Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill.  He also warms himself and says,  Ah! I am warm;  I see the fire.
        From the rest he makes a god, his idol;  he bows down to it and worships.  He prays to it and says, "Save me; you are my god."  (Yishayahu¹ 44:16-17).

        To the people of Western Europe and America falling for such superstition is not even tempting.  We in our scientific age have risen above such depravities.  But we have forgotten that we in the West do not represent the norm.  India still has its idols;  Thailand its shrines.  There are still temples to the Virgin in Latin America, Spain and Italy.  Africa is full of animism.    And the Middle East is full of people who bow down to a black stone and make pilgrimages to march around it in white robes.   Having managed to offend ninety-nine percent of the inhabitants of this planet we call earth who have profound emotional attachments to such delusions, our western objectivity is but  a blip in a sea of confusion.
        And even then, we are not the exception that some of us think we are in the West.  Just under the surface lies the drug culture, dabbling in the occult, astrology, and all those religious cults we have imported from abroad as well as some home-grown ones.   Our Judeo-Christian ethical system and resistance to idolatry may be our western heritage, but it is fading fast.
        You may think that education and technology will save us from the fate of gross religious ideas and rituals, but let us look at the direction of education today.    Education today is excellent at imparting the technical facts needed to keep our civilization going, and indeed to advance it to the next stage, but where has education gone in terms of moral understanding and teaching us the meaning and value of life?  What has education done to teach us the value of normal human reproduction and biologically based relationships.  We can now see that the educrats punish anyone who suggests that gay is not normal.  And what about the value of human life?  Pregnant in school?  Off to the abortion clinic we go.   Wherever we look we see lots of factual knowledge, but very little knowledge of the God who created the facts or the meaning of life, or how to live it in the right way.
        And so what can we predict that the creator will do?  "Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind ... " (Rom. 1:28).  Now, we look at  ancient nations and the modern third world and their images, and we laugh.  They do not speak.  They do not walk.  They must be fastened to a base to stand upright, and men carry them around.  Will we return to such absurd actions -- so clearly the result of a depraved mind?  If you believe the bible they will.  And if you don't, it will still happen, and then you may believe, but will you have any faith?
        What we now have, is the power to make images talk, to walk, indeed to fly, and to do all those things that western society values the most -- to handle vast quatitites of factual information.  I am talking about the computer in a certain sense, that is what the computer is about to become.  The computer will get so small that we will have to impart a tangible size to it just so we humans can still relate.  It will be portable.  It will allow instant communication with anyone else.  It will render phones, calculators, books, paper, pencil all obsolete for utilitarian purposes.  It will tell us what we need to know when we need to know it.  It will be the trusted source of knowledge --- more than your doctor, your priest or you lawyer.  The computer on your wrist will give you all the medical and legal answers you will ever need.  In an small way, the internet does that for us now.
        At some point in the future (don't ask me when right now) men will cease to be able to tell the difference between the computer personality and a real human being --- just like when you place a call and shamefacedly realize that the person you are trying to interrupt on the other end of the line is just a recording on an answering machine.  Oh yes, we will still know that computers really are not people, but when the third world and the undercurrent of our own society gets ahold of it, will they wish to maintain the distinction?  Will they not propose that the spirit world is really communicating with the "computer personalities"?  --- especially when the computers seem to come up with answers that save us from disaster that we do not expect?
        And the scarry thing is that they will be right.  For the computers will not be dumb enough to drown themselves in the sea of Galilee when they realize they are possessed.  Like the answers from an oujii board, the computer will tilt in favor of its controllers  -- or more accurately those to whom we give it to control.

1. Isaiah 44:16-17, NIV Bible.