God as a Programmer
Q: Does God control everything that happens in my life?
A: He could if he used the debugger, but it's tedious to go through all those variables.
Q: Does God play dice?
A: No, but maybe He uses a random number generator program.
Q: Why does God allow evil to happen?
A: God thought He eliminated evil in one of the earlier versions.
Q: Does God know everything?
A: He likes to think so, but He is often amazed to find out what goes on in the operating system kernel.
Q: How come the Age of Miracles ended?
A: That was the development phase of the project; now we are in the maintenance phase.
Q: Will there be another Universe after the Big Bang?
A: A lot of people are drawing things on the white board, but personally, God doubts that it will ever be implemented.
Q: Who is Satan?
A: Satan is an MIS director who takes credit for more powers than he actually possesses, so non-technical people are scared of him. God thinks of him as irritating but irrelevant.
Q: What is the role of sinners?
A: Sinners are the people who find new and imaginative ways to mess up the system when God has made it idiot-proof. As soon as God has made it idiot-proof again, there's Satan building a better idiot.
Q: Where will I go after I die?
A: Onto a DAT tape and into off-line storage.
Q: Will I be reincarnated?
A: Not unless there is a special need to restore you to on-line accessibility. And searching those .tar files is a major hassle, so if there is a request for you, God will probably just say that the tape has been lost.
Q: Am I unique and special in the universe?
A: No. There are over 10,000 major university and corporate sites running exact duplicates of you in the present release version.
Q: What is the purpose of the universe?
A: God created it because He values elegance and simplicity. But then the users and managers demanded He tack all this other senseless crap onto it and now everything is more complicated and expensive than ever.
Q: If I pray to God, will He listen?
A: You can waste His time telling Him what to do, or you can just get off His back and let Him write code in peace.
Q: What is the one true religion?
A: All systems have their advantages and disadvantages. So you just have to pick the one that best suits your needs and don't let anyone put you down.
Q: Is God angry that Jesus was crucified?
A: Let's just say He's not going to any more meetings if He can help it, because that last one with the twelve managers and the food turned out to be murder.
Q: How can I protect myself from evil?
A: Change your password every month and don't make it a name, a common word, your phone number or a date than can be easily associated with you, like your birth date.
Q: Some people claim they hear the voice of God. Is this true?
A: They are much more likely to receive e-mail.
Q: Why don't we see God at work?
A: God works at interrupt level, His Wonders to perform. When He wants to do something, He suspends our processes, saves our registers and status and swaps us out. Then He works His will on the world. Finally, He executes a RFS instruction (Return From Subroutine), then He swaps us back in, restores our registers and status and resumes our execution. To us, of course, things just appear to change by magic.
Q: What causes God to intervene in earthly affairs?
A: If a critical error occurs, the system pages Him automatically and He logs on from home to try to bring it up. Otherwise, things can wait until tomorrow.
Q: Does God control everything that happens in my life?
A: He could if he used the debugger, but it's tedious to go through all those variables.
Q: Does God play dice?
A: No, but maybe He uses a random number generator program.
Q: Why does God allow evil to happen?
A: God thought He eliminated evil in one of the earlier versions.
Q: Does God know everything?
A: He likes to think so, but He is often amazed to find out what goes on in the operating system kernel.
Q: How come the Age of Miracles ended?
A: That was the development phase of the project; now we are in the maintenance phase.
Q: Will there be another Universe after the Big Bang?
A: A lot of people are drawing things on the white board, but personally, God doubts that it will ever be implemented.
Q: Who is Satan?
A: Satan is an MIS director who takes credit for more powers than he actually possesses, so non-technical people are scared of him. God thinks of him as irritating but irrelevant.
Q: What is the role of sinners?
A: Sinners are the people who find new and imaginative ways to mess up the system when God has made it idiot-proof. As soon as God has made it idiot-proof again, there's Satan building a better idiot.
Q: Where will I go after I die?
A: Onto a DAT tape and into off-line storage.
Q: Will I be reincarnated?
A: Not unless there is a special need to restore you to on-line accessibility. And searching those .tar files is a major hassle, so if there is a request for you, God will probably just say that the tape has been lost.
Q: Am I unique and special in the universe?
A: No. There are over 10,000 major university and corporate sites running exact duplicates of you in the present release version.
Q: What is the purpose of the universe?
A: God created it because He values elegance and simplicity. But then the users and managers demanded He tack all this other senseless crap onto it and now everything is more complicated and expensive than ever.
Q: If I pray to God, will He listen?
A: You can waste His time telling Him what to do, or you can just get off His back and let Him write code in peace.
Q: What is the one true religion?
A: All systems have their advantages and disadvantages. So you just have to pick the one that best suits your needs and don't let anyone put you down.
Q: Is God angry that Jesus was crucified?
A: Let's just say He's not going to any more meetings if He can help it, because that last one with the twelve managers and the food turned out to be murder.
Q: How can I protect myself from evil?
A: Change your password every month and don't make it a name, a common word, your phone number or a date than can be easily associated with you, like your birth date.
Q: Some people claim they hear the voice of God. Is this true?
A: They are much more likely to receive e-mail.
Q: Why don't we see God at work?
A: God works at interrupt level, His Wonders to perform. When He wants to do something, He suspends our processes, saves our registers and status and swaps us out. Then He works His will on the world. Finally, He executes a RFS instruction (Return From Subroutine), then He swaps us back in, restores our registers and status and resumes our execution. To us, of course, things just appear to change by magic.
Q: What causes God to intervene in earthly affairs?
A: If a critical error occurs, the system pages Him automatically and He logs on from home to try to bring it up. Otherwise, things can wait until tomorrow.
