by Chris Bodenner
A reader writes:
Bacevich argues that technology, most recently represented as the smartphone, has replaced Christianity as an organizing principle in our lives. This is grasping at straws. Christianity didn't die as an organizing principle due to a discredited Church. It did so because it has not remained sufficiently adaptable to be useful to people in the modern world. It is full of prohibitions and offers few realistic prescriptions. The smart phone, if anything, represents interconnectedness. In place of the Church as an organizing principle, we have turned to each other (to technology only as a means, not an end). What has replaced Christianity – full of prohibition, shame, etc. – is what one would have hoped replaced Christianity – our ability to support each other.
An atheist writes:
Your recent post about the idea of the iPhone as a talisman or amulet reflects a need to equate every secular impulse, trend, or habit to a corresponding religious practice which I find rather obtuse. (The implication being that secularists, skeptics and atheists need to somehow replace religion with "secular religion" – an oxymoron if I every heard one.) See, the iPhone is the complete opposite of a religious token or relic. Because the iPhone works.
It doesn't provide owners only with a sense of security and connectivity: it actually does connect people with resources, information, and each other in a real, repeatable, demonstrable and useful way. Using email is not prayer; surfing the Internet is not meditation. Bot activities have external results that can be read and copied and printed and shared. This is the complete opposite of the personal, internal revelations experienced by religious and spiritual people. By its very definition, the transcendent nature of spiritual or religious ecstasy is a private, unsharable and non-transferable experience.
iPhones are not replacements for rosaries or idols, in the same way that the Theories of Evolution, Abiogenesis, and the Big Bang are not replacements for creation myths, and modern medical science is not a replacement for exorcisms and sacrificial atonement. Modern science and technology provides measurable, useful results, while religious practices provide a spiritual solace, but little else.
I largely second the readers' sentiments, but they share a blind spot: church congregations, in a more tangible way than texting or Facebooking, provide a powerful means of connecting people with one another, regardless of any doctrine being preached. Listening to sermons or reciting scripture make some people feel connected to something bigger, but the peers in the pews offer a more reliable and immediate means of support and belonging.
For instance, I've never been a religious person, but one of the ways I tried to meet new friends and cute girls after moving to Georgia in the middle of high school was joining a Methodist youth group. There were occasional Bible discussions, but the group was mostly a way to hang out at the cool youth pastor's house and go on fun trips. For the believers, it offered a way to extend their church worship into less formal settings. For non-believers such as myself, the group provided a way to relate to and respect those with very different beliefs. Plus I got a few dates out of it.
The Dish 