The world's foremost atheist has a godly incarnation. Richard Dawkins has a Second Life avatar, a word which originates from Hindu theology. He initially appeared in SL through a real world lecture video streamed in-world, in late May, then returned in avatar form, to watch people watching that stream.
“I have to confess I've been in there myself, as an avatar, incognito," he impishly told a UK Telegraph reporter recently, "and I've seen people in there watching it, and I’ve even actually had conversations with them." Leading to a moment that can only be called the "Dawkins delusion"-- fixating on a video of Dawkins without realizing there's a Dawkins-controlled avatar standing right next to you.
I've transcribed the most SL-relevant passages from the interview: in it, Dawkins begins by describing “huge overlaps" between his work and Second Life: "[O]ne aspect is artificial life, and I’ve played a little bit of a role in that in the early days when it was still starting up in the 1980s, I suppose." (I wonder if anyone's told him about the ant colony or the school of evolving fish, or, of course, Svarga.)
"But there’s also fascinating things," Dawkins continues, "for example, I think it’s reasonable to say that when you and I think we see the real world… what we’re really seeing in a sense is a simulation in our own head. And the evidence for this is the way we see visual illusions, which
are just what you would expect to see if we are
simulating a virtual reality in our heads. A virtual reality which is
steered and guided by the real world through our sense organs.