Meet AI – the God of the New World Order

Here is a brief history of Western Christianity, as seen from the perspective of Religion as a tool for societal control. AD 30, ca: Something happens in the Near Middle East. According to a book known as the Bible a man referred to as Jesus, reportedly born in a village called Nazareth, is executed by the local Roman powers at the behest of Judaic leaders. The event signals the birth of a spiritual grass-roots movement: Christianity.

• AD 325: The Roman Emperor Constantine convenes a council and co-opts the movement. The body of scriptures of the newly official religion is censored, radically cut down in size, and consolidated into the officially sanctioned Bible.

  A tool for social control has seen the light of day: a religion by which a class of self-appointed priests presides over the populace through collective mind-control, ombudsmen for an alleged invisible superhuman intelligence called God, whose dictates everyone must obey.
  
  In order to truly keep everyone on their toes, the priesthood throw into the mix, the ideas of a cataclysmic endgame (Apocalypse) and the scope for individual Salvation.

• AD 1054: Christianity is split in two: the Western Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Two of the contested ideological issues are the concepts of “the heart reconciled with the mind is higher than reason alone” and “original sin”, the former being embraced by the Orthodox Church and the latter peddled by Rome.
  
  Since then, Rome expects its adherents to emote less and intellectualize more, whilst hounding them with the guilt of having been born into “sin” – the “original sin” committed by their alleged ancestors Adam and Eve, who as punishment for scrumping apples were cast out of Eden.

Fast forward to the post-industrialized 21st century.

Western Christianity is pretty much dead. Instead most of humanity is hooked up to a global digital grid known as the Internet.

Meet your new God: AI – the notion of an invisible artificial intelligence which, through some inexplicable Miracle, is about to achieve self-awareness.

So we are told by a new priesthood of IT entrepreneurs, their financial backers, clandestine services and Hollywood.

The Gospel of the coming AI, which will be superior to humans, even boosts its own version of Apocalypse and Salvation.

Soon, very soon, most of humanity will be obsolete and risk being replaced by robots.

Which is all god and well, since there is now also a new “original sin”: the reader’s carbon-dioxide footprint.

The Salvation?

Merge with AI – starting with the microchip.

The only parts missing in the analogy are Hell and the Prince of Darkness.

Perhaps the reason for this is that this is what the combination of Internet of Things and AI as a virtual God will become for humanity: Hell.