By Scott Donahue-Martens

With the paperback release of Theology, Religion, and Dystopia in February 2024, I thought it was time to revisit the content in light of recent societal developments. On the one hand, it is incredible how much can change in the short interval between a final manuscript and a new published format. On the other hand, it is intriguing how a constellation of concerns remains constant. War, ecological disaster, social control of bodies, and technological advances continue to make headlines. Dystopia texts frequently serve as warnings for societal imbalance or impending threats. These texts can simultaneously embrace and push against aspects of religion and theology. Brandon Simonson and I write, “We hypothesize that the rise of dystopian works might correlate with the rise of experiences of reality being dystopian. In other words, as people continue to experience life and reality in increasingly dystopian manners, popular culture responds by producing dystopian works.”[1] While science-fiction has continually warned humanity about the possibility of Artificial Intelligence (AI) having untold destructive capacity, the probability of such an event has rapidly increased in the past year and a half.

I remember watching a history movie in college that ended each chronological period in the same way. Though the title of the film has been lost to time for me, one line sticks with me to this day. “The Christians of that time thought it was the end of the world.”[2] Growing up in the heyday of Left Behind, it dawned on me that hysteria concerning the end of the world was not new. I took comfort that time and time again the end of the world did not come as the movie indicated it would. Perhaps because of a strong Left Behind upbringing, I don’t like to be a doomsday sayer or sensationalist when it comes to potential threats, but the headlines about AI are expressing the existential dread for me. Here is a sample of just three article titles: “AI Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn,”[3] “Exclusive: 42% of CEOs say AI could destroy humanity in five to ten years”[4] and, “Five ways AI might destroy the world: ‘Everyone on Earth could fall over dead in the same second.’”[5] According to these articles, the end may be nigh.

Rather than discuss the merits of whether or not AI is taking over the world, I am more interested in the kinds of questions generated at the intersections of AI, religion, theology, and dystopia. One particular work, Ready Player Two,offers a rich depiction of this intersection for further conversation. Ernest Cline’s Ready Player series imagines a dystopian world in which a computer-rendered OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation) offers an escape to those who can afford the Virtual Reality technology and associated gear required to enter it. Akin to Apple’s new $3,499 Apple Vision Pro augmented reality technology, this cost barrier to entry is steep in the dystopian future imagined in Cline’s first book, leading many to exhaust income and credit limits alike for an occasional escape from their harsh realities. The second book allows users to connect via “signals transmitted directly” to users’ “cerebral cortex,” narrowing the gap between how the virtual world is experienced in reality.[6] “The simulation has now become indistinguishable from real life.”[7] Both books in the series take on quest formats that are filled with popular culture references, especially from the 1980s.

The second novel’s plot revolves around a haywire supposed “NPC” (Non-player Character) created by one of the founders of the OASIS. The main character learns that the character is not really an NPC, however, when he starts to act erratically. “‘I’m not an NPC designed to look like James Halliday.’ I am him. A digitized copy of his consciousness, bound inside this avatar. I can think. And feel. Just like you.”[8] The character refers to himself as AI even while acknowledging its intelligence was initially rooted in the consciousness of the OASIS creator. The book revolves around a quest for seven shards that allegedly contain a dead person’s soul. When brought together, these shards would reconstitute the person inside the OASIS with their human consciousness intact. Beyond the ethics of plugging human consciousness into a computer simulation that exists independently of a physical body, Cline’s choice of the word “soul” intrigues me as a theologian. It raises questions like: can the soul live on without a body? Can a soul be digitized in a manner that goes beyond a mere copy of the physical? While the second question is much more recent, the first question has deep roots in Greek philosophy and theology.

Apart from the chaos caused by AI gone haywire, the book names “DPCs—digitized player characters,” as those who have been granted “the gift of digital immortality.”[9] Reminiscent of “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:26), and countering the introduction of death in Genesis after paradise lost, the book says: “From this moment forth, death would have no more dominion. … He had delivered all of us unto this digital paradise … .”[10] For Ready Player Two, salvation from the dystopia of the world is through digital escape eternally pixilated.

If the digital world is a “paradise,” what kind of paradise is it and, as Theology, Religion, and Dystopia asks, for whom is this paradise/utopia imagined at the exclusion of others? Ready Player Two is not obligated to answer these questions, but its escapist soteriology raises all sorts of dystopic questions about the relationship between reality and virtual reality. In a way, Ready Player Two offers an eternal Matrix-like existence which offers further separation between the body and existence. In Ready Player Two, the soul and human consciousness can escape physical limitations by being uploaded into a simulation, which has its own rules and limits, but what does it mean to then be human without a body after the body dies? What happens to the souls if the OASIS somehow shuts down? Salvation and paradise arrive by digitally escaping the world; yet, I have a feeling that such an escape would only reinforce the existential dread of postmodernity.

As Theology, Religion, and Dystopia notes, the presence of ancient philosophical, theological, religious, and/or spiritual questions is prevalent within dystopian works. Simonson and I argue that “dystopia might be best understood as a sort of demythologized apocalyptic,” and that “both apocalyptic literature and dystopian literature aim to inspire the reader to makes changes in their own lives.”[11] Ready Player Two invites readers to consider pertinent existential changes in light of the blurring intersections between life and technology, the body and the soul, human consciousness and artificial intelligence. The paperback version of Theology, Religion, and Dystopia is available for $27.99 using code LXFANDF30.

Scott Donahue-Martens (Ph.D.) is a graduate of Boston University where he earned a Ph.D. in Practical Theology. He is ordained in the Wesleyan Tradition and is a Board-Certified Chaplain. Some of Scott’s research interests are at the intersections of Paul Ricoeur, narrative theory, homiletics, hermeneutics, trauma, and pop-culture. 

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Notes

[1] Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson, eds., Theology, Religion, and Dystopia (Lanham, MD: Fortress Academic / Lexington Books, 2022), 10

[2] I don’t recall the video to give proper citation unfortunately.

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/technology/ai-threat-warning.html

[4] https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/14/business/artificial-intelligence-ceos-warning/index.html

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/07/five-ways-ai-might-destroy-the-world-everyone-on-earth-could-fall-over-dead-in-the-same-second

[6] Ernest Cline, Ready Player Two (New York: Ballantine Books, 2020), 6.

[7] Cline, Ready Player Two, 14.

[8] Cline, Ready Player Two, 124.

[9] Cline, Ready Player Two, 355.

[10] Cline, Ready Player Two, 359.

[11] Donahue-Martens and Simonson, Theology, Religion, and Dystopia, 19.