My Religion is Excellent

I’m in Jerusalem visiting family, and have lately been playing with Google Now. Since I’m pretty well embedded in the Google ecosystem its been pleasantly surprising me now and again with relatively useful information: scores for favorite soccer teams, directions to the airport on the morning of our departure, local films etc.

Arriving in Jerusalem I was interested to see what cards Now would offer in a completely new location. First up were the usual suspects: Local weather, birthdays and calendar items. But just below were “Attractions Nearby”. Presumably since I wasn’t “Home”, Now considered me a tourist, but the top attractions served up to me were a little unexpected: The Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock, the Holy Sepulchre and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Pretty much a slam dunk for your major religion tourist, which is exactly what I’m not. But I suppose that hundreds of years of pilgrimages probably skewed the algorithm to this default.

Of course, not wanting to pass up the opportunity to dig deeper I clicked on the cards and discovered, just below the usual top level info and direction, user reviews. And what do user reviews of some of the top religious sites in the world look like? Well, they’re all pretty: Excellent.

The Western Wall has only one somewhat lengthy and seemingly balanced review headed by : 
Appeal: Excellent. Facilities: Good. Service: Very Good.

I’m not entirely sure what “Very Good” service means at a religious shrine. From my own experience, albeit over 10 years ago, the Wall is pretty much a self service operation, and if you are a woman you may have plenty of arguments with these ratings.

Meanwhile the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque weigh in with 70 and 127 reviews respectively. The vast majority rated: 
Quality: Excellent.

Many of these “Excellents” come both from the extreme Jewish:

“jewish holy temple will be built here soon”

And Muslim side:

“Dear Muslims, soon…Al-Aqsa will belong to us once again!”

Finally the Church of the Holy Sepulchre clocks in with the highest overall score of 26 based on 18 reviews that are overwhelmingly: Overall: Excellent. 

So where does this leave me? Aside from being a fun diversion, when it comes to rating religion, especially in a complex and extreme place like Jerusalem, its clear that Above Average simply won’t do. Over here everybody’s religion is Excellent, (and sometimes even someone else’s religion if they’ve got something we want). 

Maybe in some utopian future we’ll end up in a world where religions will be rated like restaurants and we’ll be able to taste equally from everyone’s menus, complain about the service and debate recipes, but in this neck of the woods this is a Now that’s probably too much to ask for.