This article addresses one of the most commonly raised objections to the reality of God as Creator – Why did God not make a perfect world? Treatises have been written on this topic, but the piece below provides a succinct overview of some points worth considering.
Granville Sewell writes:
In a series of posts, I am considering the problem of pain, but also indirectly, the “silence” of God. See my earlier post here.
The laws of nature work together to create a magnificent world of mountains and rivers, jungles and waterfalls, oceans and forests, animals and plants. The basic laws of physics are cleverly designed to create conditions on Earth suitable for human life and human development. Gravity prevents us and our belongings from floating off into space; water makes our crops grow; the fact that certain materials are combustible makes it possible to cook our food and stay warm in winter. Yet gravity, water, and fire are responsible for many tragedies, such as airplane crashes, drownings, and chemical plant explosions. Tragedies such as floods and automobile accidents are the results of laws of physics which, viewed as a whole, are magnificently designed and normally work for our benefit. Nearly everything in Nature which is harmful to man has also a benevolent side, or is the result of a good thing gone bad. Even pain and fear themselves sometimes have useful purposes: pain may warn us that something in our body needs attention, and without fear, we would all die young doing foolish and dangerous things, or kill ourselves the first time life disappoints us.
Why Not Overrule Nature?
But why won’t God protect us from the bad side effects of Nature? Why doesn’t He overrule the laws of Nature when they work against us? Why is He so “silent” during our most difficult and heart-breaking moments? First of all, if we assume He has complete control over nature, we are assuming much more than we have a right to assume. It does not necessarily follow that, because something is designed, it can never break down. We design cars, and yet they don’t always function as designed. When our car breaks down, we don’t conclude that the designer planned for it to break down, nor do we conclude that it had no designer; when the human body breaks down, we should not jump to the conclusion that God planned the illness, nor should we conclude that the body had no designer.
That we were designed by a fantastically intelligent super intellect is a conclusion which is easily drawn from the evidence all around us. To jump from this to the conclusion that this creator can control everything is quite a leap. In fact, I find it easy to draw the opposite conclusion from the evidence, that this creator cannot, or at least does not, control everything. Nearly everyone seems to assume that if you attribute anything to God, you have to attribute everything to God. And even if we assume He has complete control over nature it is hard to see how He could satisfy everyone. Your crops are dry so you pray for rain — but I am planning a picnic. It seems fairer to let nature take its course and hope we learn to adapt. Controlling the motions of all the atoms in the world so that nothing terrible ever happens to us, so that we always get what we most need, is probably not as easy as it sounds!
If Natural Laws Were Unreliable
In any case, what would life be like if the laws of nature were not reliable? What if God could and did stand by to intervene on our behalf every time we needed Him? We would then be spared all of life’s disappointments and failures, and life would certainly be less dangerous, but let us think about what life would be like in a world where nothing could ever go wrong.
I enjoy climbing mountains — small ones. I recently climbed an 8,700-foot peak in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and was hot and exhausted, but elated, when I finished the climb. Later I heard a rumor that the Park Service was considering building a cable car line to the top, and I was horrified. Why was I horrified — that would make it much easier for me to reach the peak? Because, of course, the pleasure I derived from climbing that peak did not come simply from reaching the top — it came from knowing that I had faced a challenge and overcome it. Since riding in a cable car requires no effort, it is impossible to fail to reach the top, and thus taking a cable car to the peak brings no sense of accomplishment. Even if I went up the hard way again, just knowing that I could have ridden the cable car would cheapen my accomplishment.
When we think about it, we see in other situations that achieving a goal brings satisfaction only if effort is required, and only if the danger of failure is real. And if the danger of failure is real, sometimes we will fail.
An Athletic Contest
When we prepare for an athletic contest, we know what the rules are and we plan our strategy accordingly. We work hard, physically and mentally, to get ready for the game. If we win, we are happy knowing that we played fairly, followed the rules, and achieved our goal. Of course we may lose, but what satisfaction would we derive from winning a game whose rules are constantly being modified to make sure we win? It is impossible to experience the thrill of victory without risking the agony of defeat. How many fans would attend a football game whose participants are just actors, acting out a script which calls for the home team to win? We would all rather go to a real game and risk defeat.
