New on the Spiritual Web Shelves - A select list of books

• Playing with Religion in Digital Games (Digital Game Studies) Gregory P. Grieve
• Exploring Religious Community Online: We are One in the Network (Digital Formations) Heidi Campbell
• Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds Digital Religion Heidi A. (EDT) Campbell
• iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives Craig Detweiler
• Digital Religion, Social Media and Culture: Perspectives, Practices and Futures (Digital Formations) Pauline Hope Cheong
• The Digital Puritan - Vol.III, No.3 John Bunyan
• Byte Religion Christian Kirtchev
• Cyber Meltdown: Bible Prophecy and the Imminent Threat of Cyberterrorism Ron Rhodes
• Cyber Religion: An entry from MACM's Contemporary American Religion Brenda E. Brasher
• 13 Blasphemies: Cyber Attack on the Holy Bible S.R. Smith
• Religion and the Internet - current cult fundamentalist Cyber ??religion ( Internet Society) (1998) ISBN: 4000262742 [Japanese Import] Tosa Masaki
• Religion on the Internet (Religion and the Social Order) (Religion and the Social Order) (Vol 8) Jeffrey K. Hadden
• Cyber Evangelism Esther Ogbonda
• Cyber With Me God (First Edition) Lee Vosloo
• iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks) Gary R. Bunt
• Digital Amen: A Look into the New Cyber Congregation S. Antonio Moffett
• CyberQuest: The Complete Virtual Adventure Sigmund Brouwer
• eMinistry - Virtual Pathways for Spiritual Leadership: Taking Evangelism into the Cyber Frontier Rev. Dr. Lauren Speeth
• Cyber Snoop Nation: The Adventures Of Littanie Webster, Sixteen-Year-Old Genius Private EyeOn Internet Radio Anne Hart
• Saved In Cyber-Space: How One Man Found Salvation On-line & How the Internet Can Bring Christ to the Entire Planet Matthew Long
• Japanese Religions on the Internet: Innovation, Representation, and Authority (Routledge Research in Religion, Media and Culture) Erica Baffelli
• The First Cyber Death Extravaganza!: A Mock Passion Play Scott Douglas
• Super Cyber Box Scope and Sequence First Quarter: Cyber Wars, 7 Weeks of Fighting to Win Over the Enemy, Satan 6 Weeks of Faith, Responsibility, Self Charisma Life Publishers 

Maximizing God's Plan for You Using Technology

By  Dr. Courtney S. Lamar,  Edward Waters College --  Read / Browse the Slides here

Extract:

• 1. Maximizing GOD’S PLAN for You Using Technology Dr. Courtney S. Lamar, October 11, 2013

• 2. Our Plans

• 3. God’s Plans (Jeremiah 29:10- 14) 10-11 This is GOD’s Word on the subject: 

• 4. God’s Plans (Jeremiah 29:10- 14) 12

• 5. “I’ll turn things around for you. 

• 6. How do we determine God’s Plans? Call Come and Pray Seek

• 7. Planning Analogy General Plan ◦Master Plan ◦Sector Plan ◦Functional Plan 

• 8. The Spiritual Disciplines

• 9. Corporate Outward Inward 

• 10. Technology

• 11. Spiritual Disciplines & Technology 

• 12. How/Where Do I Start? Pray Research Practice It! Reflect

• 13. Potential Technology Threats… 

• 14. Comments? Questions?

New on the shelf: Deus in Machina: Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between

Deus in Machina: Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between
Jeremy Stolow; Paperback: 368 pages, Fordham University Press (2012); ISBN-10: 0823249816

Review:

• (Re)locating religion in a technological age: Book by Concordia professor explores intersection of religion and technology, September 24, 2013 By: Cléa Desjardins -- Extract: 

  Deus in Machina brings respected scholars from around the world together to evaluate the philosophical, cosmological and ethical terms on which technology has been imagined as the opposite of religion.
  Their essays — on subjects ranging from the development of mechanical clocks in medieval Christian Europe and the healing power of prayer in premodern Buddhist Japan to Islamic debates about organ transplantation in contemporary Egypt — call attention to what can be created once this division has been done away with.

