Technology has at last caught up with religion! Not wanting to stay behind the times and other religions promoting "remote abhishek" and "talaak by SMS", the church has okayed an iPhone/iPad "confession" app. Here is the info: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/02/08/smartphone-sins-catholic-church-approves-confession-by-iphone/?hpt=T2. According to its maker: "it has already helped one person come back to the church after 20 years away."
I love this idea! It will start a new debate about which is easier: committing a sin in today's world, or atoning for it! This is truly a win-win for everybody:
The sinner: Heaven is just a click away! How guilty can a tablet make you? (Mind you, not the original 10 commandments tablet, but the iPad). In fact it is estimated that the average number of punishable sins worldwide will decrease because the middle"man" (literally, the priest) has been eliminated. Governments all over the world, are you looking?
The church: This will surely help their cause. They can now compete with other age-old religions in the 21st century. Instead of the confession box, now there will be a confession cubicle complete with an air-conditioner (for the computer, not the priest) to receive confessions (in a later release, as it seems that current app is just for guilt resolution, not absolution). Church steeples can now be turned into broadcasting towers so that confessions are digitally sent to God above. And eventually they would need technical support. Thus in the greatest of paradoxes, China will support the church!
Apple: This is a masterstroke. With one swoop they have targeted a long-neglected demographic: criminals. Apple is projected to earn millions in ad-revenue around prisons and courts. Look for the "There's an app for that!" sign outside every courtroom and prison and the related addendum to the law allowing out-of-court settlements.
Skeptics warn that modern-day sinners could fall into a loophole where they mistakenly went to hell because their confession did not get through due to poor signal strength. Apple is mulling using antennas shaped like religious symbols so that their apparatus does not suffer divine signal loss.
Rival Google is smacking its lips: it plans to collect statistical data on worldwide confessions and create interesting visualizations to see which sins are popular in which demographic. Of course it promises that no humans will read them: only bots manufactured by atheists would be used.
Several other religions are considering alternative "Paap ko jala kar raakh kar doonga" apps on the rival Android platform which is slated to overtake the iPhone in popularity by 2014.
Note: For those of you who didn't get it, this is a sarcastic article (I must have read way too many legal notices living in the US to think of writing this note!)
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