I think you misunderstand the problem here. Or maybe I misunderstand you :) Theism is the same idea as that we are living in a simulated universe. A simulated universe has a programmer or sysadmin that from the inside view, appears as omnipotent and omniscient. A creator. Which is exactly why The Matrix was full of religious references. They understood the strong parallels.
This creator is not an object inside the simulation, but is something outside from it, behind it. Therefore, the methods of empiricism fail here, as they only work inside the simulation. You don't look for the creator inside the simulation with a looking glass.
In fact, your first step is not even talking about the creator as by default you know nothing about it. The first step is to talk about whether this looks like a simulation? If yes, then it *logically* implies am omnipotent, omniscient (from the inside view) creator.
So one talks about the characteristics of the universe first. Einstein first tried general relativity with the inductive, empirical method, because he too believed that is how good science worked. Wrote the Entwurf and it absolutely failed. So he reluctantly went for the deductive method, made a number of mathemathical assumptions and ask which would be the simplest possible laws of nature that follow from it. And it worked.
Isn't it strange? It is not supposed to work, induction is supposed to work. This really looks like our universe runs on math i.e. software code and he just managed to reverse-engineer a part of it. And if true, it implies a creator.
So don't even jump directly to talking about god either way. If people talk about something outside the universe, and offer some kind of proof, then you can't reject it by saying it cannot be detected with in-universe methods.
Shakespeare's characters cannot find Shakespeare empiricially. This in itself does not mean Shakespeare's existence is not something one can talk about. The characters might notice that their world is surprisingly story-like.
Talk about the universe. Does it look natural? As in, randomly happening?
The simulator analogy does make theism unlikely to succeed--unless the simulator/designer would have left signs to point to something outside the simulation. Would characters in a simulation who understand it's just a simulation still be merely simulated characters? There's a familiar paradox here.
"Natural" isn't synonymous, though, with "randomly happening."
I think you misunderstand the problem here. Or maybe I misunderstand you :) Theism is the same idea as that we are living in a simulated universe. A simulated universe has a programmer or sysadmin that from the inside view, appears as omnipotent and omniscient. A creator. Which is exactly why The Matrix was full of religious references. They understood the strong parallels.
This creator is not an object inside the simulation, but is something outside from it, behind it. Therefore, the methods of empiricism fail here, as they only work inside the simulation. You don't look for the creator inside the simulation with a looking glass.
In fact, your first step is not even talking about the creator as by default you know nothing about it. The first step is to talk about whether this looks like a simulation? If yes, then it *logically* implies am omnipotent, omniscient (from the inside view) creator.
So one talks about the characteristics of the universe first. Einstein first tried general relativity with the inductive, empirical method, because he too believed that is how good science worked. Wrote the Entwurf and it absolutely failed. So he reluctantly went for the deductive method, made a number of mathemathical assumptions and ask which would be the simplest possible laws of nature that follow from it. And it worked.
Isn't it strange? It is not supposed to work, induction is supposed to work. This really looks like our universe runs on math i.e. software code and he just managed to reverse-engineer a part of it. And if true, it implies a creator.
So don't even jump directly to talking about god either way. If people talk about something outside the universe, and offer some kind of proof, then you can't reject it by saying it cannot be detected with in-universe methods.
Shakespeare's characters cannot find Shakespeare empiricially. This in itself does not mean Shakespeare's existence is not something one can talk about. The characters might notice that their world is surprisingly story-like.
Talk about the universe. Does it look natural? As in, randomly happening?
The simulator analogy does make theism unlikely to succeed--unless the simulator/designer would have left signs to point to something outside the simulation. Would characters in a simulation who understand it's just a simulation still be merely simulated characters? There's a familiar paradox here.
"Natural" isn't synonymous, though, with "randomly happening."