About this publication

What If God Is a Programmer?

And we’re all living in his simulation?

Andrew Cheng
God the Programmer
Published in
5 min readJan 1, 2022

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Cover art for God the Programmer, and his not-so intelligent AI’s
Adapted by the author. Source images by geralt and Sammy-Sander on pixabay

The idea that we’re living in a simulation isn’t new. The Matrix movies have made the concept part of our collective zeitgeist. What are video games but mini digital worlds for us to experience life as our favorite fictional heroes or professional athletes?

But what if we’re actually living in a simulation? What are the implications?

Oxford professor Nick Bostrom thinks the possibility is very likely. He proposes three scenarios:

  1. All human-like civilizations go extinct before inventing the technology necessary to create a simulated world.
  2. There are civilizations that have the technology to create simulations, but none of them have chosen to do so.
  3. There exist civilizations capable of programming simulated worlds. Thus, there are, in fact, more simulated worlds than authentic ones.

All three cases are possible. But Professor Bostrom thinks the third scenario is the most likely. If that is the case, then everything we see — everything we experience — is likely part of someone else’s computer simulation.

If one were to take this philosophical train of thought to its logical conclusion, then we are certainly living under the auspices of a creator. We might as well call this creator God. Such a god would be imperfect in its own right. But to us, it might as well be omniscient and omnipotent.

The Bible could be literally true, even if all the evidence in the world suggests otherwise. (I don’t believe that’s the case, but it’s possible.)

About This Publication

The articles in this publication are the chapters to a novel that explores what it’d be like if the Christian God were the programmer of a simulated world, and the Biblical characters were his (not-so) intelligent AI sprites.

The story starts out beat-for-beat like the 2010 Aaron Sorkin film, The Social Network. Like the fictional Mark Zuckerberg in that movie, my fictional God is a comp-sci undergraduate who gets dumped by his girlfriend, Asherah — a character named after God’s alleged forgotten wife. In…

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Andrew Cheng
God the Programmer

3x top writer, most recently in fiction. Author of God the Programmer. An atheist nostalgic for his Christian days. Slava Ukraini!