I think that programming communities as they stand fit in the same psychological and spiritual "space" as religion and religious practice. Do you really think anyone would sincerely take up a deity you just invented?<p>Presumably, in programming terms, computers are your creator - except they create logical streams rather than being responsible for creation of those you are proposing to be the worshippers (from what I can tell) who in fact are the creators of the machines that would form the focus of worship.<p>I don't think you can form a deistic religion on this basis. Perhaps if we have computers that can write their own code, replicators running on vacuum energy, and ability of computers to generate their own parts and have control over biological systems that can affect the permutations of DNA which precipitate? Such machines could mould mankind and be perpetually self generating. Perhaps then it would make some sense to have religion focussing on the programming.<p>This does lead on to how broad a definition you'd accept. Recall the t-shirts with "God said ..." and the Maxwells equations ( <a href="http://www.zenker.se/Surprise/quantum.shtml#Links" rel="nofollow">http://www.zenker.se/Surprise/quantum.shtml#Links</a> ) "... and there was light". This is effectively claiming the universe as an actualisation of a program made by God. DNA too is a program for replicating with alterations DNA.<p>So, on a loose enough definition one could argue that Christianity could fit. One of the Matrix Neo as Christ metaphors weighs heavily in this direction; a Christ figure that enters the program in order to fix a bug and release those held captive in the algorithms. Or something.<p>Ooh, that was long, who's round is it?