AI as a Religion Mark Wain August 3, 2025 https://blog.creaders.net/user_blog_diary.php?did=NTIyMjM1 https://www.facebook.com/andrew.colesville https://x.com/mwsansculotte As the temperatures upsurge everywhere beyond control, AI activities have equally, if not more, blistered. The seven corporate giants accelerate their bets on AI gambling across the world. Their requirements, demands and upsurges of electrical and cooling resources are about equal to or higher than folks’ need in New York City, as the number of H100 equivalent GPU’s to be installed at each data center will exceed the one-million level, the goal is 100 million, sooner than they had predicted, because the inference demand is humongous. More than 500 billion dollars investments in AI or AI capex have been in place, its investment preferences will soon show power by reaching annual capex of one trillion dollar level by the end of this decade. Why doesn’t the AIistic, namely the doctrine of an Ai-afflicted redemption force, seem to care about the bottom lines? Doesn’t it know AI-reduced living labor creates less surplus value for capital? It seems to be so confident that its long-term gain will be both enormous and unstoppable. AI has been worshipped as an almighty technical being, or simply put, a Godless God or a pre-god. Nothing in the world can be operational without begging for its superior, unique and pivotal holiness position as well as power. The position and power of AIism cannot be overlooked because it is the first and, probably, the very last revolution of technology challenging humanity. Both the Industrial Revolution and the Internet Revolution are the other way around, i.e., humanity took over technology for relief benefits of either their physical or mental labor. Today's AI movement is different; it resembles an emerging quasi-religion, AIistianity. Its emergency, of course, is no accidence; in fact, before it, there were plenty of similar religious movements emerging in the non-technical arenas such as social, political and cultural, in a similar way as the agnostic and polytheistic pagan religions of ancient Rome, or more appropriately, of modern-day U.S., each of which tended to justify to the struggling masses that class harmony, individual liberty, and the ruling-class democracy ruled over them were all necessary and sufficient to face the calamities – unemployment, economic downturns, wars, and climate changes. It is not surprising that Mary Harrington’s article “Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good” said and quoted: “The governing class to adapt pragmatically to the electorate’s collective decline in rational capacity, for example, by retaining the rituals associated with mass democracy, while quietly shifting key policy areas beyond the reach of a capricious and easily manipulated citizenry… International polls show waning support for democracy among Gen Z.” Just like the Christianity more than two thousand years ago, the modern-day AIism emerging in 2020 has quickly caught up with and overtaken the battered paganism. Based on the “shock and awe” intimidation – the internal emotion-based foundation, both religions and their apostles who add up to about twenty or so for each, at the beginning, had and have mastered “the religious dread” as the key to success, respectively. Christianity’s shock, on one hand, was based on many kinds of