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Even more ridiculous than classical theism, and more useless than classical Deism, which, IIRC, a number of 18-19th century thinkers pointed out was a sort of "gateway religion" to outright atheism (because a god who doesn't answer prayers might as well not exist).
But the logic does hold. If you're an atheist materialist, why don't you believe that we are in a simulation? That's a perfectly materialist conclusion based on principles we can observe. Bostrom's a pretty smart guy.
Deep down Christians know that their prayers aren't being answered, they can tell that prayer alone won't get them what they want and produce all this cope about how you should be praying to be a better person rather than any concrete outcome. Nor are they using telescopes to look for heaven, somehow they know they won't find it. Still they find some reassurance in the rehashed schizo-prophecies surrounding a 2000-year dead Jew and hope that some day, their prophecies might be resolved and good things will happen. After they die good things they hope good things will happen. And singing hymns is fun.
Well, simulationists can also hope that good things might happen. We might die and wake up from this dream as transcendent, posthuman beings. It's not a hard kind of knowledge, we could be NPCs and be deleted. But there is more weight behind this abstract hope than in theirs, for a certain kind of rational person.
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