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Technology For the Masses: Churches Going Hi-Tech
theodp writes "More and more, reports the Chicago Tribune, churches are embracing the use of tablets and smartphones during services. At Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side, the Rev. Otis Moss III preaches from his iPad. 'There was a time in the church when the Gutenberg Bible was introduced,' notes early adopter Moss. 'There was a severe concern among ministers who were afraid the printed page would be such a distraction if you put it in the hands of people in worship.' Tech-savvy churchgoers are also on board. 'In the service, when they say to pull out Bibles, I pull that phone out,' Ted Allen Miller said of using his Android smartphone at Willow Creek Community Church."
The iPad and such might make it easier (especially when it comes to the really big books, as it definitely saves bulk in many cases), but I do have one nitpick with the summary...
re: " 'There was a severe concern among ministers who were afraid the printed page would be such a distraction if you put it in the hands of people in worship."
Err, the vast majority of a given population back then couldn't read, so on what rational basis would that concern be placed?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Err, the vast majority of a given population back then couldn't read, so on what rational basis would that concern be placed
The ministers were afraid people would become curious with all those pretty printed symbols and tried to learn how to read them. Then they'd lose their minister jobs. Ignorance and superstition are close friends.
The primary concern the clergy had with the laity having Bible's in their own language was that they might actually read it and compare what it said to what was being taught from the pulpit. Christianity has had almost 2000 years of significant forks - its history is rife with individuals trying to make their church more popular by blending in local non christian concepts, softening the tone of unpopular language, and removing or changing phrases that might offend. My favorite data point - God's name appears almost 7000 times in the original texts, yet most modern translations have dropped that to between three and zero! Why? Because 'its tradition not to use it', and 'it might confuse people who should believe that Jesus is God', which is hard to make people accept if the Bible is left in its original state as referring to Jesus as the Son of an Almighty God with a different name that most Christians have been told they should not even pronounce.
The power of the clergy came from them telling the people that the Bible was best left in Latin, they should believe what they were told, and follow what the King said. Their telling people to obey the King kept their comfortable relationship with the ruling classes. For a long time anyone in possession of a Bible in English would be executed, most often because they quickly realized the Trinity was a false teaching. For example, the last person officially burnt alive for this in England was a medical student in 1612.
Fun quote: "Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should not be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; we most strictly forbid their having
any translation of these books." - The Church Council of Toulouse 1229 AD
1) No all people who read and study the Bible are deniers of science.
2) Using 21st century technology (iPad) to study the Bible is just as strange and unusual as using 15th century technology (printed books) to study a set of documents written between 1200 BCE and 100 CE.
I would say the same thing as a theist.
Isn't interesting how doing science requires believing in induction, that the future will be like the past. But if you don't assume that the reason why the future is like the past is due to God sustaining and creating those rules, you have laws of physics resting on nothing. There's no reason they won't change.
Or the fact that atheists trust their own rationality. I mean you have your thoughts being due to brains that weren't designed for any particular reason. Why trust your own rationality? As JBS Haldane wrote:
"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."
Or that materialists like to use immaterial laws of logic.
Funny goes both ways.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Irrespective of how you might choose to translate the Hebrew word, pronounced without the missing sounds as "Yad-Hey-Vad-He", it is a personal name. Words like Adonai are titles, translated in English as "God", "Lord", which leads to to ridiculous translations like "the Lord my Lord said untoeth my Lord". Why should Christians maintain a Jewish superstition? (Didn't Jesus say he made God's name manifest? Did he say Lord? Didn't he teach his followers to pray for the sanctification of his Father's name? What name was that?) I've always found it amusing and sad that the 'author' of the Bible has had his name removed and replaced by titles, and this continues to be justified by people who claim to follow Jesus teachings.
I've also found it interesting how many smart people who studied the Bible came to the conclusion that the Trinity was a pagan teaching unsupported by scripture, Issac Newton being one of my favorite examples.