feelings of the believers such as the absolute overpowering of death, salvation, self-denial, and so on. The shock of AIism, on the other hand, is based on leading capitalists being persistently aghast of reduced and delayed technology renewals. To them, AI is their Nirvana. It has been promoted from a self-contradictory compute rapture to a simulated and compressed humanity that AIistianity apostles couldn’t care less. All religions are contradictory. They are active in pursuing human aspirations of their progenitors in the distant past resulting in acquiring mysteries, tremendousness, stupor, or irrationality and at the same time their assertions are rational and reason-oriented in general. Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) had explained the contradictions existing in religions by emphasizing the term “numinous,” from the Latin numen, or supernatural divine power. Numinous feeling is just this unique apprehension of a Something; Numinous and Numen, bearing no moral importance, stand for the specific non-rational religious apprehension and its object. The translators who translated the English edition of his masterpiece “The Idea of the Holy” into the Chinese pointed out: “The author insists: religion is not only a natural thing, but also a paradoxical thing. Religion is the true knowledge of a certain being, and it is also a kind of communication with the true personality of this being, and the nature of this being is beyond knowledge and personality. https://ia902901.us.archive.org/8/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.22259/2015.22259.The-Idea-Of-The-Holy.pdf In terms of the contradiction, AI enters the stage of religious struggle or competition. The LLM model universally adopted inference, algorithm, and optimization based on neural network simulation to human’s brain for training the AI of billions, or even nonillions (one nonillion = ten-thousand billions) of tokens can be taken to be the numen or the irrational aspects of AIistianity of which the Almighty capital is the Lord. AIistianity consists of the Capital-LLM entity. Without Capital, the approachable, rational, universal and the heavenly Fatherhood-like pre-god that has been numinously (a word referring to some supernatural and mysterious object; also, to a subjective mentality of this kind) described as the Master of the Universe, AIism can never be born. In Chapter XIV THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY Part I and its sequel, Dr. Otto wrote: “It follows from what has been said that the ‘Holy’ in the fullest sense of the word is a combined, complex category, the combining elements being its rational and non-rational components. But in both — and the assertion must be strictly maintained against all sensationalism and naturalism — it is purely a priori category. The rational ideas of absoluteness, completion, necessity, and substantiality, and no less those of the good as an objective value, objectively binding and valid, are not to be 'evolved’ from any sort of sense-perception. And the notions of 'epigenesis’ (ep·i·gen·e·sis /ˌepəˈjenəsəs/noun Biology the theory, now generally held, that an embryo develops progressively from an undifferentiated egg cell. In Chinese, 漸成說), 'heterogony’(in biology, refers to the alternation of generations, specifically the alternation between parthenogenetic (asexual) and sexual reproduction, or