These days it is much easier for some folks to embrace the idea of an 'ancestor simulation' than believe in God. It may be that the former, based upon a proposal by Oxford academic Nick Bostrom, has a more scientific, more sophisticated ring to it, than what seem like the worn-out, ancient ideas of faith.

Some serious minds have embraced the notion that we are a part of a massive experiment by a super-advanced race, who, in their curiosity about their own origins, set up a computer simulation of mind-boggling proportions. We are in essence one of the potential pathways of their early evolution, there being many others, depending on the software settings. It is impossible for us to conceptualise the kinds of computing power required to generate a universe of such vast size, together with creatures who are self-aware. That's is really just the start of our befuddlement.

I find theories like the ancestor simulation, which can be neither proven nor disproven, fascinating from pretty much any angle. They speak to a great curiosity and a keen intelligence. They are essentially harmless. That they seem to take the place of God is hard to contest, only this is a god that sets all in motion and then walks away. It is a god who watches, now and then, from afar with a kind of detached scientific interest. This universe has no teleological, no moral significance. It just is.

And in as much as we seek to derive meaning and to feel that something is ultimately in control of the universe that, through science, we continually unravel, this cosmos is most unlike our own, I suspect. Better the simpler explanation, the uncaused cause, that is God.