Valley of God

[cbayer]

The author is being interviewed on an NPR call in show this morning (Forum - KQED). Really good show.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/a7845296-e1b2-11e1-92f5-00144feab49a.html

August 10, 2012 5:01 pm
Valley of God
By April Dembosky
Faith in technology is at the heart of Silicon Valley but Christianity is a force here too– from Bible apps to the divine power of the internet

Alexa Andrzejewski sits in the balcony watching the pastor pace the floor below. Before the sermon gets rolling, she sneaks out her iPhone and opens her social networking app. She “checks in” at her San Francisco church, and looks to see if anyone else from her technology start-up world is in the packed pews this Sunday morning. The pastor asks them to pray and then to turn to Mark 15:21 in their Bibles. In unison, Andrzejewski, her husband and their friend all pull out their phones and swipe through their Bible app to the passage.

It is the week before Easter, and Andrzejewski is in the middle of some unsettling business hurdles around the start-up she runs, a mobile app called Foodspotting. It’s a typical lurch in the constant rollercoaster that all Silicon Valley entrepreneurs ride. Some of them, like Andrzejewski, turn to the story of Jesus’s crucifixion to find solace.

“My faith helps me to separate what I do from who I am,” she says, after the service. “Recognising that I have a value that comes from being loved by someone outside of myself, who created me for a reason, has given me a lot of strength as a founder. Because of that, I don’t have to worry about losing my identity if I fail.”

Silicon Valley, the epicentre of the global technology industry, is ruled by rationality and science. Data drives decisions, computer code solves problems. And yet there is a strong current of faith that permeates everything – an extreme idealism that motivates entrepreneurs, a staunch belief among engineers that technology can cure the world’s ills and contribute to the progress of humanity.

more at link

[rrneck]

1. ...

[cbayer]

2. Can't stream. Very bad connection.

[rrneck]

3. Bummer. Sorry about that.

It's Steely Dan's Deacon Blues. Here's a link for the lyrics. (But and paste is a pain on a phone. Ain't technology wonderful?)

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/steely+dan/deacon+blues_20130079.html

[Goblinmonger]

4. Here you go; I'm on my laptop

This is the day
Of the expanding man
That shape is my shade
There where I used to stand
It seems like only yesterday
I gazed through the glass
At ramblers
Wild gamblers
That's all in the past

You call me a fool
You say it's a crazy scheme
This one's for real
I already bought the dream
So useless to ask me why
Throw a kiss and say goodbye
I'll make it this time
I'm ready to cross that fine line
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/steely+dan/deacon+blues_20130079.html ]
CHORUS:
I'll learn to work the saxophone
I'll play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whisky all night long
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues

My back to the wall
A victim of laughing chance
This is for me
The essence of true romance
Sharing the things we know and love
With those of my kind
Libations
Sensations
That stagger the mind

I crawl like a viper
Through these suburban streets
Make love to these women
Languid and bittersweet
I'll rise when the sun goes down
Cover every game in town
A world of my own
I'll make it my home sweet home

CHORUS

This is the night
Of the expanding the man
I take one last drag
As I approach the stand
I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long
This brother is free
I'll be what I want to be

CHORUS

[rrneck]

5. Ah! Thanks! nt

[cbayer]

6. You are better with the phone than I am with the iPad.

I have yet to figure out how to cut and paste at all when I am using that.

Love Deacon Blues.

[cbayer]

8. By the way. What is your interpretation of this song and why did you post

it in response to this article?

[rrneck]

9. I'm allergic to chickenshit.

“My faith helps me to separate what I do from who I am,” she says, after the service. “Recognising that I have a value that comes from being loved by someone outside of myself, who created me for a reason, has given me a lot of strength as a founder. Because of that, I don’t have to worry about losing my identity if I fail."

