{"id":1304,"date":"2011-08-13T22:53:49","date_gmt":"2011-08-14T02:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=1287"},"modified":"2011-08-13T22:53:49","modified_gmt":"2011-08-14T02:53:49","slug":"reasons-to-buy-religion-and-science-fiction-you-are-free-to-or-youve-been-programmed-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/08\/reasons-to-buy-religion-and-science-fiction-you-are-free-to-or-youve-been-programmed-to.html","title":{"rendered":"Reasons to Buy Religion and Science Fiction: You Are Free To&#8230;Or You&#8217;ve Been Programmed To"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1288\" href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/exploringourmatrix\/?attachment_id=1288\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1288\" src=\"https:\/\/wp.patheos.com\/community\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2011\/08\/TRON-RASF.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"355\" height=\"476\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re free to order the book, and free not to \u2013 right? That\u2019s a surprisingly controversial subject. Free will, consciousness, and many other aspects of our human experience remain puzzles to philosophers, neuroscientists, would-be programmers of artificial intelligences, and of course, science fiction fans. Pondering what would be involved in creating an artificially intelligent computer program is one of the thought experiments that can help us reflect on what it means to be human, to be conscious, and to be free.<\/p>\n<p>But whether you think you have free will, and whether you actually have it, you still might buy the book. The only question will be <i>why<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>The TRON films actually have<i> lots <\/i>of interesting points of intersection with religion, in particular as they explore the analogy that humans (\u201cUsers\u201d) are essentially the gods of the computer world, and in <i>TRON Legacy<\/i> as it explores \u2013 and problematizes \u2013 a creator\u2019s (and a demiurge\u2019s) vision of a perfect world.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019re free to order the book, and free not to \u2013 right? That\u2019s a surprisingly controversial subject. Free will, consciousness, and many other aspects of our human experience remain puzzles to philosophers, neuroscientists, would-be programmers of artificial intelligences, and of course, science fiction fans. Pondering what would be involved in creating an artificially intelligent computer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,106,1],"tags":[810,2144,10500,10885,10890,12941],"class_list":["post-1304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","category-tron","category-uncategorized","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-consciousness","tag-robots","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-tron"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Reasons to Buy Religion and Science Fiction: You Are Free To...Or You&#039;ve Been Programmed To<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You&#039;re free to order the book, and free not to - right? That&#039;s a surprisingly controversial subject. Free will, consciousness, and many other aspects of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/08\/reasons-to-buy-religion-and-science-fiction-you-are-free-to-or-youve-been-programmed-to.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reasons to Buy Religion and Science Fiction: You Are Free To...Or You&#039;ve Been Programmed To\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You&#039;re free to order the book, and free not to - right? That&#039;s a surprisingly controversial subject. 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