  Table of Contents:

  >>Introduction: Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between Jeremy Stolow
  >>Ticking Clock, Vibrating String: How Time Sense Oscillates Between Religion and Machine Wolfgang Ernst
  >>The Electric Touch Machine Miracle Scam: Body, Technology, and the (Dis)authentication of the Pentecostal Supernatural Marleen De Witte
  >>The Spiritual Nervous System: Reflections on a Magnetic Cord Designed for Spirit Communication
  >>An Empowered World: Buddhist Medicine and the Potency of Prayer in Japan Jason Ananda Josephson
  >>Does Submission to God's Will Preclude Biotechnological Intervention? Lessons from Muslim Dialysis Patients in Contemporary Egypt Sherine F. Hamdy
  >>The Canary in the Gemeinschaft? Disability, Film, and the Jewish Question Faye Ginsburg
  >>(Re)Locating Religion in a Technological Age
  >>Thinking about Melville, Religion, and Machines That Think John Lardas Modern
  >>Amazing Stories: How Science Fiction Sacralizes the Secular Peter Pels
  >> Virtual Vodou, Actual Practice: Transfiguring the Technological Alexandra Boutros
  >> TV St. Claire Maria José A. De Abreu
  

New Publications on the Theme: Cyber Worship and Online Religion

On the same shelf (see below articles in Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet on the topic of online religion / cyber worship in different faiths, including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc.):

Vaishnava Cyber-Puja: Problems of Purity and Novel Ritual Solutions
by Karapanagiotis, Nicole, University Heidelberg Philosophische Fakultät. Institut für Religionswissenschaft 2010, in Online - Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet [Vol. 04.1 Special Issue on Aesthetics and the Dimensions of the Senses, ed. by Simone Heidbrink and Nadja Miczek ]

Seeing the Divine through Windows: Online Puja and Virtual Religious Experience
Author: Herman, Phyllis K. Year: 2010. [Vol. 04.1 Special Issue on Aesthetics and the Dimensions of the Senses, ed. by Simone Heidbrink and Nadja Miczek ]

Hindu Embodiment and the Internet, Author: Scheifinger, Heinz [Vol. 04.1 Special Issue on Aesthetics and the Dimensions of the Senses, ed. by Simone Heidbrink and Nadja Miczek ]

Introduction to the Special Issue: Religions on the Internet - Aesthetics and the Dimensions of the Senses, Author: Heidbrink, Simone ; Miczek, Nadja [Vol. 04.1 Special Issue on Aesthetics and the Dimensions of the Senses, ed. by Simone Heidbrink and Nadja Miczek ]

"Tweeting Prayers and Communicating Grief Over Michael Jackson Online"
by Jimmy Sanderson; Pauline Hope Cheong, The Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 30, no. 5 (2010): 328-340

"Sacred Island or World Empire? Locating Far-Right Movements In and Beyond Malta"
by Mark-Anthony Falzon; Mark Micallef, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 16, no. 3 (2008): 393-406

"Spirituality, Religion, and Globalization" by Sudhir Kale, Journal of Macromarketing, 24, no. 2 (2004): 92-107

"Cyber Synagogues - On the Web, architecture students in Germany reconstruct houses of worship destroyed by the Nazis" by Daryl Scott Lindsey, Architecture : the AIA journal. 88, no. 10, (1999): 134

Cyber hymnal : dedicated to the glory of God.

Cyber cafe trades websites for worship: The Hard Disk Cafe doesn't look like your typical house of worship. By The Calgary Herald

Cybertheology Revisited

What would Jesus hack?
Cybertheology: Just how much does Christian doctrine have in common with the open-source software movement?
Sep 3rd 2011 | The Economist
Extract:

"THE kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” Jesus said of little children. But computer hackers might give the kids some competition, according to Antonio Spadaro, an Italian Jesuit priest. In an article published earlier this year in La Civiltà Cattolica, a fortnightly magazine backed by the Vatican, entitled “Hacker ethics and Christian vision”, he did not merely praise hackers, but held up their approach to life as in some ways divine. Mr Spadaro argued that hacking is a form of participation in God’s work of creation. (He uses the word hacking in its traditional, noble sense within computing circles, to refer to building or tinkering with code, rather than breaking into websites. Such nefarious activities are instead known as “malicious hacking” or “cracking”.)..." Continue reading

Prayer rug links high-tech, spiritual worlds

eRug has built-in sensors that alert the user to prayer time

Shauna Rempel
Toronto Star

Name: Wael Aboulsaadat

Age: 36

Program: Fourth-year PhD student, department of computer science at the University of Toronto.

Thesis: Computer user interfaces for religious practice.

The device: Aboulsaadat has designed a prototype of a digital device called eRug that Muslims can use to enhance their daily prayers. The rug has built-in sensors, lights and a display screen to show scripture, alert the user to the next prayer time and find the direction of Mecca. "It will increase their understanding of the scriptures and the quality of the prayer," says Aboulsaadat. continue reading

What Do Religions Believe? A Website with Answers

By Jeninne Lee-St. John Tuesday, May. 05, 2009

Quick — what's the difference between Methodists and Presbyterians? (Presbyterians believe in double predestination; Methodists that free will can help you get to heaven.) Confused about how Hindus believe the world was created? (So are they; the religion has no single canon and there are many, sometimes conflicting, origin stories.) Why are so many celebrities drawn to Scientology? (A key teaching says personal success can help overcome the human condition.) ...

