[net.religion] Technology, a religion

leff@smu.UUCP (11/19/83)

#N:smu:17100001:000:2352
smu!leff    Nov 17 12:48:00 1983

In a Psychology Today article, they did a survey of congressman to 
see what effect their religion had on their voting.  The
definition of a religion was that it had to have three characteristics:

1. There had to be some initial human state that was poor.

2. There had to be some desirable goal

3. There had to be some ritual/mechanism/way/etc from getting from 1 to 2.

In Christianity, there was original sin as 1.  The desirable goal was
heaven as 2.  There are various ideas about 3, grace, good works, etc.
depending upon which sect.

In Buddhism there was human want as 1.  The desirable goal was Nirvana, 2
and 3 was eliminating wants.

By this definition, technology is a religion.  The initial state was
prehistoric poverty where people died in their twenties, had high rates
of infant mortality, etc.  The desirable goal is a Technotopia where
people don't have to work or cured of their illness's and perhaps have
their lifespans extended artificially, unlimited energy, etc.

The method for getting there is engineering and scientific research.

If one accepts the above definition, then technology is the only religion
that has achieved some progess or at least evidence, thereof.  Christianity
is either correct or incorrect but there is no evidence that anyone is going
to heaven.

This also raises the question of can a computer firm be set up as a church
with all the relevant tax exemptions and bulk mailings, etc.  I believe
that it can.  In the I. R. S publication on non profit organizations it
said that activities are judged as being related to the purpose of the
organization depending upon among other things their payment structure.
If a church simply ran a barber service, that would be treated as an
unrelated business and would be taxed as such.  However, if they had
a sliding scale fee system where elderly or poor people paid less than
others, perhaps with the regular customers subsidizing the other customers,
there would be no problem with that being treated as an unrelated business.

A computer firm if it had such a sliding scale fee could then act as
a church.  The software or hardware it sold would be a legitimate
religious activity.  An example of such a sliding scale fee system
would be AT&T's low price for educational institutions getting a UNIX
license and a higher one for profit making operations.