What you say is that the fantasy that god X exists is real and has measurable effects. Like software, it's not the software that makes the computer run, but its manifestation in electrical charges their representation creates in the processor's data lines.
All abstraction is imagined. When someone uses the word God in this context, it's obvious the abstraction is about the root forces that cause reality to manifest.
When you read a fantasy story you don't really think about whether it is true or not, if someone asked you then you would say it isn't true, but you never thought about it before prompted.
So for me the first time I really thought about whether god existed was in internet discussions. When I learned about the religions in school it was just a bunch of cool stories and cultural things, there was no need to think whether any of that was real or not. And when I got into internet discussions and first encountered religious people I wondered why they thought a fantasy story was real, but apparently you can't ask them that.
It's not that simplistic. More like, if we realized that god is a fantasy and there's no afterlife or other mystical values to strive for, and the life we have on earth right now is all there is, the world would actually be a better place.
But even within that framework, there is room to have things that one 'imagines' about God, that one doesn't necessarily 'believe' as a part of ones core beliefs about God. Certainly various religious sects have core beliefs about the human-divine relationship- however, within most belief systems, there remains a great deal of speculation and room for 'imagination'. For example, within the LDS(Mormon) sect, a core belief is that this life is a testing grounds- and a place to learn. That would fit very well within the context of this life being a simulation, of sorts.
Whenever this debate comes up, I find it interesting that it's rarely discussed the theological ramifications of this.
God is generally described as a being who is outside the plane of our existence, and created our existence.
It's intriguing to me that those who argue we're in a simulation have much less trouble having faith in that premise despite the difficulty in proving it being exactly the same as proving the existence of God.
If you think about it, the vast majority of the world which believes in a God essentially believes we're in a simulation.
That is a definition of God that is so amorphous that it is completely useless. God is whatever you want it to be in that particular moment. So much so, that there is nothing concrete there.
You are simply living from moment to moment, with no grounding connecting your beliefs aside from your personal desires for them.
The narrative that God is an eternal void that has become self aware and out of suffering decided to create/imagine a world of humans is not entirely implausible, but in the end it's just a story with no supporting evidence.
Consider for example Max Tegmarks idea that the universe is a mathematical structure in an infinite set of platonically real mathematical structures. I don't believe this view to be true either, but it certainly has a few arguments in its favor. And it's completely incompatible with the former narrative.
My point is that it's possible to conjure up different kinds of narratives to explain our existence. Believing in something just because you thought it up is the delusional part.
It seems relevant to add that I've become a Christian later in life. But that's largely because of things that have happened to me first hand, that have led me to believe in a divine savior at work.
Very true, Anselm refers to greater, not more powerful. And is describing God entirely in the Christian tradition. But another problem is, the conclusion does not follow from the premises.
1) Imagine/conceive of the greatest possible thing. (This premise is more than true, it's a directive.)
2) Real things are greater than imaginary things. (This premise is un-controversially true.)
So we can imagine an extraordinary being omnipotent and great. And we must imagine him existing because if we imagine he does not exist, we're imagining something less great.
The problem is, in his own premise, _any_ existing being is greater than _any_ imagined being.
So it's very true that a real God is greater than an imagined God. But, from premise 2, so is any physical real thing including the most humble being.
At the risk of wandering outside of my expertise, I would think this would not bother the faithful either way since I understand faith is central to the religion. I'm guessing that Anselm's argument is a "nice to have" but if it fails it does not disturb anyone. And incidentally, I hope I have not said anything offensive.
It's incredible how many people still don't know what a myth is, or how to read one. God is, and has always been, metaphor for the universe at large, designed to awaken one to the wonder and ever present mystery of our existence. God is inside of you, and is you. You are the voice of the Universe. The Thiest vs. Athiest debate seems so silly to me - this is like people debating the existence of an experience one has when they listen to a piece of music or view a painting.
God and simulation to me are fundamentally different, but that may be because I dabbled in religion a lot.
The simulation hypothesis, to me, is not terribly surprising or interesting. Why wouldn't someone be able to create a simulation like ours at some point? I am not following why Musk's belief is stupid? Yeah, obviously there's another layer above, and this doesn't explain that much, but I don't understand the stupid part.
God is something else. For one, not all gods in religions are the same. The Christian God is not a mere simulator. He's everything that ever was (i.e., final level), he's super powerful, and, most importantly, as far as Christianity is concerned everything that God does is right.
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