AI as a Religion （bilingual）人工智能作为一种宗教

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 /?ep??jen?s?s/noun Biology the theory, now generally held, that an embryo develops progressively from an undifferentiated egg cell. In Chinese, 渐成说), '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, 形变说 ) 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?

汉语译文

人工智能作为一种宗教

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

随着全球气温失控，人工智能活动也同样火爆，甚至更加火爆。七大企业巨头正在全球加速押注人工智能。他们对电力和冷却资源的需求和激增，大约相当于甚至超过了纽约市居民的需求，因为每个数据中心安装的H100级GPU数量将超过100万台，目标是1亿台，这比他们预期的要早，因为推理需求巨大。人工智能的投资或资本支出已超过5000亿美元，其投资偏好将很快显现其威力，到本世纪末，其年度资本支出将达到1万亿美元。为什么“人工智能主义”（AIistic），即那种被人工智能所困扰的救赎力量的信条，似乎并不关心底线？难道它不知道人工智能减少的活劳动会给资本创造更少的剩余价值吗？它似乎如此自信，认为其长期收益将是巨大的且不可阻挡的。

人工智能一直被崇拜为无所不能的技术存在，或者简单地说，是无神的神或前神。世界上任何事物的运作都离不开它卓越、独特和关键的神圣地位以及力量。

人工智能主义的地位和力量不容忽视，因为它是第一次，也可能是最后一次挑战人类的技术革命。工业革命和互联网革命则恰恰相反，即人类接管技术是为了减轻其体力或脑力劳动的负担。

今天的人工智能运动有所不同；它类似于一种新兴的准宗教——人工智能主义。它的出现当然并非偶然；事实上，在此之前，在社会、政治和文化等非技术领域，已经涌现出许多类似的宗教运动，其方式与古罗马（或者更确切地说，现代美国）的不可知论和多神论异教类似。这些宗教运动都倾向于向苦苦挣扎的民众证明，阶级和谐、个人自由以及统治阶级的民主，都是应对失业、经济衰退、战争和气候变化等灾难的必要且充分条件。毫不奇怪，玛丽·哈灵顿在其文章《思考正在成为一种奢侈品》中写道：“统治阶级务实地适应选民理性能力的集体衰退，例如，保留与大众民主相关的仪式，同时悄悄地将关键政策领域转移到反复无常且易于操纵的公民无法触及的地方……国际民意调查显示，Z世代对民主的支持正在减弱。”

如同两千多年前的基督教一样，2020年兴起的现代人工智能主义迅速赶上并超越了饱受摧残的异教。

基于“震慑”式的恐吓——基于内在情感的基础，两种宗教及其信徒加起来大约二十人左右，最初都掌握了“宗教恐惧”作为成功的关键。

一方面，基督教的震撼源于信徒们的诸多感受，例如对死亡、救赎、自我否定等的绝对压倒性力量的渴望。另一方面，人工智能主义的震撼则源于主流资本家们对技术革新速度的减缓和延迟的持续恐惧。对他们来说，人工智能就是他们的涅槃。它已经从一种自相矛盾的计算机狂喜状态提升到了一种模拟和压缩的人类状态，而人工智能主义的信徒们对此毫不在意。

所有宗教都是矛盾的。它们积极追求其祖先在遥远过去对人类的渴望，最终获得了神秘、巨大、麻木或非理性，但同时，它们的主张总体上是理性的、以理性为导向的。

鲁道夫·奥托（1869-1937）曾强调“灵性”（numinous）一词，该词源自拉丁语“numen”，意为超自然的神力。神圣感正是这种对“某物”（Something）的独特理解；“神圣”（Numinous）和“神”（Numen）不具有道德意义，代表着特定的非理性宗教理解及其对象。将其杰作《神圣的观念》（The Idea of the Holy）英译成中文的译者指出：“作者坚持认为：宗教不仅是一件自然之物，也是一件悖论之物。宗教是对某一存在者的真知，也是与该存在者真人格的一种沟通，而该存在者的本质超越了知识和人格。”

