Aliens running our universe as a simulation would probably not be recognized as “spiritual” beings by religious people, so I guess the intelligence would have to be of the “just-magically-appearing” kind.
I’d expect any such interaction to be both misinterpreted and miscommunicated so utterly as to be useless in forming evidence for one hypothesis over another.
I don’t even mean in the sense of historical culture having no reference for Tegmark multiverses, but that the true state of affairs is probably far weirder than such multiverses and that any of us today would also mess it up. Maybe not quite as badly just due to having access to a greater space of human thought than anyone back then, but still essentially useless.
In short, I think that even if we knew exactly which religion was directly inspired by such an external agent, it wouldn’t help one bit in forming a better model of the universe.
Aliens running our universe as a simulation would probably not be recognized as “spiritual” beings by religious people, so I guess the intelligence would have to be of the “just-magically-appearing” kind.
I’d expect any such interaction to be both misinterpreted and miscommunicated so utterly as to be useless in forming evidence for one hypothesis over another.
I don’t even mean in the sense of historical culture having no reference for Tegmark multiverses, but that the true state of affairs is probably far weirder than such multiverses and that any of us today would also mess it up. Maybe not quite as badly just due to having access to a greater space of human thought than anyone back then, but still essentially useless.
In short, I think that even if we knew exactly which religion was directly inspired by such an external agent, it wouldn’t help one bit in forming a better model of the universe.
Interesting.
Would the Cthulhu Mythos be at least somewhat close to what you are imagining?