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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 bullshit. Even if God isn't real, community is, and that's pretty much all I can say about that.
There's been a really cool 3D visualization of the Sistine Chapel out for some time now. It's a great way to appreciate it.
I'm certain that when all your religious holidays have been preempted with massive consumer frenzies, you're message has been already overtaken.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to eat this chocolate bunny butt first.
In one way, this could help religion by providing people with a religious experience or even a very realistic recreation of religious events, connecting people to the origins and mythology.
In another way, religions could view it as a threat. I've read several times that psychedelic drugs were often suppressed by religions because they provided people with a transcendental experience not controlled by the religion. I can see someone producing a slick VR religion program that's not endorsed or controlled by mainstream religions being seen as a big threat.
So in this VR world, are the Pyramids grain stores?
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!
They've also built a virtual-Messiah twitter account. It's first tweet was, "I drew much bigger crowds than Moses. Believe me."
You are welcome on my lawn.
Tried it out but I'm not sure I did it right.
*At the crucifixion*
Me> Bro, that looks painful, you need some help?
J> Uhh... I'm dying fo-
Me> I hear ya! Let me just equip a hatchet and-oh here we go.
J> No, you don't understand I'm daying for your-
Me> For my help, yeah dont' worry just gimme a few more seconds! I'll cast resurrect if you don't make it.
J> That's noooOOOT-
Me> TIMBER!
*Game segfaults*
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"This is the future of Christian programming."
Or am I?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I agree. This will give me at least 4 minutes of standup material. "Oh, my computer crashed. Wait, it's back! It's a MIRACLE. The resurrection is real!"
Or giving geeks everywhere hope: "Wait, what? You can have a kid without having sex? My gene lineage isn't necessarily destined to die out! Yay!"
If this technology shows promise in spreading the Good News and making more disciples of Jesus Christ, then we will use it. Just like the printing press, radio, and internet before it. if it's just a distraction or poor use of resources, as I suspect it is, we'll just go with what works.
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.
Mystical is in your head. Reinforce something and....
https://thehumanist.com/magazi...
In recent years Persinger set out to investigate so-called âoemysticalâ experiences under controlled laboratory conditions. He got volunteers to wear a helmet fitted with a set of magnets through which he ran a weak electromagnetic signal. Persinger found that the magnetically induced seizures in the temporal lobes generate the same sort of hallucinations and mystical experiences reported by epileptic patients. Four in five people, he says, report a âoemystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or nearâ them. Some weep, some feel God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of demons and evil spirits. âoeThatâ(TM)s in the laboratory,â Persinger notes, referring to subjectsâ(TM) knowledge of a controlled environment. âoeHow much more intense might these experiences be if they happened late at night, or in a pew in a mosque or synagogue?â
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Maybe they will mod you down for simply being a dick, too.
I suspect they'll "forget" to model 2 Kings 2:24, or any of the other awkward moments. https://www.kingjamesbibleonli...
Putting faith in God is great. Putting your faith in claims that other humans make about God is stupid.
When you put your faith in the Bible, and your church's interpretation of the Bible, you aren't putting your faith in God. You are putting your faith in the humans that wrote the Bible, the humans that translated it to English, and the humans who tell you how to interpret it.
You can't get around this with the "all scripture is God-breathed" argument...that claim is made by humans. And, as every Christian knows, humans are fallible.
If you choose to believe in the nightmare-universe in which the overwhelming majority of people are kept alive forever just so that God can keep torturing them without end...you owe it to yourself to have a damn good reason for believing. "Because a bunch of humans wrote about it a long time ago" is a terrible 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.
From the Book of Numpty, 3:16..."And they knew not their holes from an ass in the ground."
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Isaac Newton was a religious fanatic even by standards of the day. He invented modern science and differential calculus as a side-effect.
Rene Descartes was highly religious and formed the basis of modern philosophy, citing God as the basic element of the universe.
The vast majority of the human population believes in some sort of higher power.
Baron_Yam, on the other hand , makes smart-ass comments on the internet
>> Wait, what? You can have a kid without having sex? My gene lineage isn't necessarily destined to die out! Yay!"
