Before reading the following post, consider the Boltzmann Brain problem.
In its simplest form, the problem asks what would follow if all of your apparent experiences, memories, perceptions, and beliefs about an external world could be generated by a single brain, without that world actually existing as you perceive it.
The point is not that this is what is actually happening.
The point is epistemological: if your immediate experience is merely a constructed representation generated within your mind, then you need some basis for establishing that the representation corresponds to an external reality in the way you think it does.
Keep that in mind.
Anyway, of course there is a greater reality beyond what we are able to perceive. You are pretending that this means multiple realities exist but that not a normal use of language. Even to simply posit the physical realm is a simulation still only implies there is 1 reality. When we invent things like virtual-reality video games or flight simulators, nobody says "Well multi-realities exist now because we have flight simulators"
You are just importing your own goofyness into this thread and trying to poison the well with it, while pretending you've solved some sort of problem.
This is where I think you're misunderstanding Clete's argument.
Clete isn't arguing that multiple realities exist.
In fact, his point depends upon there being ONE reality.
And your flight simulator example doesn't really help your case.
Nobody thinks that creating a flight simulator creates another reality because the simulated airplane isn't another airplane existing in some second reality. It is a REPRESENTATION of an airplane that exists within the one reality.
That distinction matters when you're proposing that the physical realm itself is analogous to a simulation.
Why do you insist on building up this same strawman again? You are not making a Christian argument. You are making a materialist one. Are you a creationist? Because God created us so that we would interact with the physical realm by means of a virtual reality complied in our minds via the interpretation of an electrochemical data stream.
You really need to think about that more. It's obvious you won't though. You are only interested in wordplay and obfuscation.
That's not a materialist argument. Materialism is the position that only material things exist. Clete can believe in God, the spiritual realm, the soul, the mind, angels, heaven, and everything else Christianity affirms while still rejecting your characterization of human perception as a "virtual reality."
Creationism doesn't entail your theory of perception.
Yes, our sensory organs and nervous systems mediate our perception of the physical world. That does not, by itself, establish that what we experience is a simulation. Calling the brain's processing of sensory information a "virtual reality" is already a philosophical interpretation of what that processing means. You don't establish that interpretation simply by pointing out that electrochemical signals are involved.
And this is where the Boltzmann Brain problem becomes relevant. If what I experience is fundamentally a virtual environment compiled inside my mind from an electrochemical data stream, then what establishes that the apparent external world exists as I believe it does?
Why could that data stream not be radically misleading?
Why could the memories contained within that virtual environment not also be generated?
Why couldn't the apparent existence of everyone else be part of the same internally constructed experience?
Again, I'm not arguing that any of those things are actually true. I'm pointing out that YOUR characterization of perception raises those questions.
Clete isn't smuggling materialism into the discussion by noticing the epistemological consequences of your premise.
I mean a reality beyond what we perceive. Is that really so hard for you to understand??
No, that's not difficult to understand at all, and that clarification actually gets you much closer to what Clete and I have both been saying.
There is more to reality than we presently perceive. Nobody is disputing that.
But "there is more of reality than we presently perceive" is not the same proposition as "the physical realm is analogous to a simulated reality."
The former is ordinary Christianity.
The latter is what you still need to establish.
The Bible establishes it in every which way one can define "greater". Larger, more important. We currently experience smaller part of reality. Physical and worldly things are less important than spiritual ones.
You missed the point.
Read what I said again:
Reality includes what we cannot see, eg, the spiritual realm.
You have yet to establish the "greater" part.
You don't seem to disagree with the rest, so I'll leave it be for now...
The point is that what you're referring to as "greater" is still part of reality, which is precisely what we mean by the word. You could argue that the spiritual realm is a greater PART of reality, whether you mean larger, more important, or both.
But that does not establish the existence of a "greater reality."
Reality already includes both the physical and the spiritual, the seen and the unseen. "More important" establishes a hierarchy of IMPORTANCE within reality. "Larger" would establish a difference in EXTENT within reality. Neither establishes a hierarchy of REALITY.