Life is a real game, not a rigged one. We know what the rules are, and we plan accordingly. We know that the laws of nature and of life do not bend at our every wish, and it is precisely this knowledge which makes our achievements meaningful. If the rules of nature were constantly modified to make sure we achieved our goals — whether they involve proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, getting a book published, finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, earning a college degree, or making a small business work — we would derive no satisfaction from reaching those goals. If the rules were even occasionally bent, we would soon realize that the game was rigged, and just knowing that the rules were flexible would cheapen all our accomplishments. Perhaps I should say, “If we were aware that the rules were being bent,” because I do believe that God has at times intervened in human and natural history, and I would like to believe He still does so on occasions, but in our experience, at least, the rules are inflexible.
If great works of art, music, literature, or science could be realized without great effort, and if success in such endeavors were guaranteed, the works of Michelangelo, Mozart, Shakespeare, and Newton would not earn much admiration.
A Book from the Sky
If it were possible to realize great engineering projects without careful study, clever planning and hard work, or without running any risk of failure, mankind would feel no satisfaction in having built the Panama Canal or having sent a man to the moon. And if the dangers Columbus faced in sailing into uncharted waters were not real, we would not honor him as a brave explorer. Scientific and technological progress are only made through great effort and careful study, and not every scientist or inventor is fortunate enough to leave his mark. But anyone who thinks God would be doing us a favor by dropping a book from the sky with all the answers in it does not understand human nature very well — that would take all the fun out of discovery. If the laws of nature were more easily circumvented, life would certainly be less frustrating and less dangerous, but also less challenging and less interesting.
Many of the tragedies, failures, and disappointments which afflict mankind are inevitable consequences of laws of nature and of life which, viewed as a whole, are magnificently designed and normally work for our benefit. And it is because we know these laws are reliable, and do not bend to satisfy our needs, that our greatest achievements have meaning.
This series is adapted from Dr. Sewell’s book In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design.
Evolution News
A better question is why did God make the world at all?
CD at 1,
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
‘293 Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: “The world was made for the glory of God.” St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things “not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it”, for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand.” The First Vatican Council explains:
‘This one, true God, of his own goodness and “almighty power”, not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel “and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . .” ‘
Why should God be required to make everything perfect, just because we want it that way?
Can’t he have purpos(es) we are unaware of? Furthermore, can’t he have purpos(es) for us that we aren’t even able to comprehend?
This is nonsense.
Of course the creator could control everything. And the irony is that the creator does but for purposes/objectives we do not consider. This must be the best of all possible worlds. What we fail to do is try to understand is why it is so.
Clue: the OP gets near the answer but misses an important part. This world must look imperfect. How else could It be perfect if it did not look imperfect. It must be a set of perfect imperfects to be perfect. An essential part of this world is that we must believe it is imperfect and thus doubt it is perfect
Part of this is bad things must happen to good people (natural evils) for the world to be perfect.
Jesus Christ will return to judge the living and the dead. Before then, our best lives are lived according to His Commandments. He loves us.
Are you really sure you want that?
Seversky at 6,
Do you have an alternative? What is it?
Chuck Darwin
I’ve often wondered that myself.
As to:
Or put another way, Is there an ultimate ‘teleological’ purpose behind the universe to be found?
Under atheistic naturalism, which is the default assumption of many leading theoretical physicists today, when you drill down to their philosophical bedrock, we find that they hold, as a foundational presupposition, that there is no ultimate reason to be found for why the universe exists.
For instance, under inflationary cosmology, which is currently the leading theory in theoretical physics for how the universe came about, (although the ‘simplest’ models of inflation are now experimentally falsified), the entire universe is “presupposed’ to be the result of some random ‘quantum fluctuation’. A quantum fluctuation which, as the name itself implies, happened for no reason whatsoever.
But alas, the atheist’s appeal to random quantum fluctuations, (which happen for no reason whatsoever), to try explain why the universe exists is a two edged sword that comes back to bite the atheist big time,
As Bruce Gordon further explains elsewhere, “In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum, (“Boltzmann Brain Paradox”), than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science.,,,”
In short, presupposing random quantum fluctuations, which happen for no reason whatsoever, as the ultimate reason why the universe, and everything in it, exists, destroys our ability to reason coherently about the universe in the first place.
Yet, In order for science to even be possible for us, we MUST presuppose the universe to be rational.
