09th May 2008
It looks like you’re trying to have a divine revelation
In the Middle Ages, people had visions. In modern times, it’s more common to have various holy apparitions appear in food (cheese sandwiches, tortillas, potatoes, etc.)… and now, deus in machina.
This past January, James Randi has received a letter from an applicant for the JREF million dollar prize, in which the author describes mysterious communications on his computer.
Guh…
A frequent user of any word processing software is probably familiar with the automatic word checks it will do for you. I’m willing to make a large bet that this guy is using Microsoft Word, which ships with the checkers turned on, and see those green/red squiggly underlines that are on his screen but not on the paper when it prints out… with no idea what the software is doing, he concludes divine intervention is the cause.
It’s more sad than anything else, really — I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell him his deep religious experience is just a spell check. (Bill Gates is so totally not the Messiah.) But at the same time, he’s trying to peddle this deep religious experience for money…
I wonder if that wasn’t a prank. It sounds hilarious, but like the CD tray/cup holder story, almost too good to be true.
I have encountered people who use Word and Excel on a daily basis for their jobs, but didn’t have any idea what the red or green squiggly lines were supposed to be. Combine that with humanity’s propensity to jump to conclusions with no evidence; is it that surprising that somebody would believe their computer is giving them divine revelations?