Church of England will commune with God for you via Amazon's Echo Technology worship has ascended to a higher spiritual plane with the Church of England now offering the faithful daily voice-activated prayers from Amazon's smart home kit, Echo. Using the new Alexa "skill", believers can ask the CoE for prayers, explanations of the Christian faith and location-based information about local …
The Discworld had many female gods.
"Gods exist in potentia in numbers uncountable, but the moment an event of any note occurs – say, two snails happening to cross at a single point – a god becomes tied to it and begins to manifest in the physical world."
Possibly Alexa's sister is Anoia.
"I initially misread the original as Google Pay."
According to the BBC article.
"In March the Church announced it was to begin taking contactless payments for services such as weddings and christenings at more than over 16,000 churches - a move it said should appeal to young people who often did not carry cash."
Sounds like passing the begging bowl round people obliged by social convention to attend "hatched" and "matched" services. Seems like they are leaving "dispatched" for later.
"If I remember correctly, there was a very very short story by Isaac Asimov with that plot."
That would be 'Answer' by Frederic Brown, the undisputed king of the vignette.
Also rightly famous for his shortest SF/Horror story in the world:
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door..."
"Siri: "Ahem..."
They need a few miracles attributing to their powers before they will gain their major deity status. Any bets on the first case that makes the claim? A cure for cancer; the blind seeing; the lame walking; the dead resurrected; winning a lottery?
I gave my neighbour some left-over Halloween sweets for her kids. Her religion prevented her kids from doing "Trick or Treat". She said that day she had had to make a choice between milk or sweets. So she said that her god had answered her prayers for sweets for the kids. She believes that her god makes my garden bloom with flowers.
"A cure for cancer; the blind seeing; the lame walking; the dead resurrected; winning a lottery?"
We already got bionic ears, eyes, and limbs, and people winning lotteries happens all the time. Recently actors have been acting in movies after they die, and see my previous post in another thread about Micheal Jackson touring Australia after his death. I guess that leaves curing cancer?
She believes that her god makes my garden bloom with flowers.
Many years and jobs ago one of our junior programmers was a born again Christian, but management had to tell him to tone it down a bit because everyone round him got sick of him thanking God by praying out loud every time his code compiled. He wasn't that bad a programmer.
him thanking God by praying out loud every time his code compiled.
Almost but not quite, I've often been presented with code and thought 'it's a miracle this compiled at all'.
Most programmers do their praying while compilation is in progress though, not after. After, all bets off, all promised forgotten and it's off to the pub to indulge in some sin*
* Or at least as close as degrees of afflicted nerdy-types can come to their interpretation of sin*
* gotos instead of procedures, or procedures instead of functions (presumably). & beer/ale
It's not surprising that they're already comfortable asking a pretend sentient entity to solve their problems for them, but why they now need to ask a small plastic device for help instead of going directly to the biig numero uno surely raises serious theological questions?
Like does God work in binary or trinary?
As the Blessed Knuth said(*), in some ways the most efficient base for a computer would be e, which would mean even computers would work in a mysterious way(**).
(*) Somewhere in TAoCP IIRC.
(**) Although floating point would automatically be supported by the architecture.
I only discovered this week that my Fire HD8 now had Alexa switched on in a recent update. The way I found out was when I held down the home for too long when distracted by something else. As it was in a dark room and quite late at night I almost leapt out of my skin. However I was reassured by the voice message that the bloody thing couldn't connect to amazon (I have a no root firewall taking care of that). Even if it could connect I physically disabled the built in microphone when I got the tablet, so good luck understanding what I'm saying. I turned on parental controls after that to disable Alexa from coming back.
Exactly. If you RTFA you'll see that there is no praying to Alexa involved. Alexa can be asked to recite prayers FOR you. Which is just the high-tech version of the prayer-wheel. Particularly if you can get Alexa to loop.
Rather takes the fun out of 20 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers, though. Bit like an automatic line-writing machine. Was it Molesworth who invented one?
That is a nice story to read here. Thought I had read all Asimov's stories many years ago - but don't remember that one.
'You are a true believer, blessings of the state, blessings of the masses. thou art a subject of the divine, created in the image of man by the masses for the masses.'
'Be thankful you have an occupation to fulfil. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy.'
'Buy more, buy more now, and be happy'
Well, it'll probably not fit my consumer.
I have a Dilbert motif T-shirt that appears to be a condensation of this strip.
"What if GOD is the consciousness that is created when enough of us are connected to the INTERNET"
Dilbert "That would certainly limit the types of files I download"
Dogbert "My web browser would fly!"
no need to go to church....
As per Bottom.
Richie : I don't think that, as a Christian, I could look myself in the face whilst watching a dirty video. I mean, it's Sunday for Christ's sake, I mean for Heaven's, I mean for goodness sake. And are the masses all in church praising the Lord's name? No, they're all down the vid shop, trying to get their hands on "Pervy Nights in Bangkok"! I mean, it's ironic, isn't it? There's plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth going on, but it's not happening in church!
