Apple and religion, same symptoms, different answers

The Bishop of London sees similarities between religion and Apple. And a team of neuroscientists looking at the brain of an “Apple fanatic” found that Apple was stimulating the parts of the mind normally excited by religious imagery in people of faith. I gleaned this from a BBC review of a new programme, Secrets of the Superbrands, to be broadcast this evening.

While it’s a bit unfair on Apple to compare it with religion, there’s a glimmer of truth there. I’ve often joked to the less afflicted about my frequent detours to any Apple store, comparing them with visiting church. It’s true to say I can’t just walk past, I have to go in and inspect the stuff I’ve already seen a thousand times before. Just like religion, really.

Meanwhile, it seems, Apple and the universe coincide in the human brain. Professor Stephen Hawking trended worldwide yesterday with his pronouncement that heaven is a “fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Hawking, rejecting the idea of life beyond death, believes the human brain is simply a computer which will stop working when its components fail: “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers.”

Whatever our views,  we can’t argue with Hawking’s assertion that we should fulfil our potential here and now by making good use of our lives and, by implication, stop worrying about the next. Anyone for a defrag?