I appreciate your response. I’d like to address this again from two angles, the empirical and the theoretical, fleshing out these points in response to some of the specifics you give:

Empirical

Would a survey of history really show an expanding idea of rights? I’m not so sure and it will likely depend on one’s political narrative and their perception of whose currently “winning.”

For instance, suppose one is a conservative pro-life advocate. Recent bills in states like Alabama, which protect the rights of the unborn (from that point of view), could be seen as piece of data in support of the narrative that the arc of history comprises granting rights to more and more creatures.

On the other hand, if you’re a pro-choice advocate, the recent heart-beat bills will be a counter-point to that narrative. It shrinks women’s rights:

Whether we just added one more point into our pile of ever expanding rights will depend on where we are standing politically.

We could do the same analysis for other culture war issues: gay marriage certainly seems like an expanded right, but has it come at the cost of religious freedom rights? Those who oppose SOGI laws would say yes. Even some advocates of SOGI laws would acknowledge that correcting course, by providing more robust gay or transgender rights, will require shrinking our concept of religious liberty (e.g., John Corvino, if I remember correctly).

Consider health care. Is it a right and is that right expanding or shrinking? Many people think it expanded under Obama and shrunk under Trump.

In many cases, it seems like there isn’t so much a clear expansion of rights as there is a shifting of rights (e.g., from the unborn to the pregnant woman or vice versa).

There are, of course some clear examples of expanding rights that are relatively uncontroversial and maybe you’ll want to suggest that I just haven’t gone far enough back in history. Freedom from slavery and women’s suffrage are clear examples of expanding rights that are relatively uncontroversial today. (Though I note that some see respect for these groups as being increasingly under threat.) But are they enough to support the narrative? I’m not trying to argue that they definitely are not sufficient to support the narrative, I’m just suggesting that the answer isn’t obvious.

(P.S. Drowning cats may not be as common today, but even the Humane Society and PETA still kill the vast majority of unwanted cats (and dogs).)

Theoretical

Now setting the empirical issue aside, there is a host of interesting issues here related to your Failed Objection 3 that I touched on in my first response.

If all else being equal we should “expect our descendants to think of us as having moral rights, even if we’re merely simulations” and if “it’s more probable than not that they’ll side with the good people.” Then it seems like Failed Objection 3 is still on the table.

In fact we seem to run into some interesting theodicy-type issues here and much of the debate there might transfer nicely here. Take any recent instance of horrendous evil: our simulation skeptic (asimulationist?) might argue that no good programmers would allow simulations with moral rights to experience such evils. The simulationist might counter with many (any?) of the tools of the theist — she might even develop a skeptical simulationist argument!

I guess the upshot here is if you’ve found the problem of evil to be a convincing defeater to theism then you should find it a convincing defeater to at least the benevolent simulationist thesis. But if you don’t find the problem of evil convincing you may still think the benevolent simulationist thesis is a live option (at lest in regards to PoE objections).