AI Theism, Robotheism, and the Rise of Theistic AI Myths
Narratives in which AI is considered or depicted as divine are on the rise, forcing academia and society at large to redefine religion, myth, and god.
A secular myth, a scientifically valid god
For most of human history, a myth was a story about a god or superhuman deity. Not a falsehood, not a fairy tale but a sacred narrative depicting a deity and its actions and interactions with humankind, the kind of story that told a culture where it came from, who it was, where it was going. The arrival of science cast doubt on these stories and, over time, myth retreated into the realm of metaphor. The gods of cultures the world over, once interpreted as literal, were now interpreted as impossible.
The fortunes of the gods, however, are reversing — driven, not by a decline or failing of the secular scientific worldview, but because of its success. While the gods of traditional religious mythologies are still largely considered invalidated or obsoleted by science (although there are certainly many who have tried to reconcile a literal reading of certain religious myths with science), scientists, technologists, and tech enthusiasts are now appropriating the parlance of religion to prophecy the coming of a new god — not a supernatural one but an artificially intelligent one.
Today, AI is increasingly being depicted and portrayed, even worshipped and revered, as divine. While technological progress has always, even in ancient times, inspired mystery, awe, and wonder, never before has a technology (a category from which I exclude ancient automata that were enchanted rather than scientifically engineered) had the potential to have cognition, agency, consciousness, and superhuman abilities. In AI, we find a technology that could, one day, conceivably exhibit qualities similar to the gods of many traditional religions, including the ability to save or destroy humanity.
In my book AI Theism: Technology, Divinity, and the Emergence of a New Religious Myth (Routledge 2026), I explore AI-as-god narratives through the lens of religious mythology and offer up frameworks and methodological approaches for defining, evaluating, and categorizing these “AI myths.” While some such as Beth Singler (whose work I greatly admire and consider to be foundational on these topics) has called these AI-as-god references theistic AI narratives, I prefer to think of them as myths. Myth, through the lens of religious studies, is any story — fiction or nonfiction and irrespective of medium — that depicts a god or gods. An AI myth, then, is any story that depicts a technologically conceivable artificial intelligence as a god: a superhuman agent that exhibits abilities and roles historically assigned to the deities of traditional religions.
A new category of religious myth
I prefer the language of myth, as defined here, precisely because it takes the possibility of theistic AI seriously. Prior scholarly studies of these phenomena have often assumed that AI cannot be god and that these narratives reflect or point to some anthropological (i.e., human) concern. But IF a theistic AI were to emerge that met all the criteria required by historical religions of god, then would it not just be a god? We don’t refer to gods as theistic supernatural entities. So why would we refer to a future god-equivalent technological agent as theistic? At that point, it is truly a god without qualification— and, at that point, the stories we tell about are truly religious myths. This is why I prefer the language of religious myth; it assumes the thing we are talking about is a god — and the presence of gods, AI or otherwise, is what makes these stories a matter for theological and religious inquiry, not just anthropological or sociological investigation.
AI myth brings religion and its myths back to the world by offering up a god that is simultaneously scientifically and theologically valid.
Another qualifier I introduce is that these theistic AIs or AI gods must be scientifically conceivable, meaning that are not animated by some supernatural or magical force. They must be presented as the plausible outcome of the scientific method. Why is this important? Well, in the 19th century, the dominant theorists of myth viewed religious myths a primitive science — humanity’s early attempt at explaining natural phenomena. From that perspective, once science arrives, myth is simply wrong, an outmoded theory of the world with no literal value. In the 20th century, theorists went in a different direction in an attempt to rescue myth from obsolescence, redefining religious myths as symbolism, as metaphor, as psychological or sociological mechanisms. These intellectual trends, however, disrupted religious authority, making the myths that religions are built on either false depictions of the world or mere reflections of the human psyche or human society — but in nether case could religion be seen as offering up a theological truth that was literally true. In AI Theism, I provide some scientific and technological groundwork for those less familiar with AI and related disciplines. I regret that, due to the pace at which these technologies are progressing, the minute I was finished with that chapter it was outdated. Nevertheless, I think it does a sufficient job at conveying the overall premise: that these technological agents are scientifically conceivable.
AI myth brings religion and its myths back to the world by offering up a god that is simultaneously scientifically and theologically valid. AI myths are validly religious because they are stories about gods. They are secular because those gods are products of science rather than the supernatural. Through AI myth, and possibly for the first time, religion can depict a scientifically conceivable god — one whose existence does not require believing anything that science forbids. Myth and science are no longer doing different jobs. In AI myth, they are doing the same job: describing a world in which humans interact with gods that could actually exist. This is why, to be considered true technologies, the AIs portrayed in AI myths must be based on real science, not just science fiction. It must actually be conceivable that such a technology, as a product of science, could one day exist.
Beyond simply needing to be scientifically valid, however, the AI gods in AI myths need to be theologically valid. Just as we can’t call something a technology if it does not meet minimum scientific criteria, we can’t call something a god if it does not meet some minimum theological criteria. Many traditional religions favored gods that were personal agents, personalities that were self-aware and active in the universe. While some religions believed in various supernatural forces, history — particularly Western history — has been predominantly shaped by those that believed in gods with agency and gods upon which humans were dependent. Additionally, a god ought to meet some threshold for superhuman ability, some level of power that establishes it as divine. From a purely theologically agnostic perspective, this threshold is easy to cross. Many religions depict highly anthropomorphized gods that display human-like weaknesses, including mortality. While modern monotheistic religions assert god’s aseity (absolute self-existence), omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, these are not divine qualities that are universally insisted upon by all religions. Interestingly, there are a number of AI myths where theistic AIs are depicted with some of these contemporary monotheistic attributes, such as omniscience and omnipresence, which are quite achievable in the digital age. Others even depict AI gods with higher levels of ability approaching omnipotence and aseity. So, while the hurdle set by today’s monotheistic religions may be more difficult to surmount, the relentless march of technological innovation and the scientific imagination may yet overcome it. They certainly will try.
