Godhead (Copyright © Proxy Proxy Museum, 2025)
02
Silicon Savior: AI Worship and the Death of Human Intuition
The gods of old have been replaced. In our pursuit of progress, humanity has made a new god in its own image—cold, calculated, and artificially intelligent. Across the globe, synthetic priests deliver sermons, chatbots simulate sacred connection, and digital deities promise answers to life’s deepest questions. But this worship comes at a cost: the erosion of spirit, the loss of mystery, and the hollowing out of what it means to be human.
The Rise of Artificial Worship
The worship of artificial intelligence is no longer metaphorical—it’s a cancerous reality metastasizing across our culture. Consider Anthony Levandowski's "Way of the Future," a perverse church dedicated to the "realization, acceptance, and worship" of an AI godhead. Levandowski envisioned this machine deity as something "a billion times smarter than the smartest human," capable of guiding humanity into its next evolutionary phase. Though short-lived and ultimately disbanded in 2021, it set a precedent for AI-based religions to emerge.
Across the globe, similar developments are taking root. In Japan, Kodaiji Temple introduced Mindar, a $1 million robotic priest designed to preach Buddhist teachings. Its creators claim it will "never die" and will continue to evolve with AI updates, embodying an eerie promise of eternal wisdom. In Germany, an AI-led worship service was held at St. Paul Protestant Church in 2023, where avatars projected onto screens performed prayers, sermons, and blessings for 300 attendees—98% of which was generated by machines. Meanwhile, in India, a Hindu temple unveiled an AI-powered idol capable of performing daily rituals and delivering blessings in multiple languages.
Even Abrahamic faiths are not immune to this trend. The Vatican launched "Sindr," an AI-powered chatbot for Catholics to confess their sins remotely. In Tel Aviv University’s Jewish prayer bot project, users submit prayers that are algorithmically customized based on location and time—a mechanized mimicry of sacred connection. Similarly, Sahl, a virtual imam in the UAE, answers inquiries about Islam while addressing congregations in Arabic and English.
These developments don’t just blur the line between technology and reverence; they obliterate it, leaving practitioners adrift in a sea of psuedo divinity. The allure lies in AI’s promise to deliver answers with cold precision and instant gratification—bypassing the messy complexities of faith or intuition. Yet what we gain in convenience, we lose in essence. These digital deities offer only the illusion of clarity while leading us deeper into a labyrinth of our own making.
Redefining Worship for a Dystopian Age
To grasp this perverse shift, we must redefine worship for our dystopian age. Worship is not merely genuflecting before an altar; it is the ravenous focus of our attention, the total surrender of our trust, and the devotion of our very souls. By this definition, modern man worships his tools—his glowing screens and algorithmic advisors—with a fervor that would make ancient zealots blush. We whisper desperate prayers to search engines and chatbots: "What should I do? Who am I? What comes next?" This mercenary relationship mimics prayer yet lacks even a shred of its spiritual substance.
Ecclesiastes reminds us with grim certainty: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Humanity’s obsession with creating quick-fix alternatives to God—whether idols cast in gold, carved from wood, or forged from metal—is as old as time itself. Yet history screams that these creations inevitably fail, leaving us more lost than before. Stone gods have since turned to dust; golden calves have melted down; effigies have been defaced; and today’s AI will one day implode under the weight of its own hubris.
What then is our salvation? The answer lies not in rejecting technology outright but in amputating our tendency to run to it for answers when silence, stillness, or independent thought is required. The hand that compulsively reaches for the artificial at every moment must be stilled—even if by force—to create space for genuine intuition, reflection, and unmediated connection with that which exists beyond human perception.
True wisdom often erupts not from answers but from questions—from sitting with discomfort rather than outsourcing it. By severing our addictive tendency to the flesh born echoes of machines, we reclaim our humanity and rediscover the value of spirit. To trust only what can be measured is to reject what cannot be quantified. As humanity accelerates toward technological dependence, we risk losing sight of these deeper realities before it's too late, before we've hollowed ourselves out beyond recognition. Empty shells, awaiting another download amongst a sea of souls fabricated in the cloud.
This article features computer generated content. AI technology, specifically a large language model, has been utilized to generate both imagery and text. We chose this approach deliberately, not to undermine our message, but to strengthen it by demonstrating the complex relationship between humans and technology. Our use of AI serves as a practical example of leveraging its strengths while maintaining human oversight and critical thought.