Even such a miracle is not really a saving throw for most cliche nerds because I think it requires you to at least know the girl, which would also mean venturing out of your parent's basement at least sometimes.
>> citing God as the basic element of the universe.
Maybe that was just his shorthand for hydrogen.
...
What we must do is guard against the use of technology through market logic where people become brands and all things spiritual become commoditized.
My upbringing taught that religious music was a deliverance of gospel and the performer would have objected vehemently to any attention to self via admiration or applause because the gift was presented by God Himself.
Now it's a goddam industry.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
As a side-effect? I know that Newton wrote more about theology than about science, but the only link I've previously heard people make between his theology and his science is that he is responsible for the traditional rainbow having seven colours for numerological reasons. What's the connection between his theology and differential calculus?
I suspect that many people who ridicule religion aren't doing so on the grounds that it cannot be proved, but because it's Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or some other religion. Richard Dawkins sharply criticizes Christianity, but when asked about the idea of the universe being a computer simulation, he doesn't condemn the idea. As I recall, Sam Harris has commented on this, saying it would be awful if the designer of such a simulation was a Mormon. If we lived in a computer simulated universe, whoever ran the simulation would have absolute control over it, knowing every detail about the simulation, and the ability to manipulate it with unlimited power. Anyone running a simulation would effectively be a god over the simulation. Although we may be able to look for signs of a very particular type of simulated universe, there is no way to prove with certainty that we are not in a computer-simulated universe. It isn't falsifiable, and therefore it cannot be a theory. There is no actual evidence we live in a computer simulation, yet it isn't dismissed and ridiculed the way religions are.
I believe the disdain toward religion isn't because of the lack of evidence, but because of the doctrine and practices of many religions. People believe in many irrational and, in some cases, clearly false things, yet few of those elicit the negative reactions that religions do. Perhaps we ought to recognize religion as a construct to influence human behavior, in which a religious experience has a lasting impact on a person's behavior and mentality. There are plenty of atheists who refer to themselves as secular humanists and proudly state that they have much of the same morality as religious people, but without the gods. Contrast this with something like Laveyan Satanism, which rejects the existence of gods and devils, but teaches twisted morals. I certainly prefer the views of secular humanists. But my views aren't because those people are atheists, but rather because of their principles and actions.
If a person has the same principles as a secular humanist, but that person believes in a god, why should anyone have a problem with this? I suspect the real difference in the reactions toward religion versus the idea that our universe is contained in a computer simulation, is that believing that we exist in a computer simulation isn't driving people to do evil things. Who cares if someone has a religious experience? What matters is what that religious experience drives a person to do. If it drives a person to do positive actions, that religious experience has actually been beneficial, even if it's a construct of that person's mind. People are often advised to find faith as a way to deal with stress and some types of mental illness. Perhaps a tool that helps people have religious experiences can actually improve human health, which I firmly believe would be a good thing.
Good. Now try again where you show Newton was right about God and I'm wrong, using reproducible experiments that support a logically consistent theory that isn't more easily explained by something simpler (that is also supported by reproducible experiments that support a logically consistent theory that isn't more easily explained by something simpler, etc.)
Lots of religious folk are smart and achieve great things. That doesn't mean God exists, it means they have blind spots when it comes to their faith. Since faith is, by definition, believing what you want without proof in support of it (and often despite proof against it)... it's not particularly surprising Newton was deluded on the subject.
Those self-appointed men of God have long used technology to perpetuate their scamming.
Maybe they will mod you down for simply being a dick, too.
Dick or not, deep down they know I'm right and they can't stand it. :)
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
From the Book of Numpty, 3:16..."And they knew not their holes from an ass in the ground."
I rest my case.
But while we're on the subject, why doesn't god ever heal amputees?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I can see artistic merit in a Christian VR experience. Of course my wish would be a VR experience of one of the great old world Cathedrals while a chorus sings Gregorian chant. If it were well done it would have enough artistic merit standing on its own to be a worthy experience regardless of one's religiosity.