There’s another issue that your version of the argument has. If one of the standard Christian versions of a deity exists, it isn’t going to think that worshiping it because it is the simulation runner is going to cut it. Saying “I will worship you because you run the simulation” isn’t very similar to a heartfelt confession of sins and acknowledgement of Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. Moreover, if a simulator is as petty as you hypothesize, and as you hypothesize doesn’t want to break its feeling of immersion, they will likely want to also punish people who worship it because they’ve realized that it runs the simulator for ruining its fun.
I believe you may be right for Christianity, but not for Judaism, for instance. For Judaism, I think, it is not very relevant why you act righteously, as long as you do. As long as you don’t eat pork, worship God, don’t light a fire during Shabbat, and do the other 600+ things, you are probably OK. Although I am not a practicing Jew, so someone may correct me.
It depends a lot on the type of Judaism. Some of them emphasize correct belief a lot. Believing in Christianity while practicing the 613 commandments would be not ok. The good news though is that almost every form of Judaism agrees that if one isn’t Jewish one needs to only keep the Seven Noachide laws. But even some interpretations of those laws can be pretty strict. There are for example some interpretations of the prohibition flesh from a living animal that make most modern meat to be unacceptable.
Believing in Christianity while practicing the 613 commandments would be not ok.
I always wonder about that. I know it’s true, but I am not sure what argument they put forward to explain that. I can’t remember anything that requires one to think anything specific in the Tanach.
Believing in the divinity of a human would fall under the idolatry prohibitions. There’s some question of how serious an issue this is. In particular, the major historical Rabbis who lived in the Christian world generally argued that the anti-idolatry statutes were more strict for Jews than they were for non-Jews, so it was ok for a non-Jews to believe this way but not a Jew. Those in the Muslim world took a more strong standpoint (presumably in part because they could get away with it and in part influence from Muslim beliefs) and considered this to be unacceptable for non-Jews also.
If one had one of the minority forms of Christianity that does’t believe that Jesus is divine, that would be less problematic. There are some who claim that the defining difference between Christianity and Judaism is whether or not Jesus was the messiah, but this seems to be very weak from a theological perspective, and is more useful as a descriptive rather than normative claim.
There’s another issue that your version of the argument has. If one of the standard Christian versions of a deity exists, it isn’t going to think that worshiping it because it is the simulation runner is going to cut it. Saying “I will worship you because you run the simulation” isn’t very similar to a heartfelt confession of sins and acknowledgement of Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. Moreover, if a simulator is as petty as you hypothesize, and as you hypothesize doesn’t want to break its feeling of immersion, they will likely want to also punish people who worship it because they’ve realized that it runs the simulator for ruining its fun.
I believe you may be right for Christianity, but not for Judaism, for instance. For Judaism, I think, it is not very relevant why you act righteously, as long as you do. As long as you don’t eat pork, worship God, don’t light a fire during Shabbat, and do the other 600+ things, you are probably OK. Although I am not a practicing Jew, so someone may correct me.
It depends a lot on the type of Judaism. Some of them emphasize correct belief a lot. Believing in Christianity while practicing the 613 commandments would be not ok. The good news though is that almost every form of Judaism agrees that if one isn’t Jewish one needs to only keep the Seven Noachide laws. But even some interpretations of those laws can be pretty strict. There are for example some interpretations of the prohibition flesh from a living animal that make most modern meat to be unacceptable.
I always wonder about that. I know it’s true, but I am not sure what argument they put forward to explain that. I can’t remember anything that requires one to think anything specific in the Tanach.
Believing in the divinity of a human would fall under the idolatry prohibitions. There’s some question of how serious an issue this is. In particular, the major historical Rabbis who lived in the Christian world generally argued that the anti-idolatry statutes were more strict for Jews than they were for non-Jews, so it was ok for a non-Jews to believe this way but not a Jew. Those in the Muslim world took a more strong standpoint (presumably in part because they could get away with it and in part influence from Muslim beliefs) and considered this to be unacceptable for non-Jews also.
If one had one of the minority forms of Christianity that does’t believe that Jesus is divine, that would be less problematic. There are some who claim that the defining difference between Christianity and Judaism is whether or not Jesus was the messiah, but this seems to be very weak from a theological perspective, and is more useful as a descriptive rather than normative claim.
A good point. Hopefully the simulator user interface is awkward enough that the Player won’t bother to add that to the heaven/hell criteria.