Course: Science Fiction & Religion
Lecture #1: Reading:
The Church of the All Net-a virtual house of worship
By Tom Dworetzky
I really don't want to talk about this teensy problem some of us in 2066 are having in VR. For me, it started a few days ago when I was saying how sometimes I feel the weight of the VR monkey on my back-and felt an actual monkey on my back. Metaphors are as real as reality, I thought, in cyberspace.
That's the damned problem with VR. I try to shut it off, cut myself off from it so I can figure out what is real, and then I can't find anything out there that absolutely has to be. The abyss comes with the turn off from the net. Then I'm left with nothingness, wondering if I alone exist. My room is silent and dark. Out on the streets it's the same. Everything that is happening, everyone I could be interactive with, is on the net. All the world is restaurants without tables and chairs, shops without doors or aisles, all nodes on the net. Whatever is outside the net now, no one can know it. I think therefore I am, blah, blah, blah. So if I'm the only thing that exists, without a reference point outside of me, then everything I presume real might just be in my imagination, a metaphor, a symbol in a dream. To shake myself out of this metaphysical funk, I need something that will talk back.
My need led me to the Church of the All Net. Its vaulted ceilings and stained glass illuminate the story of its founding. Marconi, Bell, Von Neumann, Marconi, Bell, Von Neumann, Turing, Shannon, Jobs, Gates, Cray: The saints of the net are depicted in their moments of legendary greatness. The gods and saints of all religions and philosophies are there, too: Socrates, Confucius, Lao-tzu, Yahweh, Christ, Mohammed, Krishna, and on and on, down endless galleries filled with names and images I could not recognize, whose knowledge I could not possibly fathom. Upon this bed- rock of all principles, others as troubled as I am by the basic question of existence have found their answers and peace.
Yet I was not comforted. Although any window could, at a thought, grow animated and play an interactive recounting of the history of a deity's genius in which I could ask questions and receive wisdom in any language or idiom I chose, this total immersion in the religious experience. brought me no sense of peace. I needed to pierce this veil.
So I sought the priest and floated into the comfort of the confessional.
"Oh please show me the certainty that I have lost," I begged the shimmering form.
"You wish sensational verification?"
"Yes."
"There are risks. You lack the bandwidth to process omniscience and omnipresence, just for starters, that are part of God's wonder."
"I can't live in doubt any longer."
The priest guided me into the tableau of Adam receiving the touch of God. As we crossed the gateway, he changed into an angel; the flapping of his wings beat in time with my pounding heart. We floated into a blue sky, and I reached for the fingertip that filled my vision. Dread, fear, joy, peace, all filled me as my body expanded and diffused into the heavens. I knew.
Back in my room, curled up on the floor, I became dimly aware of the monotonous voice of my deck: "This is God. Is there anyone you'd like to speak with? Allah, Krishna, Yahweh, Christ, or any other god?"
"I must know you exist. I feel so forsaken."
"Christ, the Son, is good for abandonment. Is He your desire, then?"
"Yes, fine."
"That will be 95 dollars a minute."
"Ninety-five dollars?"
"Come, this is the real thing: A full-fledged god experience with a no-questions 30-day money- back guarantee. You owe it to yourself. What will some prerecorded god-line message do for you, considering the metaphysical fix you're in? And, I've only got a few of these full-baud god experiences left before we have to move on to the next item- Rolexes. That's right, circa 1990; they're real collector's items, back when people still kept track of linear time!"
Ninety-five dollars is pretty steep, but I logged in anyway. Faced with this existential bleakness (or is it virtuality?), I guess everyone has to have a god.