Religion is a touchy subject.

Oddly enough, as I have come to discover in these pages, so is Apple.

Somehow both inspire such extreme levels of devotion that I am amazed there hasn't yet been an Apple-inspired war, with bodies strewn across the malls of America.

Some British neuroscientists chose to investigate whether there may possibly be some scientific similarities between devotees of a Creator and of Cupertino.

You will be stunned into additional homilies in the chapel of your choice when I tell you that, having performed a brain scan, these neuroscientists declared that Apple was a religion. Well, almost.

OK, so they actually performed brain scans on just one Apple apostle--Alex Brooks, editor of World of Apple. Brooks alleges that he thinks about Apple 24 hours a day.

An iconically Apple store in London.

According to Digital Trends, this scientific delving was for a BBC show called "Secrets of the Superbrands." And it's not as if the BBC can necessarily afford a full-scale, statistically significant examination of Apple-zealots' brains. So the show made do with an examination of one extreme case of Applephilia.

However, the neuroscientists had previously scanned brains of the religiously faithful and saw markedly similar results.

As Alex Riley, the presenter of this fine BBC show, noted: "The Apple products are triggering the same bits of [Brooks'] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith."

The show also managed to chat with (though not scan the brain of) the Bishop of Buckingham, which is a nice, little, wealthy part of England's south. The bishop noted that he reads the Bible on his iPad. More touchingly, though, he offered that there were clear religious aspects to Apple stores: stone floors, arches, and little altars upon which the precious products are perched.

And as Riley watched the staff at London's Covent Garden Apple store chant and whip those waiting in line into a devotional frenzy, Riley remarked: "I can honestly say I've never seen anything like this at PC World."

Has it ever happened at a Microsoft store Perhaps.

But there is surely one deep and significant philosophical question to ask on this fine Friday: are people becoming religiously devoted to products such as Apple's because religion has failed them

Or does this craven conversion simple signify that the world has caved in upon itself, that our caveman selves have been fully revealed, and that the world will, indeed, come to a cheery and well-deserved end on May 21

Wait, that's tomorrow.