Dr. J. Budziszewski

And, um,

So far as I know, all of those guys did think at least that it wasn't an endless regas and back there there was something.

But they thought that, you know, we didn't have any commerce with God himself.

It was just with his emanations.

And this is a version of that too.

I'm living in a simulation.

Well, that's a simulation that's on a computer.

Where did that computer come from?

Well, that computer might have actually been just something in somebody else's simulation.

So there are simulations upon simulations upon simulations.

Is there ever one at the beginning of it?

And some of these guys who actually do this try to work out the mathematics and figure out whether you could prove that there was a simulation at the beginning of the simulations or whether we could ever know that or whether there had to be one.

But

I would want to say, though, that there can't be an infinite regress.

To say that there are infinite regresses of explanations for things amounts to saying there's no explanation of things.

And there has to be an explanation.

Now, so that even if that were true, that we're simulations, and those simulations were in a simulation, and those simulations were in a simulation, if there's a first simulation...

then that's God.

And if we're here in this one, what will you still have to decide?

Am I just, I mean, in one sense, I'm God's artifact, right?