Oh, God!

George Burns as "God" in a 1977 film directed by Carl Reiner and also starred John Denver and Terri Garr.

Google Cloud defines Artificial Intelligence as “a field of science concerned with building computers and machines that can reason, learn, and act in such a way that would normally require human intelligence or that involves data whose scale exceeds what humans can analyze.”

On September 14, 2025,  the lead article from “The Morning” in the  NYT was a piece by Lauren Jackson entitled, “Chatting with God.”  Here are a few excerpts:

Tens of millions of people are turning to A.I.-powered religious apps that mimic conversations with clergy — or even God.

These apps are rocketing to the top of Apple’s App Store. Bible Chat, a Christian app, has more than 30 million downloads. Hallow, a Catholic app, was Apple’s most-downloaded app at one point last year, ahead of Netflix, Instagram and TikTok. The apps are attracting tens of millions of dollars in investments, and people are paying up to $70 a year for subscriptions. Now, other apps — like Pray.com, a platform that encourages people to pray and has about 25 million downloads — are rolling out chatbots, too.

Religions are in the business of omniscience. They promise answers to the unknowable, encounters with the mysterious, and communion with the divine. While chatbots can seem all-knowing, they’re only a facsimile. They borrow the aggregated wisdom of the internet, but they are incapable of cultivating their own. (At least, for now!)

Many people have devoted their entire human lives to spiritual contemplation; chatbots offer replies in about three seconds. Still, they are shaping how people think about huge, eternal concerns — salvation, deliverance, confession.

This is tricky theological territory because chatbots “tell us what we want to hear,” said Ms. Campbell, the technology and religion professor. “It’s not using spiritual discernment, it is using data and patterns.”

What's new?

John I,1- “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

What is “The Word”? Answer: Symbols that contain meaning. Voila! Artificial Intelligence.  God is reborn.

At some time between 3500 BC and 3000 BC, some unknown Sumerian geniuses invented a system for storing and processing information outside their brains, one that was custom-built to handle large amounts of mathematical data.  The Sumerians thereby released their social order from the limitations of the human brain, opening the way for the appearance of cities, kingdoms, and empires.  The data-processing system invented by the Sumerians is called ‘writing’.

-from Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, pg.122.

In summary, with AI, man has once again developed a system of symbols that, in this case, instantaneously gathers enormous amounts of data. AI can be interpreted as an omnipotent God.

I leave you with this poem that I will call "Word Play".

Word Play

God is Great.

Dog is Great.

Is Dog Great?

Is God Great?

Great is Dog!

Taerg is God!

CPW