THE DECEPTIVE EXISTENCE IDEA ASKS IF GOD HAS PUT US IN A VIRTUAL REALITY

God is all-powerful.

It is believed that God put us in a real world with real relationships so that we might grow.  He did this despite knowing that sometimes we would be dragged down developmentally and spiritually and morally.  That is the price you pay for living in a real world.  Sometimes, they say, God lets you be tempted though it will lead you into sin because he has a plan that contains evil in order to produce good.  God uses evil to do the greater good.

If God hadn’t put each person in a real world but a virtual one he could concentrate on the sanctity of each person individually without being restricted by maximising good generally for they only think the world is real and he can fully control what illusions he sends them. Since he chose to put us all in a real world instead it follows that God wants us to suffer for this great purpose of his. He has gone out of his way to make us suffer for that purpose. From this it follows that to feel sorry for anybody is to deny this and is against the respect due to God. Belief in God forbids compassion.  The compassionate God is a contradiction.
 
If God lets me be harmed so that I will progress spiritually because of it then he should not have put me in a real world. The fact that other people would need similar treatment would only delay my progress and get in the way of it. For example, if harming me to help me would make people sin more in indirect and direct ways then he cannot harm me.

The illusion of a real world in my mind allows for a world in which all the right buttons for getting me to decide to be good and holy are pressed. Then God can make me good as fast as he can. It is a sin for God not to do this.

So if God exists and is good then the material world is unreal. But if I believe in God I will realise this and God will not succeed in sanctifying me – it is no virtue to sacrifice yourself for people who are not there – so God would have to prevent me making the connection.

I can make it so God does not exist and I know I am not in that kind of a world when I am not much of a saint because it is a fact that some things happen that make me bad.  I am weak and cannot be all to blame.

Don’t object to the virtual world that God would be sinning by deceiving us, for we are often deceived by nature anyway.

Don’t object that it would be cruel for God to have me sacrificing myself for an illusion for when the only reason he would want us to suffer for others is for his own sake.  If he made us from nothing then he alone is to be loved for to love what he has made is silly for it depends on him.
 
Some say we have to suffer for we have to be given something to do – but we could battle illusionary devils or something. It does not matter when we are to think of God to the exclusion of everything else anyway.
 
Memory and your past cause the good character you have developed. At this moment (hypothetically), you have free will you no longer have it as regards the past but for the present alone. The past is sent and you cannot change it. God could make a person one minute and implant a false history in the memory of that person the next so that the person is perfected.
  
Religion objects that this would be deceptive for the person would think she or he had a history and had none. But nobody is asking God to deceive. And is deception that bad if it stops huge suffering?

Is it an invasion, a transgression against the person’s free will? God could make the offer to do it and wait until the person consents. But anyway if it is an invasion so is the way the freedom to alter the past is lost to us right now. It is not an invasion especially when we want what is best. Even when we do evil it is because we are drawn by the good in it.

If God is really so anti-deception then why has he rigged us to have dreams? We think the dreams are real when we are having them. He could have made us so that we don’t have them or need them.

If there is a loving God then  your life on earth is not real.  If it is real there is no God.  It makes sense to assume that it is real and thus that there is no God.



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