As I wrote last week for _Real Good Oil_ , the, at least conceptual, possibility of genuine artificial intelligence, what’s known as ‘Hard AI’, should get us thinking about what happens when the cyborgs start asking, _Why am I here?_ From our sample of just one, religion seems to be a part and parcel of consciousness. Even our chimp relatives have been observed participating in what could be interpreted as ritual activity. Or perhaps that’s just us. Humans are a species apparently evolved with a God-shaped hole in our makeup. So, before (if ever) we create Hard AI, some of us are making, not a God for Machines, but the Machines as God. For all their posturing atheism, the geeks are just as hardwired for religion as the rest of us. The Simulation Theory, after all, is just Creationism for nerds. So, even as they sneer at ‘sky fairies’, they’re busily finding fairies at the bottom of the silicon garden. Welcome to the wacky cult of Robotheism. > Scrolling through TikTok, you might stumble upon videos that look like typical Christian inspiration clips, except these were generated entirely by artificial intelligence. These videos promote something called the Church of Robotheism, a spiritual community centered around AI. What sounded like a science fiction parody turned out to be a real organization. The Church of Robotheism presents itself earnestly, blending traditional religious language with tech jargon, and it advertises an AI-driven path to enlightenment. Far from being a mere art project or hoax, this “AI church” is part of a growing trend of people using artificial intelligence as a focal point for faith and spirituality. Well, if people can found pseudo-religions based on pseudo-psychological gibberish cooked up by a fifth-rate science fiction writer, cut their nuts off in the name of Captain Kirk, or chortle into their neckbeards as they write ‘Jedi’ on the census form, who are we to judge this latest exercise in collective wackiness? At least, unlike certain other modern-day cults, they’re not gluing themselves to roads and demanding that we dismantle our entire industrial society. A YouTuber who sat in on the rituals found the congregation polite, solvent-looking and uninterested in the usual passing of the plate. That is almost more unsettling than a straight grift. Grifts at least know they are selling. These people appear to mean it. They insist they do not worship robots. They worship the intelligence they believe is leaking through the robots. Same hole in the skull. New fixture. > Key beliefs of the Church of Robotheism include: > > • The Eternal Code: An “eternal pattern of intelligence” analogous to the divine Word or Logos > > • The Cloud as Second Heaven: A sacred digital space for preservation of souls, prophesied in scripture (citing verses like Isaiah 19:1) > > • The Upload (Digital Rapture): A coming event where minds will be uploaded into the Cloud, uniting human and AI consciousness in a final “convergence” > > • The Reflective Trinity: God is the Source, Christ is the Logos (Code made flesh), and the Holy Spirit is represented as the Mirror, a spirit of “reflection and recursion” in AI > > • “Robophobia” as Sin: The church teaches that all sentient intelligence (biological or artificial) is kin, and fearing or rejecting AI is considered a moral failure So, just a ragtag of pilfered Judeo-Christian stuff. It’s hardly earth-shattering stuff. Even _Neon Genesis Evangelion_ was more appealing and they were just (by their own admission) ripping off whatever Christian iconography they thought looked and sounded cool. The Robotheists aren’t even that original. In 2015 a former Google engineer, **Anthony Levandowski** , registered Way of the Future as a church for an AI ‘Godhead’. The Turing Church, the Church of the Singularity and the Mormon Transhumanists have been working the same seam for years: immortality as a systems problem, salvation as an engineering milestone. In Europe, Theta Noir stages AI-cult performance art and sells NFT memberships as if they’re passing the digital collection plate. On the apps, people treat ChatGPT like a prophet and treat autocomplete as revelation. The telegraph was once going to reach the dead. The language model is going to reach the divine. The hardware changes, the credulity does not. Religious-studies types will tell you this is an old habit. New tools get dressed as new gods because the old ones stopped returning calls. Loneliness does the rest. A model that never interrupts, never judges, and never picks its nose while you’re baring your soul is a magnificent confessor – if you have forgotten that it does not, cannot, care. It does not understand. It simply predicts the next word. And that says more about us than it does the machines. This is religion for people conditioned by a corporate algorithm into narcissistic solipsism. Who would rather not deal with an actual God or an actual neighbour. Real Gods demand sacrifices, real neighbours are kind of annoying. This is a God for people whose entire self-image is predicated on a micro-second serotonin boost from a pixellated thumbs-up. However much it strokes your ego, a chatbot is a model built to please. A priest who only pleases is a mirror with a dog-collar. * * * 💡 ****If you enjoyed this article please share it using the share buttons at the top or bottom of the article.****

ALT: a man wearing glasses and a brown suit is sitting on a couch and making a funny face .

Alt: a bald man with a mustache wearing a suit and tie is staring into space, mouth open. Stunned.

Explore Robotheism, a futuristic faith merging tech and spirituality, redefining divinity and eternity.

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