On Religion and Software

I am a software professional so its not unreasonable for me to often try to relate the world around me in software metaphors. Here is one of them.

For some time now, I have been developing a perspective that religions across various cultures and societies have not evolved sufficiently to keep pace with societies. As a result, the abstractions (teachings or philosophies) associated with any religion have sustained because these abstractions offer more opportunities for interpretations and instantiations. Conversely, specific beliefs or practices have failed because they were associated with geographic or situation-specific contexts and have failed to migrate or transform across these contexts (across time, cultural boundaries or geographies). I am not suggesting that religion is dying anywhere but clearly it has become much more of a legacy than a constant, evolving, driving force that 'consistently and uniformly' regulates our behaviors, interactions, morality, purpose, sense of sacred (specific reference from Stuart Koffman's book--At Home In the Universe), sense of humility--in a way that was likely imagined in the minds of the originators (if that were to have happened). Moreover, I would even assert that in the modern societies, regardless of the social or cultural setting, religion has seemingly transformed more into a 'buffet' where people are choosing various aspects of it to suit their lifestyles, improvising or compromising on its 'raison d'etre'.

Of course I am making all this up since I have never come across a general definition, interpretation or purpose of religion. I am assuming that it arose in any society as a result of some very fundamental needs--and different societies seemingly recognized the same needs. However, that need or philosophy quickly became integrated with local beliefs, traditions and superstitions and gave rise to a blend of practices that have not found sustaining values over time. I am mixing up traditions and social behaviors with religion because there are no clear lines between them and there are many scenarios where these beliefs created controversies and revolutions in societies--all in the name of religion or god. The challenges to Darwin, Copernicus, Galileo and others were all because of specific beliefs and not the abstract teachings of a particular religion. They came up because of the inability of a particular religion or teaching to adapt to our learning and our growth.

So what does that have to do with software? Well, it demonstrates the same characteristics. We are neither able to build sustaining values in it nor are we ever wanting to accept that the systems that we build need to evolve or be replaced. Modern society's spiritual and intellectual growth is accelerating in much the same manner as its needs for technology but we are chronically mired by 'enterprise-class' legacy systems which outgrow their usefulness as the business practices and processes evolve. Here also, we are left with compromised functionality and vision or conversely a set of abstractions which offer value only to the intellect.

Was that a stretch? :))

Sanjiva, Orinda, Jan 13, 2006