As Paul Davies pointed out, “even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
In short, in order for science to even be possible for us in the first place, we must presuppose that there is an ultimate reason to be found for why the universe exists. i.e. We must presuppose Theism to be true. Otherwise we are stuck with, as Dr. Gordon put it, “a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science.,,,”
And indeed, one of the main foundation presuppositions that led to the founding of modern science in medieval Christian Europe was that the universe is rational, and/or ‘intelligible’, in its foundational essence, (see Stephen Meyer, “Return of the God Hypothesis). As Prof Robert Koons put it, “Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics.”
So, sInce atheistic naturalism is simply a non-starter as providing the ultimate, rational, reason for why the universe exists, we are back to ChuckyD’s and Alan Fox’s (very reasonable) question, “why did God make the world at all?”
Well in the New Testament, the Bible, fairly specifically, tells us the ultimate reason for why God created the world/universe.
And I hold that we now have evidence that this claim from the New Testament, for the ultimate reason why the universe exists, is true.
Although Atheistic Naturalism, as a foundational presupposition, holds that there is no ultimate reason to be found for why the universe exists, this does not stop atheistic theoretical physicists, (in an amazing display of cognitive dissonance), from looking for a ultimate reason for why the universe exists. They do this via their search for a “Grand Unified Theory of Everything”.
Yet as Prof. Steve Fuller asked, “Why should we even think there is such a thing (as a “theory of everything”)?,,, You see, there is a sense in which there is design at the ultimate level, the ultimate teleology you might say, which provides the ultimate closure,,”
And indeed, the atheist’s attempt to find a naturalistic ‘theory of everything’, without recourse to God, has, time and time again, failed.
The main failure in the naturalist’s attempt to find a “theory of everything”, without recourse to God, is the ‘infinite mathematical divide’ that exists between General Relativity, (i.e. gravity), and Quantum Mechanics,
Professor Jeremy Bernstein states the situation as such, “there remains an irremediable difficulty. Every order reveals new types of infinities, and no finite number of renormalizations renders all the terms in the series finite.
The theory is not renormalizable.”
And as theoretical physicist Sera Cremonini stated, “You would need to add infinitely many counterterms in a never-ending process. Renormalization would fail.,,,”
And as Michio Kaku stated in the following video, when you try to combine General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics, “you get an infinite sequence of infinities, (which is) infinitely worse than the divergences of Einstein’s original theory (i.e. General Relativity).”
Various attempts have been made to find a mathematical workaround for this apparent ‘infinite mathematical divide’ that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, M-Theory, etc.. They have all failed. And the current mathematical workaround adopts “a very radical attitude to infinity”
Yet even this current proposed mathematical workaround, of prescribing a minimum possible size, will not bridge the ‘infinite mathematical divide’ that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
Specifically, it is now proven, via the extension of Godel’s incompleteness into quantum physics, that “even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,,” and that “the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”,
In short, and mathematically speaking, the microscopic descriptions of quantum mechanics, (even if you take a ‘radical’ approach to infinity and prescribe a minimum possible size), will never be successfully extended to the account for the macroscopic descriptions of General Relativity. i.e. There will never be a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ that includes both quantum mechanics and general relativity into a single mathematical theorem.
And although there will never be a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ that bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between quantum mechanics and general relativity, all hope is not lost in finding the correct ‘theory if everything’.
Dr. William Dembski in this following comment, although he was not directly addressing the ‘infinite mathematical divide’ that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, offers this insight into what the ‘unification’ of infinite God with finite man might look like mathematically:, Specifically he states, “The Cross is a path of humility in which the infinite God becomes finite and then contracts to zero, only to resurrect and thereby unite a finite humanity within a newfound infinity.”
Of note: I hold it to be fairly obvious that ‘growing large without measure’ can only ever be a potential infinity. Whereas a fraction in which the denominator goes to zero would be an actual infinity, and/or a “completed totality”
Moreover, when we rightly allow the Agent Causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founder of modern physics, Sir Isaac Newton, himself originally envisioned,
,,, and when we rightly allow the Agent Causality of God back into physics, as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company,
,, then that (very) reasonable concession to rightly allow God ‘back’, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned), provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides a very plausible, and empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
Specifically, when scrutinizing some of the many fascinating details of the Shroud of Turin, we ‘surprisingly’ find that both General Relativity, i.e. gravity, and Quantum Mechanics were both dealt with in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
As can be seen in the following ‘backside’ image, and holographic image video, from the Shroud of Turin, there is no flattening on the backside of the body as would be expected if the image on the Shroud had formed if a dead body had merely been laying flat on a slab of rock.
