Digital Technology
Humans are not the primary players in such an era. Regardless of whether they make the technology, they like digital technology. However, humans often find it hard to match the power of their artificial technology. In the book that Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson wrote called Race Against the Machine, we are in the midst of a technological revolution that radically redefines what work is.
According to them, advanced digital technology is making people wealthy, more productive, and more innovative both in the long and short term. However, it has the potential to come at the expense of increasing wealth inequality in society. Digital technology becomes full power through its character of automation in anything’s creation that has never existed in human life. As an alternative, digital technology also shows the development of human civilization and helps the development of human life.
If we don’t realize it with technology, many things from technology will negate the essential role of humans in running their own lives. In such an era, there have been many profound shifts, especially in human life’s way. National boundaries are not a big problem in building activities; the distance between people is no longer far.
Separating Human Perspective
We cannot separate the human perspective from the influence of various interpretations of information and data; algorithms affect countless human behavior. Likewise, with human privacy in the face of vital threats, this digital era is an era of openness. If we wish so, anyone can participate in demonstrating their existence. Therefore, we fell into the labyrinth era of illusions. We can compare the phenomenon in the play Asinaria by Plautus: humans are not humans, but wolves, to strangers.
People know the play as homo homini lupus, which means that one man is another man’s wolf. Humans who build their relationship with God show the side of human religiosity. Likewise, the human experience of building relationships with others manifests the human social side. Human knowledge in achieving the goal of common welfare through a structure and system of living together shows the human side.
In addition, the human experience of giving and processing meaning to the world appears as a cultural side. To clarify, Sigmund Freud says, in his book Civilization and Its Discontents, that humans are not gentle creatures who want to be loved. On the contrary, they are creatures among whom we must count the gift of instinct as a brawny component of aggressiveness.
Existential Experience of Humans and God
When we go back to the digital era, it becomes a fact that we can’t just deny it. However, we also have to place it more seriously in viewing patterns of interaction and development of life between humans today. We try to put down facts in the digital era by criticizing, exploring, and seeing how humans live now. With the religious traditions that we live in, do humans, and religion, harmoniously have a position in the labyrinth of illusion era, and fills with challenges?
We depart from the side of human culture, especially on the issue of sociality and human religiosity. It is not about the conception of religion and God. According to Brian Leahy, the entire existential experience of humans with their religiosity tries to understand the world. We cannot separate it from their relationship with God. By incorporating God into concrete life, humans “create” the reality of God in our existence.
Although humans have their way of understanding God’s existence, it does not change. In such a way, it plays the role of God’s existential influence on human life. The side of human religiosity has brought him from mere existential experience to the existential impact of God.
Inherent Religion
What about a detailed description of what is inherent in human life? Regardless of having a meeting point in terms of human culture, human experience always tries to give and cultivate meaning in the world. Until today’s digital era, we can see world developments in this context. Such development is the human effort’s result to give and cultivate more meaning for the world. Through other existential experiences, we can see more deeply how the human side of culture gives and processes meaning to the world.
With religion as a reference in displaying the existence of God, social roles and forms of constructive goodness play a role in every meeting of the existential experiences of humans. If religion means a form of human existential experience, then it shows the existential influence of God with all his goodness on human life. We can and should meet the sides of human sociality and religiosity through religion.
Although it influences how man manifests his experience of God, such emphasis is very acute. It plays the role of religious people who live together with people of other religions. When we accept it as a general conception, the belief in the existence of God is that God brings positive and good influences in human life.
Vessel
In concrete life, man’s complete existential experience of God will encourage him to try to reveal God. Therefore, religion acts as an expression of living beliefs. It is existential in the form of charity and faith in perfecting all human behavior. In the digital era, we have made many dogmas, along with religious traditions, seem as if they are no longer relevant, like it or not. Therefore, technological developments have made traditional religious authorities far out of date.
Like all kinds of slander and fake news in the name of religion, the information’s spread is very vulnerable. Certain parties analyze data through algorithms in mapping areas; it is defenseless to conflict. They carry out divisive propaganda. The advent of the post-truth era made it difficult for religious people to place their trust solely in devout teachings. Because what is important is the influence of one’s beliefs and emotions because the digital era has challenged the human way of religion.
If we understand saintly as a vessel for God’s existential influence on human existential experience, then the way humans express faith becomes very important. It requires us to look again at how we should carry out religion, bearing in mind the sad facts about the amount of sacrificed blood in the name of religion.
Pure Fundamental Analogy
Offense because we feel a religion that we believe other people think is wrong or trivial; it has made the way some humans express belief. It is pure hate-based and emotional. However, the religious radicalism of holy communities that thrives in almost all religions raises a fundamental analogy. Humans can do badly if not in the name of a good God. Therefore, what we need now is integration between technological developments and religion.
Religion will find relevance to get to the point. If religious values themselves mixed with technological developments, religious authorities should not be anti-technology just because it seems as if it has replaced its role in human life. Sooner, it seeks to make technology part of how religion conveys values. For example, we must use social media in the catechizing religious teachings context.
It is so that divinity can reach everyone who lives more intensely with their social media than their social reality. Even though the digital era challenges the way each member of society views religion, we can still interpret each other’s religious values solidly.
Integral Ground
We must not reject the facts of the developments that the digital era has brought and must not simply accept them. Moreover, to find common ground between religion and God, we must be proportional in taking a stance. Through his existence, God exerts an existential influence on every human existential experience, including religious experience. On the other hand, the way of religion we need no longer fixates on closed and rigid religious traditions.
Instead, it’s open and flexible. However, the negative impact of such dichotomy, at least, raises a few problems. First, we emphasize the religious way of an individual more on the absolute truth of his creation. For another reason, it closes itself even from information and all existing technology. Besides, it rejects others outside of itself, and there is only conflict with each other between religious communities.
Second, we will consider the faithful life’s concept out of date and irrelevant. If we want to express such believing experience, it must lead to positive values and kindness to fellow human beings. In this digital era, we can only help our religious way. If we place technology as an integral part of our lives, then the labyrinth of illusion can find a peaceful meeting between humans and religion.
Bibliography
- Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2012). Race against the machine: How the digital revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy. Brynjolfsson and McAfee.
- Freud, S. (2015). Civilization and its discontents. Broadview Press.
- Konstan, D. (1978). Plot and Theme in Plautus’ Asinaria. The Classical Journal, 73(3), 215-221.