'The Game Allegory'
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Peace,
I have been doing some heavy philosophical thinking for quite some time about something I call 'the game allegory'. It is an attempt at explaining the life we live here on Earth from a different perspective. Observe that we shall all take this story lightly, as an alternative way of comprehending the meaning of life.
I have for quite some time already started to perceive the world we live in as a sort of game, although a very real game, where you have only one life and you cannot mess around for your score at the end will determine whether you qualify for Heaven or not. The verse in the Quran telling this world is just a temporary illusion boosted my feeling of a game.
Anyway, I will start my allegory from the beginning.
- The game creation
God made a new race called human. And He created a physical game world for it with amazing features and the size of it is enormous. The reason for making all this was to make a trial for his new race, the human, to see if it could live up to His standards, after a prototype human male named Adam and his wife failed a first test, which was eating the forbidden fruit in God's garden after Satan duped him.
Everything we know in our life is part of a huge game world. God created it all.
He executed the game world construction through something known as 'Big Bang' where everything exploded into existence, shaping the universe with its astronomical amount of planets, stars and other things, which is continuously expanding until He destroys it all in pre-programmed scenario known as 'the Hour', after which God will shut down His server and extract all character (soul) data and classify each played character in three categories through a judgment process.
- Terraforming Earth
After creating the universe, God began to terraform the Earth, adding whatever game elements needed for the test. He had created certain rules, how things should work and thus the so-called "laws of physics" were added as main parameters, as well as all other limits as we know them. He created a self-sufficient planet with renewable resources, a very amazingly well-developed platform, yet it was very easy for God to do it.
To make things more intriguing He created evolution, the biological process, which God is in ultimate control of. Evolution is part of the game features.
- Insertion of the character (soul)
Now that God's game was compiled, and up and running, he began by spawning Adam and Eve's souls into physical bodies on Eart. They were told why they were put on Earth and they began to reproduce.
Now we are all descendants of Adam, our souls spawned into the newly created babies and the soul gradually becomes aware of its existence after a while.
- Character control
Our souls are completely empty of knowledge as we begin gameplay, as they were made from scratch and we need to acquire all necessary information. Human characters have an autonomous function which is called imitate and new characters who are not fully mature will most of all learn by imitating adults and peers.
As the human becomes older he/she will be less dependant on imitating others, although many will continue having idols they keep imitating.
Now the character can choose to be a good person or a bad person and is free to choose his/her behavior. God created many vanities to see who would indulge themselves in these or who would reflect upon creation and use intelligence and wisdom to obtain guidance.
God has given the character full control to make choices, which will affect the game story and the ending.
- Choosing the path
The Light side
The further on the light side a character struggles to get, the more guidance and wisdom it will get and it will sooner or later gain certainty.
Good deeds will give light side points, multiplied by 10, a high points score will give many righteous buffs (benefits) in form of blessings, such as divine intervention, certainty, wisdom, tranquility etc. A high score will also affect the game ending.
The Dark side
Evil and selfish characters will generate dark side points, which although may give wealth and fame in this world, but will lead to a the worst ending of the game.
God will curse evil characters with various debuffs (negative modifiers) like blindness and deafness to awareness of spiritual guidance, impatience, aggression, intolerance etc.
The dark path has its bonuses too, although temporary, since the character does not care about lying or frauds, and may therefore hoard money to his benefit and gain fame among his people through indulging himself in vain desires.
The evil character will be susceptible to something called the whispers of Satan, further leading him on the evil path, by being inspired by ideas generated by this master of evil. This is a strong buff which may generate wealth, but at the great cost of others.
- The score system
There are two kind of points accumulated, light side points and dark side points. Below I will explain examples of what generates points from each category.
Light side points
Charity, kindness, devotion to God, righteousness, modesty, chastity, being humble and many more.
Dark side points
Being stingy, arrogant, selfish, violent, bad mouthed, disrespectful, wasteful, idol worshiper, fraudulent, a thief/robber,a criminal, a murderer and much more.
- Game end
God will shut down the game world at an unspecified time after a violent breakdown of his created world. All character data will be extracted and God will give his final judgment based on the scores.
This will divide all people in three categories, Elite, Righteous or Hellbound.
Elites were those who really worshiped God alone and in a distinct way performed righteous deeds and were aware of the traps of God's trial, such as selfishness, arrogance and the hoarding of money.
