Can the simulation theory be a scientifically-sound proof that God exists?

Question

The way I understand it, it says that the probability of God not existing is like 1 / infinity. I wonder if there are any flaws in the logic below that I don't see.

A possible interpretation can go like this:

Let's assume that there's indeed nothing divine about our universe. Most importantly there are no souls and there's nothing "magical", other-dimensionly about the consciousness and therefore life. Everything is all just evolutionary rules that we don't understand yet, because we haven't uncovered 100% of the physics laws. But at some point we will uncover them. Once that happens, we will be able to put these evolutionary rules inside a computer program, run it very fast and after, say about a week, we should get a fairly similar copy of our universe. That new universe, even though a simulation, would have been created by the same evolutionary rules as ours, so it will be as real as it gets - not just some illusion. So real that it may actually be a crime to pull the plug, because you'll be destroying lives. The only difference for that universe will be that it exists in a different dimension.

The life inside it will reach the point where they can do the same and spin their own universes. And this can go on forever (limited by the processing power of our computer, but it can be very powerful). We can spin multiple such universes, the aliens in ours can do the same and as a result our universe would have created millions of child, grandchild, etc. universes.

Seeing all this, we start asking - what is the chance that we actually live in a universe that is not like this? And the answer is 1 / infinity (actually not infinity, but limited by the original computer's resources, but still it can potentially be a very large number).

The original universe that started all this may not have a creator, may be very different from ours and it may actually have a relatively simple explanation of how it all began. But if we don't live there - it's hard to speculate.

So is it really safe to say that according to this theory, the chances of God not existing (in our universe) is like 1 / infinity? Are there any flaws in the above? Is the theory scientifically sound at all?

EDIT: I'd like to point out that the purpose of the question is not to ask if we live in a simulation or not. This can only be the case if consciousness can be achieved using simple if-then-else computer logic. I don't think that's possible, but the purpose of the question is to ask - if we assume this is actually the case (because many atheists believe this) then the simulation theory becomes a very real thing, so is it scientifically ok to make that 1/infinity statement. And if not - why not?

Answer 1

The Hard Problem of consciousness does not go away just because you virtualised it. But, setting aside the dubious ontology here, the core issue of infinite simulations has been raised often enough to deserve an answer.

The short answer is, it is rubbish. It suffers the same fallacy of large numbers as do Boltzmann brains, parallel selves and all such fashionable nonsense. The reason is simple - infinities are not permissible in physics, they are merely signs that your theoretical model has reached breaking point.

In the present case, the Standard Model of cosmology is a good enough place to start. In the Big Bang, the Universe arose as a finite-sized ball of finite energy. It then grew at a finite rate for a finite length of time. It is therefore finite. No simulation can have as much detail as the Universe it is constructed in. Since hardware must be built and powered, software layered on top of it and the simulated environment itself on top of that, Shannon's law places a theoretical limit of 25% efficiency on a Universe dedicated to nothing but simulating the next one down. So maybe 10^0.000000000001 would be a more realistic estimate. Cascade that down a few generations and your latest simulation soon runs out of steam. You end up with a finite number of simulations in a finite number of levels.

What civilisation would commit vast resources on a cosmic scale, simply to initiate such a dead-end project? One level would be enough for anybody. And without such an F&SF grandiosity, the 1/infinity issue vanishes with it.

Moreover it is wholly irrelevant to the issue of deity. Any Divinity who started the whole thing off would be as present/absent for the subsidiary level/s as for the top one.

Answer 2

The biggest issue people seem to have with this theory is the energy problem - it would require so much energy that it seems absurd to the human mind. I've always thought that this point was irrelevant, but I couldn't formulate a clear explanation in my head. I think I finally got a good explanation as to why this may be the case, so I want to add it.

The energy problem becomes a problem only if we assume that the Multiverse is "quite small" - like a 1000 times bigger than our Universe. Then such a simulation seems absurd, at least from our perspective.

But in fact there's no reason to assume that the Multiverse is that small. If we take into account the mind-bendingly large size of the Universe, then it would be logical to assume that the Multiverse could be mind-bendingly bigger than a single universe. A single universe could be just a drop in an ocean and so the energy needed to simulate it would be a negligibly small part of the total available energy (even if you run a simulation with billions of copies).

It seems to me that this leaves no sensible arguments against this theory, at least from what I've seen so far (not just in this thread).