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Religions As Software




Maybe I’m just a nerd, but I love computer metaphors. Maybe the real reason these metaphors are usually so juicy though is because computers are actually a metaphor for us, and how we work. After all, we did invent them, so there must be something in them that reflects back on us. This little graphic I put together below is probably the best metaphor I can use to explain where I’m at right now in terms of religion and spiritual inquiry.

It’s been a long time since I used a Mac, so you’ll have to forgive me if this makes no sense to you. In Windows 2000 anyway, this is the dialog box you get when you right-click on a file and choose “Open With”. You might use this function when you download an unusual file type, or when you don’t have the correct file associations set up, or when you want to open a file inside a program it’s not associated with.

I’m sure the idea of looking at religions and ideologies as software systems that run in the mind is nothing new. Some people run this programs on a more base level, almost like they are operating systems. Other people run them at the application level above the operating system (OS). People who run the programs as an OS tend to end up identifying with them. A criticism on their program tends to be interpreted as a criticism on them. I don’t really know if one of these styles is necessarily better or worse, but I myself tend to lean away from the OS and more toward using religions as a desktop application.

This means when I find a new idea that I want to play around with, I’ll often right-click on it and choose “Open With” and then scroll through the list of religious programs that I have installed, and try to find the best one to open the file/idea with. On PC’s, if you run around indiscriminately opening unknown file types with the wrong software application, you run the risk of crashing the software program once it loads, or of crashing your underlying operating system. Either that or you’ll open the file in the wrong application and be treated to a heaping plate of gobbledegook, because the program doesn’t know how to interpret the file format. The same could easily be said for opening ideas in various religions. A good example is what happens if you open up the Jesus = Lucifer idea inside of mainline Christianity. That idea is likely to crash the application or else come up unintelligibly in that application. So you may have to run an Anthroposophy patch or conversion utility in order to make sense of it. On my real-life computer, I have a lot of hacked or cracked programs. In other words, they are not-quite-legal versions of software which I either downloaded or got from a friend, or had to make some other modification on in order to get them to run on my machine. This observation holds up in my understanding of various religions as well. I may have “downloaded” an unofficial or pirated version of that religion and installed it on my local machine with some modifications. So if somebody sends me a file/idea that works according to their understanding and I try to open it, it doesn’t work. Another thing that happens is that somebody might tell me about how great a particular program is, and show me the great results they’ve had with it. But when I go home and open that program and try to recreate what they did, all I can come out with is a shitty drawing of a stick figure because I just don’t understand how all the tools and options work in the program, and I don’t grasp the underlying concept of how to use it.

With my real computer, I’m also pretty adventurous in terms of downloading and installing programs, and fiddling with settings and the operating system. For that reason, open-source programs like Firefox and web applications like Wordpress have been a natural match for me. I have to wonder if the thing that draws me to messing around and modifying my software is the same thing that draws me to applying the same approach to how I use religions. Does any of this make any sense to anybody else?







6 Reader Responses

  1. Eric Says:
    July 31st, 2005 at 11:47 pm

    Totally! Fellow geek, here. So, what OS does your mind run? Ho ho!
    Tim, man, I’m always excited to check your page, because sometimes you pick something out of the thought stream that I’ve seen. It’s like deja vu in someone else, and this article was one of those times. I had a picture exactly like this one a few months ago in my head, when I was questioning my religious upbringing. Weirdly awesome.

  2. Darkshadow Says:
    August 1st, 2005 at 1:14 am

    Heh, that makes sense to me, too. I’m a software programmer in my spare time. And on a Mac, so I can let you know your analogy comes through for Mac users, too. The dialog you get doesn’t look quite the same, but you pick files in a list about the same way. Though you can traverse the file system, looking for an app in any particular place. Hmm, about the only thing different on a Mac is that it’s not likely to crash the OS. Crash the app if the data is wrong, sure, but it’s actually difficult to crash the OS. You have to be directly accessing it to crash it, really. Which holds with your analogy of someone using a particular religion as an OS, too.

