>>235
To be fair I am operating under the assumption that "simulation" in these contexts means a structured program of complex rules and variables like you would program into a computer, regardless of whether it's a literal "computer" as we know it or a wizard orb or whatever else, and that whoever created or otherwise has access to the "code" of the program can check/change variables, tweak rules, undo events, etc. etc: a being that exists unbounded by the simulated universe and with unlimited power over it, thus from the perspective of the sims, effectively a god. I'm inclined to think that fire drills etc. might be called simulations but are a different thing even if the same word is used, but I don't have a firm "why" on that beyond that I don't think they're the sort of situation people are invoking when they talk about the universe being a simulation.

Now sure, outside the simulated universe maybe it's a scientist or some computer nerd or even Roco's Basilisk or whatever. If you bring in arguments that there's even another level of creation/creator above the universe that the simulation was created within, or that there has to be one "True God" above everything else or otherwise hold that "god" can only apply to a being that has superhuman powers in every universe and not just Some Guy who can only control his own pet sim at will, then "demiurge" might become a more appropriate word for the simulation-programmer in some situations. I would argue that such distinctions are only genuinely relevant to sims if there exists some mechanism by which they can "break out" from the simulated universe to observe or exist in a higher order one (so Gnosticism or the like). Otherwise the knowledge (if it can be known, which is doubtful) is purely academic.

As for the continued existence of religion in the face of a revelation like that, I'm confident that even if our universe was programmed by some computer nerd in a higher reality and they sent down an avatar to tell everyone that it was so and that the whole thing was just an experiment done for kicks, short of rewriting their minds there would be plenty of people who, regardless of any other demonstration made, would just say it's a demon trying to trick the faithful, or whatever other explanation need be made to consider it false, and keep on keeping on with what they believed before.

Ultimately these kinds of discussions have a tendency to fall into "turtles all the way down" philosophical wank about things that have no humanly knowable answers, and this is a podunk jokey board on the butt end of the Worldwide Web (or so it is here perceived), and I spent more time on this post than was probably worthwhile to, so you know.