Friday, March 25, 2011

God vs. Google. Who is really more powerful?

The other day I saw a t-shirt which I thought was pretty funny.  It read, "Google is my new god, it answers my questions."  At first glance I thought to myself, "huh, that's clever."  Then I started to give the message some more thought and have concluded that it may not be just a quick, clever, and to some people blasphemous phrase, but may be unequivocally proven correct, at least in the case of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons.  I will now explain.

Growing up in the Mormon church, it became quickly obvious that the "laying on of hands" was extremely important.  Now, don't go all perverted on me and try to make this sound like something it isn't.  I'm just saying that the Mormons believe that they have the Priesthood of God, or in other words the power to act in God's name.  The vast majority of times, this power is used in conjunction with physical touch.  When you are baptized, you are physically held by the arms and dunked under the water.  You then are confirmed a member of the church and given the Gift of the Holy Ghost.  This is done by a group of priesthood holders (men, sorry ladies, no priesthood for you, except for what you can access through your husband, if he is worthy.  Keep him in line ladies, it's your duty.) who place their hands upon your head.  Mormons give blessings of comfort or healing, by the hands on the head bit, and also ordain people (men) to the priesthood in the same manner.  Lots of hands on the head for the Mormons.  As an aside, there are other Christian sect that do similar things.  A slap to the forehead has healed many a southern sick person.

Mormons have built well over 100 very expensive temples all around the world with the idea to allow their members to receive ordinances that are necessary to salvation.  These ordinances are done in a very hands on manner.  (Sometimes a little too hands on.  Awkward.)  Members go to the temple to be married for all eternity, to receive the "Endowment" or given the answers and signs and tokens to be saved.  Converts can go and receive all these ordinances and be sealed together as a family forever.  The second purpose for the temples is to perform saving ordinances, from baptism to eternal marriage, for the deceased.  Mormons believe that everyone must have these ordinances or they can not be saved.  And since they must be done on Earth, in the flesh, they require the members of the church to do them as a proxy for those that are body challenged, i.e. dead.  Mormons believe in the sealing power of the priesthood, that like the scriptures say, that which is sealed on Earth will be sealed in Heaven.  All of these ordinances require a certain ceremony and manner of doing them.  They require touch, the laying on of hands to use the Priesthood of God.  And, they believe that all things are possible with this power.  Impressive huh?

So, with the Power of God so powerful, and all these things done in a special place or by the touch of a priesthood holder, what power in all of creation could possibly over come it?  Who would dare molest or make afraid?  Google.  Or, more specifically, my gmail account.  Hard to believe, but it's true.  When I decided that I no longer believed in the Mormon Church, or religion in general, I sent an e-mail to the church headquarters.  Because of my e-mail, I was informed that all the ordinances that I had received would be null and void.  That if I decided to continue with the removal of my name from the church records, and decided to come back, I would have to be baptized again and have all the other ordinances redone.  Seriously.  So, for God to do something, it requires a special person, with a special power, to touch the person to be effected and therefore achieve the desired result.  However, for Google to erase all that God has done before, it only required a few kilobytes of information to go out over a telephone line.  God requires you to live in a specific way so that you are worthy, give thousands of dollars to the church, spend hours of your time every week in service to the church, travel great distances to the nearest temple, sometimes in another country to receive the hands-on ordinances, and all of that can be erased by a free gmail account.

There you have it.  In the power struggle between God and Google, the t-shirt doesn't lie.  I'm going to go and Google that saying and see if I can buy one of those t-shirts.  Or maybe I'll just pray and see if I can feel where to buy one.

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