Excommunication from the Church of Google

With the decline in Christianity, many people have moved to the Church of Google, a worldwide organization run by a "pope" called Sundar Pichai. Unlike in the Catholic Church, for instance, where answers to fundamental questions are hard to come by if Pope Francis chooses not to supply them, the Church of Google has answers to everything.

A "google" in Oxford comments on the state of religion there.

Ask the god Google for "answers to the dubia", and, after first offering you "answers to the Dubai", because it thinks it knows better than you do, it finally admits that there are 91,200 results for your query - which is probably one per Catholic priest (except for the Pope himself, of course).

But that is not all that Google will do for you. If today is the 147th anniversary of the birth of Aloysius Squirm, the inventor of the singing bottle-opener, it will tell you. Or more likely, it is the 112th anniversary of the death of Ms Bruce Wurgledoom, the famous pioneer of transgenderism.

What Google won't tell you, is that the day is Easter, let alone the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Religious festivals are highlighted if they are politically correct, so the Aztec "Day of Organ Removal" will be remembered by a jolly "doodle" showing a high priest going about his business - if you are lucky there will be an interactive game, in which Google encourages you to remove the liver, spleen, kidneys, etc. of a heretic.

A religiously diverse doodle for the Aztecs.

The teaching of Google is sometimes regarded as intrusive. Messages such as "You searched for the phrase 'Thomas the Tank Engine', so here are some adverts for sex toys that we thought might interest you" have been criticised by some conservatives. Still, the faithful say that Google knows best.

But this week we discovered that all is not well in the Church of Google, as Pope Sundar excommunicated one of his priests, Father James Damore (which is almost an anagram of "Father James Martin", but that's probably a coincidence). Father James's offence was to write a parish letter on the subject of Equality (everyone is equal) and Diversity (oh no, they aren't!)

The Google faithful are encouraged to fly KLM because of its "diversity" policy on safety.

Unlike many churches, the Church of Google does ordain women; however, as with the Anglicans, many people regard their ministry with suspicion. We tried to find a Google "mother" to comment on Fr James's claim that women weren't capable of coping with stress, but they were all so upset that they had decided to spend the day at home. (The men were all away with hangovers, so at least in this respect everyone was equal.)

Pope Sundar explained to us that "free speech" at Google was used in the same sense as "Comment is free" is used by the Guardian. The faithful may say what they like, provided that it not heretical - a bizarre idea that will never catch on in the modern Catholic Church!

This blog is maintained by Google. Oops!

Genesis

This is the first chapter in the Eccles Bible project, where we explain the Bible in simple terms to an atheist called Richard, who knows something about science, but does not really understand life.

Let there be light! Genesis 1:3.

Now, I am not taking a fundamentalist everything-is-literally-true or even a sola scriptura approach in this project. And Richard, old man, if you get to the end of my course and become a protestant rather than a catholic, that's fine too. A great improvement on atheism, I can assure you. Indeed, I'm mostly going to be using the King James Bible: I know you think it's a great piece of literature - although mysteriously, your wife tells me that there are lots of holes in your personal copy, where the words God, Jesus, Christ, Heaven, Devil, Sin etc. have been excised with a pair of scissors (and, oddly, the word Rome, too).

Now there are several problems that Richard finds with Genesis, because he assumes it is intended to be read as a completely literal account of events.

God created the world in six days, ending up with man, and - as an improvement - woman.

Stephen Hawking explains the mathematics behind Genesis, Chapter 1.

Well, it seems that what the authors of Genesis are suggesting is that the universe did come into being, somehow or other, and that gradually different creatures emerged, until one of them became identifiable with the intelligent, thinking, wise beings we see around us today - those who read the Daily Mail and watch Top Gear, and use these media as ways of understanding the deeper mysteries of life.

So God created man in his own image. Genesis 1:27.

Apples, talking snakes, etc. What a load of rubbish!

Now, stop being silly, Richard. The Adam and Eve story as a legend, all to do with Man's attempts to defy the will of God. It does not need to be literally true in every particular to convey a message to us.

Man's downfall. Genesis 3:6.

What's more, although mainstream Christians tend not to believe in the literal truth of a story involving talking snakes, there is no particular reason why a talking snake could not exist - after all, we have talking birds and talking mammals....

A talking gorilla (L) and a talking snake (R).

The rest is all primitive stuff about bronze-age goatherds.

Well, we have to admit that several of the characters in Genesis (and there are many interesting ones, such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and so forth) would have lived in the bronze age, and some of them would have owned goats. But then, Richard lives in the plastic age and wrote a D.Phil. about chickens, so we don't seem to have moved on significantly.

Let's get on to Jacob, and see what he has to say.

Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. Genesis 27:11.

Well, yes, that's one thing he said, although not necessarily the most important.

Look, I'm a busy man. What is the point of Genesis?

Well, Richard, it's the beginning of Man's story. It shows that people are not perfect, and they commit sins. The best people are trying to understand who God is and what He wants (a question not completely answered to everyone's satisfaction even now). We first encounter Israel - initially an alias for Jacob, but then a name for his many descendants - which will become quite important later on, especially when we get to see God's plans.

Jacob (alias Israel) has an odd dream. Genesis 28:12.

Now you see the problem that Genesis poses for materialists and secularists. First, you have to go for the meaning behind the legends, rather than worrying whether Methuselah literally lived for 969 years or only 96. Second, there are the underlying themes that God is out there and that sometimes we actually do wrong things - even you, Richard. There, there, don't cry, dry your eyes... here's a handkerchief. Now, give us a big blow! Well done.

A fellow of New College, Oxford, discovers that he is a sinner.

Let's take the later part of Genesis as "oral tradition," which someone finally wrote down. It seems probable that Abraham and co. really did exist, and did roughly the things attributed to them. When we eventually get onto the New Testament, we'll see something more in the line of eye-witness accounts, and literal truth will be more important.

So, our story today ends with the people of Israel settling in Egypt. This turns out not to be what they really wanted, but we'll find out more about this when we get on to Exodus.

So Joseph died... in Egypt. Genesis 50:26.