Conference thebay::joyoflex

312.0. "First Church of Computer Science" by MAY13::MINOW (Martin Minow, MSD A/D, THUNDR::MINOW) Thu Jan 29 1987 12:34

From Vogon News Service (29-Jan-87)

VNS Letters to the Editor:
==========================

From: Phil Kaplan ............................................. Phoenix, AZ, USA

(Here's part of a news article about a new religion.)  Waving his black	book in
one hand, the cleanshaven man in a white 3 piece suit and shoes	yells to the 
crowd "HAL-lelujah!!  Has your data been saved?"  He made the Sign of the 
Monitor, a hand drawing a square in the air, and read, "Hail Memory, full of 
space, the motherboard is with thee."  A computer chip is glued to his forehead
and a computer bug (a chip with toy eyes and a tail) is on his shoulder.  He 
introduced himself as St. Silicon, the patron saint of appropriated technology,
a profit, not prophet, of the Church of the Heuristic Information Processing, 
or CHIP.  He said that he receives transmissions from G.O.D., or the Giver Of 
Data.  "The Giver Of Data has downloaded to me," he said.  "PCing is believing. 
In baud we trust."  He is tring to convert some DOSciples.  They chuckled
knowingly as he presented the Sermon on the Monitor from his Binary Bible, as 
translated from the Old Geek: "Friends, perhaps you know someone out there with
a terminal illness?  A computer weary pilgrim with bloodshot eyes, in data 
distress?  Has your data been saved?  Because you know friends, even if your 
beloved data has been blown all	to hell, there isn't a thing in the world 
anyone can do to bring it back.  But we can solace you in your hour of need."

Jeffrey Armstrong, former Apple computer salesman, has degrees in comparative
religion, psychology, English literature and history.  He is a published poet,
songwriter and producer of an off-Broadway rock	opera.  He has used high-tech 
humor since 1984, and started St. Silicon as a full-time job last April 1.  
Unlike other religious leaders, he shuns donations for his "user friendly 
religion."  Instead, his church	runs on the sale of posters of the Keyboard 
Prayer: "Our program, who art in memory..." and a videotape of his Sermon on 
the Monitor.  His conversion supposedly occurred when lightning struck his 
satellite dish and knocked him out at his terminal.  When he awoke, the 
Keyboard Prayer	was printed on his monitor and the computer told him to pass
the message to all "carbon-based entities."

Other quotes include: "like IBM, I believe Information Becomes Money.  We 
believe in the divine dollar."  Also, "for the MacRighteous shall inherit the 
Earth, and in the end, everything will be justified."  He gives divine 
"disk-pensation" from his pulpit in Winchester Cathodral, and the choir now 
has "a new semiconductor."  There is a mantra for Buddhists who lose data: 
"Ohms, EPROM, RAM, ROM" and Muslims can read the Core RAM.  He claims what he 
does is not sacrilege but "hackriledge", and that "we are a FUN-damentalist
church."  Although St. Silicon is not the first reverend to announce a bid for 
the U.S. presidency, he is the Technocratic Party's first candidate.  "With
'Star Wars', we need a computer literate President," he says.  So go the 
mysteries of the UNIXverse.