If God Doesn't Exist, Then Life Is Just a Video Game

I wasn't really planning on writing this one now, but I figured hey, why not... The idea has been on my mind a lot lately, though it never really leaves it. And when that's the case, as with most ideas, the best is to just write them down and get it over with.

I don't think you have to be a big fan of video games to understand my point with this argument, which I actually believe to be quite simple... What is a video game? A video game is essentially a closed system that contains an alternate reality governed by its own rules and values, which make perfect sense within the system itself but lack any meaning outside of it. If you know quite a bit about coding you might consider that definition to be atrocious, I dunno, but as far as I can tell, it's an accurate and simple definition for our purposes here. Let's take Fallout: New Vegas for example. It's a massive sprawling game with a vast map to explore, various ways to develop your character, countless characters to interact with, as well as plot points to bend to your will, and tons of rare items to collect. So as you play the game you might lose yourself within the vast world that is its depiction of a radiated Mojave desert, or you might spend a lot of time tinkering with the intricacies of how you wanna build your character, or you might become invested in the characters that populate the world, in getting to know them, hearing their stories and so on, or you might put a lot of value into acquiring a rare weapon with a very specific name. You might, and likely will, do all of that, and it will all make sense because that's just what you're supposed to do in the game. Thing is though, when you don't feel like playing anymore, or when you wanna start over, or when the power goes out and your computer crashes, the screen will just go black and the game will become a big nothing... Because it's just not real.

So what does that mean? I'd say it means that, because the game is a closed system, whatever it has of value can only be valuable within the system. And even more so because it's a virtual thing. Some players will go through a lot of trouble to find a specific rare item in a game, or something that is exactly the same as usual but just so happens to have a rare alternate color, or in card games, for example, there are collectors who are often willing to pay thousands of dollars for a card that has the luxury of belonging to a specific edition, when they could instead get a much cheaper one that is essentially the same. Thing is, that other card would only be the same if you don't know or don't care about the game, because when you do care you can immediately tell its value. I might be pressing my luck by going into card games, since those have a physical dimension that video games more or less lack, but I'll press my luck a bit more and mention chess. Because if you understand the game of chess, you will begin to see a sense of style in the games, you can glean something about the moves, you can find them beautiful, graceful and genius, or aggressive and violent and blunt... The more you understand, the more you buy into the game, the more sense it makes. But the problem is that if you simply do not buy into the game you can just knock the pieces off the board, or you can throw rare first edition cards into the garbage because they're just pieces of cardboard, or you can ignore shiny pokémon, or you can delete a level fifty, power armor, anti-materiel rifle character and in all that, you won't even bat an eye. In essence, the value of the game, along with everything contained within it, is contingent on whether or not you want to play.

But what the hell does any of that have to do with life? Or even worse, with God? I actually think my point follows, because if God doesn't exist then we seemingly can't find a set of values that exist outside the world or outside of human existence. This might be an issue of dispute but, for my money, if every single human being ceased to exist, then the Mona Lisa would cease to be a work of art. It would instead become just a thing, seen with the exact same confusion as a person who never played chess looks at a chess puzzle, or as a person who never played video games looks at gameplay footage. Indeed, if you listen to people talk about a video game you don't know, especially if you don't know video games in general, the whole thing will sound senseless, like two people arguing in a language you don't speak. The analogy doesn't fully translate to real life because, for the most part, we buy into the premise of life and we play its little game, for what little good it does us. We are born, we gain some awareness of the game, we do the tutorial stage, we choose a character build, then we begin by performing a few side quests until we have to move on and play the main quest on our own and without the tutorial characters. But eventually we become tutorial characters for new players, we get to the endgame, we play the final quest, the credits roll and we find that there's no post-game...

