When does the new year stop being the new year? Like many of you, I expect, past Januaries would find me accidentally writing the prior year’s date on checks, correspondence, and the like. The benefit of those errors was that, usually within 30 days or so, they forced me finally to adjust to the notion that a year had passed and we were firmly in the next.
Except that I no longer write checks. Rather, I use my bank’s online service, which automatically generates and dispatches payments. Entering the wrong year is close to impossible. The same goes with correspondence. E-mail is internally dated. And when I write a letter, the date-completion function on my word processor offers up the day’s date even as I begin to type. All I have to do is press “enter.”
Comments
Nice article. However you left out how religion is effectefd by science and technology. Both of these things have great effects on how we view the bible and other holy books.
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@HHK, only if it makes itself so, and vice versa for those who would claim that science is the enemy of religion. I learned Darwin's Theory of Evolution at a Catholic High School, and the Brother (a fiesty old Irishman) who taught the class had no such attitude. He even had a challenge from one of my classmates, who insisted that evolution went against the word of God in the Bible. Brother Doyle responded with two comments. First, that the Bible was the word of man inspired by God, and second, that there is nothing in evolutionary theory that posits the non-existence of God, that the controversy is more about how people interpret things after the fact. So yes, there are those who claim their religioius convictions are opposed to science, but if you scrutinize their claims, it is more accurate to say such individuals see science as threatening to their faith. To me that implies their faith is weak to begin with, but faith and science are not mutually exclusive or antagonistic. There are simply people who claim their faith justifies their hostility to science and there are people who claim science justifies their hostility to religion. Louis Pasteur's faith did not prevent any of his scientific discoveries, nor did his career as a scientist weaken his faith. Brother Doyle was the same way.
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