Eddie : Well, when did you last go to church?
Richie : Well, I don't have to go, I'm Church of England.
"[...] the BBC respect people's rights to believe in whatever they wish [...]"
BBC Radio 4 has too much religion in its schedules: "Prayer for the Day"; "Thought for the Day"; "Something Understood"; "Bells on Sunday"; "Sunday"; "Sunday Worship"; "Beyond Belief".
At least BBC TV no longer closes down for an hour at 6pm so that people will go to Evensong. Nor do they end the evening's broadcast with a cleric delivering "The Epilogue".
Yes but in balance, they have pagan crap by the likes of Astrologists on in the afternoon
Hmm, Daily paper 'Sun sign' garbage is like being able to do macros on word and calling yourself a programmer.
Also not exclusively or particularly 'pagan' by neither the old roman or the modern interpretation.
At least BBC TV no longer closes down for an hour at 6pm so that people will go to Evensong. Nor do they end the evening's broadcast with a cleric delivering "The Epilogue".
The Angelus on RTE used to creep me out as a kid. They're still doing it, I'm surprised to learn.
...mind you, I think for a while I thought the Anglia TV logo was the English version.
I'd have 'voted' for the 'Venice is Sinking' (by Rondo Veneziano, I found out, decades later) that used to be broadcast occasionally (due to a gap in the schedule, but you don't know about these things as a wee nipper).
BBC Radio 4 has too much religion in its schedules: …
"Something Understood"
Not so much religion, more aimless "spiritual" wittering that makes Thought for the Day seem like incisive theological philosophy.
"Bells on Sunday"
They may do it in church, but in my experience your average bell ringer is rarely described as "godly".
"They may do it in church, but in my experience your average bell ringer is rarely described as "godly"."
IIRC there have been several occasions where the long-standing bell ringers were "locked out" by a cleric.
York Minister a couple of years ago sacked all their bell ringers - then attempted to replace them with presumably more spiritually*** motivated people.
"It says the Minster is looking for bell ringers who can demonstrate ‘support and respect for chapter, particularly in inviting chapter to fulfil its mission of helping everyone to discover God’s love."
***beer wasn't mentioned
'They may do it in church, but in my experience your average bell ringer is rarely described as "godly".'
I used to play handbells, got a lot of gigs playing in churches. Being an atheist, I'd probably not be described as "godly" either.
Though technically I am a god, of the OpenSim world I run, coz that's the technical term for the admins. A term invented by Second Life, and inherited by OpenSim, coz they use the same viewers, and that's the term the viewer software uses. I guess it fits, I can wander around the virtual world, and if something needs fixing, some one "prays" to me, I "put on my halo", wave my arms, and it magically gets fixed. Or in other words, I request admin access from the server, which gives it to me, the viewer says "Entering god mode", and adds an Admin menu, with an option to bring up the "God Tools" window. shrugs
"So, they're not really trying to attract new converts or lapsed members then?"
The Economist believes that is their target audience.
"Most of the 28 questions programmed into it are aimed at non-believers, who nowadays make up more than half of British adults. Curious agnostics can quiz Alexa on how to pray, what Christians believe and who the Archbishop of Canterbury is. The aim is to use new technology to “bring people into a relationship with God”, says Adrian Harris, head of digital matters at the church. "
So if you can get computers to do your praying for you now, can they do it really really fast? A new unit of measurement for El Reg, Mega Prayers per second.
And at those sorts of speeds, will the effectiveness of these prayers increase? I'm no theist, so no idea really. Any one care to donate some time on a super computer for a little experiment? We may be able to prove the existence of God if after running this little experiment, a loud voice is heard coming from The Cloud - "AAARRRGGH, shut up already!".
I'll get my coat, it's the one with the micro dog collars.
Don't forget the material wealth that many of the preachers promise to their followers. Basically a First World version of cargo cults.
In the SW U.S., where I am at the moment, there are TV commercials for "Peter Popoff" (you can't make this stuff up). He offers to send you a container of spiritual water that guarantees you great financial gain. Doing some research (what, me, cynical?), you'll discover you're supposed to sprinkle the water on a check and mail it to PP. In return, great financial wealth will come your way. The TV commercial features totally believable testimonials from people who allegedly followed instructions.
These charlatans aren't proof that religion is always a scam. But if I were $deity, I wouldn't wait until Judgement Day to wipe out the competition. So my message to them is, "The fact that you still exist is proof that what you claim to represent does not exist."
" it's theoret..sorry, theologically impossible."
Before Constantine saw the social control possibilities of Mithrasmono-theistic Christianity - the Roman Empire did a mix&match of gods from anywhere in their reach. Whatever you believed was ok - as long as it didn't appear to challenge the Emperor and the State.
Even major Christian sects have effectively often broken the commandment against idolatory. In Africa the Abrahamic god of the various colonialists was added to their extensive list of local gods. The more you acknowledged, the better your chances of a lucky break in life.
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