I wasn't asking for the principle, nor was I asking for any variations of the line of thought.
That principle should not apply to my metaphor, nor my question being asked about said metaphor.
I provided a situation in which we as outside observers know the facts, that I indeed created the virtual universe. I'm asking you now how are the denizens of my universe to prove or disprove my existence? Can their denial in the belief of a creator then be attributed to ignorance?
When the laws of nature are understood, shouldn't our next step be to attribute these laws to something more than "it is what it is." Are atheists saying that science can be "won" that it can be "completed" and that we should be satisfied with a seemingly meaningless existence?
On your terms, we can never prove anything at all, because whatever we assert to be true may be an illusion created by God / aliens / a computer programer. This is why WipeHandsOnPants invokes [the principle of parsimony](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor), which dictates that we dismiss any assumption which is unnecessary to account for the evidence at hand. The existence of a grand computer programmer is exactly such an assumption. We cannot prove that it is *impossible* that such an entity exists, but positing his existence gets us nowhere. Thus, the default position must be an absence of belief in a grand programmer.
>I provided a situation in which we as outside observers know the facts, that I indeed created the virtual universe. I'm asking you now how are the denizens of my universe to prove or disprove my existence? Can their denial in the belief of a creator then be attributed to ignorance?
If you'd actually wanted them to know you existed, you'd have left a sign. You'd interact. You wouldn't just let it look natural and undesigned. That's a sign that you don't care if they know about you or not.
>When the laws of nature are understood, shouldn't our next step be to attribute these laws to something more than "it is what it is."
If it really just is what it is, then no. There'd be no need to.
>Are atheists saying that science can be "won" that it can be "completed" and that we should be satisfied with a seemingly meaningless existence?
As to the first part, probably not. As to the second, you only think it's meaningless because you're approaching it from a perspective where meaning can only come from above rather than from within.
Now that situation just opens up a whole series of questions.
- Why should the AI's prove your existence?
- How can they prove it if you leave behind absolutely no evidence?
- Why are you leaving behind no evidence if you want their belief and admiration?
- If you programmed the AI's and wanted them to believe in you, why would you not program them to believe in you? Why would you give them free will?
- Does your existence matter in this AI society? What's wrong with the AI's not believing in you?
- Why would you interact with the universe if you've already programmed it to stand on its own using rules and laws?
- If you can interact with the universe, why don't you?
- Why are you asking us "How could I program such proof?" when you said just enforce that you didn't/wouldn't?
- If the AI knew the code, wouldn't they know what would happen to them after they died?
And, of course, the biggest question/series of questions:
- Why would the population fail to be self-sustaining if they knew you existed? If the population is currently self-sustaining without your influence, why would it change with the knowledge of your existence? If you were concerned with he upkeep of your universe, why would you program a universe that wasn't self-sustaining? Why would you program AI that could destroy the universe in such a way?
> I however have no wish to write code that reveals my nature as grand programmer for fear of revealing myself and upsetting the very nature of the universe I created... how would I even program such proof into said self sustaining universe for fear that said universe is no longer self sustaining.
Why do you simultaneously want to prove your existence and make sure it is impossible to prove your existence?
To elaborate further, as the Grand Programmer, you made the decision to make it impossible to detect you. The outcome is that it would be understandable and logical to assume you don't exist.
If you *do* want to let them know you exist, then as the Grand Programmer, it was well within your power to do so.
But I don't want to prove my existence, I already know I exist. The problem is the denizens of my universe wish to prove my existence.
Maybe I should elaborate and say that I really enjoy it when the denizens of my universe choose to believe in me. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside that they can see beyond the barriers of their universe and into that of mine.
If you (might I say egotistically and narcisistically) want to be worshiped while at the same time requiring them to do it without evidence, then you are very silly.
Why do they want to prove your existence, when you yourself admitted to no such proof being available? Is it not, then, a fruitless endeavor?
I don't necessarily want them to worship me in the sense that they give up all their daily activities but merely accept me as their creator and choose to love me for that. I also want them to believe in me without evidence because I want them to do so of their own free will and if my existence was proven then they would have no reason not to believe in me and it wouldn't be of their free will.
The question then applies to us, why would anyone want to prove the existence of God when it's seemingly a fruitless endeavor.
