"The Internet Is My Religion"

"We are the leaders of this new religion. We have faith that people connected can create a new world. Each one of us is a creator but together we are The Creator."<p>It all sounds lovely until the universe turns into a cold, dead cinder.<p>Seriously, making stuff is beautiful, and helping people is beautiful, but those don't add up to transcendent beings. If everything about us, right down to our deepest desires, is fundamentally just the motion of atoms, when the universe ends, it might has well have never happened.<p>I am a Christian, so I'm biased here#, but it seems to me that non-religious people keep trying to simultaneously claim that the universe is merely a semi-random collection of atoms and energy, AND that we can find transcendent meaning in it. You can't have it both ways.<p>#Then again, I think it's impossible NOT to be biased about a question like the meaning of life. We all want some particular thing to be true.

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. It's okay to appreciate helpful humanity, but to deify it is absurd.

For those of you who can't watch it or want a synopsis:<p>It's an inspiring talk about a guy who has dealt with multiple extreme health issues, like cancer and a lung transplant, and how people--connected by the internet--made it possible for him to get the help he needed to live. He's not saying that he worships the internet, rather that communication and understanding other people is what is best in all of us. In this sense, the internet is his religion because it allows him to have faith in the goodness of the world.

Very interesting talk -- I think. Too bad I don't know how it ended because as the email input prompt appeared I closed the window immediately.

Read the comments on Youtube and tell me the Internet is "The Creator".<p>Right now the Internet is at the primordial ooze stage of evolution.

I hope religion is more than the interconnectedness of us all, though I've got no idea.

I think he's pretty right on. One can argue that currently the connection between human beings made possible by the internet is _not_ godlike, but if you extrapolate this kind of connection to its endpoint - telepathy and humankind as an organism, you start to get something very godlike by today's standards. If you still don't agree with him then we're arguing about the definition of god, which is a silly thing to argue about.

The internet's a third level of "human organism," not a deity. The first two levels being individuals, and traditionally organized bodies with leaders.<p>That said, it is a great source of "godly" works.

Lost me at the Rand quote.

"The next Buddha will be a Sangha." — Thich Nhat Hanh

Will Congress ratify Internet as a Religion?

<i>his slightly nervous, ever-so-geeky, sensibility...</i><p>I would love for that sentence to be explained. The speaker took the stage and spoke with confidence. I saw no signs of nervousness. As for geeky, I guess you mean he was skinny, wearing a rumpled shirt and glasses? Sensibility? You mean he looked sensitive, or reasonable?<p>I dunno, it just seems like a whole lot of snap judgment of a guy and some words that seem to have just been assembled at random because it sounded cool.

I can't see it. Where is the HTML5 version of this?

Please add tl;drs to these sorts of things. I don't want to have to seek randomly in the video to know what this is about.