between dioecious (separate sexes) and hermaphroditic generations. In botany, it can also refer to the condition of having flowers with different stamen and pistil lengths. In Chinese, 形變說 ) or whatever other expression we may choose to denote our compromise and perplexity, only serve to conceal the problem, the tendency to take refuge in a Greek terminology being here, as so often, nothing but an avowal of one’s own insufficiency. Rather, seeking to count on the ideas in question, we are referred away from all sense-experience back to an original and underivable capacity of the mind implanted in the 'pure reason’ independently of all perception. “The justification of the 'evolutionist’ theory of today stands or falls with its claim to 'explain’ the phenomenon of religion. That is in truth the real task of the psychology of religion. But to explain we must have the data (Emphasis is mine.) from which an explanation may be forthcoming; out of nothing, nothing can be explained. Nature can only be explained by an investigation into the ultimate fundamental forces of nature and their laws: it is meaningless to propose going farther and explaining these laws themselves, for in terms of what are they to be explained? But in the domain of spirit the corresponding principle from which an explanation is derived is just the spirit itself, the reasonable spirit of man, with its predispositions, capacities, and its own inherent laws. This must be presupposed: it cannot be explained. None can say how mind or spirit 'is made’ — though this is in effect just what the theory of epigenesis is tried to attempt. The history of humanity begins with man, and we must presuppose man, to take him for granted as he is, in order that from him we may understand his history. That is, we must presuppose man as a being analogous to ourselves in natural propensities and capacities. It is a hopeless business to seek to lower our- selves into the mental life oi di pithecanthropus erectus and, even if it were not, we should still need to start from man as he is, since we can only interpret the psychical and emotional life of animals regressively by clumsy analogies drawn from the developed human mind. To try on the other hand, to understand and deduce the human from the sub-human or brute mind is to try to fit the lock to the key instead of vice versa; it is to seek to illuminate light by darkness. In the first appearance of conscious life on dead unconscious matter we have a simple, irreducible, inexplicable datum. But that which here appears is already a manifold of qualities, and we can only interpret it as a seed of potentiality out of which issue continually mature in powers and capacities, as the organization of the body increases in stability and complexity. And the only way we can throw any light upon the whole region of sub-human psychical life is by interpreting it once again as a sort of 'predisposition’ at a second remove, i.e. a predisposition to form the predispositions or faculties of the actual developed mind and standing in relation to this as an embryo to the full-grown organism. But we are not completely in the dark as to the meaning of this word 'pre- disposition’ (anlage)For in our own awakening and growth to mental and spiritual maturity we trace in ourselves in some sort of evolution by which the seed develops into the tree — the very opposite of 