Rule 7: Market Christianity to College Professors and Computer Nerds

Rules for Reactionaries ^ | May 10, 2022 | Fabius Minarchus

[GarthVader]

Consider the mindset of your stereotypical Silicon Valley computer nerd: hyper-intelligent, introverted, socially awkward, often weird.

Consider also what they are tasked to do for their day jobs. They dissect the ambiguous statements of natural language into the deterministic logic that a machine can “understand.” The resulting tangles of logic are often huge, more than any human mind can contemplate at once. So a large part of the job is organizing that logic into hierarchies so a human can focus on manageable chunks at a time. And even then, the more chunks one can hold at a time, the better.

This leaves no room for ear worms – including Jesus Jingles.

Modern day Accessible Christianity is not so accessible to the denizens of Silicon Valley.

Try this thought experiment: imagine Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek series attending a modern hip church service with its repetitive tunes and forced emotionalism. He would stand still looking over the crowd displaying a mix of confusion and disgust. The only way he would participate would be if some hostile alien energy beings forced him to participate. Then, Spock would indeed end up speaking in tongues – due to brain damage. Dr. McCoy would have to come up with a miracle cure, probably involving a Klingon nerve gas derivative.

[GarthVader]

America's intellectual elite have gone Post Christian. This is a dangerous situation. The solution, alas, is going to be controversial.

[lurk]

Simple.

Guilt cannot be deleted by a guilty person. It can only be deleted if it is transferred to a person who has none. One person in the universe has no guilt.

Ones and zeroes.

[Paperpusher]

This is going to take a while to digest.

[Tell It Right]

Christian and software engineer here.

The #1 problem with programmers and engineers being Christian is that we tend to be prideful about our intellect (on that I agree with the article). Pride is truly a damaging sin.

What's needed is more emphasis on sola scriptura. When a programmer is sorta interested in Christianity and learns that the only limitation to him understanding God is any lack of devotion he'd have to studying the Bible -- Christianity meets his requirement of being something he could be part of. The new Christian programmer becomes a Bible geek faster than an baby boomer programmer and gen-x programmer could start an argument over TOS vs TNG. I see a lot of Bible geek programmers and engineers in Alabama, the state that's 3/4ths Protestant (believe the 5 solas like sola scriptura). Just like my programming skills are limited only by how much time I'm willing to devote to researching new design methodologies and coding techniques, solar scriptura tells me that my understanding of God is limited to only how much time I'm willing to devote to studying the Bible.

It also wouldn't hurt to have more apologetics, particularly old earth creationists who aren't theistic evolutionists. (read: Christians quoting Hugh Ross more and while giving less attention to Josh McDowell). I know many a programmer who said they weren't interested in Christianity until another programmer told them about all the "fine tuning" necessary in nature and the cosmos for advanced life to exist.

[GarthVader]

The point of the article is that it would be nice to mix sola scriptura with traditional, more contemplative, worship style. More Bach, less Maranatha Music Company.

(Not for every church or every service. Emotionalism is motivating and spiritual to a large number of people, perhaps a majority.)

[Myrddin]

The problem with apologetics is that you're a grain of sand in a Sahara desert full of demons happy to tie up all of your time. I found it an unproductive use of my time.

[Tell It Right]

I, too, think modern worship style is too simplistic for my tastes. I'll take some late 1970's to 80's Mylon, David and the Giants, Petra, and D&K any day over Chris Tomlin or Kristen Stanfield. LOL

My point is, most engineers and programmers don't care about that anyway. No matter the music style, it'll always be too simplistic for programmers. You might as well be trying to market an investment firm to programmers as DIY investors and spend time debating about the best colors for your banner ads and ignoring the fact that the programmer investors are looking for firms that can supply the best market data and trading options.

We should market Jesus to them by pointing out that Jesus Himself said to study the Scriptures. We should tell them there's so much, much more to God that what little you hear from the normal sermon or church media -- and you can find it in the Bible.

I'm telling ya, Christianity is popular among programmers and engineers in Alabama. I have no doubt it's related to 3/4ths of the population of Alabama being Protestant.

[Tell It Right]

"The problem with apologetics is that you're a grain of sand in a Sahara desert full of demons happy to tie up all of your time. I found it an unproductive use of my time."

I see very little of that among programmers. Programmers debating the origin of life is more akin to watching an old episode of Firing Line with William Buckley (respecting each other's positions, sometimes changing each other's minds because on that show intellectual prowess was displayed by the ability to pay attention to the facts that matter in the aggregate, not shouting when someone proves your position wrong). For example, it's been forever since I heard a programmer try to use a straw-man argument that people who don't literally use logic for their everyday work get trapped by.

This is especially true with most Christian programmers being old-earth creationists (not theistic evolutionists). That alone tells the atheist programmers that they're not debating with a run-of-the-mill young earth Christian who believes things like it didn't rain at all before Noah's flood or that not even a bug or virus died before Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden. Basically, there are less "gotchas" to trip up most Christian programmers because the Christian programmers tend not to adamantly believe a lot of that stuff anyway.

[BRL]

The problem with apologetics is that the path to God is primarily through faith, not intellect. The existence of God is self evident. Either a person sees it or they do not. However, what actually matters is that if God does exist (self evident) who is he and does a person have any obligations to Him. The unwillingness to feel an obligation /duty/or gratitude to the self evident God is where people actually make their decisions as to whether God exists or not. If you believe in God and feel a duty to him then where do you go for instruction.....you are pretty much left with going to an old religion (Christian , new, Muslim, old eastern) because it is irrational to think that God did not reveal himself to all men for all time. That is the intellectual side for me, but in the end conversion is an intervention by God and it is done through repentance and faith.

[Myrddin]

As a software engineer, I am pretty well equipped to make a strong, logical, cogent line of reasoning supported by scripture. That's fine as far as it goes. The "program" exits with a successful status. The next day, another new challenge arrives. I'm just not into endless sieges of "whack a mole". If there is any element of contention, you're not going to succeed. Apologetics is by nature contentious in defense of a scriptural truth. There are more enjoyable ways to direct one's energy in sharing the gospel.