Digital Korans, automatic prayer reciters and headphones dispensing religious advice are all part of the growing wave of outward religiosity that is increasingly defining daily life in Egypt.
“The idea came to me on a plane when I was listening to my iPod,” said developer Sherif Danesh, an Egyptian living in California’s Silicon Valley.
“Many people of all religions are hungry for information on their religion these days,” he told AFP by e-mail. “The availability of small portable inexpensive audio and video devices is making it very easy to access such information anywhere, anytime.”
Sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim…thinks the trend is more indicative of the “naivety of the consumers and the intelligence of the merchants.”
“It also says a lot about how quickly the Chinese economy reacts and adapts to the desires of the consumers — whoever they are,” he said with a smile.
This parallels the experience of fundamentalist Americans. I used to work for a 7th Day Adventist who wouldn’t part with his old car – because it was the only place he could still play 8-track tapes of his favorite sermons.
have we come full circle?
From “I believe there’s an imaginary friend because the world is so complex” via “I think I understand the way that science explaines the world and thus don’t need any god’s anymore” to “science has become so complex that I don’t understand it anymore, I’ll turn back to my imaginary friend”.
It’s so sad to see us all go down this road yet again.
If only more people had free, unbiased access to good education.
pj
Okay, where’s the GPS unit that will alway point the correct direction to Mecca?
J/P=?
#2
Mecca-pointing GPS?
I think there is such a gizmo — since it also keeps perfect time for your exact location, it call tell you the precise times for prayer
Certainly, there are lots of small electronic Korans sold everywhere over here.
They also sell a line of “Muslim” jeans that are cut big in the behind so that they are comfortable when you pray.
#3 “They also sell a line of “Muslim” jeans that are cut big in the behind so that they are comfortable when you pray. ”
And whole line of cloths cut big so you can pack more explosives in.
#4, that’s another one of the “good us” (=christians) and “bad them” (=muslims) groupings?
Heck! that’s exactly the reason why I would hope, religion would finally die out. Most muslims have only had the bad luck to be born in a geography where Islam pervails just as most christians had the misfortune to be born into a christian part of the world. It’s bad luck either way because none of them was allowed to grow up free of the religious “in group / out group” thinking!
pj
#5 – pjakobs
It isn’t Xian, it isn’t Mulsim, it’s herd instinct; the insecurity that leads to group formation is hardwired into the human brain. Next comes group-centrism, and along with black-and-white thinking, that subsequently develops into the ‘us and them’ mentality.
If the Xian/Muslim group dichotomy is not applicable in a given culture, another one, such as skin color or dietary habits or you-name-it, will be used to divide people into in- and out-groups. This is a universal human trait, no matter what culture one is born into. It requires the development of both rationality and empathy in order to be overcome. Most of humanity, being of average intelligence, has had -and will always have – limited success, if any, in overcoming this primitive mindset.
You have to face the fact that rising above ‘us and them’ is something only the more intelligent minority of our species can consciously resist – and even then it’s never truly eliminated; in more advanced cultures it simply operates at a more abstract level.
Sorry, but the world – or rather, the people in it – is/are still not gonna turn into a joyful, singing Coke commercial of multicultural bliss anytime soon, so it’s best to simply accept the mass-psychological status quo and address ones efforts towards more productive and rewarding endeavors, effective over the longer term, such as promoting the virtues of knowledge and rational thought – the two indispensible ingredients for a world without conflict.
So Declareth the Ghoti
resist = accomplish, in 3rd para above.
Thank you. 🙂
Ghoti,
denying the fact that forming groups and thus defining aliens and outsiders is a part of basic human nature would be foolish.
But does that say that it would be wise to just accept the fact that people are forming groups around something as stupid as religion?
Does that say that #4’s comment above is in any way acceptible? Do we really have to accept that Bin Laden and his little helpers on one side and Dubya and the Pope with their respective little helpers on the other side keep deepening and widening the gap?
Religion is a way to abuse the less intelligent.
pj
What would Muslim astronauts on the moon do? I guess it would be easy to determine the direction of Makkah, but how would they determine prayer times?
#9 – wouldnt the device run off of universal time? Also, there could be a laser guide in mecca thats pointed up into space, you just need to make the device face the guide and give a direction.
