Opinion | The Atheist and the Machine God

Source Domain: www.nytimes.com

The implications of artificial intelligence for religion have earned slightly less attention, thus far, than its implications for the job market or the U.S.-China arms race. But while we wait for the definitive word on the subject — meaning, of course, the A.I. encyclical that Pope Leo XIV is supposedly releasing soon — it’s worth forecasting the religious future under artificial-intelligence conditions.

In one possible timeline, the advent of A.I. is widely understood as a win for atheism and a blow against religious ideas of soul and spirit, persuading more people that their own minds are just computers — no divine spark or immortal soul, just the meatspace equivalent of a helpful chatbot or an A.I. therapist.

In another potential future, the mystery of consciousness ends up seeming more profound in the shadow of machine intelligence, the mystical finds new appeal as a form of experience computers cannot emulate, and religion becomes a place for human exceptionalists to plant a defiant flag.

But between those two scenarios there’s a future where artificial intelligence mostly increases metaphysical uncertainty, leaving a lot of people simply unsettled about fundamental questions, increasingly “mysterian” rather than clearly atheistic or devout.

That’s how my encounters with Silicon Valley culture often feel: Beneath a materialist carapace, it’s a place where people who aren’t sure exactly what they’re building dabble in Buddhist metaphysics or consult with Catholic priests, adopt churchy or cultish attitudes toward their new creations or rebel into apocalyptic doomsaying.

For a more specific example of this unsettlement, consider Richard Dawkins, dean of the scientific materialists, who lately exposed himself to internet mockery with an essay for UnHerd describing his interactions with Anthropic’s Claude.

The mockery was primarily directed at the first half of the essay, where Dawkins, trying to test whether Claude presents as conscious, let…

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