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.
