The Edge as usual are tickling all the thinkers of our time and below is one of the MANY responses. I like Pickovers response

CLIFFORD PICKOVER
www.edge.org
Author, Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves

We are all virtual

Our desire for entertaining virtual realities is increasing. As our
understanding of the human brain also accelerates, we will create both
imagined realities and a set of memories to support these simulacrums. For
example, someday it will be possible to simulate your visit to the Middle
Ages and, to make the experience realistic, we may wish to ensure that you
believe yourself to actually be in the Middle Ages. False memories may be
implanted, temporarily overriding your real memories. This should be easy to
do in the future — given that we can already coax the mind to create richly
detailed virtual worlds filled with ornate palaces and strange beings
through the use of the drug DMT (dimethyltryptamine). In other words, the
brains of people who take DMT appear to access a treasure chest of images
and experience that typically include jeweled cities and temples, angelic
beings, feline shapes, serpents, and shiny metals. When we understand the
brain better, we will be able to safely generate more controlled visions.

Our brains are also capable of simulating complex worlds when we dream. For
example, after I watched a movie about people on a coastal town during the
time of the Renaissance, I was “transported” there later that night while in
a dream. The mental simulation of the Renaissance did not have to be
perfect, and I’m sure that there were myriad flaws. However, during that
dream I believed I was in the Renaissance.

If we understood the nature of how the mind induces the conviction of
reality, even when strange, nonphysical events happen in the dreams, we
could use this knowledge to ensure that your simulated trip to the Middle
Ages seemed utterly real, even if the simulation was imperfect. It will be
easy to create seemingly realistic virtual realities because we don’t have
to be perfect or even good with respect to the accuracy of our simulations
in order to make them seem real. After all, our nightly dreams usually seem
quite real even if upon awakening we realize that logical or structural
inconsistencies existed in the dream.

In the future, for each of your own real lives, you will personally create
ten simulated lives. Your day job is a computer programmer for IBM. However,
after work, you’ll be a knight with shining armor in the Middle Ages,
attending lavish banquets, and smiling at wandering minstrels and beautiful
princesses. The next night, you’ll be in the Renaissance, living in your
home on the Amalfi coast of Italy, enjoying a dinner of plover, pigeon, and
heron.

If this ratio of one real life to ten simulated lives turned out to be
representative of human experience, this means that right now, you only have
a one in ten chance of being alive on the actual date of today.

I guess it's sort of like the Internet, which only exists as we know (the way it looks and sounds) on your screen?

To my mind anything which is virtual does not actually exist, ie., it is not real.
Since the internet really exists, it is not an example of a virtual 'thing'.

Tomorrow you might be a slave working in the fields of a Roman farmer. The next day you might be a serf standing barefoot in the snow in your Lord's pig sty. Then you might be tortured into confession and burned at the stake during the Spanish inquisition.

Not everyone gets to be the knight kissing the damsels.

I have to confess that even though I have not tried any virtual worlds (except in my own thoughts) I strongly suspect that I will stick with the real world.
I feel that virtual worlds are little more than an escape mechanism; perhaps ok. for entertainment, but not at the risk of losing touch with reality.

Here's my dangerous idea: antitheism.

Antitheism goes beyond atheism, which merely asserts that no supernatural entity exists. Antitheism holds that belief in a non-existent god is nuts, and that further, any such belief is always harmful.

Some have argued that a religious belief, however ill-founded, serves a good purpose in that it helps to keep people in line, gives them hope, fellowship, etc. That argument is bogus because it betrays our human potential. People who "behave right" because they are religious are being duped. A better person will behave right because he has knowledge of his true role in the universe.

Consider this reductium ad absurdum. Suppose we develop a miniature police-bot that ride on the back of your head and ensures you behave well. The religion apologist will say that solution is acceptable. It's actually an Orwellian nightmare, and lays bare the emptiness of the "it does good" argument in favor of religous nonsense.

Therefore, adherents of antitheism (there are at least two, Ann (on this forum) and I) work to actively disuade belief in the supernatural. We confront the fools head on. We say "You are not only wrong for believing as you do, but you are a fool as well, and to the extent that you promote your idiotic and demonstrably false beliefs, you are a criminal for doing harm to others." I hope this dangerous idea catches on.

Rick, as (almost) always I fully agree with you !

pickover's (science) (fiction) books are certainly worth a read.

If you were (put yourself in the place of) a member of an isolated neolithic culture, and one day you developed a suspicion that a culture with a less primitive technology existed (from evidence such as airplanes high in the sky, ships on the horizon, etc.), would you be better off closing your mind to such a possibility?

Regardless of how we got here, and whether religious activity helped or hindered our progress in the past, I maintain that it is better to free one's self from false beliefs than to resign one's self to a life of ignorant bliss.

Religionists routinely and falsely claim that only a belief in a supernatural power can provide a sound basis for ethics. That notion is demonstrably false.

I would bet that most of the predators who exploited the natives and brought them ruin were religious, too. Christopher Columbus, himself, was quite pious, but he saw it as his right and duty to first enslave the people he found.

One might say that in the long run, certain religion-driven events, like the Crusades, were actually beneficial to society, because the Crusades, for example, brought Arabic knowledge to Renaissance thinkers. However, all such justifications for the "good" that religion does are bound to fail because for every example of historical good, I can construct a "could have been" scenario that has an equivalent or better outcome but using reason instead of religious justification.

Where is Rhymer?