The Gospel according to Neo: 'The Matrix' as a phenomenon shaping public opinion about religion

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | May 09, 2003 | Josh Burek

[Paul C. Jesup]

Oh come on, those ads are great if you love pure dry humor.

[nospinzone]

Maybe the super intelligent machines will realize that life is meaningless without a soul and power off.

Hey!! That's from at least 2 Star Trek episodes!!!

Man, screw Neo! We need Captain Kirk to have a heart to heart with the Matrix. He's the only starship captain I know to talk machines into committing suicide!

[Teacher317]

Does 666 translate into binary?

1010011010... beware the UPC Mark of the Beast!

[lurky]

The commercial for 2 was just on and I got shivers.

[cgk]

Remember our "Zion" discussion about the Matrix? Read this.

[B-Chan]

The Matrix ? Thinly-disguised Gnostic dreck. I cannot fathom what it is about that awful film that people think is so great. The laughable premise? The ripped-off Hong Kong action scenes? The bong-hit, dorm-room-bull-session "philosophy" behind the story? Keanu Reeves' unique Zen acting style? What?

Envoy Magazine published a great article a couple of years ago detailing all the Gnostic propaganda in the film. I suggest giving it a read before waxing rhapsodic about the gospel ccrding to Neo.

The New Gnostic Gospel
By Steve Kellmeyer

Two women lead a young man into a dusty, poorly-lit room. The furnishings are simple: two chairs and a table. Near the table stands a dark-skinned man. The young man had prepared for, longed for, this meeting for quite some time. Finally, he was about to meet the man he had known only by legend and rumor. The darker man motions towards a chair and both take a seat at the table. The dark man begins. “You want to know the answers to your questions.” The younger man nods warily. “I can reveal them to you. Are you ready to learn?” The young man nods again. “The world has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. You are a slave, born into bondage, living in a dream world . . .”

As the speaker continues his revelations, the young man leans in close, drinking in every word.

Does this scenario seem vaguely familiar? If so, it may be that you’re reminded of a similar scene in the hit movie The Matrix. Yet this is not a clip from a Hollywood movie. Even though artificial reality, illusions and delusions, and the building of dream worlds lie at the very heart of the modern movie industry, Hollywood’s media moguls did not originate the ideas embodied in this scene. Thousands of years before motion picture technology existed, the idea of artificial reality, of a dream world built for men, informed the lives of thousands of men and women throughout the Near East and beyond. The scene above is a composite drawn from the experiences of those men and women, whose philosophy seriously threatened Christianity almost from her birth. Now Hollywood has imported this dangerously false view of the world into an increasing number of its movies, showing us what it looks like when it’s placed firmly into our time.

Remember when Hollywood produced wonderfully Catholic films such as The Bells of St. Mary? Times change. The wild success of the Star Wars series began a Hollywood trend in “alternative” theologies that has recently become quite sophisticated, most especially in the cult favorite The Matrix.

Such a trend may seem discouraging to those of us who lament the deepening religious confusion of our culture. Yet Catholic apologists who recognize the theological roots of a film such as The Matrix., and who appreciate the reasons for its popularity, can use such a movie as an intriguing springboard for discussion with non-Christians. Analyzing Hollywood’s aberrant theology allows us to contrast it with Catholic truth — and thus to clarify the Faith...

Complete Article

Philosophical question for fans of The Matrix: We know that The Matrix can create a virtual-reality environment of sufficient detail to fool any human being. With this in mind, how can Neo know for certain that the world into which he awakens after taking the red pill is truly the Real World and not just a computer-generated "honey trap" created by The Matrix to trap potential troublemakers?

[ffusco]

"Latin was almost never used by the Romans in the eastern provinces." Correct those people of the Hellenic sphere of influence spoke Greek, but as a part of the empire, they were not Romans. They were Roman subjects and Romanization never took hold there.

Also it was legal to conduct any civic matter or legislation in Greek or Latin, as The Romans had turned Greece into a vast university system.


"Most Romans spoke Greek better than they did Latin".
The half -a-dozen Romance languages that exist seem to contradict that.

