Montag, 23. März 2009

Like a Prayer

As you may or may not know, I consider myself an agnostic (though I'm not sure I really am, so maybe I'm a Meta-Agnostic...) and there are days I am really glad about that:

Information Age Prayer provides a service for the forgetful religious person to read prayers in their name. With their computer via voice synthesizing (actually it's the computers of the company, NOT the personal computer of the subscriber as I thought first). So, if you don't have time to pray for yourselves, you can subscribe for a fee and somewhere a prayer is read for you by a computer.

Huh. Let's read the FAQ:

"Are the prayers meaningless, will subscribing really make a difference?
(being exactly the very first question I had) As with all prayer, the final results are up to God as everything follows His will. We make no claims regarding the efficacy of the service, however it is our opinion that the omniscient God hears the prayers when they are voiced, as He hears everything on this Earth. The omniscient God knows exactly who has subscribed and who each prayer is from when their name is displayed on screen and their prayer voiced. He is also aware of all donations to charity from each subscriber and we can surely make a difference in these charities supported."

Huh. Honestly, if I were God.... I mean, C'MON! That's cheating! I would strike every wanna-be-follower with lightning who thinks he can get off that easy! Isn't the point of praying that you sacrifice some thoughts and time to your God? Maybe that's just me, but if I were religious I would feel deeply insulted when some soulless machine speaks with god in my name. (As a SciFi-Geek I'm pretty amazed by the way.... all kinds of cool stuff come in mind... mechanical gods, Deus Ex Machina, robots with their own religion....).

And it get's even better:

"If your children don't pray anymore sign them up for one of the many daily prayers available for each religion (click categories at the left). You may also want to have a prayer said for them directly. The prayer for children is the cheapest Information Age Prayer service at only $1.99 a Month. Pray for a child here."

Ha! Everything's gonna be fine for Junior. He doesn't pray, he doesn't believe... but hey, a machine prays for him! Because I paid someone to do that! Phew, NOW God will think totally different about that black sheep...

Pfff. I don't know who I pity more: The developers, The clients, or God. Probably the latter one. If you exist, God, I just spent twenty minutes defending the good old ways of praying. Keep that in mind on Judgement day :).

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