Is the idea of the Matrix copesthetic with Christianity?

[Shempster]

First, let me say I love the philosophy section. We can pose thoughts but there is room for learning and growth. I love you folks who hang out here!

Anyway, there is a theory that all of existence is really a preset program that works in a realm of perceived reality. Some of the latest data in this area suggests that the world is a simulation that seems real to the participants but is really more like a reality video game. The parameters are preset and we participate with absolutely NO foreknowledge of any of it. It is a game where we have a major obstacle to overcome (evil) that we are surrounded by. We have Jesus who tells us the truth of the universe is the opposite of what the majority believes. That we are to overcome evil and learn to offer grace and love to all and especially those who don't deserve it.

Thoughts?

 

[nebulaJP]

Virtualism is a form of metaphysical idealism, so here is what Wikipedia says:

Christian theologians have held idealist views, often based on Neoplatonism, despite the influence of Aristotelian scholasticism from the 12th century onward. Later western theistic idealism such as that of Hermann Lotze offers a theory of the "world ground" in which all things find their unity: it has been widely accepted by Protestant theologians.[15] Several modern religious movements, for example the organizations within the New Thought Movement and the Unity Church, may be said to have a particularly idealist orientation. The theology of Christian Science includes a form of idealism: it teaches that all that truly exists is God and God's ideas; that the world as it appears to the senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual reality, a distortion that may be corrected (both conceptually and in terms of human experience) through a reorientation (spiritualization) of thought.

 

[nebulaJP]

Some of the latest data in this area suggests that the world is a simulation that seems real to the participants but is really more like a reality video game.

Yes, I'm a virtualist myself, and I like this hypothesis/description: http://thephysicalworldisvirtual.com

 

[Butterfly99]

I've heard of the matrix but don't know what it's about so I can't say.

 

[elopez]

Anyway, there is a theory that all of existence is really a preset program that works in a realm of perceived reality.

This theory, while dating back to the ancient Greeks, is more currently proposed by Nick Brostrom, a Swedish philosopher at Oxford, concluding we almost certainly live in a simulation.

Some of the latest data in this area suggests that the world is a simulation that seems real to the participants but is really more like a reality video game. The parameters are preset and we participate with absolutely NO foreknowledge of any of it.

This is the basis of what Brostrom refers to as the Simulation Hypothesis. However, there are many questions that arise. One in particular is, while the environment is illusory, is our brain, body, and self, equally as illosry, or is there something organic about us in the simulation? In the Matrix, remember that they had organic, physical bodies that were in "rest" while they were acting out in the simulation.

It is a game where we have a major obstacle to overcome (evil) that we are surrounded by. We have Jesus who tells us the truth of the universe is the opposite of what the majority believes. That we are to overcome evil and learn to offer grace and love to all and especially those who don't deserve it.

Thoughts?

There are theologians that ascribe to a sort of the SH. As far as I have heard, what this is called is continuous creation - the idea that God creates and "it (the universe) momentarily ceases to exist, to be replaced by a facsimile that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time. This, in turn, is annihilated, or ceases to exist, and is replaced by another facsimile world that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time. dit momentarily ceases to exist, to be replaced by a facsimile that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time. This, in turn, is annihilated, or ceases to exist, and is replaced by another facsimile world that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time."

This idea was made popular Johnathan Edwards. The idea is interesting, yet I cannot say for sure there is any validity to the idea. Erica Carlson, Professor of Physics at Purdue University, points out that wavefunction collapse doesn’t mean the wavefunction goes away, rather means the shape of the wave suddenly changes. Implying there is no evidence particles come into existence various times a second.

 

[Butterfly99]

Is the Matrix worth watching?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I don't think so, christianity is a form of relaism I think not virtualism. There is no info about computers in the bible, so in that cause (if virtualism were true) then genesis would be very misleading. In fact IIRC Pope JP was recently i.e. about 15 - 20 years ago, in Vatican time calling out for a philosophical realism to bolster Christianity.

 

[Wgw]

First, let me say I love the philosophy section. We can pose thoughts but there is room for learning and growth. I love you folks who hang out here!

Anyway, there is a theory that all of existence is really a preset program that works in a realm of perceived reality. Some of the latest data in this area suggests that the world is a simulation that seems real to the participants but is really more like a reality video game. The parameters are preset and we participate with absolutely NO foreknowledge of any of it. It is a game where we have a major obstacle to overcome (evil) that we are surrounded by. We have Jesus who tells us the truth of the universe is the opposite of what the majority believes. That we are to overcome evil and learn to offer grace and love to all and especially those who don't deserve it.

Thoughts?

The Matrix is closely related to Gnostic Christianity, but quite opposed to the orthodox, Nicene faith. Specifically, the Architect in the Matrix is unambiguously a demiurge.

One ironic postmodern twist in the Matrix however is that the world of the Matrix, the false world, is non-material, whereas the real world is material. In Gnosticism, the material world is a prison created by the evil demiurge that we must strive to escape from; Gnostics argue salvation through sacred knowledge allows us to throw off the prison of katter and ascend to the spiritual pleroma.

Orthodoxy on the other hand regards creation as the sublime work of God; creation is good, beautiful and so on, but we make it ugly and introduce corruption into it through our voluntary sinfulness.

 

[Wgw]

Is the Matrix worth watching?

Well I enjoyed it when I was your age. And I still do. Given your status as vintage 1999, I expect you might enjoy it in the same manner I, as vintage 1985, enjoy Back to the Future.

