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grouchymusicologist comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong
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This post could use a reminder of Less Wrong's working definition of the supernatural (of which theism, as virtually everyone uses the term, is surely a proper subset): it's something that involves an ontologically basic mental entity. We have no reason to suspect the existence of such things, and the simulation argument -- since it certainly does not appeal to such things -- doesn't change that a bit. Any resemblance to theism is superficial at most.
I'd also be curious to know what popular arguments for atheism you happen to think are so much weaker than you'd expected.
EDIT: ignore that last question if you like, I'm getting a sense for it elsewhere in the thread (though do not really agree).
Carrier's definition of supernaturalism as non-reductionist explanations involving ontologically basic mental entities is something of a strawman argument and makes the term somewhat useless. (ie it is not the definition many theists would even argue)
The more typical definition of supernaturalism usually refers to events that operate outside of the normal laws of physics. This definition is potentially relevant to simulationism, because a simulator would of course be free to occasionally intervene and violate normal physical 'law' if so desired. Of course, this entity itself would still be reducible to simpler physical processes in it's own universe.
But what does that even mean? How are the "normal" laws of physics distinguished from the actual laws of physics?
The normal laws of physics being those that predict the universe absent interventions from said external universe, which may include some extraneous special case code.
The same physics could describe the whole system of course at some deeper level, so perhaps 'normal' was not quite the right distinction. Limited?