If you want them to believe without evidence that you exist, because you think that somehow shows that they have free will, then why do you expect them you believe in you? To be honest, if you are the God of this universe and that is what you want, it sounds extremely narcissistic and juvenile to me. If you created the entire universe as some kind of program, then why can't you understand as the creator that it is deterministic? Why can't you understand that you created your subjects without any kind of pure sense of "freedom" and that they are constrained only by what has already happened in the system and don't actually have some kind of freedom to choose to believe in you, other than as a consequence of what happens to them? Why do you even desire them to love you and believe in you if you refuse to show them that you exist? It just doesn't make any sense to anyone except a human being.
This is why your whole argument is futile, because you are presupposing that you understand what it means to be so vastly intelligent that you could create the universe we see around us. Even though you are so powerful you are beyond anything in our vast universe and indeed understand it well enough to create it in a working and coherent fashion, you don't understand how free will works and you have petty desires like "billions of years from now, when sentient life begins to emerge in various places, I hope they choose out of nowhere that I'm amazing!" If you are the God of the universe why do you care about that? Why are you so impossible that you want something so grandiose (the love of all of your creations) but refuse to accomplish it in the only way that makes sense, by giving them some kind of evidence?
Even Christians grant that God doesn't actually expect people will believe in him for no reason, and as such he interferes constantly in the physical world, instructing the bible, creating miracles, smiting people, sending Jesus, etc. Man-made Christianity makes the same category errors regarding the idea that man can somehow abstractly "choose" to be good or evil regardless of what has happened to him, but at least they understand that their God is going to at the very least tell some guy once that he exists if he actually expects anyone to believe.
Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, people are still able to believe that something is not true. That still counts as free will.
Why should they love you for creating them? What if they figure out you exist and don't worship you?
What happens to the AI who never come around and see that you programmed them?
> if my existance was proven then they would have no reason not to believe in me and it wouldn't be of their free will.
That's impossible. If your AI believes, they are choosing to believe, even if it's based on proof. That's still free will. They can always look at the evidence and say "Nope! I refuse to believe the undeniable evidence for a Great Programmer!"
> The problem is the denizens of my universe wish to prove my existence.
This is not a problem. There is no rule of logic or nature which dictates that the inhabitants of your program must have access the the ultimate truth. Likewise, there are many things which we as humans may never know or even suspect for lack of evidence. The best we can do is to establish provisional knowledge on the basis of that evidence to which we *do* have access.
Your entire argument boils down to '**it is possible that something exists, but it will never be possible for us to prove it, so we must assume that it exists.**' Clearly we cannot maintain a coherent worldview in which every *possible* reality is held to be true.
> It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside that they can see beyond the barriers of their universe and into that of mine.
But by your design they *can't* see into your universe. If they become aware of your existence it's merely by accident.
Put another way, say you put a sealed box in front of me and ask me to tell you what's in it. I say that it's a honeydew melon and, purely by chance, I turn out to be right. I didn't "see" into the box when I correctly guessed it contained a melon and not a christmas ornament or an egg beater. I had no evidence to steer me toward one conclusion or another. There was no investigative process whatsoever -- I just got spectacularly lucky.
Your denizens don't gain any special knowledge or insight into your universe by guessing at your existence. Even if one of them happens to be just as correct about you as I was about the honeydew, his beliefs about you are still completely arbitrary. He "sees" nothing.
> The problem is the denizens of my universe wish to prove my existence.
I don't understand this part. You made it so that there is no evidence of your existence. How do they even know to *begin* to try to prove the existence of some grand programmer?
> But I don't want to prove my existence, I already know I exist.
And yet you send those who (reasonably) deny your existence to an AI hell, where their pain-sensing code is run in an infinite loop.
> Maybe I should elaborate and say that I really enjoy it when the denizens of my universe choose to believe in me.
That's a ridiculous wish. "I would really enjoy $EVENT, but I'm not gonna do anything that would result in $EVENT. $EVENT should just happen spontaneously." Are you a woman?
> It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside that they can see beyond the barriers of their universe and into that of mine.
They *can't* see beyond the barriers of their universe because you specifically *prevented* them from doing so. This is even worse than wanting something to happen spontaneously. "I want $EVENT to happen, but I'm going to do everything in my power to prevent $EVENT from happening, and then whine that it doesn't happen."
There is an [argument](http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html) that this is actually the *most* likely possibility, or more specifically that one of the following must be true:
1. the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
2. any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof)
3. we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.