 

[Wgw]

There are theologians that ascribe to a sort of the SH. As far as I have heard, what this is called is continuous creation - the idea that God creates and "it (the universe) momentarily ceases to exist, to be replaced by a facsimile that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time. This, in turn, is annihilated, or ceases to exist, and is replaced by another facsimile world that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time. dit momentarily ceases to exist, to be replaced by a facsimile that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time. This, in turn, is annihilated, or ceases to exist, and is replaced by another facsimile world that has incremental differences built into it to account for what appear to be motion and change across time."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you describe here sounds closely related to Process Theology. It differs from it I suppose in that Process Theology denies these seauential events are created specifically by God or subject to direct divine influence.

However, what I see in the Matrix is more specifically the Gnostic dualist idea of an inferior artificial world existing inside a more wholesome pleroma.

 

[Butterfly99]

Well I enjoyed it when I was your age. And I still do. Given your status as vintage 1999, I expect you might enjoy it in the same manner I, as vintage 1985, enjoy Back to the Future.

Oh wow the Matrix is from 1999? I didn't know it was that old. Ppl still talk about it. I wonder if it's on Netflix. I'll try to watch it!!!

 

[Wgw]

Oh wow the Matrix is from 1999? I didn't know it was that old. Ppl still talk about it. I wonder if it's on Netflix. I'll try to watch it!!!

Alas its not on Netflix. The Matrix was fairly high quality. It also had the effect of producing a generation of teenage armchair philosophers. A friend of mine who owned a science fiction related forum felt obliged to state "Watching the Matrix does not make you a philosopher."

 

[elopez]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you describe here sounds closely related to Process Theology. It differs from it I suppose in that Process Theology denies these seauential events are created specifically by God or subject to direct divine influence.

Yes it does sound similar to Process Theology. And it would differ on that point, and others, too. Such that PT says God is changing as is the universe, while the continuous creation view may maintain God is immutable. PT also says God is unaware of the future, while it would take foreknowledge to know what to create every second.

The CC view may be more akin to the Matrix, as God would be creating every second, every happening, just like the super computer and machines create the virtual reality. Niether the Gnostic thought or the CC view seems to take reality as something organic, though.

 

[Shempster]

OP here.
This has been interesting. I am definitely one for discussion of stuff like this, but I do not suggest that I believe any of it is real. There is no way to test the theory, really.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

If we are in a matrix, the question remains, who created the matrix?

So its down to the cosmological argument, then...?

And the winner is:


It's time for atheist aid, the wonder cause, nothingness:
Ø



Or God (via negativa)... the transcendent ineffable ~@Universe...

Do we both walk in the light of ein sof (the light of the infinite)?


Its a close call!

Identicles are indiscernable, but are indiscernables identical? God as no-thing, and God as nothing?

And if you dont believe there can be a negation of observable matter, then who (and where) are you... the observer? Yonder close is all I can say.

Was Buddha right there is no self, and is this the mystic secret, the "imago dei" the image of God we share with the divine?

The great disappearing act when "____" is most needed?

Matrix, I am waiting...

 

[Aelred of Rievaulx]

a form of idealism: it teaches that all that truly exists is God and God's ideas; that the world as it appears to the senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual reality, a distortion that may be corrected

Alas, Bertrand Russell traced the idealist tradition to Parmenides and laments how it has infiltrated and distorted much of philosophical history. I wouldn't be quite that pessimistic about it but I do think it's telling that the Kantian idealist tradition sits right before Hegel and Fichte. As glorious as Hegel is and particularly the left Hegelians following him, his and Fichte philosophies were very much a part of the romantic movement which bemoaned reason and contained the forefronts of racialised nationalism. One can especially see this in the German nativist reaction to the French universalism: Fichte's Address to the German nation in particular.

I don't think so, christianity is a form of relaism I think not virtualism.

This is probably the more Aristotelian stream of the Christian philosophical tradition. However, Christianity has had various trajectories and influences. Middle Platonism, it can be said, was a Judaism and Christianity drew heavily from the Philo traditions. Much of the Christian philosophical history has also been heavily informed by a rather robust scepticism, Alan Charles Kors in his Atheism in France, made the case that much of contemporary atheism owes considerably to groups of intellectual attempting to provide proofs for the existence of God whilst at the same time refuting those of their peers. He calls this period towards the end of the sixteenth century a period of "atheism without atheists".

The Matrix is closely related to Gnostic Christianity

I was always much more inclined towards viewing the Matrix as an interpretation of Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation than the more overt (yet pertinent) religious overtones. It's revolutionary, it portrays reality as an ever-self-replicating arbitrary system of power and exploitation. It even outright references SS: "the desert of the real".

Jean Baudrillard flipped when he read the script, he said that they had fundamentally misinterpreted him. Within Baudrillard's philosophy, life on the Nebuchadnezzar would have been just as much of a simulation as life within the Matrix, Zion itself is a simulacrum.

 

[durangodawood]

OP here.
This has been interesting. I am definitely one for discussion of stuff like this, but I do not suggest that I believe any of it is real. There is no way to test the theory, really.

Makes me wonder if ANY fantasy fiction is, um 'copesthetic', with Christianity.
I mean, is the very idea of enjoying an imaginary world without God somehow.... anti-Christian?
.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Maybe

In abstract theory, modal logic etc:
"Christianity may be true"
"Virtualism may also be true"

Therefore:

"Christianity may be a form of virtualism..."