The vast majority of Americans hold some religious affiliation, but we're often too polite — or maybe too shy — to ask friends and neighbors about the nuts and bolts of their beliefs, let alone sneak into a service in a house of worship that we're not thinking of joining. Enter a new website that sets out to explain the differences among religions as well as illuminate the areas of common ground. Patheos.com, which is launching on Tuesday, is a mash-up of path and theos, the Greek word for "god." ... continue reading

Wireless Mosque

{Info courtesy: Virtually Islamic.com Image courtesy: MY INVISIBLE.. SELF}

MASJID KRISTAL, TAMAN TAMADUN ISLAM, PULAU WAN MAN, KUALA TERENGGANU, MALAYSIA: http://masjidkristal.blogspot.com/

( THE CRYSTAL MOSQUE ) THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF KUALA TERENGGANU, MALAYSIA COMBINES PERFECTLY WITH THE THEMED LANDSCAPED GARDENS THAT LINK ONE THEME ENVIROMENT TO THE CITY. STAY FOR A DAY OR FOR A WHILE, VISIT ONE ATTRACTION OR MANY, AND CELEBRATE IN STYLE AT THE WEDDING CENTRE. VISIT THE UNIQUE CRYSTAL MOSQUE, OR TAKE TIME TO JOURNEY THROUGH THE EXQUISITE MINIATURE MONUMENTS OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD, WINDOWS ON ISLAM.

Read more @ The Star Online, 9 Feb, 2008; Masjid Kristal "floating" on Sungai Terengganu.

Indonesians tune in to digital Koran

Ahmad Pathoni, Reuters
Published: Thursday, September 20, 2007,
A boy reads the Koran during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in the West Bank city of Hebron, September 17, 2007. REUTERS/Nayef Hashlamoun JAKARTA (Reuters) - With her tiny earphones and slim digital player, Jakarta office worker Mira Indriarti looks like any other young music lover -- only she's not listening to the latest tunes, but to a recording of the Koran. Digital Koran is increasingly popular in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, where such gadgets sell especially well during the fasting month of Ramadan when... continue reading

The Souls of Superheroes - Faithwise Review of the Week

Spider-Man 3 trailer:




7 Minutes Of EXCLUSIVE Spider-Man 3 Scenes!!!



"Spider-Man 3" is more than an action movie--it's full of religious and moral themes. How much do you know about Spider-Man's spirituality and the faith of other superheroes? continue reading @ Beliefnet.com

`Spider-Man 3' nets record $59M in 1 day, By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer, Sat May 5, 2007

Islam goes digital
Cairo - Egyptian residents, already summoned to prayers five times a day by a chorus of scratchy loudspeakers, are now clamouring for a new line of portable electronic devices to show their devotion to Islam. Digital Korans, automatic prayer reciters and headphones dispensing religious advice are all part of the growing wave of outward religiosity that is increasingly defining daily life in Egypt. continue reading

Egypt's faithful crave new Islamic gadgets

Digital Qur'an finds home in Cairo

Fatwa: Women and Men Touching in Pro-Wrestling

Too hot for prime time? Once again a pulled TV ad – this time for Chanel lipstick – has generated controversy over acceptable standards
KEITH MCARTHUR, From Thursday's Globe and Mail, 19/04/07
The agency that screens ads for Canada's private broadcasters is at the centre of controversy again over efforts to protect the public from advertising deemed too hot for TV. This time the controversy is over an ad for Chanel lipstick in which Swiss model and actress Julie Ordon — clad only in a sheet — rolls seductively in bed and asks her clothed male companion if he loves her lips. “There's absolute nudity in the spot.

Gere-Shetty kiss sparks Indian lawsuits Last Updated: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 9:27 AM ET, The Associated Press

See also book discussion @ Google Video:

Cyber worship in Multifaith perspective - part1

Cyber worship in Multifaith perspective - part2

Cyber worship in Multifaith perspective - part3

Cyber worship in Multifaith perspective - part4

Related posts from my blog:

So much of visual literary genre, so little time to categorize it

1st computerised Muslim graveyard in the making

Indian Muslim Mumbai, April 17 (Indianmuslims.info) The making of first computerised graveyard in the city is in its final stage. Once the Jama Masjid Trust goes online, Muslims will not have to go to the graveyard office to enquire about the details of some near and dear one(s) buried there; all the details will be only a click away, chairman of the Trust Ameen Antulay told the presspersons here Monday.