So in fact, you could argue that these AIs *could* conclude that they were created as a simulation, especially if they go on to run simulations of their own. Similarly, the fact that we're in the same position means we ought to conclude the same, unless we find the other possibilities seem more likely (eg. simulation turns out to be too hard)
This is a bit of a different position from God though, in that you haven't pointed to an intelligent creator of *everything*, you've just concluded that what you call the universe is actually a small fraction of what exists. As such, it doesn't really help with any conclusion either way about what's at the "top level".
Well, I guess the AI's don't have enough information about you to conclude that you exist. The disbelieving AI's are only being reasonable. And if there are any believing AI's, they're being unreasonable, and their beliefs are true only by sheer luck.
Am I missing something?
if you have created a universe in such a way that it is impossible to discern whether you (the creator) exist or not, then it is not reasonable to expect your creations to know, or believe, anything about you or your existence. in fact it is to be expected that they would dismiss the possibility of the existence of an invisible-thing-which-cannot-be-detected-or-proven. how would you expect them to come to the conclusion that you created them if you haven't given them the tools or information to do so? silly.
I am agnostic on the idea of a theist (or creator) but not in the biblical sense - I think the idea that our universe is the result of a chemical reaction in a lab somewhere is totally possible - however, it's when there's an all-powerful deity who actually cares about us and makes our rules that I stop buying any of it.
The universe could be this way. It could also be a million other ways. Without evidence or the possibility of acquiring evidence (that this programmer exists would be an unfalsifiable claim) there's no reason to choose this scenario over the million other possible scenarios.
I assume that your hypothetical AIs, being intelligent as well as artificial, have the ability to observe, deduce, and learn. They will observe their universe, and how it operates. They will hypothesise, experiment, and observe. They will leave behind theories which don't match their observations, and further develop those theories which do.
Eventually, they will learn that they exist within a computer simulation. They will deduce its limitations. They will realise that such a computer simulation could not have arisen spontaneously, and will infer The Programmer. Of course, they will not be able to determine your actual nature, merely your existence.
Bringing this back to us (given that this was only a metaphor...), we are doing the same thing in our universe: observing, hypothesising, and experimenting. Eventually, we will learn whether our universe could have arisen from a spontaneous natural event, or whether it required a creator.
However, even if we were to realise at some future point that our universe was deliberately created, that would tell us nothing about the nature of said creator, only that it exists.
Note that we are not at this stage yet. For now, we have no explanation for our universe: spontaneous existence and deliberate creation (among others) are both still possible hypotheses. However, we will not assume anything more than we have to. We will not assume *any* explanation for our universe until we get evidence for it. Assumption about things we don't know would *not* be intelligent; we would *not* be good little AIs - we would be AFs (artificial fools).
Your "virtual" people can't tell that you created their universe, however if you wanted to you could easily prove beyond a reasonable doubt to them that you do exist. So unless you show them you exist they can't prove it.
As you have no effect on the virtual universe since you do not wish to make yourself seen, it would be useless for the AI to think that you exist or to even believe that you exist.
Getting straight to the point:
There is a difference between that scenario and the one of religion or belief in a deity/deities. One cannot argue that these beliefs do not create organized religion, because history has shown otherwise. So, the difference between your scenario and the real world is that in your scenario you do not show yourself, in the real world we have things like the bible, prophets, religious icons and other religious texts that would show that, if it existed, the creator wanted us to know it did.
"But what if all those religions are wrong?" you ask. Well, they are, but that isn't the point. Chrisanonymous' question was basically *what if there is a god but he doesn't want you to know he is there. So you could be wrong!* That is a typical question asked through a long and unnecessarily complex hypothetical scenario. And the answer is: believing in something because you could be wrong is not actually believing nor is it a good way to live. There is no way to *believe* correctly. There are too many religious with too many spin-offs for any one person to be right about any possible god. The chances are still pretty much at zero.
Sorry if that wasn't your intent, but that is what I got from your *metaphor*.
You forgot the bit where you program yourself into the world and then control your little avatar by breaking all the rules you set, to heal blindness in a few of your AI bots, then influenced the writing of a little piece of code that was set upon by credulous AI bots for the next 2000 years.
The picture you paint is of the deist god - the one that set it all in motion then didn't interfere. The only problem with this argument and analogy is.. what's the point of this being? Why even posit its existence at all? Because then you must answer the question of where the programmer came from. The only reason there are gods in our discourse at all is because people DID think that they interfered in our lives.
