"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," replace just one word so as to instead read:
"In the beginning Satan created the heavens and the earth," and then claim that the output is somehow the same. But surely, I'm not understanding this point correctly, because one sentence doesn't equal another, right?
Sure, the sentences aren't the same, but that doesn't mean that
the output is what is going to be different. See, a function is just like a shortcut to another chunk of code. If godCreates() is a function, and satanCreates() is the other function, the output can still be "Heaven and Earth" even if all that inner code you don't see is completely different. For instance, if we were to define the godCreates function as:
godCreates() {
heavenAndEarth = true;
//a single '=' assigns a value to a variable
if (heavenAndEarth == true) { // a double '==' tests the value of that variable
print("Heaven and Earth"); // the print function displays the string between the () on the screen
}
}
And the satanCreates function as:
satanCreates () {
while (heavenAndEarth != 1) { // this is a loop that repeats while the variable doesn't equal 1
heavenAndEarth = randomNumber(1,1000000); // random number between 1 and 1000000
}
print("Heaven and Earth");
}
Side note, using the // allows me to make comments that people can read to see what's going on in the code, without the program reading whatever I write after them until the next line. The color coding isn't exactly how it would look in most programming environments, but I think it's the easiest way to break it up for folks not familiar with it. Each set of {} is a section or subsection of a function. You may need to stretch your browser window to keep it looking neat. Unless you're on a phone, in which case, I don't know what you could do if those lines are running into each other. I don't own a cell phone.
See, for God creating it's as simple as making it true. For Satan he has to fumble around a lot picking a random number between one and a million over and over until he gets it right. A huge difference between those two functions, but the output is the same.
Now, how I'm using the analogy is that we don't know those inner workings. Even if we're talking about a being that's lesser than God, such as Satan, he's still a higher being than us for us to talk about his inner machinations as well. All we see is the output and we make a guess about the name of the function being called.
Can we tell by looking at the output whodunit? Can we tell by looking at the output those inner machinations? I think the answer is "no" to both questions. Even if we discard the whole idea of a matrix screwing with our perceptions and assume the outside world is exactly the way it seems, we still don't know the answers to those questions.
In programming, for whatever function I want to use, I can look up the code it refers to. I could even learn binary and look up how that code flips the transistors in your computer's processor to see exactly everything that is going on. There isn't anything like that for gods and demons.