The problem with saying "greater reality," particularly in the context of a simulation analogy, is that it implies another level upward, as though what we presently inhabit were somehow less than reality, with the REAL reality sitting beyond it.
I'm not saying that the spiritual realm does not exist, nor am I denying that it could properly be called "higher" in some sense. I'm saying that this plane and that plane are both parts of
the one reality.
Reality is already the inclusive category.
And if all you mean by "greater reality" is "more of reality than we currently perceive," then we're back where we started:
I already agree that there is more to reality than we presently perceive.
That does nothing to establish the simulation analogy.
I don't think it is really necessary at this point. But I can show how everything Clete said is wrong.
Your brain interprets an electrochemical and compiles a virtual reality of the physical realm. Things are added to this virtual reality that do not even exist in the physical realm. Like color and love. (It's actually a bit more complicated than this, but in my favor, not Cletes.) That is how our creator God designed us.
Basically Clete is just saying "Yeah but what If I am just a physical being?". It is a question that makes no sense for a Christian to ask.
So here Clete is ultimately arguing that if the physical realm were analogous to a simulated reality, then God would be incapable of representing Himself accurately to us in the physical realm. But God is the one who created both us and the physical realm. He Himself assigned the values in us that say:
Let this equal Red
Let this equal Pain
Let this equal Joy and so on.
Notice how each one of Clete's arguments only works if preceded by "If God does not exist, then.."
Your greatest access to reality, is through prayer. You might be drugged, paralyzed, color-blind or mentally ill. But Christ is still the reality. Christ can still love someone who is in a coma.
The mind is real.
You might want to reconsider his framing.
Clete's argument does not require the premise "If God does not exist." Nor is he asking, "What if I am just a physical being?"
That is a straw man.
His argument is epistemological. If your characterization of our experience gives us reason to doubt whether our faculties actually put us in contact with reality, then you have created a problem for EVERY conclusion reached through those faculties, including the conclusions you're using to defend your characterization of reality.
And calling that argument "materialist" doesn't answer it.
An argument does not become materialist merely because it does not begin by assuming Christian premises.
Saying, "But God created our faculties so that we can trust them," doesn't refute the objection. It actually concedes the important part of it: our faculties must provide genuine access to reality.
And this is where I think your framing actually hurts your case as a Christian.
You and I already believe that God exists. We already believe that He created us. We already believe Scripture is revelation from Him. So you can appeal to God as the guarantor that this "virtual reality" being compiled in our minds corresponds reliably to what is actually there.
But what happens when you're talking to someone who doesn't already grant those premises?
You have effectively told him that the world he experiences is a virtual construction assembled inside his mind from electrochemical signals.
He then quite reasonably asks:
"How do I know that this virtual construction accurately represents reality?"
And your answer is:
"Because God created you that way."
But God's existence is one of the very things you're presumably trying to persuade him is true.
You've made the rational reliability of his access to reality dependent upon first accepting the conclusion you're trying to establish.
The Boltzmann Brain problem shows precisely why that matters.
Once you've characterized experience as an internally generated virtual environment, merely pointing to the contents of that environment cannot, by itself, establish what lies outside of it or what is generating it.
Then Christianity has to come along afterward and rescue us from a skeptical problem that Christianity never required us to create in the first place.
Why?
God created us IN reality, with faculties by which we genuinely perceive and reason about reality. Those faculties are finite. They can malfunction. They don't reveal everything that exists. None of that entails that our ordinary experience is a simulated or virtual reality.
Your examples don't establish otherwise.
A color-blind person having impaired access to color doesn't establish that color perception generally is virtual.
A paralyzed person lacking certain physical abilities doesn't establish that embodiment is virtual.
A person in a coma being loved by Christ certainly demonstrates that reality extends beyond what that person presently perceives, but nobody here disputes that.
And yes:
The mind is real.
That doesn't establish that the mind is a simulator.
There is more to reality than we presently perceive.
That does not make what we presently perceive less real.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