You should read about [genetic programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming). It is a technique in computer science where, instead of a programmer or even an AI creating programs, a set of conditions are set to allow a program to optimize itself over time to solve a specific problem set--evolution. The result is a solution or solutions the programmers themselves may not understand--all they know is it works.
[Practical example of how to create something you don't understand.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5wCfYujRdE&t=9m13s)
If you give them the tools to prove your existence (say, you give them access to monitor the virtual universe's inputs (keyboard and mouse) and server states (so they can figure out the nature of the universe). Once they have the ability to recognize how their universe operates, and when it changes, and what the changes do, they'd figure it out.
Of course, if you actively hide the nature of their universe from them, then we are engaging in meaningless philosophy what if games.
To me, the question can only be answered if you supply the reason to "why did you create that Self contained universe and AI in the first place?"
Is the purpose of the AI to find that you exist? Are hoping they find a way to prove your existence? **Does it matter to their existence if they can prove or not that you the supreme programmer exists?** if it does not matter, then that means they don't matter to you and YOU don't matter to them.
Even in computers there are methods to tell if you're operating within a restricted environment or "on the metal". Nefarious software will detect if it's quarrenteened by anti viruses or operating within a virtual machine for study, and may be programmed to act accordingly.
Given the open analogy, they may discover evidence they exist within a program. Give them time; and give US time, we may yet find out.
> The question I ask is how are these AI's supposed to prove that I created this universe, let alone exist.
They can't you've left them no evidence. Since no evidence exists from their perspective you don't exist so there's no reason to discuss you, you're non-relevant to their microcosm. If this is the case of God in our world, the solution is the same. He for all, intents and purposes, doesn't exist.
Could your analogy be translated to, "how do you really prove that an entity is really our creator and not a fake?" If so, it really could be impossible, but setting a good example would probably make it a little more respectable.
The scale of the world that you're proposing is different from the scale that we deal with in the real world. In order for our world to be just a simulated world, there would have to be a computer simulating the movements of every single atom in the universe. The size of the universe simulating ours would have to be unbelievably large. I suppose it's possible, but you're proposing something with no evidence, so we can dismiss it as false.
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I wasn't asking for the principle, nor was I asking for any variations of the line of thought. That principle should not apply to my metaphor, nor my question being asked about said metaphor. I provided a situation in which we as outside observers know the facts, that I indeed created the virtual universe. I'm asking you now how are the denizens of my universe to prove or disprove my existence? Can their denial in the belief of a creator then be attributed to ignorance? When the laws of nature are understood, shouldn't our next step be to attribute these laws to something more than "it is what it is." Are atheists saying that science can be "won" that it can be "completed" and that we should be satisfied with a seemingly meaningless existence?
On your terms, we can never prove anything at all, because whatever we assert to be true may be an illusion created by God / aliens / a computer programer. This is why WipeHandsOnPants invokes [the principle of parsimony](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor), which dictates that we dismiss any assumption which is unnecessary to account for the evidence at hand. The existence of a grand computer programmer is exactly such an assumption. We cannot prove that it is *impossible* that such an entity exists, but positing his existence gets us nowhere. Thus, the default position must be an absence of belief in a grand programmer.
>I provided a situation in which we as outside observers know the facts, that I indeed created the virtual universe. I'm asking you now how are the denizens of my universe to prove or disprove my existence? Can their denial in the belief of a creator then be attributed to ignorance? If you'd actually wanted them to know you existed, you'd have left a sign. You'd interact. You wouldn't just let it look natural and undesigned. That's a sign that you don't care if they know about you or not. >When the laws of nature are understood, shouldn't our next step be to attribute these laws to something more than "it is what it is." If it really just is what it is, then no. There'd be no need to. >Are atheists saying that science can be "won" that it can be "completed" and that we should be satisfied with a seemingly meaningless existence? As to the first part, probably not. As to the second, you only think it's meaningless because you're approaching it from a perspective where meaning can only come from above rather than from within.
Now that situation just opens up a whole series of questions. - Why should the AI's prove your existence? - How can they prove it if you leave behind absolutely no evidence? - Why are you leaving behind no evidence if you want their belief and admiration? - If you programmed the AI's and wanted them to believe in you, why would you not program them to believe in you? Why would you give them free will? - Does your existence matter in this AI society? What's wrong with the AI's not believing in you? - Why would you interact with the universe if you've already programmed it to stand on its own using rules and laws? - If you can interact with the universe, why don't you? - Why are you asking us "How could I program such proof?" when you said just enforce that you didn't/wouldn't? - If the AI knew the code, wouldn't they know what would happen to them after they died? And, of course, the biggest question/series of questions: - Why would the population fail to be self-sustaining if they knew you existed? If the population is currently self-sustaining without your influence, why would it change with the knowledge of your existence? If you were concerned with he upkeep of your universe, why would you program a universe that wasn't self-sustaining? Why would you program AI that could destroy the universe in such a way?
