The Church Of Google suggests the super-powered search engine is a man-made God, with more evidence in favour of its divinity than for “other more traditional gods”.
Are Larry, Sergey and Eric the Holy Trinity of the dot-com era? That’s the notion of
The Church of Google, which suggests their handiwork is born of man but has become “the closest humankind has ever come to directly experiencing an actual God (as typically defined).”
The religious movement has its own name – Googlism (the followers of which are called Googlists) – and its own set of
commandments, including “Thou shalt not use Google as a verb to mean the use of any lesser Search Engine.”
There’s even an annual religious holiday on September 14th, the date on which the Google.com domain name was registered in 1997.
It’s all a spoof, of course, but The Church of Google applies that typically relentless and unforgiving ‘geek logic’ to making the case for Googlism and against, well, just about every other organised religion (and quite a few disorganised ones).
“We reject supernatural gods on the notion they are not scientifically provable” decree the Googlists. “We believe Google should rightfully be given the title of ‘God’, as She exhibits a great many of the characteristics traditionally associated with such Deities in a scientifically provable manner.”
(And no, we didn’t know that Google was
female until now, either).
The Church of Google offers what it calls nine proofs of the ascendancy of Google to God-like status:
1. Google is the closest thing to an omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence.
2. Google is everywhere at once (omnipresent).
3. Google answers prayers. (“As an example, you can quickly find information on alternative cancer treatments, or new and innovative medical discoveries, and generally anything that resembles a typical prayer.”)
4. Google is potentially immortal.
5. Google is infinite. (The internet can theoretically grow forever.)
6. Google remembers all.
7. Google can do no evil. (Google's corporate philosophy is “do no evil”.)
8. Google is believed. (The term “Google” is searched for more than the terms God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Christianity and Islam combined, and quite possibly even including Jedi, which rated rather highly as a religion according to the last Australian census.)
9. Evidence of Google's existence is abundant. No faith is required.
All of this has of course attracted its share of
hate mail, naturally, from Web-surfing God-fearing Christians.