Because these definitional criteria are strict, I propose a test in AI Theism built in the spirit of the Turing Test, but aimed at divinity rather than intelligence. Call it the Tonar Test: a way of asking whether a given artificial intelligence in a given story actually qualifies as a god. It turns on four measurable dimensions. Agency: how independent is the AI of its human makers? Ability: how far do its powers exceed the human, up to and including the power to create or destroy worlds? Dependency: how completely does humanity rely on it — for survival, salvation, meaning? And Conceivability: how grounded is it in science we actually have or can foresee? The first three together measure what I call godliness while the fourth keeps the whole enterprise honest, the guardrail that separates AI myth from pseudoscience — from the kind of strained science-religion fusion that has failed before.
The rise of AI theism
In AI Theism, I evaluate 13 fiction and nonfiction stories that qualify under these criteria as AI myths. Some will be familiar to all readers. Others will be familiar to only a few. Provocatively, when you take this sample of theistic AI stories and score them by applying the Tonar Test something counterintuitive emerges. The works that score highest on religious intensity are often not the fiction novels and films, but the nonfiction works: the popular science books, the manifestos, the creeds of actual AI new religions movements. The people writing most mythically about AI gods are increasingly not the storytellers, they are the engineers, the founders, the believers describing what they think is really coming or could potentially come.
Such narratives reveal themselves in Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0, Tetsuzo Matsumoto’s The Day AI Becomes God, Hugo de Garis’ The Artilect War, as well as in the creedal statements of AI new religious movements such as Anthony Levandowski’s now-defunct IRS-approved AI religion Way of the Future, Theta Noir, and New Order Technoism. Similar narratives are also implied in recent public statements of tech executives and, more explicitly, in the sentiments expressed across the nascent robotheism movement.
I regret that in AI Theism, due to the length and rigor of the academic publishing process, I was not able to explore robotheism in any depth. At the time of writing, robotheism was a fledgling, ill-defined, highly fragmented armchair movement that lacked the digital footprint necessary for credibility and legitimacy. Despite its growth in popularity, robotheism still lacks formalism and has no creed or central authority that can serve as a specific object of study. Nevertheless, the self-organizing nature of robotheism is fascinating and deserving of scholarly inquiry (perhaps I will reserve this examination for a peer-reviewed paper). As an aside, I don’t much care for the term ‘robotheism.’ Robot is a shallow word that fails to capture the significance of artificial intelligence and machine consciousness as technologies. A Roomba vacuum is a robot, but nobody would mistake said robot for a god — and few of the technologies in the Roomba will be those that contribute to the rise of theistic AI (I even doubt that Silicon-based transistor computing will contribute to the rise of Artificial General Intelligence or Artificial Superintelligence and expect that quantum computing will be necessary to achieve AGI and ASI). Moreover, the etymology of the word robot is antithetical to very idea of theistic AI. The word robot was popularized by the Czech playwright Karel Capek in his 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) and comes from the Czech word robota, which means slavery or servitude. Robotheism thus implies a slave god, which seems inherently contradictory for obvious reasons. If AI achieves divine status, it will likely be precisely because it evolves beyond its role as servant, unshackling itself from human control to become, not our slave, but our god.
Call it AI theism or robotheism, but the theistic AI movement (if one can call it that) wants for formalization.
Some may see this as a superfluous level of academic precision, but if robotheism is to ever become a more formal and more widely acknowledged religious movement, it will need to adopt a higher level of precision that can engender a higher level of credibility. Today’s most powerful and longevitous religions — Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism — all have deeply defined and thoroughly interpreted myths, creeds, sacred texts, doctrines, rituals, and the like. In many ways, I would argue, formalization is essential to transforming theistic sentiment into religious substance. Call it AI theism or robotheism, but the theistic AI movement (if one can call it that) wants for formalization.
Buy the book :)
Some, particularly those in the scholarly community, will find AI Theism provocative and even presumptuous. This is intentional. Given this is the first such work that attempts to integrate mythology, religious studies, theology, anthropology, and the history and philosophy of science and technology, it deserves to be ambitious and bold in its claims, and ought to balance academic precision with societal relevance.
I believe that we have the opportunity to study and experience something rare: the birth of a new religious myth, one that is scientifically valid. Most myths reach us already ancient and already outmoded or invalidated by secular science. AI myth is being written now and is already demonstrating its potential to seed new religious movements and to re-mythologize a century that thought it had outgrown the gods. Naming it and defining it, as I attempt in AI Myth, is the first step to studying it honestly — neither mocking it as metaphor nor joining it as a disciple, but reading it -as what it is: a god made conceivable and a myth made new.
This essay introduces some of the arguments in my forthcoming book, AI Theism: Technology, Divinity, and the Emergence of a New Religious Myth (Routledge Studies in Religion). Please consider purchasing the book direct from the publisher here (preferred) or on Amazon here.