The Righteous were those who worshiped God alone and performed righteous deeds and tried to stay away from God's traps, but did less good than those in the Elite category.
The losers of this game was those in the Hellbound category. They failed to worship God alone without having idols like Muhammad or their money and lives. They could not resist the whispers of Satan and did not do enough righteous deeds and they were over-indulged in vain desires and sins.
- Destiny (the recompense)
Elites will dwell close to God in high Heaven in eternal bliss in a place with maximum rewards and pleasure. They will live happily forever after.
Righteous will live in lower Heaven, a place with fine rewards and pleasure. They will not be as close to God as the Elites, but they will live in happiness.
Hellbound people will live in a new place God calls Hell. They will live in a place with very poor standard, no rewards and all kinds of misfortune will befall them.
- Conclusion
Seeing that this life is just a temporary illusion, a dead-serious game, we need to be aware of what God requires from us and stop living only by our own ego. We must refrain from trying to prove ourselves in arrogant ways to other people or all such sins. We must spare our coin, not just little but the excess of our belongings, i.e. Stop hoarding and buying unnecessary vain things. Wake up today and read the true guide, the Quran and live in the way of God.
Remember God has said most people do not believe without committing idol worship, He means not only idolizing persons, but also the ego, property and so on.
Final note This article may be expanded at some point, meanwhile I hope you enjoy my philosophical work.
Disclaimer I reserve myself from factual errors or typoes, I did not edit the text much. The main principle is what is important here.
May God bless us
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Nice post MoF...I agree generally with your main principle. Recently have been playing around with the idea of parallel lives in different settings, including all possible choices one can/would make etc which makes the 'game' more interesting and may fill in possible plot holes and even the playing field. Anyways, refreshing to read.
peace
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Peace savage_carrot,
Thank you.
I could have spent more time elaborating the ideas and editing the text, but I was tired of writing. Doing this on a smartphone, so got tired of tapping the screen, heh.
Also I have another article I want to begin working on and it is about the parallel between an atom's structure
and the solar system. I think there lies a great mystery and a hidden truth in it.I am still meditating on that topic and no clue where to begin yet.
My theory is that everything is in layer from the atom and the molecules they form and to the solar system's position in a galaxy making a sort of pattern too. It may be those layers the Quran speaks about.
Like this thread it is highly philosophical and I can certainly not validate it using science.
I will return when I have given it more thought.
But it is the thinking around the gravity phenomenon, why everything seems to be orbiting something. Even inside an atom. Conventional scientists are limited to their narrow-mindness about man-made science, but I am not. I try to think out-of-the-box and I do not want to really prove anything, just see a connection and, God willing, feel God's hand in it all.
It is such a deep topic it will take some time.
May God help
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Impressive, I usually give up after a line of text if i'm using a phone. Sounds awesome tbh, would definitely like to read it when you think you've got something...or even just to bounce ideas off or something. Will look forward to it.
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In about 7-8 years of reading these forums I'd have to put this in the top 10 must-read threads.
Nice summary, flawless in fact. This is entirely supported by science/mathematics; let not readers be deceived by the word 'theory' as game theory is a matter not of evidence but of geometry.
See http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
Game theory is a study of strategic decision making. More formally, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers." An alternative term suggested "as a more descriptive name for the discipline" is interactive decision theory. Game theory is mainly used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic and biology. The subject first addressed zero-sum games, such that one person's gains exactly equal net losses of the other participant(s). Today, however, game theory applies to a wide range of class relations, and has developed into an umbrella term for the logical side of science, to include both human and non-humans, like computers. Classic uses include a sense of balance in numerous games, where each person has found or developed a tactic that cannot successfully better his results, given the other approach.
Modern game theory began with the idea regarding the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games and its proof by John von Neumann. Von Neumann's original proof used Brouwer's fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets, which became a standard method in game theory and mathematical economics. His paper was followed by his 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, with Oskar Morgenstern, which considered cooperative games of several players. The second edition of this book provided an axiomatic theory of expected utility, which allowed mathematical statisticians and economists to treat decision-making under uncertainty.
