How to Create a Universe

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GOD created the universe, they teach in the elementary schools of my Christian home country.

'But how?' was the question I asked myself as a ten year old. And even more puzzling: 'If it is true that the universe is infinite, where was God before the universe was created?' Somewhere else, for sure. But if the universe is infinite, where could this somewhere else exist?

These were difficult questions for a young boy, and several years passed before I could make any progress. When the revelation eventually came, it was only as an insight into how the Divine Creator *could* have done it -- if he had been a human being, existing in a reality like our own.

VIRTUAL reality was probably not invented yet. Cyberspace was still just an obscure word found in a book the world at large had not yet heard about. I certainly had not. I was just a school youth spending most of my spare time programming and playing games on my home computer.

Still I dreamt some of the same cybernetic dreams that were unavoidably spreading at the time, and which later have become mainstream visions. Like: 'What if you could get a direct link between a computer and the human mind?' Wishing to learn a foreign language? Just plug in the cartridge. The prospect was irresistable to a bored school youth.

Then I started dreaming of the great role-playing game. Imagine that your brain is not only connected to the computer, but that the machine takes control over all your sensory organs, and perhaps even cuts you off from your memories. You link yourself in, and the external world disappears. Instead you find yourself in a virtual reality, controlling a virtual body. Everything is generated by the computer, but to you it is as real as life.

See yourself striving to come to terms with your new virtual body. When you have managed that, you begin to move around, perhaps meeting other people, who have also linked themselves in, and entered the virtual world. It seems possible, doesn't it? Technically it is just a mulitiplayer role-playing game. The only thing mystic is the direct link between mind and machine.

Now imagine that our world -- your present life -- is such a game.

THIS scenario is of course not very likely, but the fact that it is possible is interesting enough in its own right. It answered my original childhood questions of how one infinite universe could exist inside another one. Also it greatly widened my views on what is possible.

Reported phenomena like telekinesis, telepathic contact, even teleportation, and divine intervention no longer seemed so far-out. Once they could be imagined on a technical level, they became fathomable. A Creator would have little trouble including such features if he wanted to.

It also showed me how, as fundamental Christians insist, God could design our world in a few days, and in an order not consistent with the one scientists discover when they study evolution. Of course, he just ran evolution over and over, focusing on adding new features each time, until he got it right.

So -- the scenario seemed like bad news for atheism, then. But actually it was not better for religious dogma. Suddenly just any creation history seemed possible. Once you can imagine 20 theories that all seem equally likely, and you have no means of testing them, you realize that choosing one is a matter of mere speculation.

Myself I am an ardent agnostic.