These last few days I’ve installed and been playing the Sims 2. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a game where you manage the lives of various people (henceforth called Sims). You have to tell them to get dressed, go to the bathroom, take baths, go to work, flirt with other Sims, buy them the things they need, etc.

My Sims are a normal couple. They have their wants and needs. The father is a sex deviant, always looking to have WooHoo (that’s what sex is called) with the mother. Her needs are rather more materialistic, wanting to move up the corporate ladder and buy expensive stuff. They have jobs, two teen daughters (who have boyfriends), like to play SSX 3 in their free time, and are very religious. By religious, I mean they believe in Me.

Not all Sims believe in Me. Most Sim scientists don’t. They see their world, they know how it works and they see there is no need for a God to run it. Indeed there isn’t, if I step away the computer takes over and the Sims go on with their lives (albeit a bit less happy). Sure, if I buy them a new kitchen counter, it magically appears, but that’s normal for them, that’s how purchases work. If you have money and want something hard enough, it magically appears and the money gets deducted from your account. They sometimes fight over this because they don’t make common decisions on what to buy that much, but most of the time everything is just fine.

As I said earlier, some Sims don’t believe in Me. Others believe in me so much that they’re willing to kill other Sims to convince them. I don’t really care either way (although I don’t condone killing). I manage their lives anyway. It makes no difference to Me because in the end I don’t have to judge them. When they die, they get deleted indiscriminately. That sort of moots the whole “is there a God” argument, but they don’t know it.

I also didn’t send anyone there to tell them I exist. It would perhaps be easier just to send someone and have him perform some miracles than code the entire game again just to make my presence more felt. Of course, the miracles this person would perform could all be explained by the standard rules of the game (since that’s the interface I’d be using), but I think it’s more about the timing than the method.

They just probably figured out about me on their own, and that would explain why they got so many things wrong (like the afterlife, or reincarnation, or whatever they think happens). They just get deleted, maybe I should tell them that somehow, it might stop all the bickering.

I guess the point of this post is that they can never really know for sure if I exist or not, probably because the game wasn’t designed for that. Their Sim science can explain their world perfectly without the need for Me. Then again, the appearing of stuff is too convenient to happen on its own. The game looks like it’s been going on forever, too, the family I just started playing has a family tree and everything, even though the game just began a few days ago. I guess they’ll never know for sure…

And neither will we.