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Religion Meets Virtual Reality: Christianity-Themed VR Demo Scheduled For Easter (nbcnews.com)
"Anyone looking to experience God in a brand new way will soon have his or her chance -- virtually," writes NBC News, reporting on "a new immersive faith-based virtual reality experience...part of a larger project created by L. Michelle Media called Mission VR." An anonymous reader writes:
The company was founded "to create a signature virtual reality environment -- a faith world of sorts -- where dynamic, never before seen, Christian lifestyle stories and experiences could have a home." Demos have been timed to coincide with this weekend's Easter celebration, while the official launch happens later this spring. Viewers will apparently experience biographical stories combining VR applications and YouTube videos to showcase the power of belief. "Up until now, we've only been able to watch Christianity from a third person perspective -- preached sermons, music videos, interviews, even reality shows..." says the founder of Mission VR. "This is the future of Christian programming."
But one reverend told NBC that VR worlds could be dangerous because they "may take people from community and from the incarnational aspects of Christian life... [W]e always run a very serious risk that the medium overtakes the message... What we must do is guard against the use of technology through market logic where people become brands and all things spiritual become commoditized."
But one reverend told NBC that VR worlds could be dangerous because they "may take people from community and from the incarnational aspects of Christian life... [W]e always run a very serious risk that the medium overtakes the message... What we must do is guard against the use of technology through market logic where people become brands and all things spiritual become commoditized."
This is also the only way that Christians can visit a lengthening list of ancient structures that Those Other Guys have demolished.
and people come to realize that they wasted time perfecting a skill that doesn't work. How to salvage the situation? Create a VR game where prayers do work!
An annoyance of modern life in the free world - people who believe in God (without the slightest sliver of proof and with plenty of evidence to explain where such beliefs came from, evidence that they are not immutable but have in fact 'muted' quite a bit over the years, decades, centuries and millennia) still vastly outnumber people who don't believe in the fantasy.
And if you're too obvious with your disbelief, they'll assume you're fundamentally evil (or just misguided if they're not the nasty, incredibly hypocritical type) and will be prejudiced against you in ways that can severely affect your life.
Maybe you find your social options limited, maybe you find your employment options limited, and maybe rather than passively exclude you they also spread the word around their community to ensure everyone else does, too.
I'm lucky to live in a place where that's not true to any significant degree, but there are plenty of places left where it is.
An adult who earnestly believes in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny and will defend that belief against Occam's Razor and all the rational alternative explanations will either be mocked or checked for psychiatric issues. An adult who earnestly believes an invisible, intangible, omniscient, omnipresent father figure who was intimately involved in the world a few thousand years ago but now only 'works in mysterious ways', though... you have to respect their beliefs for for some reason.
I grew up in a Christian home, so I’m one of those people who rebelled against their up-bringing, etc., etc. People like me also get riled up by Christian fundamentalists, like those weirdo creationists who are the poster chldren for cherry-picking evidence. Personally, it’s more important to me to experience the excitement of a new scientific discovery than to derive some kind of false comfort from an ancient philosophy. Nevertheless, I can see its value for others.
The truth is that we all live in a world of delusions. Even in science, we know that the latest and greatest or most advanced theories are just approximations of reality, so we choose to apply what we know now as if it were true because it gets the job done. Improved versions of the theories in the future may or may not get the job done better. (Relativity and QM don’t always improve over Newtonian physics, because the added complexity is usually not worth the often immeasureable improvement in accuracy.)
In many ways, religion is effective as a meditative philosophy. Things like yoga, martial arts, Buddhism, etc. all come with psychological/spiritial/traditional baggage beyond the practical effects of teaching discpline, exercise, and other things. But people actually NEED a basis for finding emotional comfort and psychological stability, and religions often get the job done (even if they’re mosty fictional). Do we pick on people for reading fantasy novels, watching Star Trek, and playing video games? It’s all the same.
As Richard Dawkins has said, compared to “certain” relgions, Christianity is relatively benign. And choosing between one “relatively benign” religion and another is like choosing between Karate and Kung Fu and also indulging in the quasi-religious philosophies that come with them. 6 of one, half dozen of another. What difference does it make which delusion you choose? The value in choosing one is the comfort or practical value it brings you. And for many peolpe, they are involved in their religion primarily to belong to a community, with the beliefs being secondary.
Yes, there are those prominent people that turn religion into a weapon, tell you all about how you’re going to hell if you don’t believe EXACTLY as they do, etc. Well, there are “scientists” who regularly engage in fabrication and falsification. Computers have no positive or negative moral aspect per se, but there are people who utilize them to commit crimes. We don’t disavow something just because some assholes abuse it. And we don’t completely disavow something just because it contains ideas we realize are inaccurate.
When we want to pick on Christians, maybe the first representative we think of is Ken Ham. Yeah. He’s a bad guy. (He doesn’t mean to be, but he causes a lot of damage.) Instead, why not think of Kenneth Miller? Despite being a devout Catholic, he has been one of the most vocal opponents to religious bullshit impinging on science since the 1970s. We could all use him as a role model. And BTW, he benefits from his religion.
Those self-appointed men of God have long used technology to perpetuate their scamming.