I first approached the Bible as an agnostic leaning towards atheism, read with an open mind, and a goal of proving my parents wrong. At the time my idea of light reading was books on particle physics and molecular and evolutionary biology, I came away with two strong opinions - 1) the Bible was a much more interesting book than its critics gave it credit for, especially in the few places it touched on science and the many places where it touched on archaeological history, and 2) what most people who call themselves Christians believe has very little to do with the book they claim to base their beliefs on - modern churches and teachings are nothing like first century Christians. Studying the bits of of history of Christianity that survived the many purges and burnings explains very well why this is the case.
After 3000+ years, religion has finally finished with hides, scrolls, codices and books, and moved back to tablets?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The ministers were afraid people would become curious with all those pretty printed symbols and tried to learn how to read them. Then they'd lose their minister jobs. Ignorance and superstition are close friends.
Once again, the old "educate them and they'll lose faith" saw.
Except... it's not true, and never has been. The spread of literacy and Christianity went hand-in-hand in the West. You're more likely to be deeply faithful if you can read your own scriptures, not less. And especially in the case of Americans that are religious, they tend to be especially more so the higher their level of education:
"
Many in the pundit class identify religion as something of a regressive tendency, embraced by the less enlightened, the less skilled, intelligent and educated...Some might be surprised to learn that religious affiliation grows with education levels. A new University of Nebraska study finds that with each additional year of education, the odds of attending religious services increased by 15%. The educated, the study found, may not be eschewing religion, as social science has long maintained, even if their spiritual views tend to be less narrow, and less overtly tied to politics, than among the less schooled.
I've noted here in past posts that the 9/11 hijackers were all educated, and that the London bombers were British-born, with a lifetime of Western liberal educations and economic and political opportunity. Their immigrant parents were poor and uneducated when they came to the UK, and were much more moderate. And yet their Westernized, educated children chose Jihad.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Isn't interesting how doing science requires believing in induction, that the future will be like the past.
Living requires the assumption that the future will be like the (apparent) past. If the future is unrelated to the past, then memory and experience and choice and action are all meaningless. For there to be such a thing as choice, one must be able to predict the effects of one's actions. The point of choosing an action is to have a certain effect on the future. If the future does not follow from the past, experience is useless, and memories may well be arbitrary—after all, they're being remembered in the future compared to the time those memories were supposedly made.
You can't choose to believe that the future does not follow from the past without contradiction. Perhaps it doesn't—but there is no point in entertaining that possibility. It can never form the basis for any action or belief.
But if you don't assume that the reason why the future is like the past is due to God sustaining and creating those rules, you have laws of physics resting on nothing. There's no reason they won't change.
And if you do assume that, then you have the laws of physics resting on an unfounded belief, and there is still no reason why they won't change. Since the result is the same, one might as well choose the principle with fewer unnecessary assumptions.
Or the fact that atheists trust their own rationality. I mean you have your thoughts being due to brains that weren't designed for any particular reason. Why trust your own rationality?
You are attempting to make a rational argument against rationality. This is a contradiction. If your argument against rationality were well-founded, it would invalidate itself.
One trusts one's own rationality—within limits—because one has no choice.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I was with you up until this point:
The really weird thing to my mind is the fundamentalist Evangelicals who combine the non-Biblical overemphasis on Jesus
Jesus is central to Christianity. Christ IS Christianity. The old covenant with the Jews was obey every law, or spend eternity in hell. The new covenant is that your sins are forgiven; they were paid in blood by an innocent man, the son of God, who God sent to die so we may live.
As to the trinity, I never understood that myself until I was baptised a couple of years ago. I understood the father and son but not the holy ghost -- until I was filled with the holy ghost.
I'll bet some of those here who follow my journals have noticed the change in me the last couple of years without even ever having met me in the flesh. I've always been a Christian, so I didn't imagine how much being baptized would change me.
Free Martian Whores!