A Gizmodo article titled “Get Ready for Oculus Rift to Deliver a ‘Christian Experience’” observes that Christian churches may soon establish outposts in Virtual Reality (VR) worlds and offer VR services based on new technologies like the Oculus Rift to global congregations of avatars.
The article quotes my essay “Virtual reality a new frontier for religions,” published on Hypergrid Business, where I interviewed three experts, Christian Rev. Christopher Benek, Mormon Lincoln Cannon, and professor of religious studies Robert Geraci, about future applications of VR technologies to the spiritual needs of new generations of believers.
Science fiction writers Neal Stephenson and Ernest Cline, respectively in Snow Crash and Ready Player One, imagined fully immersive VR worlds – the Metaverse and OASIS – with advanced user interfaces based on intuitive head, body and hands motion and voice commands. Such next-generation VR interfaces are coming out fast with the Oculus Rift, acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion, and the Leap Motion hand motion sensor. Second Life, a virtual world that was very popular a few years ago, failed to deliver on early promises of consumer VR, but Second Life creator Philip Rosedale’s new venture, High Fidelity, could leverage the power of new VR interface hardware and software technologies and eventually bring the Metaverse to the masses.
Benek, Cannon and Geraci are persuaded that the time of VR churches is coming and will offer new outreach options to both traditional churches and new religious movements. In particular new Internet-age spiritual communities, scattered around the planet without a geographical center and a local critical mass, could establish their home base in VR. The Gizmodo article says:
“The Internet can bring people together over great distances, to celebrate their unique belief systems. Strap on your goggles and pray.”
Rev. Benek, who serves at the First Prebyterian Church of Ft. Lauderdale, was recently interviewed by Ed Berliner about the future of religion on Newsmax TV’s MidPoint show. He said that the age of immersive VR is coming fast and will have an important impact on the way religion is practiced, and perhaps bring disaffected former believers back to the Church.
In the Hypergrid Business article, Cannon invites readers to:
“Imagine authenticating to [a] neurally immersive online temple in which you participate in the mythological re-enactment, adapting the imagery to your personal spiritual needs, perhaps in concert with or according to the guidance of spiritual friends or authorities.”
The reference to a neurally immersive online temple is especially significant because it shows a clear understanding of the exponentially acceleration of technology. Today we have smartphones in our pockets and some early adopters are beginning to strap VR goggles around the head, but it seems likely that in a couple of decades we will have neural prostheses implanted in the brain, able to access the Internet via wireless links and stream high resolution, immersive VR worlds directly to our mind. We will send our mind to roam the Metaverse, and the impact of future neural VR on religious communities and practices will be huge.
Even deeper in the territory of science fiction – soon to become science fact – is the prospect of thinking and feeling Artificial Intelligences as smart as people, or much smarter. More and more experts are persuaded that the time of conscious and perhaps superintelligent AI will come sometime in this century, which prompts questions about their possible attitude to religion.
Gizmodo has an article about the future of religion in the time of superintelligent AI, written by futurist philosopher and aspiring politician Zoltan Istvan, author of The Transhumanist Wager. Provocatively titled “When Superintelligent AI Arrives, Will Religions Try to Convert It?,” Istvan’s article asks whether AI can also know God. Rev. Benek answers:
“I don’t see Christ’s redemption limited to human beings. It’s redemption to all of creation, even AI. If AI is autonomous, then we [should] encourage it to participate in Christ’s redemptive purposes in the world.”
“If Benek is right, America might be a nation filled with robot pastors and AI spiritual gurus in the future,” says Istvan, and describes new religious trends, inspired by future studies and contemporary scientific advances as well as science fiction literature, which could give rise to new visionary and massively popular religious movements.
It’s to be expected that, at the beginning, these new religious movements will be the first to establish outposts in VR, but if VR churches and spiritual communities become popular traditional religions will have to adapt and follow the pioneers in the Metaverse.
