SimChurch

Roland Piquepaille writes "It's Sunday and some of you might go to a church. But starting on May 11, and for a duration of three months, you'll be able to go to a virtual church. Only the building, with its altar and pews, will be virtual. The preacher, congregation and prayers will be real, according to this BBC News article, 'Glimpse inside the virtual church.' This experiment is launched by a Christian website, Ship of Fools, and will be named Church of Fools. Even with such a foolish name, the virtual church project has been approved by the church hierarchy. This overview contains other details and references about the Church of Fools project."

talk about heresy

[QEDog]

Now you can go to church, read /. and watch pr0n all at the same time.

note to moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

the first post is not redundant by its very nature

I for one

[lightspawn]

Pity the new fool overlords.

Re:Prior Art: LOL

[focitrixilous P]

Keillor had this one story of aboy rebelling against his methodist parents, he would always skip church and such, until his dad informed him:
"You know, son, you can take communinion online now, using a methodist modem"
Internet Church might be the thing of the future, but its current state is awful.

Brilliant Idea

[Law-Eagle]

I predict this will be the first of thousands, including a few dodgy ones based in Nigeria (oops did I just give someone an idea).

Never been done before...

[asobala]

"...no one has built an interactive 3D church environment before - complete with gothic arches and hard wooden pews."

HAVE YOU NEVER PLAYED DEUS EX???

Re:Have to wonder

[nkh]

If I were the preacher, I would be more scared about how much script kiddies would come to deface this virtual church. I really hope he is aware of what can happen on the Internet these days...

Confession?

[MrIrwin]

Come on now....own up to your virtual sins. Otherwise you will be sent to Dante's virtual inferno where BSD deamons are condemmed to burn Windows CD's for eternity and SCO executives abound to slap lawsuits on everthing you do.

Sorry, I'm getting a bit carried away.

Re:talk about heresy

[Xeo 024]

Yeah, but the real question is will I still be safe from Catholic Priests?

Hmmm...

[Huxley_Dunsany]

So... if I fail to attend online church, do I go to virtual hell when I die?

Huxley

Hopefully..

[Caedar]

This will allow me to stay home every Sunday. ;)

Re:Religion is for the week-minded

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Quite. We've got church once a week...

Use your Online Ordination

[maxwells_deamon]

Finally a good use for the online ordination I bought from that spammer.

I don't even need to buy candles! ;-)

Re:The Return.

[Camel Pilot]

Yup he will control the global console and will announce his return with the wall command...

ObLink...

[Aardpig]

...to the best Church site on the net: Landover Baptist Church [landoverbaptist.org]. Praise the Lord!

Virtual prayer

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I pray virtually?

Does it have a python module?

from Prayer import vprayer
from Prayer import GOD_CHRIST
while True:
choose_god=GOD_CHRIST
text='Dear Lord please.....'
vprayer(choose_god).write(text)

Re:WWJD?

[Grey Ninja]

I'm not religious in the slightest. But I suppose if there were popups abound on the site, it would show once and for all that Mozilla is the holier browser. ;-)

Re:Religion is for the week-minded

[fejikso]

And what is left for those of us that are month-minded?

Re:Hmmm...

[Retep Vosnul]

No, you will just be banned from all servers and be forced to live your virtual life in single player mode. reteP vosnuL

Re:This is not just for laughs

[Colonel Cholling]

would love to go to a church on Sundays but can't (e.g., those who are sick, those who live in rural areas)?

Uh, what rural areas are you talking about? I used to live in an unincorporated town in Mississippi. It was seven miles to the nearest gas station, and there were no fast food restaurants or video rental stores. But we had three churches. Believe me, the places that are too rural to support churches are probably too rural to support internet access. Or electricity.

Confessional

[Anonymous Coward]

Bless me, father, for I have spammed...

Re:Virtually real

[Colonel Cholling]

I mean, they're worshipping a deity who isn't real, in order to gain admission to a place, Heaven, that isn't real and avoid being sent by their unreal but supposedly loving God to another place, Hell, that isn't real, where they would be tortured for eternity by an entity, Satan, who isn't real.

You're a bot, aren't you?