#8, #6 – You guys aren’t really in disagreement at all. On the subject of whether in/out conflicts are inevitable, consider these little factoids:
– Man’s closest cousin, the chimp, wages wars of genocide against other groups of chimps
– Nuns’ brains “light up” on an MRI in a very specific, and unusual, pattern when they put themselves into a mental space of feeling in conscious contact with their deity
– Every group, as tested against elementary school kids years ago (which I had a citation for you), picks a “goat” who is picked on, sneered at, excluded. The only thing the goat can do is be moved to a new class or school where there is already a goat and it is someone else. When the goat is removed, the group will very shortly select another goat, so it seems to be an essential social function.
Those three factors together suggest to me that the “us/them” awareness is gene-deep and ineradicable. That’s why scoundrels can use it with such confidence that it will work – wrapping up in the flag (“us”) and pointing at demonized enemies (drug users, terrorists, communists, liberals…. “them”).
Even here where rising above that is celebrated, there’s quite an explicit us/them division between our own wise group and the less intelligent majority of fools who go for a different us/them division. Like it or not, we humans seem to define ourselves by excluding or rejecting some “other” or outsider group. And we’re combative about it.
If we could recognize that about ourselves, there might be some hope of harnessing it to more benign purposes. Otherwise, it will simply continue to be used to personal advantage by pope, imams, Dubyas and unprincipled politicians of all stripe.
As opposed to me and thee. We’re not like that at all, no sir.
pj;
As undesirable as it is to sit back and watch superstition-programmed sheep – and their cynical, amoral manipulators in the sociopolitical self-defined “elite” – perpetuate and exacerbate the situation, greater minds than ours have not yet proposed a viable, effective alternative to taking the middle-term view – that is to say, of trying to wean people away from divisive, destructive cultural artifacts like religion by means of universal education.
We who see religion as an obstacle to achieving a sane, stable, relatively peaceful society are in the minority – and that puts us at a distinct disadvantage. The tools and materials needed for a better life – i.e. reason and knowledge – are more readily available to more humans than ever before. But you can’t force masses of people, particularly those blinded by primitive emotions, to abandon their beloved traditions, prejudices and superstitions in favor of a mental paradigm they are not equipped to understand the validity of.
All that preceding verbiage amounts to is an overintellectualized recpitulation of the ancient but eternally true cliché, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”
Until such time as the majority of humans take for granted the desirability, let alone the necessity, of believing in, and acting in response to, only what is agreed by all to be objectively real, we are in for an uninterrupted continuation of the present-day clash of paradigms.
The best I can figure we can do is join forces with the great minds of our time, such as Dawkins, and promote reason-over-emotion among the civilized minority we belong to. Then, hopefully our numbers will someday reach the critical mass necessary for us to coöperate and coördinate our efforts to nullify the influence of ignorance and superstition on our governments and peoples.
Unless you have a better suggestion…?
So Querieth the Ghoti
yo ghoti, i think you need to aim for conciseness and readability. and ease up on the vocabulary. your english teacher might be able to help…
all we need is a good old fashioned alien invasion. only then will people start reinventing the wheel of faith.
I write to share my views with other persons of a similar level of literacy to mine own, not to sway the masses. Or, IOW, I write at an 8th-grade level when I figure I’m talking to 8th-graders.
Words of one and two syllables are fine for owners’ manuals and parking-meter instructions; for use in other contexts we have a wealth of more precise words, which I choose to avail myself of…
As a far wiser man than I used to say, “Forgive me if my lack of ignorance is an embarassment to you.” 🙂
Good on him! He figured out to fuse his engineering, faith, and modern tech to make what is hopefully a successful and profitable product.
Now what interests me is if there are going to be any DRM issues with his device.
Haven’t all manner of folks, from engineers to con men (and women) been on a quest to separate the religious from their dollars for thousands of years? Thanks #15, Ron Larson!
Next in the pipeline: a GPS receiver that can direct you to Heaven, Paradise and (with optional expansion card) Shangri-La…
Crikey!™
Never to be read, but so what….
17, Lauren, just how much is that expansion card going to cost me? I’ll trade you the Magellan GPS download maps for the Middle East… 🙂