This theory was developed extensively in the 1950s by many scholars. Game theory was later explicitly applied to biology in the 1970s, although similar developments go back at least as far as the 1930s. Game theory has been widely recognized as an important tool in many fields. Eight game-theorists have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and John Maynard Smith was awarded the Crafoord Prize for his application of game theory to biology.
This of course leads entirely into other branches of truth such as computer science, information theory, linguistics, mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry and all assorted derivatives. Truly the signs are everywhere, we know the entire backbone of the game's code as it is the very thing we run on. There is no mystery to this game as it is entirely open source, an entirely self-consistent self-resonating repeating code, the fingerprint of which is captured in The Book or The Reading.
Post up what you got, moar boar wants moar eat
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This reminds me of the presentation "The Worldly Illusion" on
http//www.masjidtucson.org/conference/2009/index.html -
Peace,
Thank you all.
I felt that thinking about life in this manner may help being more aware of the meaning of it. And it makes it certain that every action counts, no matter good or bad, and is recorded and never forgotten.
Being stingy and indulged in this world are the biggest traps after idol worship and we must remember this "game" has a time limit, after the time has run out it is too late because the record will then be assessed.
I also felt that looking at life as a game helped me distance myself from its vanities, which has made me organise my priorities better.
Another is that doing good deeds is accumulating invisible but important points.
You have maybe played games like 'Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic' and noted that it may give more money or make progress easier if you choose to play as a bad guy. But if you see those around you in the game world being hurt your conscience comes into play.
That game also shows how being bad negatively affects those around you.
Being good to someone feels great, but still we are often afraid of being generous or charitable, probably because of being different. The problem may lie in our likelihood of imitating others. If others are not charitable we risk falling in the same trap, because we subconsciously and instinctively follow others through imitation.
But through 'thegameallegory' we can see ourselves more like actors in a huge game world where we control our own fates by our actions.
These were my thoughts, hope they help.
May God bless the righteous
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I always enjoy stuff that gives people an opportunity to think of something in a different way, through different terms, from another angle etc. Stimulating our perception and how we relate to and make sense of things is a great thing to do... because it prevents mental stagnation and virtual blindness...
)
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Your post also reminds me of the movie AVATAR, where the characters were put into "game" bodies. This could represent the soul being put into the body.
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Here's a funny coincidence. Coursera (online university with free courses from accredited brick university lecturers) is running a course on Game Theory right now.
If anyone wants to develop an understanding of people's motivations & how to judge with wisdom while satisfying everyone in a given situation (especially regarding money!) then a knowledge of Game Theory can be very useful )
http//www.coursera.org/course/gametheory
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Peace Man
The game allegory theory, when taken in the lighter vein it makes interesting reading. But when its lines are juxtaposed with the seriousness of the Book's verses, I become a bit stingy to read the article lightly. The meaning of life is to know for sure that you shall attain your heights of wisdom to secure your dwellings in Gardens both in this world and in the world after, with calmness and serenity and that you shall live with peaceful coexistence, journeying in His path God created us from nothingness before even we were a gamete; and the universe was created from nothingness in six periods; all his creations were silent without a whisper of a sound while coming into being and only the destruction is caused by a 'Big Bang', dismissing such theories being attempted at creation. Subtle is creation; bigbang is destruction!
God has created the heavens, the earth and everything in between and upon it the man not for sport and play; and further cautions those who listen to the ayats nonchalantly. There is not one life for every one here but many many rebirths in this world itself, in this life itself.
"Is he who was dead then We raised him to life and made for him a light by which he walks among the people, like him whose likeness is that of one in utter darkness whence he cannot come forth?"
"Then We raised you up after your death that you may give thanks."
"Allah said to them, "Die"; then He restored them to life. "
"And it is He who makes you die by night and knows what you have committed by day. Then He revives you therein that a specified term may be fulfilled."
The allegory of game is out of tune here in all its reality given the metaphysical nature of man capable of elevating him on the esoteric path to the Truth, by the Grace of God, by the very word from Him, 'Go!'.
Salaam
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Peace drfazl, all.
Thank you, MOF and others who are contributing here.We can speculate, guess, ... The fact is, none of us was allowed to witness the creation?
18;51
I never permitted them to witness the creation of the heavens and the earth, nor the creation of themselves. Nor do I permit the wicked to work in My kingdom.Also the game allegory is "serious", our life depends on it
187-8.