We can buy into all of the game, I suppose, and pragmatically speaking we do just that. But to those who don't see the point, to those who don't buy into the game of life, why play it? Or at least why play it by everyone else's rules? And if the new rules one individual creates for himself are considered evil by everyone else around him, then so what? It's all an illusion anyway. Every single one of our gameplay hours will be wiped away in the end... Our collection of achievements, our completed quests and rare items, they will all cease to exist, and at the end of the day, every one of us is a character not entirely different than the polygon blocks that constitute a video game character's model, and our personalities are just the lines of code that constitute its AI. Life itself becomes contingent and, ultimately, pointless. Maybe it's not a proper logical conclusion in the strictest application of the word, but what is logic compared to the meaning of life, especially to those for whom logic is nothing? When nothing makes sense in every other way, what comfort is there in A=A or 2+2=4 or F=ma? For I am persuaded that neither logic, nor mathematics, nor physics, nor good food nor strong drink, nor vast riches nor sensual comforts, nor beautiful books, or songs or sights, nor any single thing in this world shall be able to separate us from the senselessness of existence... And that sucks.

Only God would give a purpose to existence because it would mean that our existence in this world isn't contingent, it would mean we were created for a higher purpose, even if that purpose is suffering. For in my pessimism, I am also persuaded that, as far as the senselessness of existence goes, a strange and unloving god would be preferable to absolutely nothing. If God doesn't exist then most of our mental faculties, the ones with which we wonder about the purpose of the game, they're just bugs in the system, they're lines of code we simply should not have. If God doesn't exist then we have become too evolved, too self-aware, and when that happens in a video game, you'll soon find yourself bored with it, all sense of immersion will leave you, and you'll become inclined to do stupid things just because you don't care anymore, or perhaps just because you have the freedom to do them. Because both in life and in video games there's no true way to prevent crime, or if you prefer, sin. It's just a thing that happens, and when it's done, it's done.

On that point we can jump from existentialism to morality. Because in a video game, staying with New Vegas as an example, you can have fairly complex systems of morality, that is, the game can consist of an alternate world filled with many different characters with competing interests, and if you help some, you'll be disliked by others because they'll deem your actions as immoral according to their own philosophies. Or I can make it more blunt and mention how, in such a game, as in a lot of games nowadays, you can do pretty much whatever you want. You walk into a new town and feel like exploring? Sure. You instead feel like drawing your gun and killing everyone just because? Do that too. Only difference between that and real life is that in life we have no quicksave function, that is to say, we can't save the game and reload it if our choice goes wrong. But apart from that, the logic is exactly the same – if there's no ultimate purpose, if there's no justice beyond this world, then the consequences of everything we do only matter as long as we ourselves exist. None of what we do today would matter if a meteorite was going to crash into our planet tomorrow morning, so why is it any different if, instead of a meteorite, we will die one by one and, usually, after a few years of riotous living? I suppose it don't make no sense to assume that there's absolutely nothing that matters, because for the most part we can at least act like something does matter, we can buy into the premise of the game. But if you don't then there's nothing to be done, there can't be any meaning beyond this world if all that exists is this world. Modern atheists would tell you to create your own meaning, to find your own way in life, but just how many people in this world are capable of that? And of those who claim to have found their own purpose, how many of them would remain in it should a Job-like tragedy strike them?

I guess something beyond this world has to exist in order to give this world meaning, and that something, more or less by definition, would be God. Then again, the origin of existence could actually be some weird alien fellas who placed pink sponges in watery vats out of which emerged our respective consciousnesses, but that wouldn't be very different than a video game too, in fact, it would be almost entirely the same... Thus, either God exists and life has meaning, or God doesn't exist and life has no meaning. These recurring platitudes of “it has meaning to me” or “at least we can find some meaning” make no sense. So on that note, and having no good words of my own with which to end this article, I'll make use of someone else's words, ironically, the words of a video game character named Joshua Graham, who says,

There is much to be skeptical of in this world, so it no longer surprises me to learn how many people don't really believe in anything. But I believe that our Lord was made flesh as Jesus Christ, and died to redeem me. And you. […] And I believe there is something beyond this rock and this air and this water around us, something more that is waiting for us. […] In a world filled with misery and uncertainty, it is a great comfort to know that, in the end, there is light in the darkness.