The Search for God in the Digital Age
Minutes of a Panel Discussion that took place at the University of Denver on March 27th, 1998.
James Bailey - author of "After Thought;" a respected leader in the computer industry; envisions computers as our "intellectual companions;" expects an expanding intelligence to emerge from the masses of linked computers all over the world;
Eduardo Regal - director of the Electronic Christian Library in Lima, Peru;
Brother Aquinas - Benedictine monk; founded a digital "scriptorum" on line; his monastery's work has won numerous awards; currently developing a new project - high-end digital research and design for the Catholic church;
Carl Raschke - professor of Religious Studies at DU; specialist in philosophical and theological postmodernism; advocate for educational reform; written hundreds of articles and been a publisher in his own right;
Bailey: Details a recent conference in Denver - worldwide group of bishops get together to hear about the communications industry and how computer technology will impact the church;
Aquinas: His approach is to see the power of the medium (computers) for the religion & the faith; the Internet is intimacy - unlike broadcast media, which can't embody faith; interactions between people on-line give an intimacy to the medium; there's a "dark side" to the Internet as well, obviously; however, there also are many benefits to give faith life in the digital media;
Regal: Humanity has ever been searching for something to fulfill its needs; but our most profound needs have never been fulfilled with the material environment; we have a need for infinity; experienced in many different ways for every person; the search for God - this dynamic in which we search for more, for God, has always been - it's an ontological characteristic of human beings, in the Iron Age, the Medieval Age, and the Computer Age; technology is also inherent in humans; technology is an element of culture; we can establish a relationship between the need for God and technology; we can have technology that builds a better culture - expresses the need for God and can help people find God;
Raschke: The Intenet is a new experience for people; represents a primal anxiety of ours; we can't search for God in the digital age until we know what it means to be digital; human history is the history of communitcations and experience; how are we really experiencing the world today is with computers and the mouse; What is the experience of the new, hyper-textual, on-line, ever-present World Wide Web, where everything relates to everything else? Where is God? Where is "the holy?" The Christian Right says the Web is the newest Babel - the source of foul spirits and fornicating conceptions; there's a lot of info out there - it's one gigantic world; Think of Augustine in 5th century - Augustine used the phrase "faith seeking understanding;" when you go on the Web, you're on an adventure of faith; a kind of active faith experience and an understanding of a new way of processing information and knowledge coalesces; maybe God is involved in this process; (Raschke does not read books anymore - [but, and this is my note, he does write them!]) There is such a thing as a growing virtual community - people do horrible things to each other in chat rooms because of spoof identities; it's not a REAL community - deep unconsciousness expresses itself; the Web forces us to confront the totality of the human imagination - demonic AND angelic, and God must be involved somehow;
Bailey: The monopoly of the church on the greatest questions & answers is over; increasingly, what we think of as life is within our control; this dwarfs any short-term issues about the Internet & the church; we're scraping away the mysteries of how life works - THAT'S the true issue, the big deal;
Regal: Finding God is an inner experience - so the media can only be tools and symbols to take one on the path to find God within ourselves; God is not IN a computer or the digital medium;
Raschke: Look at the history of media; media doesn't go away, it just gets reallocated; computers will not replace radio or TV or phones; they said the same thing about TV replacing radio and it didn't; We never have a pure unmediated experience of God; if you look at media, it's a way of mediating experience in such a way that forms of communication are set up; the question is not WHETHER the church will get with the digital age, but HOW will the church get with the digital age; everyone's experience is being reshaped by the Internet; people say that computers are going to destroy civilization, but in reality, civilization is changing whether we like it or not, and the same goes for religion; "The book" created certain kinds of authority that hadn't existed before; the book is NOT going away, but it will lose its hegemony - it's about how you spend your time and how your experience is appropriated; the more time you spend at a computer, the more you absorb its structures; computer discourse is fragmented, uncentered - no top-down authority in the digital world; Evangelism is the marketing of God; look at studies of what's happening on the Web - the trend is the OLD content producers are taking over the Web; it's really a matter of brand recognition, not so much marketing;
Regal: The Internet is very invasive in regards to advertisements, but the church can come up with some commercial elements that are non-invasive;
(Question: How can the hierarchical Catholic Church handle the fragmented on-line medium? MULTIPLE communities, NOT GLOBAL; on the Internet, you get cafeteria-style religion;)
Raschke: There are some studies about consumer behavior on the Internet; show that once people come to a compelling site they stick there; a web site ALWAYS has text as well as pix, so it's not just TV; it's engagement comparable to a book; "What is compelling content?" is the big question; web sites must have good info; the Internet is the renaissance of text-based learning - to bring God to the faithful you have to do it in a text-based way;
Bailey: Computers are very poor at being human; but their ability to become intelligent in ways different from us - that's good and more spooky; computers start to take away human turf - Deep Blue spooked people; as this happens, is that gonna drive us to tussle with God and take aspects of controlling over, say, our own genetics? Yes, it's happening now!
Raschke: See Arthur C. Clarke's book, "The 9 Billion Names of God"; Where does God fit into the question of intelligence? Theologically, you say as machines get more intelligent and do more stuff, that's not a big deal; theologians have never argued that God is defined by intelligence - it's also POWER; Artificial Intelligence (AI) doesn't allow for intuitive leaps - we are learning the limitations of (AI) (Note: Bailey is NOT going to like this argument!); philosophically, we realize computer intelligence is very specialized, but not God-like; there's still something called "life" that's not part of the logic process; are they chipping away? - Raschke says no - it's like finding a strip of gold - a specialized vein, but NOT an entire mine; thinking machines can't IMAGINE;
Regal: To reduce the mind of humans or God to a sequence of codes and instructions is ridiculous;
(Question: What about computer analysis of the OT - see "The Bible Code")
Aquinas: That's not an important thing; has nothing to do with faith and belief; he doesn't put much stock in it;
Raschke: It's like astrology - looking for a good code or system to explain everything; you can generate numbers and conclusions but they don't prove anything, certainly not that they've come from God;
(Observation: Is there any information that gets to us that does not first go through a computer? Bailey says no.)
Raschke: Radio was ubiquitous - then TV made it more specialized; digitization will free literature; but the literature that inspires us can never be presented in the WWW - it presents DOCUMENTS, espisodic stuff, but when it comes down to the weighty, the Web won't be able to handle it; you can study the Bible easily on-line because you can easily study it in an espisodic, thematic way - not from beginning to end, like War and Peace (or any novel);
(Question: Is the Internet a self-correcting thing, sorting out the truth and rejecting the false? "Truth through a great democratic dialogue"?)
Bailey: There's no reason to think the Internet will converge on truth; maybe once the level of falsehood rises, truth will flee! It's a problem right now - you don't know what to believe on the Internet and it probably won't change in that regard any time soon if ever;
Raschke: You read articles about how rumors start on the Internet and just balloon; but there's a lot of truth on the Internet being ignored by "experts" and "authorities"; like the Monica Lewinsky story - people were talking about it on the Internet before it hit the papers; stuff that can't make the papers' standards or tests can be kicked around freely on the Internet, like a big town forum; and you CAN tell a good web site from a bad one; really, the question of truth and falsity on the Internet is a spurious one;
Aquinas: For believers, ideally, the virtual would be tied to the real - experiencing God not just while sitting at a computer;
(From the audience: The moral implications of biology and technology dwarf the moral implications of the Internet, but how people deal with these implications ON the Internet are important)
Raschke: The WWW is the contemporary form of the illuminated manuscript, which were used to spread the Gospel to the illiterate masses; the church will eventually understand how the power of the word of God can be made congruent with the experience of the Internet - then a new Reformation will take place.