04/15/2026
In the age of video games, social media, and artificial intelligence, a new technoscientific narrative has emerged about the nature of reality and the future of humanity: the simulation hypothesis. For some, it has the potential to reshape traditional religious frameworks. For others, it functions as a kind of “religion for atheists” or “science for believers.” As a cultural phenomenon emerging from technologically mediated societies, it has even been described as the first “meme religion” for digital natives, appearing after decades in which both atheism and “spiritual but not religious” identities have become a significant part of the religious landscape in the West.
What might developments in AI and NPCs have to do with ancient sacred texts from traditions such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism? What might the metaphor of living in a video game reveal about the ineffable nature of reality?
In this talk, we explore where the simulation hypothesis intersects with both the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of religious and spiritual traditions. We will look at resonances with mystical strands of the world’s major religions, including Sufism, Kabbalah, and yogic cosmological models.
Rather than proposing the simulation hypothesis as a new religion, this talk suggests that it offers a set of contemporary technoscientific metaphors for insights that sacred texts have long expressed: that the world we inhabit may be, in some sense, illusory. Seen in this way, the simulation hypothesis becomes a conceptual bridge not only between science and religion, but also across different spiritual traditions.
