When some of us were young, our parents would scold us for wasting our time with, like, SuperGirl. But our own Jon Bartlett explains,
I have been very pleased with the way that Marvel’s TV show “Agents of Shield” has been at promoting an ID-friendly worldview. Last year I noted that their super-scientists explicitly promoted the idea of “Intelligent Design” (using that terminology) in examining biological phenomena.
This season, Agents of Shield addresses moral questions about virtual vs. physical worlds. A common idea in pop culture is the idea that, as computers get bigger, eventually we can just plug our minds into a large computer and live forever. Well, Agents of Shield decided to play with that idea, and look into the moral/social repercussions.
In this season, Dr. Radcliffe creates a virtual world called The Framework, and also creates a robot named Aida in the real world. Radcliffe gives Aida two tasks – protect Radcliffe’s life at all costs and protect The Framework at all costs. However, Aida eventually feels that Radcliffe is himself a threat to the Framework. Since she is supposed to be protecting *both* of them, she doesn’t know what to do. So, she asks Radcliffe if people living in The Framework are just as alive as people living in the real world. Radcliffe says that this is the case. Aida asks if he is sure, and Radcliffe says that he is positively sure. So, Aida thanks Radcliffe for providing the solution to her problem, and then Aida immediately murders Radcliffe and transfers his mind to The Framework.
his twist plays into the mind of viewers the dangers of this digital utopianism. When someone takes this idea that our virtual selves are equivalent to our real selves as being literally true, then it means that our bodies our meaningless. It means that we *shouldn’t* be revulsed when Radcliffe is murdered by his robot, but the fact that we are revulsed forces us to rethink whether or not our assumptions about virtual worlds are correct.
See also: The Big Bang: Put simply,the facts are wrong.
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