|
|
|
|
Searching For God in Cyberspace Call them info-mystics: cutting-edge religious scholars and theologians say the Internet has the potential to be redemptive, carrying humankind to higher levels of consciousness. By Joan Connell, MSNBC Start Date: 12/22/98 (Dec. 22, 1998) -- In biblical times, the lost tribes wandering in the Sinai saw God as a column of smoke, a pillar of fire. In the era of empires, God was imagined as a king on a distant throne. Democracy demands a more intimate deity, and these days, believers are likely to describe God as a father, a mother, a lover, a friend. What will faith be like in the next millennium? The new electronic landscape is filled with spiritual seekers of all kinds, following ephemeral columns of smoke and pillars of fire, just as the lost tribes of Israel wandered the Sinai desert. Images of the Divine reflect the realities of the people who seek it. So it is perhaps inevitable that cutting-edge religious scholars are likening the Internet to an emerging metaphor for God. Call them info-mystics, these scholars and theologians who say the Internet has the potential to be a redemptive vehicle to carry humankind to higher levels of consciousness, helping flawed human matter evolve into a state of pure mind. There are scholars who regard the glowing screen of a computer as the present-day equivalent of the prayer wheel, the stained-glass window or the illuminated medieval manuscript. Engaging with the spiritual via a luminous screen, some info-mystics argue, engages both sides of the brain, allowing the spiritually attuned user to ride alpha waves into a numinous, meditative state. Is spirituality in cyperspace a fringe idea? Not really. Last year, a group of religion scholars gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to discuss the spiritual potential of cyberspace. And one of the most interesting revelations that emerged from the conference was that this is not a new idea. It originated in 1925, with the visionary French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. A geologist, paleontologist, mystic and Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin predicted that humankind would eventually evolve from the ÏbiosphereÓ we currently inhabit to a disembodied state he called the Ïnoosphere,Ó from noos, the Greek word for mind. To info-mystics like Charles Henderson, convener of the MIT conference and head of the Association for Religion in Intellectual Life, Teilhard de Chardin's transcendent vision sounds remarkably like the disembodied, borderless realms of cyberspace. Sacred and Profane: Such a rarified experience is far different from the hurly-burly of e-mail, commerce, gossip, instant news and information overload of cyberspace as most of us experience it. Transcendent or not, this new electronic landscape is filled with spiritual seekers of all kinds, following ephemeral columns of smoke and pillars of fire, just as the lost tribes of Israel wandered the Sinai desert. The mission of these cyber-seekers: to carry on the age-old search for God into new territory, raising new questions about the nature of prayer, congregational identity and spiritual authority. The Web is too big and far too fluid for accurate measures, but the last time I plugged the word ÏGodÓ into a search engine, I got 3.9 million matches. Yahoo! alone has close to 1,000 categories sorting out tens of thousands of sites devoted to various faiths and practices. Wired Religion: From the pope to practicing pagans, virtually every religious body maintains a Web site. Baptists and Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons and Muslims have established a presence online. So have the newer religions, from the Church of Scientology to UFO-worshiping cults. God only knows if Teilhard de Chardin's expansive vision of a disembodied community of souls united in cyberspace will ever be achieved. The Internet is also a new medium of dissent, challenging traditional notions of religious authority. When the Vatican silenced French Bishop Jacques Gaillot for his liberal views, Gaillot got wired. He now preaches his progressive Gospel from a virtual diocese in cyberspace. In America, Greek Orthodox dissidents have carried on an acrimonious assault on the authority of their recently appointed Archbishop Spyridon, challenging his authority in a movement that has made itself felt around the world. Far more interesting, though, are the esoteric questions of online spirituality. In ÏShopping for Faith,Ó a new book by Don Lattin and Richard Cimino on American religion in the next Millennium, communications scholar Stephen O'Leary envisions a spiritual renaissance online, as computer-based rituals, rich in iconography, image, music and sound, unite people in worship, transcending boundaries of time and space. Religious learning will also be affected, with sacred texts once accessible only to scholars being made available to all. But what about the virtual spiritual experience? Is it possible to be touched by God in cyberspace? Is praying online any different from gathering to pray in a house of worship? And the credibility question that lurks in the background of every Internet transaction also affects this realm: How can a person be sure that a religious figure on the Internet is genuine? We have yet to see confession by e-mail, a click-through experience of the Rapture or the administration of virtual sacraments (though some playful penitential software has been developed to replicate the real thing). Participants in prayer circles on the Internet do claim, however, that online healings often occur. God only knows if Teilhard de Chardin's expansive vision of a disembodied community of souls united in cyberspace will ever be achieved. But count on one thing: As long as there are human beings with a yen for the transcendent, the search will continue, in the real world and in the virtual one. Joan Connell is Opinions editor for MSNBC on the Internet.
Built by Frontier on a Macintosh on 6/17/00; 11:53:34 AM. Web Comments  -
Produced by Larry LoweServed 1326 times since 12/22/98. |
|