Jama Masjid Trust manages a big graveyard spread over 8.5 acres of land. Situated in the heart of the city near Marian Line Railway Station, the 180-year old graveyard has the facility of burying 11,000 dead bodies at a time.

At present the graveyard office holds the records of burials of about 60 years. Ameen Antulay said they are trying to computerise all the available documents. “We have already computerised the documents of last 30 years and it will be easily available to public,” he said.

He informed the presspersons that many persons visit the office everyday to enquire about the details of the burial of their relations as such information is necessary for getting death certificates issued from Mumbai Municipal Corporation or for any other purpose. The officials have to turn the pages of the record manually to provide the visitors with necessary details, and sometimes it appears rather difficult. But with this scientific invention this work will be done in a matter of minutes. The computerised information will include the name of the dead person, his complete address, date of burial, place of burial, grave No., names of heirs and/or the persons present at the time of burial, etc.

This graveyard was recently subjected to modernisation. Graves were made in order and numbered. Details of every dead person have been recorded. The modernisation included concretisation of roads in between the rows of graves, and installation of water tapes at different places in the graveyard.

see also:

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Muslims mourn loved ones online More details at Wadi-a-Hussain.net

Online Janazah From Islamabad Graveyard

Online church to feature on BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship -- Faithwise Review of the Week

Let us pray ... at St Pixels, the virtual church with bar and bouncy castle Martin Wainwright, Thursday April 12, 2007, The Guardian. Special reports, Religious Affairs

From another source: Online church St Pixels enters an exciting phase this Easter with the launch of a new church environment and a ground-breaking service for BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship.
Although not yet in full 3D, St Pixels, a project supported by the Methodist Church, now has many features of the final version. Full story @ Inspire Magazine

Online Worshipers: Church is the People, Not the Pixels, By Lillian Kwon
Christian Post Reporter, Apr. 02 2007

Web surfers flock to Godcast, Sophie Finnemore, March 26, 2007
You've heard of iPod - now welcome to iGod. High-tech vicar Reverend Clay Nelson is taking his sermons virtual.

Muslim reunited with his Sikh family The Hindu, Staff Reporter, Apr 13, 2007
A joyous reunion after 60 years: "We may belong to different religions but we are brothers"
MIRANSAHIB: A Muslim brother was reunited with his Sikh family after 60 years on Thursday.

Sheikh Aziz, a resident of Rawalakot town in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, was finally given permission to meet his Sikh family living in Miransahib, a border town on the periphery of Jammu city.

'Let women be bishops' - Archbishop Barry Morgan, BBC News, 11 April 2007,
The leader of the Anglican church in Wales has called for his church to allow women priests to become bishops. Full story

Meaningful meaningless meditation, Church of the Churchless
More and more, I'm trying to make my meditation time as meaningless as possible. That's a change.
I've been meditating, daily, for more than thirty-seven years. After being initiated in 1971 by an Indian guru, Charan Singh, I dutifully followed the meditative practice enjoined by Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Full article

Persecution strengthens our faith, says archbishop of Hyderabadby Nirmala Carvalho AsiaNews,INDIA, 04/12/2007

Widespread and persistent suspicion surrounds Christians in Andhra Pradesh. Hindu extremists threaten and sometimes act out violently against them. Mgr Joii talks about the situation stressing how persecution strengthens believers’ faith and unity among themselves and with the Church.

New Delhi (AsiaNews) – In Andhra Pradesh Christians are mistrusted and held under suspicion, frequently targeted for violence, charged with trying to convert Hindus. Speaking to AsiaNews, Mgr Marampudi Joji, archbishop of Hyderabad, talks about the difficult situation which leaves so many people in uncertainty and yet strengthens their understanding of the meaning of Easter.
Full article

Hindu Outrage At Elizabeth Hurley, @ mikeghouse.sulekha.com

Coca-Cola protests Jesus scene in film, TV3 News, New Zealand - 8 Apr 2007

Winning their Hearts and Minds @ Sacred and Profane

See also:

Cyber Worship Revisited - Balaji, a Hindu priest offering prayers

Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives' Book Discussion on OMNI TV

Cyber Worship in Multifaith Perspectives
I will be discussing my book on April 10, 11 and 14, 2006 @ the timings mentioned below. You are invited to watch this show with family and friends.
Rogers Cable: Voices of Religion: (Channel 10 or 63):

Tuesday April 10 @ 3 - 3:30am
Wednesday April 11 @ 10 - 10:30am
Saturday April 14 @ 8:30 - 9am