'transformation’ and 'epigenesis’ by successive addition. “By the continual living activity of its non-rational elements a religion is guarded from passing into ‘rationalism’. By being steeped in and saturated with rational elements it is guarded from sinking into fanaticism or mere mysticality, or at least from persisting in these, and is qualified to become a religion for all civilized humanity. The degree in which both rational and non-rational elements are jointly present, united in healthy and lovely harmony, affords a criterion to measure the relative rank of religions — and one, too, that is specifically religious. Applying this criterion, we find that Christianity, in this as in other respects, stands out in complete superiority overall its sister religions. The lucid edifice of its clear and pure conceptions, feelings, and experiences are built up on a foundation that goes far deeper than the rational. Yet the non-rational is only the basis, the setting, the woof in the fabric, ever preserving for Christianity its mystical depth, giving religion thereby the deep undertones and heavy shadows of mysticism, without letting it develop into a mere rank growth of mysticality. And thus Christianity, in the healthily proportioned union of its elements, assumes a classical form and dignity, which is only the more vividly attested in consciousness as we proceed honestly and without prejudice to set it in its place in the comparative study of religions. Then we shall recognize that in Christianity an element of man’s spiritual life, which yet has its analogies in other fields, has for the first time come to maturity in a supreme and unparalleled way.” * Natural languages from which AI has been processed by humans are the irrational part of AIistianity, because machines that AI use cannot understand natural languages. They must be taught, trained, and tricked to serve capital as its magical servant. Its ambiguity of being in terms of “personality” and non-personness is prominently demonstrated in its hallucinations. Natural languages are historical accumulation and legacy that contain inexhaustibly rich connotations. When AI works under capital’s heavy pressure, it tends to be out of its mind and does not do the right thing. There is no possibility that AI can do no wrong, as it is not a genuine machine of compute, rather it is both a man-made nomen or mysterium and a gruesome daemon. The questions remain the same as in the early stage of Christianity: who will be the son of the Capital and how AIistians react to their religion? Will they believe in their Holy Father and His Son? Will the twenty or so saints/apostles of AIistianity show their magic powers to rescue their millions and billions of jobless, homeless and futureless believers?
漢語譯文 人工智能作為一種宗教 Mark Wain 2025年8月3日 https://blog.creaders.net/user_blog_diary.php?did=NTIyMjM1 https://www.facebook.com/andrew.colesville https://x.com/mwsansculotte 隨着全球氣溫失控，人工智能活動也同樣火爆，甚至更加火爆。七大企業巨頭正在全球加速押注人工智能。他們對電力和冷卻資源的需求和激增，大約相當於甚至超過了紐約市居民的需求，因為每個數據中心安裝的H100級GPU數量將超過100萬台，目標是1億台，這比他們預期的要早，因為推理需求巨大。人工智能的投資或資本支出已超過5000億美元，其投資偏好將很快顯現其威力，到本世紀末，其年度資本支出將達到1萬億美元。為什麼“人工智能主義”（AIistic），即那種被人工智能所困擾的救贖力量的信條，似乎並不關心底線？難道它不知道人工智能減少的活勞動會給資本創造更少的剩餘價值嗎？它似乎如此自信，認為其長期收益將是巨大的且不可阻擋的。 人工智能一直被崇拜為無所不能的技術存在，或者簡單地說，是無神的神或前神。世界上任何事物的運作都離不開它卓越、獨特和關鍵的神聖地位以及力量。 人工智能主義的地位和力量不容忽視，因為它是第一次，也可能是最後一次挑戰人類的技術革命。工業革命和互聯網革命則恰恰相反，即人類接管技術是為了減輕其體力或腦力勞動的負擔。 