Have you heard the paradox of the arrow which, having been fired, crosses half the distance between the archer and the target, and then half of the remaining distance, and then half the still remaining distance, and so and so forth? In this paradox, the arrow never reaches its destination, but we know that in real life, arrows do not proceed in this manner, and they do in fact hit targets. Now let's apply that same sort of logic to another subject.
Matter, even solid matter, is mostly just empty space. That is, of course, because there is a lot of empty space between the atoms of which the solid matter is comprised. However, the atoms themselves are also mostly just empty space. After all, there is a lot of space between the electrons and the nucleus, and between the protons and the neutrons, and between the gluons and the photons, and between the up quarks and the down quarks, etc. etc. If all pieces of all matter at all levels are mostly just emptiness, then it follows that no matter is actually solid. But matter is solid in real life, right? Sadly, physicists are finding no proof that any matter is actually solid. In fact, if we are going to be honest about it, they are finding a lot of evidence that suggests that matter does not actually exist at all. You may protest, and say that the chair upon which you are sitting still seems every bit as solid as it did yesterday, but allow me to remind you that if you were having a very realistic (and boring) dream about sitting in a solid chair, no part of that apparently sturdy piece of furniture would actually exist. In the same way, if a character in a video game were to sit in a chair, no matter how solid it may appear, not one sliver of that chair actually exists. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that modern physics is leading us to believe that our own furniture is just as illusory.
But surely, the breaking down of matter into smaller and smaller pieces cannot continue forever, right? That is correct, because you would eventually reach the Planck length, which is the smallest possible length that anything can be (approximately 1.616199×10^-35 meters). Because nothing can ever be smaller than a Planck length, a Plank space cannot be only partially full, it must entirely full or entirely empty. This means that at the base level, the manifestation of our reality is very similar to binary code, which seems to be another hint that our reality may not be ultimate one.
There are many other reasons to suspect our reality is being simulated either in a mind or a computer (such the fact that particles can be connected even while separated by vast distances, like icons on the opposite ends of a desktop), but for now I would like to move on to the "religious" implications of the possibility of our reality being virtual, the most obvious of which being the possibility of an "afterlife."
Imagine you had been in a coma your entire life, and that the entire time you were in the coma you were dreaming one long continuous and congruous dream. Imagine further that after many years of this, a doctor managed to wake you up for a few minutes, and then you relapsed into your dream. The language spoken by the doctor is unfamiliar to you, as you have only ever spoken a language created within your dream. The doctor himself is an unfamiliar creature because, having never seen yourself, you created an entirely nonhuman body for yourself. In fact, nothing in the real world makes any sense to you. However, you are aware that your senses are much sharper than they have been previously, and that whatever you are experiencing is more real than anything you have ever experienced before. How could you describe your experience to the other characters in your dream?
In real life when this happens to someone, it is called a "near death experience," and it is often brushed aside as being the result of hormones being released within the brain. But when you take consider seriously the possibility that our reality is being simulated in the mind of a higher being, tales of the afterlife begin to make more sense. After all, wouldn't expect those briefly released from the simulation to come back with descriptions of fantastic beings, encounters with those who were previously released from the simulation, and most of all, the overwhelming sense that all of it is much more real than anything they have ever experienced before?
I am likely to post more reasons for suspecting our reality is virtual, but I would like to leave you for now with this thought: Our universe can broken down into Planck spaces, which are essentially real-life pixels. The speed of light is the speed required to move one Planck distance per Planck time (the smallest possible time), which is why if anything were to travel faster than the speed of light, it would arrive one or more Planck lengths away before leaving its starting point, essentially traveling through time. However, in a reality which could not be broken down into Plank spaces, it would be possible to travel through time without breaking the speed of light. In such a reality, traveling from one time to another, would be as simple as traveling from one place to another. Essentially, time would lose all relevance. As time would lose relevance, so would its definition of being the direction in which entropy increases. Without the continual increase in entropy that plagues our reality, such concepts as immortality and even eternal bliss become definite possibilities. This description fits with the biblical view of Heaven, as well as with the descriptions of those who claim to have been there.
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