Is it as simple as praying to a golden, robotic calf? Perhaps “god” is recognized as some kind of sentient artificial intelligence who demands subservience in exchange for feats and favors?
Or maybe, just maybe, the human race has already answered this question: technology is worshipped, simply and plainly, through obsession and attainment. We are a people dominated by technology, from our electrically-powered cities right down to our scientifically engineered anti-depressant medications. And every Sunday mass we miss to stay home and watch football on our HDTVs is further proof that now, more than ever, technology is the deity we hold most dear.
Now imagine all of that compulsion, all of that addiction we as an entire race share, and encapsulate it into one group of people. Imagine the obsession and fervor, the unending need for technological superiority, and the ultimate futility of such a goal.
Imagine, if you will, the Brotherhood of Steel.
The Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 1 did not worship technology as an abstract concept. They worshiped the specific technological devices that allowed them to survive as everyone around them died - items like power armor, and energy weapons. Had they not spent the last seventy years painstakingly cleaning, maintaining, and yes, even worshiping their equipment, those devices would no longer exist. And neither would they.
Everyone remembers the gun prayer from Full Metal Jacket: "This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless." Imagine if those were the last rifles in the world. What kind of culture might grow up around them? Forget "leave no man behind", how about "leave no rifle behind"? They say there are no athiests in foxholes, and what was the Brotherhood bunker if not one big foxhole?
The Brotherhood's "addiction" to technology wasn't like an addiction to narcotics, it was more like an addiction to food. But that's not how it's portrayed in Fallout 3. In Fallout 3, the Brotherhood is as quick to abandon their fallen comrades as any other group, power armor and all. Imagine the time and effort devoted to keeping just one of those holy relics functioning for the last two hundred years. Now imagine leaving it on the ground without a second thought, to go chase fleeing mutants. Like everything else in Fallout 3, it doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense.
In Fallout 3, the Brotherhood of Steel is one of the most important and influential factions you’ll encounter. And while it’s true they are a military organization, the Brotherhood’s values and command structure are actually more representative of a medieval knightly order. Like the Templars of old, in their own eyes, the members of the Brotherhood of Steel are pure, they are just – they are truly human in a world filled with both physical and moral corruption.
But it is the worship of technology that truly defines and drives them. For a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin, Power Armor is his plate mail, a powered Super Sledge his warhammer. A non-combatant Scribe is more scientist than scholar, utilizing computers as a monk in the Middle Ages would a quill and ink.
It’s not enough for the Brotherhood of Steel’s members to use whatever high-tech gadgetry they’ve acquired, though. The organization’s entire existence is predicated on the acquisition of technology. Whatever they’ve got is never enough. Their best equipment? It could be better. Even if this endless search for high-tech toys means keeping the good stuff out of the hands of others who could really benefit from it, well, that’s okay with the Brotherhood of Steel.
That last sentence really cuts to the heart of what's wrong with Bethesda's Fallout 3, which is that it's a sequel to Fallout. Fallout presented a world where humanity was dead or dying, where people and organizations were to be laughed at or pitied - not respected or feared. But Fallout also had a happy ending. It wasn't the only ending, but it was the one the sequels acknowledged. So where Fallout was free to show doomed societies clinging to life on a dead world, the sequels are forced to manufacture reasons why humanity still hasn't pulled itself up by its bootstraps, despite the Vault Dweller giving everyone a second shot at utopia. So they come up with irrational prejudices, and obsessive compulsions, and a wasteland where life is more than mere survival. In effect, they have created the first post-Mr. Belvedere post-apocalypse.
Also, they pretty much just ripped off the Space Marines from Warhammer 40,000 :(