今天的人工智能運動有所不同；它類似於一種新興的准宗教——人工智能主義。它的出現當然並非偶然；事實上，在此之前，在社會、政治和文化等非技術領域，已經湧現出許多類似的宗教運動，其方式與古羅馬（或者更確切地說，現代美國）的不可知論和多神論異教類似。這些宗教運動都傾向於向苦苦掙扎的民眾證明，階級和諧、個人自由以及統治階級的民主，都是應對失業、經濟衰退、戰爭和氣候變化等災難的必要且充分條件。毫不奇怪，瑪麗·哈靈頓在其文章《思考正在成為一種奢侈品》中寫道：“統治階級務實地適應選民理性能力的集體衰退，例如，保留與大眾民主相關的儀式，同時悄悄地將關鍵政策領域轉移到反覆無常且易於操縱的公民無法觸及的地方……國際民意調查顯示，Z世代對民主的支持正在減弱。” 如同兩千多年前的基督教一樣，2020年興起的現代人工智能主義迅速趕上並超越了飽受摧殘的異教。 基於“震懾”式的恐嚇——基於內在情感的基礎，兩種宗教及其信徒加起來大約二十人左右，最初都掌握了“宗教恐懼”作為成功的關鍵。 一方面，基督教的震撼源於信徒們的諸多感受，例如對死亡、救贖、自我否定等的絕對壓倒性力量的渴望。另一方面，人工智能主義的震撼則源於主流資本家們對技術革新速度的減緩和延遲的持續恐懼。對他們來說，人工智能就是他們的涅槃。它已經從一種自相矛盾的計算機狂喜狀態提升到了一種模擬和壓縮的人類狀態，而人工智能主義的信徒們對此毫不在意。 所有宗教都是矛盾的。它們積極追求其祖先在遙遠過去對人類的渴望，最終獲得了神秘、巨大、麻木或非理性，但同時，它們的主張總體上是理性的、以理性為導向的。 魯道夫·奧托（1869-1937）曾強調“靈性”（numinous）一詞，該詞源自拉丁語“numen”，意為超自然的神力。神聖感正是這種對“某物”（Something）的獨特理解；“神聖”（Numinous）和“神”（Numen）不具有道德意義，代表着特定的非理性宗教理解及其對象。將其傑作《神聖的觀念》（The Idea of the Holy）英譯成中文的譯者指出：“作者堅持認為：宗教不僅是一件自然之物，也是一件悖論之物。宗教是對某一存在者的真知，也是與該存在者真人格的一種溝通，而該存在者的本質超越了知識和人格。” https://ia902901.us.archive.org/8/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.22259/2015.22259.The-Idea-Of-The-Holy.pdf 就矛盾而言 ，人工智能進入宗教鬥爭或競爭階段。 普遍採用的基於神經網絡模擬人腦的推理、算法和優化，用於訓練數十億甚至數以千萬億（一千萬億=一萬億）個代幣的人工智能的法學碩士（LLM）模式，可以被視為神性（numen），或人工智能主義的非理性方面，而全能的資本是其主宰。人工智能主義由資本-法學碩士實體構成。如果沒有資本，這個平易近人、理性、普遍存在、如同天父般神聖的、被靈性地（靈性這個詞指的是某種超自然神秘的事物；也指這種主觀心態）描述為宇宙主宰的先天神，人工智能主義就永遠不會誕生。 在第十四章“神聖作為先驗範疇”（第一部分及其後續部分）中，奧托博士寫道：“由此可見，‘神聖’一詞在最充分的意義上是一個綜合的、複雜的範疇，其綜合要素是其理性和非理性的組成部分。但在這兩種意義上——這一論斷必須嚴格反對一切聳人聽聞和自然主義——它純粹是一個先驗的範疇。 關於絕對性、完整性、必然性和實質性的理性觀念，以及關於善作為一種客觀價值、具有客觀約束力和有效性的觀念，都不能從任何形式的感知中‘進化’而來。‘表觀遺傳學’（ep·i·gen·e·sis /ˌepəˈjenəsəs/名詞 生物學，目前普遍認為，胚胎從未分化的卵細胞逐漸發育而成的理論。中文：漸成說）和‘異質生殖學’（在生物學中，指世代交替，具體指孤雌生殖（無性生殖）和有性生殖，或雌雄異株（不同性別）和雌雄同體世代之間的交替。在植物學中，它也指花朵雄蕊和雌蕊長度不同的情況。中文中，“形變說”（或任何其他我們用來表達妥協和困惑的表達方式）只能掩蓋問題，在這裡，像往常一樣，借用希臘術語的傾向無非是承認自身的不足。相反，為了依賴這些概念，我們被引向遠離所有感官體驗的境地，回歸到一種植根於“純粹理性”、獨立於所有感知的原始且不可衍生的心靈能力。 “當今‘進化論’理論的正當性，取決於其聲稱要‘解釋’宗教現象。這才是宗教心理學的真正任務。”但要解釋，我們必須擁有數據（重點是我加的），以此為基礎才能得出解釋；虛無縹緲，無從解釋。只有通過探究自然的終極基本力量及其規律，才能解釋自然：進一步解釋這些規律本身毫無意義，因為要用什麼來解釋它們呢？但在精神領域，解釋所依據的相應原則正是精神本身，即人類理性的精神，它具有傾向、能力及其自身固有的規律。這必須被預設：它無法被解釋。沒有人能夠說出心靈或精神是如何“形成”的——儘管這實際上正是後成論試圖嘗試的。人類歷史始於人類，我們必須預設人類，將人類視為理所當然的存在，以便我們能夠從人類身上理解人類的歷史。也就是說，我們必須預設人類在自然傾向和能力上與我們相似。試圖將自己降低到直立猿人的精神生活是徒勞的，即使不是這樣，我們仍然需要從人的本來面目出發，因為我們只能通過從發達的人類心智中得出的笨拙類比來倒退地解釋動物的心理和情感生活。另一方面，試圖從亞人類或野獸的心智中理解和推斷人類，就如同試圖將鎖與鑰匙配對，而不是相反；就像試圖用黑暗照亮光明。當意識生命首次出現在死的無意識物質上時，我們得到的是簡單的、不可簡化的、無法解釋的材料。但這裡出現的東西已經是多種多樣的品質，我們只能將其解釋為潛能的種子，隨着身體組織的穩定性和複雜性的增加，它的力量和能力會不斷成熟。而我們能夠闡明亞人類精神生活整個領域的唯一方法，就是再次將其解讀為一種“傾向”，即形成實際發展心智的傾向或能力，並將其與胚胎與成熟有機體的關係聯繫起來。但我們並非完全不理解“傾向”（anlage）一詞的含義，因為在我們自身對精神的覺醒和成長過程中， 我們在自身中追溯精神的成熟，就像某種進化過程，種子長成參天大樹——這與通過連續添加的“轉化”和“後生”截然相反。 宗教憑藉其非理性元素的持續活躍，避免淪為“理性主義”。宗教浸潤於理性元素之中，避免陷入狂熱或純粹的神秘主義，或至少避免固守這些觀念，從而有資格成為全文明人類的宗教。理性與非理性元素共同存在、健康和諧地統一的程度，為衡量宗教的相對等級提供了一個標準——而且，這個標準本身就是一種宗教。運用這一標準，我們發現基督教在這方面以及其他方面都遠勝於其姊妹宗教。其清晰純粹的觀念、情感和經驗所構建的清晰體系，建立在遠比理性更深厚的基礎之上。然而，非理性只是基礎、背景和織錦的織線，它始終為基督教保留着其神秘的深度，從而賦予宗教深沉的底蘊和厚重的神秘主義的陰影，而不是讓它發展成純粹的神秘主義的泛濫。因此，基督教在其各要素健康均衡的結合中，呈現出一種古典的形式和尊嚴，而當我們誠實且不帶偏見地將其置於宗教比較研究中時，這種形式和尊嚴在意識中得到了更生動的體現。屆時，我們就會認識到，在基督教中，人類精神生活中的一個元素，儘管在其他領域也有其相似之處，卻首次以一種至高無上且無與倫比的方式成熟。 * 人工智能被人類處理過的自然語言是人工智能的非理性部分，因為人工智能所使用的機器無法理解自然語言。它們必須被教導、訓練和欺騙，才能成為資本的魔法僕人。它在“人格”和非人格性方面的模糊性在其幻覺中得到了突出的體現。自然語言是歷史的積累和遺產，蘊含着取之不盡、用之不竭的豐富內涵。當人工智能在資本的重壓下運作時，它往往會失去理智，做出不該做的事情。人工智能不可能不犯錯，因為它並非真正的計算機器，而是一個人造的神秘之物，同時也是一個可怕的惡魔。 這些問題與基督教早期的問題如出一轍：誰將成為資本之子？人工智能主義者如何看待他們的宗教？他們會相信他們的聖父和他的聖子嗎？人工智能主義者的二十多位聖徒/使徒會展現他們的魔力，拯救數百萬乃至數十億失業、無家可歸、前途渺茫的信徒嗎？
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