The nature of God
Bear with me.
When I got my first computer my dad said it was a silly thing. I said that there was so much you could do with a computer. He told me if he ever got a computer all he would ask it is "What is the nature of God?" You can tell he really didn't understand the nature of computers. They aren't superbrains and they don't know anything other than what we tell them.
Just a few minutes ago my dad got introduced to voice-chat over Yahoo Instant Messenger. He and my brother (who is visiting for the weekend) were talking with my other brother, who lives in Montana and is going through a major personal crisis. My brother in Montana said that he had felt so alone and isolated, having to place long-distance calls that he really couldn't afford just so he could hear a friendly voice. With the voice-chat, we could all sit in the room and talk to him without having to pass a handset around for rationed time to talk with him. It was like we were all sitting there together like a family again. It gave my brother the strength and comfort he so desperately needed and made my dad feel like the family wasn't spread out so far after all. It closed a lot of gaps and erased so many miles, all in the blink of an eye...or the blink of a cursor.
I think, in light of this, the notion of asking a computer "What is the nature of God?" is really quite trivial. If you had seen my down and depressed and generally unpleasant-to-be-with-since-my-mother-died dad bound out of his chair, abandoning his precious TV set, chatting into his nemesis, the computer, and then walking out with a spring in his step and a smile on his face, happy and chipper and full of renewed hope, you would have seen my computer work a miracle worthy of the Old Testament. All of his prayers since 1997 could not do what 15 minutes on a PC with voice-chat enabled had done.
Given that computers and the internet have brought together more friendships and made us realize that we are all part of this bigger whole, bridged communication gaps and reunited friends and family thought forever lost, could it be that the nature of God is the very computer itself?