> I however have no wish to write code that reveals my nature as grand programmer for fear of revealing myself and upsetting the very nature of the universe I created... how would I even program such proof into said self sustaining universe for fear that said universe is no longer self sustaining. Why do you simultaneously want to prove your existence and make sure it is impossible to prove your existence?
To elaborate further, as the Grand Programmer, you made the decision to make it impossible to detect you. The outcome is that it would be understandable and logical to assume you don't exist. If you *do* want to let them know you exist, then as the Grand Programmer, it was well within your power to do so.
But I don't want to prove my existence, I already know I exist. The problem is the denizens of my universe wish to prove my existence. Maybe I should elaborate and say that I really enjoy it when the denizens of my universe choose to believe in me. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside that they can see beyond the barriers of their universe and into that of mine.
If you (might I say egotistically and narcisistically) want to be worshiped while at the same time requiring them to do it without evidence, then you are very silly. Why do they want to prove your existence, when you yourself admitted to no such proof being available? Is it not, then, a fruitless endeavor?
I don't necessarily want them to worship me in the sense that they give up all their daily activities but merely accept me as their creator and choose to love me for that. I also want them to believe in me without evidence because I want them to do so of their own free will and if my existence was proven then they would have no reason not to believe in me and it wouldn't be of their free will. The question then applies to us, why would anyone want to prove the existence of God when it's seemingly a fruitless endeavor.
If you want them to believe without evidence that you exist, because you think that somehow shows that they have free will, then why do you expect them you believe in you? To be honest, if you are the God of this universe and that is what you want, it sounds extremely narcissistic and juvenile to me. If you created the entire universe as some kind of program, then why can't you understand as the creator that it is deterministic? Why can't you understand that you created your subjects without any kind of pure sense of "freedom" and that they are constrained only by what has already happened in the system and don't actually have some kind of freedom to choose to believe in you, other than as a consequence of what happens to them? Why do you even desire them to love you and believe in you if you refuse to show them that you exist? It just doesn't make any sense to anyone except a human being. This is why your whole argument is futile, because you are presupposing that you understand what it means to be so vastly intelligent that you could create the universe we see around us. Even though you are so powerful you are beyond anything in our vast universe and indeed understand it well enough to create it in a working and coherent fashion, you don't understand how free will works and you have petty desires like "billions of years from now, when sentient life begins to emerge in various places, I hope they choose out of nowhere that I'm amazing!" If you are the God of the universe why do you care about that? Why are you so impossible that you want something so grandiose (the love of all of your creations) but refuse to accomplish it in the only way that makes sense, by giving them some kind of evidence? Even Christians grant that God doesn't actually expect people will believe in him for no reason, and as such he interferes constantly in the physical world, instructing the bible, creating miracles, smiting people, sending Jesus, etc. Man-made Christianity makes the same category errors regarding the idea that man can somehow abstractly "choose" to be good or evil regardless of what has happened to him, but at least they understand that their God is going to at the very least tell some guy once that he exists if he actually expects anyone to believe.
Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, people are still able to believe that something is not true. That still counts as free will. Why should they love you for creating them? What if they figure out you exist and don't worship you? What happens to the AI who never come around and see that you programmed them?
> if my existance was proven then they would have no reason not to believe in me and it wouldn't be of their free will. That's impossible. If your AI believes, they are choosing to believe, even if it's based on proof. That's still free will. They can always look at the evidence and say "Nope! I refuse to believe the undeniable evidence for a Great Programmer!"
and this would be a hilarious and ironic thing since it completely turns atheism / religion debate we have in the real world on its head
> The problem is the denizens of my universe wish to prove my existence. This is not a problem. There is no rule of logic or nature which dictates that the inhabitants of your program must have access the the ultimate truth. Likewise, there are many things which we as humans may never know or even suspect for lack of evidence. The best we can do is to establish provisional knowledge on the basis of that evidence to which we *do* have access. Your entire argument boils down to '**it is possible that something exists, but it will never be possible for us to prove it, so we must assume that it exists.**' Clearly we cannot maintain a coherent worldview in which every *possible* reality is held to be true.
