"Very well," said this teacher, holding his hands behind his back, pacing slowly before an impeccable chalkboard. "I want you to imagine yourselves as a brain in a vat, hooked up to a sophisticated machine that perfectly simulates every aspect of your conscious and sub-conscious experience. As a rule, anything that can happen to you in a supposed 'real world' can also happen to the you as reproduced by the machine. You can walk, talk, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, have sex, or hold a conversation with someone. You can even drink beer if you like," he added with a smirk, "though you won't be immune to any resultant hangovers."
The class chuckled half-heartily. It was 8:17am on a Friday morning.
The teacher continued, "So the experiment is, if you went to sleep one night, and a bunch of scientists came into your room, took your brain out of your body, and put it in a vat hooked up to a machine like that which we just described, would you be able to tell the difference?"
No one answered. A number of stares looked blank as printer paper; others showed about as much life as martian dust.
A hand went up, belonging to a student whose name the teacher remembered as John. John had the thickest beard of anyone in the school, or so everyone claimed. He hadn't shaved in half a decade. He also possessed a body of unusually muscular proportions. He was likely the strongest person in the school as well. The teacher nodded in his direction.
"I see at least one issue with your experiment," began John, sitting up in his chair. "A brain in a vat could not have a soul."
Before the teacher could respond, a student named Cecil swallowed a laugh from the back of the room. The student John turned rapidly to face her, asking, "Is something funny?"
Cecil's eyes went wide, suddenly aware of everyone's gaze now upon her. "I...I just" she stammered, "I mean, there's no such thing as a soul, I thought it was a joke." Her cheeks went pink.
"There's no such thing as a brain in a vat either," said another student named Thomas, "it's all fake."
"The soul is no joke," said John seriously.
"Right," said Thomas "and God made Man in seven days."
"You speak falsely, and irreverently about the Truth," said John.
"Dude, chill out" said Thomas, now also upright in his chair "no one cares about your religion."
"You are an unbeliever then?" asked Ruth, a studious-looking girl with bright green eyes. A series of color-coded binders lay upon her desk, aligned perfectly with the corner.
"What does it matter?" asked Thomas, who seemed to look about the room for help. "No sane person takes what they read in the Bible seriously. It's all just stories and allegory."
Silence followed.
"I must vehemently disagree with you," said Ruth after a moment, looking Thomas full in the eye, "for I am a believer, and hold the Holy Bible to be the literal revelations of God. Jesus Christ is my Savior, and I am sane as can be."
"Well good for you," said Thomas defiantly, "but forgive me if I don't really care."
"Have you ever even read the Bible?" asked John, his eyes softening slightly.
"Here and there," said Thomas uncomfortably, shifting in his chair. "I was raised Lutheran, but stopped going to church years ago. In Sunday school, I was told my Jewish and Buddhist friends were going to Hell, so I stopped going. I was in fifth grade for goodness sake, who says that to a fifth-grader?"
"If your friends were not saved, then your teacher simply spoke the truth," said John grimly.
"So about that brain in a vat..." said the teacher meekly.
"You sound like such a pompous ass-hole," said Thomas to John in a raised voice, ignoring the teacher "and it's literalist, narrow-minded bigots like you who drive otherwise happy people insane with guilt, grief, and sectarian promises of immortality. You called yourselves 'saved,' like a member of some exclusive club, reading your special texts and drinking your group-think Kool-Aid. But the reality is you're all just a sad bunch of brainwashed, tortured people living in a society leaving you and your medieval beliefs behind.
The student John seemed to be boiling over with rage, and Ruth looked on the verge of tears, but neither reacted immediately. A girl near the front muttered quietly "Well said, man." All else was silent.
"You call yourself tolerant," began Ruth, visibly struggling to maintain her composure but looking straight at Thomas, "yet you treat my most cherished beliefs like rubbish. You generalize unmercifully against my closest friends, and on top of that, you call my lifestyle backward. What was the word you used? Medieval. Do you suppose that I and my fellow believers are unhappy? Why should we be, for we are saved, which is the furthest thing from a burden one may know in this life. We dedicate our lives to the expression of an ideal, becoming born again into a life of worship, love, and accord with the revealed Word of Jesus Christ, our only Savior and Redeemer. Ours is not a 'club,' but a community dedicated to a life of devotion and spiritual growth; if we reject certain trivialities of the modern world, it is because a more important goal stands before us, one that inspires us not to be slaves to pleasure or laxity of mind, but to be zealous followers of our Maker and our Savior. You may think what you will, but if you have any sense of kindness and decency, I would ask that you keep your narrow, bigoted opinions to yourself."
"Amen" said John, closing his eyes.
"Amen" said a girl near the door. Her name was Susan.
At that moment the door swung open abruptly, revealing a disheveled male of moderate proportions, clutching a philosophy textbook in one hand and a cellphone in the other. He seemed out of breath.
"Sorry sir," he began breathlessly, heading for the closest empty seat, "I overslept, but someone texted me saying we were talking about brains in vats, which sounded too cool."
The teacher, who had become a virtual spectator to the argument that had raged almost the whole class period, seemed to recover some of his wits. "Yes Cain, that was a thought-experiment I proposed at the start of class, but..."
"Ah man, I've been thinking about it the whole way over," said Cain, flushing with excitement. "It's so weird man, I can't see how you could know the difference. One day the whole world could be real, while the next it could be totally simulated. Unless we're already all just brains in vats, in which case what seems real now isn't and never was. Makes you think, you know?"
The teacher smiled. "Yes, I suppose it does. What does it make you think, Mr. Cain?"
Cain thought for a moment. His face seemed as lively as the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. "I tell you what sir, I just don't know."
"Don't know?" asked the teacher with a smile.
"Yeah, whether the world is real or not. And if that's uncertain, how can anything be certain? It sounds crazy to me, but maybe we don't actually know anything about anything real."
"Hmm," began the teacher, pacing again before the chalkboard, "that sounds a bit depressing don't you think?"
"Maybe" said Cain, seeming to think very hard, "but it also seems the only way to be ready for the moment if and when some indication that the world is actually real or actually fake actually appears. I mean, we may never know with certainty, in which case such a position would be useless. But how can we know if we simply contend our beliefs are always correct? We'd have to adapt a mindset of always searching and never judging with certainty, or at least suspending that judgment almost permanently. It'd be weird, I admit."
"It could be," said the teacher. "You'd never be wrong, but you'd never be right either."
"Yeah," said Cain, "but maybe our eyes would always be open."
The bell rang. Everyone got up to leave, except for Cain. "Something to consider, maybe," he said, mostly to himself.
The teacher smiled. "Yes, maybe. Happy Friday, class!"
Soon the room was empty.
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