The Future of Religion

[DJ Super Dulce]

I hope this works out and we'll soon see chat room wedding ceremonies. Weddings these days are so expensive. It would be much easier if we just decorated an electronic chapel, got cheap eDesigner Dresses, and gave Amazon.com gift certificates. Instead of hiring a band and violinist, I'll just pop over to the iTunes stores and pick up some tunes.

I guess the only downside is that people would probably expect the ceremony to be consumated by cybersex.

Semi-serious question

[Lifewish]

So do they consecrate the server as holy ground or what? I'm not even gonna think about baptisms.

Re:WWJD?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG if teh Je5u5 wz all liek popup sutff id be all like "teh b00tz off my serv0rzs d00dz" cuz i hat3z teh wallhax0rx!!!!!!11

Txt Gspl

[aslate]

Won't all that old-style English they read from the Bible be even harder to understand once they convert it to chat speak? "In da bginin Gd creatd da hvn n da erth. n da erth ws w/out frm, n void; n drknes [ws] upn da face of da deep. n da Spirt of Gd mvd upon da face of da wtrs. n Gd sd, Let der b lght: n der ws lght."

please keep it on a separate network

[silicongodcom]

from my SimState

HA!

[LordK3nn3th]

"Not everything you read online is true."

"Except whatever that man with the priest icon says."

Re:Hmmm...

[BeatlesForum.com]

I don't know, but I hear Heck is the place people go to that don't believe in Gosh.

For those using linx...

[stienman]

The colection basket has been passed to you. There are no exits because you chose to sit in the middle of the pew. What do you want to do?

Donate O$5 O$10 @$50 via PayPal
Deftly pass it along while hanging your head in virtual shame

-Adam

Re:WWJD?

[isorox]

No, windows is the thing that's full of holes.

Re:WWJD?

[sketerpot]

I would never be able to write convincingly for this. I would always sound like a low-key knockoff of Landover Baptist.

Priest: Oh God, we long for your light.
Congregation: In the darkness of our lives, you are a candle.
Priest: You call out to us, but we turn away to the bleakness of our daily lives.
All: Boy, we stink!

Priest: Show us your will, that we may blindly obey!
Congregation: We are dumb.

;-)

I'm not a religious man...

[Saiyine]

Homer: I'm not normally a religious man, but if you're up there, save me, Superman!



The Simpsons [imdb.com]

This is BRILLIANT! +5 Flame

[Any Web Loco]

An imaginary world where people can go to an imaginary church to talk to their imaginary god.

Oh flame away...

Re:Have to wonder

[Lord_Slepnir]

Now I have this image of the Church of Linux.

We'd start the service by singing "Descramble", take a reading from the book of Linus, a preacher would then preach about the evils of using Windows and how all those who used it would be thrown into the pit of Blue Screens at the day of reconing. The preacher will then bless the holy chips and sacred Jolt cola (for those are the substances the Linus lived off of during the 40 days and nights that he wrote the kernel), and we'd have a kind of communion. The preacher would finish up by passing around a hat, within it being peices of paper with the Church's PayPal ID.

its like church...

[tsunamifirestorm]

but without the free food. :(

Three words

[FreemanPatrickHenry]

"Wanna cyber, sister?"

FINALLY!

[Aqua_Geek]

Now I can finally fall asleep in church from the comfort of my own bed instead of upright on a pew!

April Ship of Fools?

[geoswan]

I thought April Fool's Day was a couple of weeks ago. :-)

Browsing the Ship of Fools site I came across the contest to pick an 11th commandment. [shipoffools.com] The first winner was "Thou shalt not worship false pop idols". The top five choices won digital cameras. :-)

Re:WJWD

[fucksl4shd0t]

if Jesus came back,

Man, jesus did come back, didn't you hear? He showed up and realized he would never be able to pwn mankind, threw his arms up in frustration, and left. Last I heard, he was arguing with his dad over whether or not to pull judgement day so they could start over and not make the same mistake again. I seem to recall his argument centered around "trying the same thing and expecting different results" or something like that.

Re:*boggle*

[Nodatadj]

In my church, singing off key is the main requirement for joining the choir.