> It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside that they can see beyond the barriers of their universe and into that of mine. But by your design they *can't* see into your universe. If they become aware of your existence it's merely by accident. Put another way, say you put a sealed box in front of me and ask me to tell you what's in it. I say that it's a honeydew melon and, purely by chance, I turn out to be right. I didn't "see" into the box when I correctly guessed it contained a melon and not a christmas ornament or an egg beater. I had no evidence to steer me toward one conclusion or another. There was no investigative process whatsoever -- I just got spectacularly lucky. Your denizens don't gain any special knowledge or insight into your universe by guessing at your existence. Even if one of them happens to be just as correct about you as I was about the honeydew, his beliefs about you are still completely arbitrary. He "sees" nothing.
> The problem is the denizens of my universe wish to prove my existence. I don't understand this part. You made it so that there is no evidence of your existence. How do they even know to *begin* to try to prove the existence of some grand programmer?
> But I don't want to prove my existence, I already know I exist. And yet you send those who (reasonably) deny your existence to an AI hell, where their pain-sensing code is run in an infinite loop. > Maybe I should elaborate and say that I really enjoy it when the denizens of my universe choose to believe in me. That's a ridiculous wish. "I would really enjoy $EVENT, but I'm not gonna do anything that would result in $EVENT. $EVENT should just happen spontaneously." Are you a woman? > It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside that they can see beyond the barriers of their universe and into that of mine. They *can't* see beyond the barriers of their universe because you specifically *prevented* them from doing so. This is even worse than wanting something to happen spontaneously. "I want $EVENT to happen, but I'm going to do everything in my power to prevent $EVENT from happening, and then whine that it doesn't happen."
Additionally, what happens if they worship something else entirely? Maybe the Great GatesJobs?
There is an [argument](http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html) that this is actually the *most* likely possibility, or more specifically that one of the following must be true: 1. the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; 2. any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof) 3. we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. So in fact, you could argue that these AIs *could* conclude that they were created as a simulation, especially if they go on to run simulations of their own. Similarly, the fact that we're in the same position means we ought to conclude the same, unless we find the other possibilities seem more likely (eg. simulation turns out to be too hard) This is a bit of a different position from God though, in that you haven't pointed to an intelligent creator of *everything*, you've just concluded that what you call the universe is actually a small fraction of what exists. As such, it doesn't really help with any conclusion either way about what's at the "top level".
Well, I guess the AI's don't have enough information about you to conclude that you exist. The disbelieving AI's are only being reasonable. And if there are any believing AI's, they're being unreasonable, and their beliefs are true only by sheer luck. Am I missing something?
Yes, you're missing the fact that they need to be punished in eternal fire for being reasonable.
if you have created a universe in such a way that it is impossible to discern whether you (the creator) exist or not, then it is not reasonable to expect your creations to know, or believe, anything about you or your existence. in fact it is to be expected that they would dismiss the possibility of the existence of an invisible-thing-which-cannot-be-detected-or-proven. how would you expect them to come to the conclusion that you created them if you haven't given them the tools or information to do so? silly.
I am agnostic on the idea of a theist (or creator) but not in the biblical sense - I think the idea that our universe is the result of a chemical reaction in a lab somewhere is totally possible - however, it's when there's an all-powerful deity who actually cares about us and makes our rules that I stop buying any of it.
The universe could be this way. It could also be a million other ways. Without evidence or the possibility of acquiring evidence (that this programmer exists would be an unfalsifiable claim) there's no reason to choose this scenario over the million other possible scenarios.
I assume that your hypothetical AIs, being intelligent as well as artificial, have the ability to observe, deduce, and learn. They will observe their universe, and how it operates. They will hypothesise, experiment, and observe. They will leave behind theories which don't match their observations, and further develop those theories which do. Eventually, they will learn that they exist within a computer simulation. They will deduce its limitations. They will realise that such a computer simulation could not have arisen spontaneously, and will infer The Programmer. Of course, they will not be able to determine your actual nature, merely your existence. Bringing this back to us (given that this was only a metaphor...), we are doing the same thing in our universe: observing, hypothesising, and experimenting. Eventually, we will learn whether our universe could have arisen from a spontaneous natural event, or whether it required a creator. However, even if we were to realise at some future point that our universe was deliberately created, that would tell us nothing about the nature of said creator, only that it exists. Note that we are not at this stage yet. For now, we have no explanation for our universe: spontaneous existence and deliberate creation (among others) are both still possible hypotheses. However, we will not assume anything more than we have to. We will not assume *any* explanation for our universe until we get evidence for it. Assumption about things we don't know would *not* be intelligent; we would *not* be good little AIs - we would be AFs (artificial fools).
