THE URANTIA BOOK: A COSMIC PERSPECTIVE

And that creates an interesting trap for Simulation Theory.

If there is a real person outside, show me how that person became me. If there isn't a real person outside, show me how the machine created me. Either way, consciousness doesn't disappear from the architecture. It becomes one of the central things the architecture has to explain.

And once we reach that point, the question is no longer simply whether an advanced civilization could build an enormous computer. The question becomes much deeper: What kind of machine can produce a world containing individuals who actually experience being alive?

## }## Not Practical or Purposeful One of the main reasons Simulation Theory has become a serious contender is that reality appears remarkably mathematical. Nature follows consistent rules. Objects interact according to predictable relationships. The same physical laws appear to operate regardless of who is observing them. When we build computer simulations, we do much the same thing: we define mathematical rules and allow objects within the simulation to interact according to those rules. The resemblance can be striking.

But there is a problem with using that resemblance as evidence that reality itself must be a simulation. **We learned how to build simulations by studying reality.**

Imagine that I decide to create a simulated ape. At first, my ape is crude. Its movements are unnatural. Its behavior is simple. It doesn't interact with its environment very convincingly.

So I study real apes. I learn how their bodies move. I study their muscles, skeletons, behaviors, social interactions and responses to their environment. I improve the mathematics controlling the model. I improve the physics. I improve the artificial environment surrounding it. After years of technological development, perhaps my simulated ape becomes extraordinarily convincing.

Then one day I look at a real ape and say: **“Wow. That ape behaves exactly like my simulation. Maybe all apes are simulations.”** Something has gone backwards. The simulated ape resembles the real ape because **the real ape was the model used to create the simulation in the first place.**

The progression was: **REAL APE → OBSERVATION → MATHEMATICAL MODEL → SIMULATED APE**

But now I have reversed the reasoning: **SIMULATED APE RESEMBLES REAL APE → THEREFORE REAL APE MAY BE SIMULATED** The resemblance is real. The conclusion does not automatically follow from it.

I think something similar may be happening with Simulation Theory. As our technology improves, our simulated worlds increasingly behave like the world around us. We create physics engines. We model gravity. We simulate fluids, weather, collisions, biological systems, light, sound and increasingly complex environments. Then we look back at reality and notice something remarkable: **Reality behaves like our simulations.** Of course it does. **We designed our simulations to behave like reality.**

The better we become at simulation, the stronger that resemblance should become.

Consider water. We don't make simulated water flow according to mathematical rules and then discover that real water mysteriously behaves the same way. We observed how real water behaves, developed mathematical descriptions of those behaviors, and then used those descriptions to make simulated water behave more realistically.

The simulation is moving toward the thing being simulated. Not necessarily the other way around. This does not mean Simulation Theory is automatically wrong. It means that **similarity to a simulation cannot be the primary evidence for Simulation Theory when the simulation was constructed by modeling the reality being offered as evidence.**

Otherwise we create a circular argument: **We build simulations to resemble reality.** **Our simulations become increasingly realistic.** **We notice reality resembles our simulations.** **Therefore reality may be a simulation.** That is not enough.

If Simulation Theory is going to move from an interesting possibility to a serious explanation of reality, it needs evidence that distinguishes **a universe that can be simulated** from **a universe that actually is a simulation**.

Because being able to make an increasingly convincing simulated ape does not tell me that every ape I see is simulated. It tells me something much simpler: **I am getting very good at simulating apes.**

As we move into Papers 20 through 22, the focus of The Urantia Book shifts again. The previous Papers introduced increasingly specialized personalities responsible for administration, coordination, information, wisdom, judgment, and decision. Now we encounter another major class of personalities repeatedly identified by a common title: The Sons of God.

Paper 20 introduces the Paradise Sons of God. Paper 21 concentrates specifically on the Paradise Creator Sons. Paper 22 introduces the Trinitized Sons of God.

I have grouped these three Papers together because, before getting lost in the many names and classifications that The Urantia Book provides, I want to understand what the word Son means within the architecture.

This is an important distinction in the Codex view. I am not initially interested in Sonship simply as a religious title. I want to know what these beings do. What capability does Sonship introduce into the system?