Social Question

Pazza's avatar

Are we all living in God's matrix?

Asked by Pazza (3268points) December 10th, 2009

Here’s a thought…......... did you hear it?
No, maybe I should have kept this one to myself…....

I mean, this is how insane society really is, on the one hand you have funda’MENTAL’ist Christians saying things like “The world is only 10,000 years old, and God put dinosaur bones on earth to test our faith!” and people just say ” Oh, it’s just their faith. I don’t have to agree with it!” but they don’t say “lock’em up, NUTTERS!”. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to dis anyone else’s faith, but these same people who think God is so vain that he wants all his children to worship him and devote their lives to him, and that committing one deadly sin, just once in your life without repent, warrants going to hell and damnation for eternity would quite happily see someone like me sectioned for believing matter isn’t really solid!

Do I think I should be sectioned, probably, but until then here’s what I think….....

So far as I know, the bible says God created man in his own image “and he will have two arms…....” etc. But since it also says Jonah was swallowed by a whale and survived, I think it’s safe to say the bible wasn’t intended to be taken literally.

So what in my interpretation does ‘in his own image’ mean. To me it means spiritually, that man would be companionate, loving, patient, forgiving, tender, sympathetic, and all the other qualities that we instinctively know to be ethical, good and righteous.

But all that being said, for the most part, I don’t believe God is a person. I believe God is the creator only because he created everything in the universe, and that everything in the universe is God. To me God is a metaphor, a rolling up into one name given to the complexity of the universe as a whole. A singular category used to explain in layman’s terms how the universe came into being, if you consider that even today science, which has seemingly come so far still struggles to understand the basics of how the universe works, how could a culture 2000 years ago
possibly comprehend the enormity of how everything they could see came to exist, to them and the vast majority of mankind today believe ‘It must of had a creator’........God.

All of the above I suppose, could be forgiven by the masses, and the men in the white suits probably wouldn’t be ‘a-knock-knock knocking’ at my door just for that, at least not until I mentioned ‘The Matrix’, and yes I do mean the film. Now don’t write me off as a nutter just yet, let me tickle your synapses a little longer.

Maybe this whole universe doesn’t really exist, not as the tangible solid form as we perceive it anyway, after all, the only way we know things exist is by interpreting electrical impulses received by the brain, just the same way a computer chip interprets zeros and one’s, maybe the signals we receive and interpret are just interactions with a sort of matrix, our matrix not being a computer program, but the energy field that surrounds and envelopes all matter in the universe.

Ancient texts call this energy field the ‘Ether’, more recent enlightened and intuitive people like Wilhelm Reich called certain frequencies of this field ‘Orgone energy’, whereas mainstream science today (which as far as I know doesn’t fully acknowledge its existence other than theoretically) call it ‘Zero point’ energy and or ‘Dark matter’ depending on whether you’re an astronomer or a physicist. Maybe my fingers aren’t really pressing keys on a keyboard, but my consciousness perceives keys on a keyboard as it interacts with the universal energy field, I give a command to my finger and say press the space bar and a flurry of messages come back and are interpreted and tell me whether or not I hit the target, since even main stream science admits that most of an atom is just empty space, and even the bit in the middle, I think they’re still confused about, could just be pure energy and contain nothing ‘solid’, maybe we are all ‘Living in a matrix’ God’s Matrix!

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY …….

Only kidding…
I cheated anyway, I used Copy and paste!

Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0

20 Answers

FutureMemory's avatar

Can I get a summarized version of your question?

SeventhSense's avatar

Yes but even the imagination of life and death is an illusion.

Xilas's avatar

nothing exist for sure – we only define and describe things in a certain sense…so we can talk about them.

Sueanne_Tremendous's avatar

I’m taking this one into the bathroom for some serious reading….hoping I don’t create something in my image and likeness…I won’t look..just flush

Xilas's avatar

everything in this world is very abstract, a bundle or collection of thoughts.. Just waiting for someone else to alter them

hence the word… theory

mcbealer's avatar

Being a movie geek, I visited your question with mild curiosity… which was quickly extinguished by the very very lengthy diatribe. just sayin’. And no, I could not bring myself to read it in it’s entirety in case you’re wondering.

laureth's avatar

Christians would often believe that Atheists and people of other religions are living in God’s Matrix, and if we would just take the “pill” and look through the barrier, we’d repent, sin no more, and stand next to them on Judgment Day.

Atheists (like me) often think that religious people are living in a Matrix of their own making, and that if they took the “pill,” they’d see that it’s all stories and myth and vanishes like a wisp of fog if you try to examine it, fading into non-existence, since there isn’t a God.

I’m sure people from other religions feel that way about their own worldview, that we’re all in the Matrix of Shiva (dancing the world into existence) or Buddha (all is illusion anyway) or the Great Goddess (...and to Her we shall return, like a drop of rain…) or whatnot, but I generally don’t hear them prosletyze as much as Christians or Atheists, so it’s hard to tell. The nature of religion is personal; aren’t we all in a Matrix of our own making, in some way or another?

SeventhSense's avatar

@laureth
Good point which echoes Buddha’s words, “The self is the only foundation of the self.”

Jeruba's avatar

I think you mean “sanctioned,” not “sectioned.”

filmfann's avatar

I am a Christian.
This could be a matrix, but it would not be in the mind of God, since there is so much evil here. God can control everything, but he has set the table, and the menu, but we still act like foolish children.

drdoombot's avatar

This reminds me a bit of the writings of philosopher George Berkeley. He claimed that the universe was made of ideas, which we perceive through our senses (the “idea” of an apple tells us it is red, round-ish, sweet, etc). Since we are only equipped to perceive ideas, there is no way for us to know if physical objects really exist.

In a sense, he believed we live in a Matrix. The Matrix transmits ideas to our senses that seem real, but from inside the Matrix, there is really no way to tell what exists outside of it. Of course, Berkeley would have said it was God who puts the ideas of things into our heads, but it’s similar enough to what the OP was suggesting.

Pazza's avatar

@mcbealer
Ignorance is bliss aye~ ;-p

Pazza's avatar

@Jeruba
Do you get sanctioned in a looney bin?

Pazza's avatar

@SeventhSense
Does that mean if I stop thinking I exist, I’ll cease to exist?

Strauss's avatar

Red pill or blue, Neo?

SeventhSense's avatar

@Pazza
Who is this that asks?
@Yetanotheruser
^OMG you stole my avatar. But then again, I stole it too but still that’s a first for me.

Strauss's avatar

@Pazza I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:

Objective reality is a mutually agreed-upon mass illusion

@SeventhSense Ho, ho, ho!

Pazza's avatar

@SeventhSense
Hi I’m God, and I just wondered wether you mortal nuggets had figured it out yet!~

Pazza's avatar

@Yetanotheruser
Red pill everytime.

SeventhSense's avatar

@Pazza
There’s your answer.

Answer this question

Login

or

Join

to answer.
Your answer will be saved while you login or join.

Have a question? Ask Fluther!

What do you know more about?
or
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther