, how humans behave in relation to the laws of the land they live in, morals and ethics in different situations, how life evolves. The creation of the universe could be a way of arranging various scenarios to see how things react to each other. For what reason, I humbly admit that what might be valuable for a higher being to study is unfathomable to the puny humans we are. I guess I can think of some possibilities.

Sometimes atheists like to poke holes in what the Christian bible says, and use that as evidence that there couldn't be a “God”. I think of this simulation idea as a possible description of the universe which was “created” but doesn't involve religious magic. Is “God” completely synonymous with “creator”? If it's just a scientist doing an experiment in a lab who created the universe we live in in a petri dish, but he isn't omnipotent or omnipresent, is that really the same entity described in the holy books? If there was some way we found proof of that, would that mean the end of all religion?

I'm not saying this is what I think the true picture is, it's one of many possibilities I entertain to varying degrees.