MIT’s large and growing interfaith chaplaincy broke new ground, naming the Right Reverend Babbage Bilko (he/him) as its first Chaplain of the Church of Computer Modeling (CCM).
Eyebrows were raised when the Acolytes of Moloch had a chaplain named to minister to their needs two years ago. But he was quickly embraced by the intersectional grievance community. As blind faith in the oracular predictions of computer models became widespread, replacing study of the real world with the tweaking of model parameters to achieve virtuous pronouncements, this exploding constituency cried out for spiritual representation.
CCM believers draw their inspiration from MIT’s Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Samuelson, whose models consistently predicted that the GDP of the Soviet Union would one day surpass that of the United States. His seminal work was followed by two generations of climate modelers whose forecasts foretold an ice age, no wait, global warming, uh no, extreme weather climate catastrophe that will cause the extinction of all life on earth any day now.
Topping it off were the epidemiological modelers who convinced authorities that only the shuttering of the global economy, locking the laptop class in their homes while they were served by essential DoorDash deliverers, could save us from a pandemic that viral systems modelers proved was absolutely not engineered by scientists.
And so, the Church of Computer Modeling stands ready to minister to the needs of those who have been taught not to believe what they see with their own eyes.
Computatio animas nostras servabit.