Futuristic Study of Religious Experience in Virtual Reality; Scenarios for the Presence of the Sacred in the Horizon of 2050

The issue of the relationship between authentic religious experience and immersive technologies, especially VR virtual reality, is one of the most challenging topics in the philosophy of religion in the future horizon. This article, using the method of futures research and the normative-exploratory scenario writing approach in the time horizon of 2050, explains possible scenarios for the “presence of the sacred” in virtual reality. The theoretical framework of the research is a new combination of the views of four prominent philosophers of religion, namely; Rudolf Otto (the feeling of the noumenon), William James (the fruits of practice), Paul Tillich (the ultimate concern and the transparency of the symbol), and Martin Buber (the structure of the I-Thou versus I-It relationship). After identifying and analyzing four key driving groups (technological, anthropological, institutional-religious, and epistemological), two main axes of uncertainty were extracted, namely, “level of integration of technology and body” and “institutional and cultural legitimacy of virtual reality as a religious space.” Based on the combination of these two axes, four distinct scenarios were narrated: “sacred copying” (low immersion and institutional rejection), “ultimate concern in the conditional world” (high integration and institutional sanctification), “I-thou relationship in the digital realm” (digital asceticism and practice of presence), and “dissolution of the sacred” (full immersion with a crisis of authenticity). The results show that the realization of an authentic religious experience in virtual reality is not automatic and inevitable, but rather conditional on conscious design, transparency training, active participation of religious institutions, and confronting fundamental contradictions such as the contradiction of access/authenticity, mediation/immediacy, and personalization/unconditionality. Emphasizing the necessity of developing a “theology of technology” and redefining the key concepts of experience, authenticity, and the sacred in the age of simulation, this article presents clear theoretical and practical implications for the philosophy of religion and religious policy-making, and will pave the way for cross-cultural empirical-phenomenological and comparative research for the future.