We have adorned everything on earth, in order to test them, and thus distinguish those among them who work righteousness.Inevitably, we will wipe out everything on it, leaving it completely barren.*
Eventually
1849
The record will be shown, and you will see the guilty fearful of its contents. They will say, "Woe to us. How come this book leaves nothing, small or large, without counting it?" They will find everything
they had done brought forth. Your Lord is never unjust towards anyone.Enjoy the game!
Peace.
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Peace drfazl,
I was happy to hear your opinion and I understand your concern. Please note that it is not a theory but just an allegory of the life we live here. One is supposed to take the life seriously after understanding this allegory's principle, but I realize this so-called 'game allegory' can be taken as a joke about God's creation and that was definitely not the purpose.
The reading was meant to be taken lightly with some elements of satire, but the underlying idea and concept was to be taken seriously.
Making the article was maybe a bit controversial, but it was never meant to be entertainment or claiming that God created the world as such. It was meant to be just like it says, an allegory.
I said that factual errors might have entered the article since I wrote it to the best of MY understanding. Whether it was a big bang or not is not utterly relevant, but as far as I have grasped the Quran, God caused the universe to explode into existence, then He commanded everything to come into existence, willingly or unwillingly. I used the term usually known as terraform to describe God's saying 'Be' and it is.
Hope this cleared out some arguments, but I fully respect your dislike if you still feel distaste for the concept.
May God bless you
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Peace good logic,
Exactly, the background to this allegory is extremely serious and I never intended to make a joke about the meaning of life. I thought I clarified that in the end of the article, but it seems I did not make enough efforts.
Also, one can almost never make anything without having negative critics, people simply have different taste and opinion, and we have to respect that, especially as good muslims.
Peace to all of you who posted your ideas to contribute to the topic, I forgot to do that until 'good logic' did that before me. It is wonderful how we all complement each other.
I also thank drfazl for highlighting the potential flaws or traps with this philosophical thinking.
May God bless you
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Peace Man of Faith.
Please do not take what was said as criticism. It is not.
This is a good topic to discuss. Please keep discussing.
You have done a good job starting this " Thread". Worthwhile for all who take part or just read.
Thank you.
Peace.
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Peace good logic,
I mentioned criticism in general. 'drfazl' gave his opinion about the allegory and I tried to meet his criticism as good as I could, but this concept may not appeal to everyone and I accept that.
I noticed you were clarifying about the seriousness of the matter and I acknowledged it.
God bless you
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Peace good logic, man of faith,
I see you both as well-composed thinkers! May God Bless All.
MoF, I am sorry if you felt there was criticism in my post. I just put my observation unequivocally so that it saves time for the author of the thread and the others to set right the initial obstacles that might arise in the mind of a reader who follows the thread. To a great extent I wish to be an obscure spectator in the big gallery of people watching your show as you seriously-enjoy your game. I might raise my finger now and then and it is not blame on you if you miss to notice it amidst the large gathering witnessing the spectacle.
salam all.
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Peace drfazl,
Like I said in a recent thread, it is good to point out potential flaws or suggestionsetc. There is nothing wrong in that. I just wanted to make sure you did not misunderstand my points given in the original message.
May God bless you
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Peace,
There is some conflation of terms going on.
The usage of the word "game" in the OP is a very different usage to the common use. When you think "game" you might get the implications of video games, laughing, joking, wasting time.
Conversely the OP's usage is a more mathematical/clinical usage of the word. Which simply means "a system with N players who can make X decisions to bring each other up or down"; of which video games are a subset but then so is the stock market, housing market, so are all your friendships (social status value), so even is your connection to God and the grace he rewards you with for goodly servitude (i.e. good by way of probation, evil by way of trial).
All movements of things can be decomposed into "games" under the assumption that each entity involved is capable of making choices.
I am not quite sure why you would think that a person talking about the quran, who believes in it wholly, would even remotely make an allegory taking it for a joke. When in doubt, always look for the best face
Also drfazl can you please provide evidence for the following statement, namely the parts emphasised?
God created us from nothingness before even we were a gamete; and the universe was created from nothingness in six periods; all his creations were silent without a whisper of a sound while coming into being and only the destruction is caused by a 'Big Bang', dismissing such theories being attempted at creation. Subtle is creation; bigbang is destruction!
I hope you are aware of 2130.