Pt. 2: The Error of the Shell

The simulation is not the world

This is where the word simulation needs to be handled carefully.

A conventional simulation presupposes a computer somewhere else: a physical machine, a program, a virtual environment and an external reality in which all of that machinery exists. Islamic theology requires none of these things. Allah does not need a server in some higher-dimensional laboratory in order for the universe to exist.

The relevant comparison is therefore not:

Developer -> computer -> program -> simulated human

but rather:

Creator -> creation -> conscious creature -> temporary existence -> judgment -> return

Earth does not have to be fake for the analogy to work. It only has to be temporary.

That distinction is enormous. A temporary reality can still be completely real to the beings experiencing it. Pain is real to the person who feels it, love is real to the person who experiences it, cruelty is real to its victim, and kindness has real consequences even if the environment in which those events occur is ultimately temporary.

In fact, the temporary nature of earthly existence gives those actions greater significance rather than less. The Qur'an explicitly describes death and life as part of a test to determine which people are best in deed in 67:2, while 21:35 describes human beings being tested through both hardship and blessing before returning to Allah.

The simulation, in this sense, is not an illusion.

It is a temporary condition of existence in which actions matter.

The purpose of the simulation

Perhaps this is the point at which the word simulation becomes most misleading, because the earthly environment is not primarily a spectacle designed for observation. It is a test.

The Qur'an explicitly says that Allah created death and life to test which of us is best in deed, while 51:56 states that jinn and mankind were created to worship Allah.

Humanity is furthermore given an earthly role described as khalīfa. Whatever precise translation one prefers, 2:30 establishes humanity's particular relationship to Earth and its inhabitants. The title should not be reduced to unlimited ownership. If anything, the concept makes human power more morally serious because it places human action within a framework of responsibility before Allah.

We are given knowledge, choice, desires, weakness, physical power, relationships and opportunities. We are also placed among countless other creatures, some of which depend upon us completely while others can be affected by our actions without possessing any meaningful ability to defend themselves against us.

The basic test is remarkably simple once all the philosophical machinery is stripped away. Will we remember our Creator when circumstances are favorable as well as when they become difficult? Will we remain honest when dishonesty would benefit us? Will we exercise mercy when we possess the power to be cruel? Will we help someone weaker than ourselves when there is nothing obvious to gain from doing so? Will we recognize another human being as a fellow creation rather than reducing that person to an object that exists for our own benefit?

The test is not whether we can understand every mechanism of the universe. It is what we do while we are living within it.

Iblis and the error of the shell

There may be no better illustration of the danger of confusing physical substance with intrinsic worth than Iblis.

Allah created Adam from clay, while Iblis was created from fire. Iblis then reasoned that his material origin made him superior: “I am better than him; You created me from fire and created him from clay.” Qur'an 7:12

His argument is remarkably simple:

I am made from superior material, therefore I am superior.

That is the primordial error.

Iblis looked at the substrate and ignored the creature. He looked at the material from which Adam's body was formed and ignored the knowledge and honor Allah had given Adam. The Qur'an's account therefore gives us an unusually powerful image of the danger of judging a being according to the substance from which its body was made.

The same underlying mistake has appeared repeatedly throughout human history. Whenever people decide that another person's worth is determined by the physical characteristics of the body, by ancestry, appearance, lineage, ethnicity or some other inherited distinction, they are making a version of the same conceptual error. The existence of physical differences between people is not itself the problem; the problem begins when those differences are transformed into a hierarchy of human worth.

There is an irony here. Iblis was not ignorant of the existence of God. His problem was not that he had never heard of the Creator. His problem was that he believed his own judgment about the value of creation should override the command and wisdom of the Creator.

Humanity has been remarkably capable of repeating that mistake.

We don't even understand the creatures around us

The same arrogance appears in a less obvious form when humans decide what counts as intelligence or awareness.

We tend to recognize intelligence most readily when it takes a human-shaped form. Parrots fascinated us because they can reproduce human speech, allowing their behavior to resemble something familiar to us. Yet dolphins, orcas, elephants and numerous other animals demonstrate complex social behavior, communication, memory and environmental awareness that researchers continue to study. Their minds are not required to resemble ours in order for their behavior to be worthy of investigation.

The problem may therefore not always be that another creature lacks awareness. Sometimes the problem is that its awareness does not look like ours.

Islam provides an important distinction here. Human beings and jinn possess a form of moral responsibility that is not simply equivalent to whatever perceptual or cognitive capacities other creatures may possess. The Qur'an explicitly places jinn and mankind under the purpose of worship, while the rest of creation is repeatedly described as submitting to Allah in ways that humans do not necessarily comprehend. Qur'an 51:56, 16:49, 17:44

This does not mean that the Qur'an gives us a scientific taxonomy of consciousness in which every creature is assigned a measurable level of awareness. It does, however, give us a worldview in which human consciousness is not the universal standard against which every other form of creation must be judged.

The Qur'an describes animals and birds as communities in 6:38, and in the story of Solomon an ant communicates a warning to the other ants in 27:18–19. More broadly, 17:44 states that the heavens, Earth and everything within them glorify Allah, while human beings do not understand the manner of their glorification.

Our inability to understand another creature's form of perception therefore cannot automatically be treated as evidence that there is nothing there to understand.