And in the following video, the late Isabel Piczek, who made a sculpture from the Shroud of Turin states that, “The muscles of the body are absolutely not crushed against the stone of the tomb. They are perfect. It means the body is hovering between the two sides of the shroud. What does that mean? It means there is absolutely no gravity.”
As well, Kevin Moran, an optical engineer who has studied the Shroud of Turin, describes the Shroud Image in this way, “The unique front-and-back only image can be best described as gravitationally collimated. The radiation that made the image acted perfectly parallel to gravity. There is no side image. The radiation is parallel to gravity,,,”
Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with on the Shroud of Turin, the Shroud of Turin also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics itself was also dealt with.
In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms.
Moreover, the following rather astonishing study on the Shroud, found that it would take 34 Trillion Watts of what is termed VUV (directional) radiation to form the image on the shroud.
That it is even possible for the human body to emit such ‘quantum light’ is revealed by the following,
Thus when we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders,,,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with a very plausible, and empirically backed, reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”
In conclusion, the New Testament’s claim for the ultimate reason, and/or purpose, for why God created this world/universe is found to be true, and ChuckyD’s and Alan Fox’s age old question of ‘why did God make the world at all?” is now found to have an empirically backed answer.
CD @1 “A better question is why did God make the world at all?”
A question worth answering! Please feel free to email me at erhedin@bsu.edu if you’d like to have an honest dialog about this.
To show the absurdity of this OP, we have the proposition that some entity that created this universe and our solar system exquisitely precise but then cannot stop a tsunami or earthquake from harming people. Or even worse, doesn’t consider the supposed harm that these events have.
This is the proposition put forth. Instead of accepting the obvious, the author accepts an absurdity.
Why?
Aside: if we eliminated all early deaths due to disease, we will still complain about the inconsequential tribulations brought on by a minor cold or a blister and wonder why the creator allowed them to happen. Then we would complain that we aren’t as rich as many of our neighbors and why did the creator allow this to happen.
Maybe we should be thankful for our existence and what we have on this special day in the United States.
Aside2: Could the nature of the creator be found in the nature of the creations? A long time was spent almost two years ago on natural law found in the nature of humans.
“A better question is why did God make the world at all?”
Why would there be a Universe just sitting around?
Andrew
The question why did God bother with a universe at all assumes (for the sake of argument) that God did create it.
If the ultimate purpose is for souls to be resurrected in heaven, then what is the point of the universe and the earthly realm? What need had God of the intermediate step?
Of course we are all stuck with ineffability and ants-on-the-sidewalk syndrome.
Caspian/13
It’s a rhetorical question. I actually got an answer when I was eight reviewing the Baltimore Catechism for my confirmation:
Of course, God was defined as perfect, complete goodness, all powerful and lacking in nothing. So, my still developing, 8-year-old mind wrestled with the idea that this God didn’t really need me to love and serve him, and, in fact, he didn’t need anything at all because, well, he didn’t need anything. So, what was the point? When I finally got to college, I learned that this is what philosophers call a tautology….
CD at 17,
And you’re no Bible scholar either. The Baltimore Catechism gave you the correct answer and you rejected it by applying faulty reasoning. Perhaps the following will help you and others who think God does not need anyone.
‘III. “THE WORLD WAS CREATED FOR THE GLORY OF GOD”
‘293 Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: “The world was made for the glory of God.”134 St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things “not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it”,135 for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: “Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand.”136 The First Vatican Council explains:
‘This one, true God, of his own goodness and “almighty power”, not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel “and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . .”137
“294 The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of his goodness, for which the world was created. God made us “to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace”,138 for “the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of God: if God’s revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word’s manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.”139 The ultimate purpose of creation is that God “who is the creator of all things may at last become “all in all”, thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our beatitude.”140 ‘
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
SECOND EDITION
Relatd
Guilty as charged–I am definitely no Bible scholar….
The Bible has nothing to do with ID.
Various religions will claim ID. People want to discuss religion here and religion may be their motivation to comment both for and against. The irony is that ID supports several conflicting religions and will not help one choose one over the other.
Another irony, the author argues against Christianity in the OP by proposing a very limited creator.
Bible==>Creationism==>Scientific Creationism==>Intelligent Design.
