People mask financial greed in many guises! Do people actually think God is going to hear a lifeless computer praying!
Unbelievable!
God listens, but does he listen to a computer?
A Boston-based company hopes He does.
Information Age Prayer sells prayers for a fee on its Web site, www.informationageprayer.com. For $3.95 a month, for example, people can ask for financial help — and a computer-generated voice in Boston will appeal to the Almighty through a set of speakers.
The 23-year-old lab worker who started the company in March studied math, not theology, at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Still, James Mcarlos knows enough to acknowledge that his service is a supplement, not a savior. His Web site warns prospective customers that the Prayer for Financial Help is “not an alternative to fiscal responsibility.”
“You can’t expect to simply sign up for this service and never pray again,” Mcarlos said. “This service is a way of just letting people relax a little more, if they feel like they should be doing something else, or praying more.”
Pastors, priests and rabbis scoffed at the idea, saying that prayer must come from the heart, not the hard drive.
“It’s rather ridiculous. That’s not God’s intention,” said the Rev. Bill Themelaras, prayer pastor at Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, a nondenominational church in Wilkinsburg. “Paul tells us that the fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. That’s the prayer of a man or a woman, not a computer.”
Mcarlos said the for-profit company donates 10 percent of revenue to charity, though he would not provide figures. He said he was inspired by a story he heard about a Dutch artist who had an answering machine for God. He declined to reveal how many prayers he has sold, but said people from 155 countries have visited his Web site.
The site offers people a daily blessing for free, but those who want to “show God (they’re) serious,” Mcarlos said, can pay to pray. Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Protestant prayers are available, as are nondenominational prayers. The most expensive is a $49.95/month Catholic rosary, spoken daily.
Mcarlos, who said he is not affiliated with a religion but believes in a “monotheistic, one omniscient, omnipotent God,” said the most popular prayers are the financial prayer and one for children. He said that he charges fees to make customers realize the service is legitimate and that the company doesn’t take its customer relationship lightly.
But profiting from prayer isn’t a divine idea, said the Rev. Sean Kealy, a Catholic priest who is the Noble J. Dick Endowed Chair in Academic Leadership at Duquesne University.
“You can’t buy prayer, and you can’t buy God,” Kealy said. “It must come from love, from struggle, patience and fear in your life.”
Though he doesn’t condone paying to pray, Rabbi Yisroel Altein of Chabad of Pittsburgh in Squirrel Hill said it has become common to use technology as a tool to enhance religion.
That’s what Maggi Normile, 33, of Moon uses her computer for. An active blogger, she uses the Web to spread prayer requests.
“It can bring people of the same faith together and allows people in and out of the faith to ask questions and hear different points of view. They may find it easier to find people online to debate or discuss religion with than in their regular lives,” said Normile, who knows about Information Age Prayer through an online community for Christians but doesn’t endorse it.
Altein and Themelaras agree that computers can be used to augment community in spiritual lives.
“You’re using it not as a means to pray or a replacement for prayer, but a way to enhance the experience,” Altein said. “You can’t have the computer doing the prayer.”
Although Covenant Church uses blogs, e-mail and text messaging to spread the Word, Themelaras doesn’t believe technology brings the faithful any closer to God.
“We are blessed with technology in this day and age to be able to use it for God’s glory and God’s purposes,” Themelaras said. “But you can’t e-mail God, and you can’t text God.”