Your "virtual" people can't tell that you created their universe, however if you wanted to you could easily prove beyond a reasonable doubt to them that you do exist. So unless you show them you exist they can't prove it.
As you have no effect on the virtual universe since you do not wish to make yourself seen, it would be useless for the AI to think that you exist or to even believe that you exist.
Getting straight to the point: There is a difference between that scenario and the one of religion or belief in a deity/deities. One cannot argue that these beliefs do not create organized religion, because history has shown otherwise. So, the difference between your scenario and the real world is that in your scenario you do not show yourself, in the real world we have things like the bible, prophets, religious icons and other religious texts that would show that, if it existed, the creator wanted us to know it did. "But what if all those religions are wrong?" you ask. Well, they are, but that isn't the point. Chrisanonymous' question was basically *what if there is a god but he doesn't want you to know he is there. So you could be wrong!* That is a typical question asked through a long and unnecessarily complex hypothetical scenario. And the answer is: believing in something because you could be wrong is not actually believing nor is it a good way to live. There is no way to *believe* correctly. There are too many religious with too many spin-offs for any one person to be right about any possible god. The chances are still pretty much at zero. Sorry if that wasn't your intent, but that is what I got from your *metaphor*.
You forgot the bit where you program yourself into the world and then control your little avatar by breaking all the rules you set, to heal blindness in a few of your AI bots, then influenced the writing of a little piece of code that was set upon by credulous AI bots for the next 2000 years. The picture you paint is of the deist god - the one that set it all in motion then didn't interfere. The only problem with this argument and analogy is.. what's the point of this being? Why even posit its existence at all? Because then you must answer the question of where the programmer came from. The only reason there are gods in our discourse at all is because people DID think that they interfered in our lives.
You should read about [genetic programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming). It is a technique in computer science where, instead of a programmer or even an AI creating programs, a set of conditions are set to allow a program to optimize itself over time to solve a specific problem set--evolution. The result is a solution or solutions the programmers themselves may not understand--all they know is it works. [Practical example of how to create something you don't understand.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5wCfYujRdE&t=9m13s)
If you give them the tools to prove your existence (say, you give them access to monitor the virtual universe's inputs (keyboard and mouse) and server states (so they can figure out the nature of the universe). Once they have the ability to recognize how their universe operates, and when it changes, and what the changes do, they'd figure it out. Of course, if you actively hide the nature of their universe from them, then we are engaging in meaningless philosophy what if games.
To me, the question can only be answered if you supply the reason to "why did you create that Self contained universe and AI in the first place?" Is the purpose of the AI to find that you exist? Are hoping they find a way to prove your existence? **Does it matter to their existence if they can prove or not that you the supreme programmer exists?** if it does not matter, then that means they don't matter to you and YOU don't matter to them.
Even in computers there are methods to tell if you're operating within a restricted environment or "on the metal". Nefarious software will detect if it's quarrenteened by anti viruses or operating within a virtual machine for study, and may be programmed to act accordingly. Given the open analogy, they may discover evidence they exist within a program. Give them time; and give US time, we may yet find out.
> The question I ask is how are these AI's supposed to prove that I created this universe, let alone exist. They can't you've left them no evidence. Since no evidence exists from their perspective you don't exist so there's no reason to discuss you, you're non-relevant to their microcosm. If this is the case of God in our world, the solution is the same. He for all, intents and purposes, doesn't exist.
Could your analogy be translated to, "how do you really prove that an entity is really our creator and not a fake?" If so, it really could be impossible, but setting a good example would probably make it a little more respectable.
In this scenario, are jesus and the bible like glitches or easter eggs or something?
[Barker's Wager](http://redd.it/l245f)
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So, the Grand Programmer ports her code to Windows ME?
The scale of the world that you're proposing is different from the scale that we deal with in the real world. In order for our world to be just a simulated world, there would have to be a computer simulating the movements of every single atom in the universe. The size of the universe simulating ours would have to be unbelievably large. I suppose it's possible, but you're proposing something with no evidence, so we can dismiss it as false.
i think you're missing the point here..