The lineage is quite clear. With “find-and-replace” evidence to support the links.
Sir Gile/21
It will be interesting to see what the next iteration of Creationism brings our way….
CD at 22,
Intelligent Design is science.
CD@22, I’m not sure,
but it will certainly be entertaining. And the blog developed to service the new “science” will deny any linkage to religion, creationism, scientific creationism or intelligent design. And the discussions will be about religion, atheism, materialism, nihilism, absolute moral values, the evils of LGBQ, the evils of abortion, IUD and the birth control pill, the dangers of gun control, the exceptional nature of humans, the downfall of society, crooked yardsticks and Plato. And there will be no discussion about the research being done by this new “science”.
ID is not a science so how can there be research on it.
It uses the tools of science to conclude what is likely happening in certain areas of reality/science domains. That’s why I refer to it as science+
Now, one can recommend scientific studies in certain domains that would solve various issues relevant to claims made by ID.
ID has nothing to do with religion, especially Christianity. The main author just published an anti Christianity OP above.
Bornagain77@10:
It seems to me that here the utmost simplicity of one world concept trumps the profundity of this last quoted statement.
If the world is ultimately at base something at least related to a virtual reality simulation instituted in a higher level of reality (where we are presumably the unwitting “users”), then such mathematical and logical incompatibilities in the apparent principles underlying our physical reality have a simple explanation: they arise because the designer and creator being(s) designed and coded the simulation program that way. The lines of text in a novel or the lines of code in a program are created by intelligence but have no obligation to make logical sense.
26,,, As to: “It seems to me that here the utmost simplicity of one world concept trumps the profundity of this last quoted statement.,,,
The lines of text in a novel or the lines of code in a program are created by intelligence but have no obligation to make logical sense.”
Well, to point out the obvious, the lines of text in a novel must make overarching logical sense if the author wishes for his book to make logical sense to his readers. And the lines of code in a program must make overarching logical sense in a program if the programmer wishes for his program to function effectively, and logically, for his users.
In short, there must be an overarching ‘context’ to a book, or to a program, that is ‘logically’ obeyed by the author, or the programmer, in order for a book to make logical sense to readers and a computer program to function effectively, and logically, for users.
Yet, as Godel’s extension into quantum mechanics has now proven, (see post 10), reductive materialism simply can’t do overarching context.
It takes an immaterial mind to do, and/or provide, an overarching context.
Here is a simple example that gets the “reductive materialism doesn’t do overarching context” point across fairly clearly.
Richard Dawkin’s infamous Weasel phrase, (which Dawkins used to try to prove the feasibility of evolutionary processes, and which William Dembski debunked), simply does not make any logical sense without taking the proper overarching context of the Weasel phrase into consideration
Moreover, the specific context, in which the phrase is actually used, is also used to illustrate the spineless nature of one of the characters of the play. i.e. To illustrate just how easily the spineless character in the play, i.e. Polonius, can be led around by the nose to see anything that Hamlet wants him to see:
After realizing what the actual context of the ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’ phrase was, I remember thinking to myself that this was perhaps the worst possible phrase from Hamlet that Dawkins, in his futile effort to show the power of evolution, could have possibly chosen to illustrate his point.
I’m sure leading gullible people around by the nose to make them see whatever fictitious thing you want them to see is hardly the overall point that Dawkins was hoping to convey with his, now debunked, ‘Weasel’ program.
Bornagain77@27
But my point was that the illogical lines of text and lines of computer code referred to can logically exist because they are merely patterns created by intelligence, where their possible internal illogicality or self-contradictoryness is irrelevant to their existence as patterns of description. If the cosmic equivalent in the world reality simulation of the lines of code referred to don’t make sense, that is not any reason the virtual reality simulation couldn’t exhibit a corresponding illogical behavior to its users. For instance, a world in which the laws of physics are the same as our world, but in which a main battle tank could have a range unrefuelled of 250 miles and a cost of $50,000. Apparently physically impossible in that world but still allowed in the simulation by the powers that be. The powers that be could enable the existence of miracles.
As witness an apparent mathematical conflict between special relativity and quantum mechanics. Both systems could exist in the world simulation as behaviors of matter and energy, even though they might be mutually contradictory in their basic mathematical form, since it would be the logical design of the simulation for them to exist and behave that particular way – completely arbitrary and subject to the will of the creators of the simulation..