    Hmm, if you’re interested in seeing the Open With dialogs (you get a menu where it lists default apps, then if you choose “Other” in the menu, you can traverse the file system like your pic above. I decided to take a picture of both):
    Open With submenu
    Open With Dialog

    Heh, you know, in the dialog, there’s a weird thing I just noticed there. Well, weird if you’re thinking in the sense of religions. It has a menu that says, in the picture, “Recommended Applications.” This just shows the apps that the system recognizes as being able to open up the type of data the file represents. It’s the default, but you can switch it to say “All Applications.” I would bet that most people that use that dialog (and there’s probably not a big giant many, since the submenu in the first link shows the most likely apps that can open that data) leave it on “Recommended Applications” and don’t try to be reckless and choose “Any Application.” Just an interesting corollary on the topic of discussion - most people probably tend to the “Recommended Religion” when they’re assessing a story to fit in with their system.

  3. JK Says:
    August 1st, 2005 at 2:51 am

    I really like the analogy between “recommended applications” and “recommended religion”. It sums up so much and could really be deployed to convince people to allow a “dual boot” of their own life’s OS. I think what many seekers (googlers) will find, after they’ve gotten over being scared about making choices on their own, is that you can much easier pick and choose (cut & paste) other people’s “fixes” and “workarounds”.

    Subconsciously, the more I’ve thought about it, I think what probably got me interested in Linux was simply the existence of the virus patch companies (McAfee, Norton) in the first place. It always puzzled me and I never saw anybody ever talk about it anywhere, save a comment in a slashdot thread here and there — but say computer virii were finally stamped out once and for all. Wouldn’t it be in the company’s interest as well as the shareholders, to create and spread more virii? Like a snake swallowing its own tail — the software companies Microsoft supplies both the friend and the foe, always blaming it on something or another. Open source software is as essential as open source religion, or open opportunity menu dialogues. This I believe is because increasingly, our interfaces with the dawning era and new human reality are being controlled by fewer and fewer parties.

    Instead of chartering a new oversight minded government entity to embark upon the future of “computerized voting” the corporation of the united states government decided to farm the work out to “responsible” corporate bidders instead.

    Instead of setting up a new church in a modest chapel just outside your village’s central business district, entities of rich right wing buisinessmen help fund megachurch campuses on the fringes of masterplanned residential deveopment.

    I suggest that if people were more aware of the open source phenom and how it works for you because you work for it, this era of rampant, closed-source corporate greed would quickly come to its eventual ignominious end. Look around. There is no difference in how a megachurch, a corporate government or a proprietary operating system work. They all “give you choices” by systematically taking choices away, obscuring the fact that other systems exist, thus simplfying the process of unhindered profit and control. They all use motivational marketing speak — language that literally refers to nothing. Charismatic leaders or idealised concepts of idealized leaders (Dubya is a good Christian) are also all in place.

    The march to obedient complaceny in an invented virtual-reality continues. Next stop: Techno-Dystopia.

  4. SpaceCase Says:
    August 1st, 2005 at 11:24 am

    If you like computer metaphors you might want to take a look at the OSI Model and compare it the chakras

  5. Nicq MacDonald Says:
    August 1st, 2005 at 8:57 pm

    Having a past as a bit of a “reality-shifter” (ala Chaos Magic, before I entered the “Integral” phase that I spent the last four years in), I can definitely see this. In fact, my life recently has not been unlike having my old OS (Integral 4.x w/ Esoteric Christian patch) “uninstalled” and replaced (with an experimental, open-source hack of NeoThelema ‘93). It’s a bit jarring when you realize that your old “programs” just don’t want to run anymore, and you find yourself scrambling to find new software and a decent user’s manual…

  6. sparkwidget Says:
    August 2nd, 2005 at 6:16 pm

    Dude, I agree totally. We get better software by subjecting our native software to memetic stress, comparing it to other ideas.

    Religion as software is a very Dickish idea, though I don’t know specifically if he ever explored it in any short stories or whatnot (probably somewhere).



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