Buying the Cellphone to Heaven

Check out this Wall Street Journal article titled, "New Cellphone Services Put God on the Line."

In late 2004, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi asked Abrasha Burstyn, the chief executive of a small Israeli cellphone company, for a phone that could put the secular world on hold.

Cellphone companies, at the time, had started to load their products with entertainment features, and the rabbi wanted none of it. He was in search of a phone without Internet capabilities or text messaging. He didn't want cameras, music downloading, or anything else that could "distract" the pious. He was looking for a device that could make and receive calls. Period.

Yahweh forbid that one receives text messages or instant news highlights on one's phone, especially when one lives in such an uneventful and peaceful area like Israel.

And the Orthodox Jews aren't the only ones in on it:

Companies are selling devices and services such as Christian ringtones and phones with timers that remind Muslims of prayer time.

How about a notification sent to a Christian cellphone network in the event of rapture? Oh wait, they already have an email service for that.

While this article is amusing, I am a bit disappointed. That is because the article title implies that there is a cellphone that connects to heaven, not just a cellphone that is designed with theistic, yet purely material, features. So I think this story was kind of misleading.

But in any case, the article got me thinking. I thought, "If a Rabbi can ask a cellphone company to make a kosher phone, why can't a theist ask a cellphone company to make a prayer-cellphone? One that connects to God and God alone for the most direct and efficient means of prayer delivery possible?"

I wonder if Abrasha Burstyn would take that request seriously? I wonder if the Muslims who requested cellphones that remind them of prayer time would take that idea seriously? Somehow I get the feeling that the idea would get laughed at by the theists.

But all the same, the consequences of achieving this prayerphone feat would be enormous. Cellphones can be located through the method of triangulation. So theoretically, we could identify the location of the afterlife, or even God Himself! Finally there would be some afterlife proof, and I would have to shut this blog down.

Of course, cellphones and cellphone towers have a limited range, but with God aren't all things possible? Why would God need cellphone towers in His kingdom in order to receive the signal?

Since I am an atheist fool who thinks that God and the afterlife are imaginary and anti-life, I started imagining creative ways to piss off these Wireless Orthodox Rabbis. I figured one good way to do this would be to offer a counter product. And of course, the best way to do this is to offer every temple-attending Jewish citizen of Israel a free cellphone, where the phone casing is made of shellfish exoskeletons and the internal components are made of ham! It doesn't matter if any Jews accept the free hamphone or not, because just offering and advertising it in the streets of Jerusalem would be enough. Now if only I knew how to make a circuit board out of bacon...