urn:wd:wdlabs.com:atom1:twilight Your Home For Snappy Repartee 應龍 urn:wd:wdlabs.com:atom1:twilight:20070222.0824 2007-02-22T13:24:00 2007-02-22T13:24:00 2007-02-22T13:24:00 <p>In <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson">Neal Stephenson</a>’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash">Snow Crash</a>, Stephenson presents a world in which churches are a franchise operation. (The book in general makes all the logical conclusion of the application of rampant free market principals as they might occur sometime in the near future; for example, the CIA of this future buys and sells information to the highest bidder, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)">USS Enterprise (CVN-65)</a> is sold off and becomes a personal yacht). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist">The Economist</a> has <a href="http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8729581&fsrc=RSS">an article (“A marriage made in heaven?”)</a> about the possible merger of Catholicism and Anglicanism [<i>sic</i>] from a business perspective. It’s amusing, but I am not sure which disturbs me more, the ease at which big religion fits into the language of big corporations, or the fact that capitalists find it so easy to talk about nearly <i>anything</i> using their dogmatic vocabulary.</p>