Religion and reality

By: kraftb@kraftb.at

When you start thinking about physics, reality, consciousness and perception you quickly head to a direction which is strongly interlinked with theology and religion.

This time I would like to think about what our world and reality really is. I personally think very often about this issue, but should write down right at the beginning that I find scenarios like shown in Hollywood Blockbusters like "Matrix" not very probable. If one thinks about the many ways how our reality could be, so that our world is the only and real one compared to the idea that our world exists in another one, then the "Matrix" scenario is only one of those many - and even a very horrible one. I guess especially for weak minded people and other mentally sick people such a thought is very bad. Even for healthy people the thought that we are only there as resource for other lifeforms is very frustrating. But I would like to point to other movies here like for example "eXistenZ", the movie "13th floor" which is a very nice one in my opinion and based on an old movie named "Welt am Draht" (World on Wires) which again is based on a science fiction novel named "Simulacron-3". There also exist other movie which include parts of the concept like for example getting into the mind of somone else like in the movie "Being John Malkovich". I should add, that I do not like watching TV and/or movies very much. Thus I am not informed about newer productions. But I assume the new cinema movie "The Surrogates" should follow those ideas partly.

When you have a look to the pictures above you see one picture of our own galaxy, the milky way, photographed from some spot of our own planet. The lower image is symbol picture for what we understand as "the matrix". The upper picture shows something more reachable, something you can watch every night when having a clear sky. The other thing is a construct of our minds. Of course you can prove neither the one nor the other. But when you would like to start to proving such things you soon end up with a problem similarly to those if god exists or not. You simply can not prove it. I guess some of the only things in our world which can get proven are mathematics and logical formulations, and of course someone can prove you her/his love or friendship!

Already at the start page of my website I greet people with a "Bless you" ("Grüß Gott" in German) like it is common in Austria. If you enter a shop or simply greet someone you don't know in almost all parts of Austria it is the most common thing to say "Grüß Gott". Please do not ask me where this tradition did came from - rather ask some students of Austrian history.

So if someone starts to ask herself or himself what god really is, you will find yourself in an area of discussion on which theologists of every religion worked for quite a few thousand years. I assume no one will ever find a final answer about the what, where and how god is. In christian religions people are confident that god watches our every day does, and when we die we either get into heaven or hell, depending on what we did and not did in our life. Other religions think that we get born again after we have died, and there are even many other religions which teach aneven different picture of the world.

Of course one could count those "world in a world" scenarios like in the previously mentioned movies also as a religion, but I think, or merely hope, that for those "religions" there are not many followers. None of those scenarios seems to be very satisfying or senseful. If you ask me personally whether I think we are living in a real world or in a simulated reality I would answer you "a real world". Just as it is too complicated assuming the other.