The song is about taking a chance on what you really believe, (I already bought the dream), and doing what you love, (learn to work the saxophone). There are no guarantees for the "wild gamblers" when you go all in (I cried when I wrote this song), and you pretty much expect to be a "victim of laughing chance" because "that's the essence of true romance".

We shouldn't seperate ourselves from our follies and failures, but embrace them and be defined by them consequences be damned. "Take one last drag as I approach the stand" and live a life to "stagger the mind" even if you "die behind the wheel" doing it. "I want a name when I lose".

Faith, real faith, gives us hope in the face if impossibility. It's not an emotional sop used to hide from the world - or from ourselves.

[trotsky]

7. Technology has enabled us to feed, vaccinate, and provide fresh water...

for more people than ever before in the history of the world.



That's not "faith" to trust in technology, that's observation. I'm really tired of this ridiculous equivocation of the word "faith" just so believers who are uncomfortable with increasing secularism can feel better about themselves.

[DavidL]

10. PLUS 1000

Some Pope was against condoms and caused more deaths in the last 10-20 years than all the people who got inoculations because of science.

I doubt any liberal theist, nor any liberal Catholic in particular, spent a day in Africa, but continues to defend Christianity as a means to make the world better.

I have a word for them, it starts with "SH" and ends in "ME". Anyone who defends Christianity as being part of the solution, I have to wonder what part of Christianity they are talking about.

And, please, don't "shame" me for not understanding your convoluted self-justifications, just try to be logical and tell me where I am wrong, then this guy in Rome lives in splendor and people in Africa die of AIDS and starvation, and he allows his church to serve itself and protect its own child molesters.

Talk about corruption of the soul.

[cleanhippie]

15. "I have to wonder what part of Christianity they are talking about. "

Well, its the part they have cherry-picked to make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside, of course.

[onager]

12. You damn grumpy atheist! I'm tired of your negative waves!

Couldn't you see the sheer WONDERFULNESS of this article?

I sure did! All about hip, tech-savvy, and incredibly photogenic young religious believers. Not a single tongue-talking evangelical or creationist dumbass to harsh my mellow.

And dig that hip, young pastor!

The internet and social media present a conundrum for Chuck DeGroat, the pastor at City Church...DeGroat is a down-to-earth guy. He wears jeans when he preaches and sometimes swears in conversation.

Wears jeans! Swears! Just like another hip, young liberal Bay Area pastor in the 1970s. That one also wore aviator shades and ran an interesting Xian retreat in Guyana.

Instead he appeals to their intellect with solid reasoning. He wants to take sceptics seriously. “We don’t want to bullshit people because, particularly in San Francisco, there’s a big bullshit meter,” he says.

Uh...hate to point this out, Rev...no, actually I enjoy pointing it out - if you're selling people a story about talking snakes, virgin births, Zombie Messiahs and life after death...then by default you're bullshiting them.

[trotsky]

14. I know, I know.

The mere existence of my skeptical thoughts is enough to counter even the most power magic, homeopathy, prayer, or potion. I've been told this many times.

[cleanhippie]

16. " Just like another hip, young liberal Bay Area pastor in the 1970s."

You owe me a keyboard!

[edhopper]

13. That is a great comparison

The "faith" of things not known, or impossible to know, as many religious people describe as their faith in God, is so much different than the secular faith in a loved one or an idea like democracy or the results in scientific discovery. This in truth is trust based on experience, not blind faith absent of evidence.

[dimbear]

11. For those not lucky enough to know California, allow me to explain that

San Francisco is a beautiful tourist town with some financial industries, a very hilly location. A historically Catholic town, famous for, among other luminaries, Senator Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi.

Silicon Valley is an area about 40 miles south of San Francisco around the cities of Sunnyvale, San Jose, Stanford, etc. The place dimbear worked so many years in a coal mine. No wait, in electronics corporations.

The two are separated/connected by infamous Highway 101. Gruesome road. Or by El Camino Real which carries traffic very slowly between the two extremely different areas. Or thirdly via a bypass interstate.