[maro]

"Most Romans"? Perhaps the very elite, who had tutors, but the average legionary spoke lingua latina. That's why the French and Spanish and Roumanians speak Romance languages, not a Greek patois. "INRI" is a Latin abbreviation, by the way.

[ffusco]

I was waiting for you to call me on that!

V'ger, Nomad....

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Could the anti-Christ be the anti-man? Does 666 translate into binary? Am I making this up as I go along? You bet!

Another branch of thought.

IIRC, a proposed method for demonstrating the existence of many worlds (i.e., a vast number of "parallel" universes a la Everett quantum mechanics), which obviates the need for God as an explanation for the existence of our finely-tuned universe, consists of a quantum mechanical observance that can only be done by a conscious, intelligent supermachine.

But would such a machine have a soul? Would such a machine be "possessable" in the traditional sense of evil spirits? Could such a machine ever therefore be trusted? By humanists? Probably. By traditional Christians? AntiChrist.

Another branch of thought: Existence of many worlds, plus Vingean singularity ==> deity or deities.

Are universes traversable by a deity?

So if no many-worlds scenario, our finely-tuned universe ==> God.

If many-worlds, and Vingean singularity (which appears, at first glance at least, almost inevitable) ==> God, or god(s) of some type.

[I_dmc]

Well, if 666 is decimal, it would be 29A in hex, which, in binary, would be 0010 1001 1010. If 666 is hex or octal, it would be 0110 0110 0110 or 110 110 110.

[Jeff Chandler]

Go HERE.

[ffusco]

Senex Macdonaldus habebat fundum, EIEIO
  Et in ille fundum habebat porces, EIEIO
  Cum oink oink hic, oink oink hoc
  Oink hic, oink hoc, ubique oink oink
  Senex Macdonaldus habebat fundum, EIEIO

  Senex Macdonaldus habebat fundum, EIEIO
  Et in ille fundum habebat boves, EIEIO
  Cum moo moo hic, moo moo hoc
  Moo hic, moo hoc, ubique moo moo
  Senex Macdonaldus habebat fundum, EIEIO

  Senex Macdonaldus habebat fundum, EIEIO
  Et in ille fundum habebat oves, EIEIO
  Cum baa baa hic, baa baa hoc
  Baa hic, baa hoc, ubique baa baa
  Senex Macdonaldus habebat fundum, EIEIO

  Senex Macdonaldus habebat fundum, EIEIO
  Et in ille fundum habebat anates, EIEIO
  Cum quack quack hic, quack quack hoc
  Quack hic, quack hoc, ubique quack quack
  Senex Macdonaldus habebat fundum, EIEIO

[maro]

wouldn't that be "in illo fundo"? Or even better, "illo fundo." Cheers.

[Arthur McGowan]

String about 300 questions together, and you have the script for an episode of "In Search of..."

[RLK]

I've come to the clonclusion a person is lucky to write three pieces like that in a lifetime. I don't know whether I would have the capacity to write that piece today.

[Vince Ferrer]

Well, if 666 is decimal, it would be 29A in hex, which, in binary, would be 0010 1001 1010. If 666 is hex or octal, it would be 0110 0110 0110 or 110 110 110.

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't."

- Unknown

[Maynerd]

The Matrix was a great flick but it aint no religious revelation. . .you will have to wait for the third movie in the fall for divine revelation guys.

[frosty snowman]

Philosophical question for fans of The Matrix: We know that The Matrix can create a virtual-reality environment of sufficient detail to fool any human being. With this in mind, how can Neo know for certain that the world into which he awakens after taking the red pill is truly the Real World and not just a computer-generated "honey trap" created by The Matrix to trap potential troublemakers?

I wondered about this too. At the end of the first movie, Neo is basically all powerful within the Matrix or so it seems. He killed an Agent (never done by any human before) after surviving a whole magazine of gunshots to his chest at point blank range. I think we will find it was a trap of some sort, or that the Agents have gotten even smarter since the first film.

[RLK]

clonclusion = conclusion