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.