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

，人工智能进入宗教斗争或竞争阶段。

普遍采用的基于神经网络模拟人脑的推理、算法和优化，用于训练数十亿甚至数以千万亿（一千万亿=一万亿）个代币的人工智能的法学硕士（LLM）模式，可以被视为神性（numen），或人工智能主义的非理性方面，而全能的资本是其主宰。人工智能主义由资本-法学硕士实体构成。如果没有资本，这个平易近人、理性、普遍存在、如同天父般神圣的、被灵性地（灵性这个词指的是某种超自然神秘的事物；也指这种主观心态）描述为宇宙主宰的先天神，人工智能主义就永远不会诞生。

在第十四章“神圣作为先验范畴”（第一部分及其后续部分）中，奥托博士写道：“由此可见，‘神圣’一词在最充分的意义上是一个综合的、复杂的范畴，其综合要素是其理性和非理性的组成部分。但在这两种意义上——这一论断必须严格反对一切耸人听闻和自然主义——它纯粹是一个先验的范畴。

关于绝对性、完整性、必然性和实质性的理性观念，以及关于善作为一种客观价值、具有客观约束力和有效性的观念，都不能从任何形式的感知中‘进化’而来。‘表观遗传学’（ep·i·gen·e·sis /?ep??jen?s?s/名词 生物学，目前普遍认为，胚胎从未分化的卵细胞逐渐发育而成的理论。中文：渐成说）和‘异质生殖学’（在生物学中，指世代交替，具体指孤雌生殖（无性生殖）和有性生殖，或雌雄异株（不同性别）和雌雄同体世代之间的交替。在植物学中，它也指花朵雄蕊和雌蕊长度不同的情况。中文中，“形变说”（或任何其他我们用来表达妥协和困惑的表达方式）只能掩盖问题，在这里，像往常一样，借用希腊术语的倾向无非是承认自身的不足。相反，为了依赖这些概念，我们被引向远离所有感官体验的境地，回归到一种植根于“纯粹理性”、独立于所有感知的原始且不可衍生的心灵能力。

“当今‘进化论’理论的正当性，取决于其声称要‘解释’宗教现象。这才是宗教心理学的真正任务。”但要解释，我们必须拥有数据（重点是我加的），以此为基础才能得出解释；虚无缥缈，无从解释。只有通过探究自然的终极基本力量及其规律，才能解释自然：进一步解释这些规律本身毫无意义，因为要用什么来解释它们呢？但在精神领域，解释所依据的相应原则正是精神本身，即人类理性的精神，它具有倾向、能力及其自身固有的规律。这必须被预设：它无法被解释。没有人能够说出心灵或精神是如何“形成”的——尽管这实际上正是后成论试图尝试的。人类历史始于人类，我们必须预设人类，将人类视为理所当然的存在，以便我们能够从人类身上理解人类的历史。也就是说，我们必须预设人类在自然倾向和能力上与我们相似。试图将自己降低到直立猿人的精神生活是徒劳的，即使不是这样，我们仍然需要从人的本来面目出发，因为我们只能通过从发达的人类心智中得出的笨拙类比来倒退地解释动物的心理和情感生活。另一方面，试图从亚人类或野兽的心智中理解和推断人类，就如同试图将锁与钥匙配对，而不是相反；就像试图用黑暗照亮光明。当意识生命首次出现在死的无意识物质上时，我们得到的是简单的、不可简化的、无法解释的材料。但这里出现的东西已经是多种多样的品质，我们只能将其解释为潜能的种子，随着身体组织的稳定性和复杂性的增加，它的力量和能力会不断成熟。而我们能够阐明亚人类精神生活整个领域的唯一方法，就是再次将其解读为一种“倾向”，即形成实际发展心智的倾向或能力，并将其与胚胎与成熟有机体的关系联系起来。但我们并非完全不理解“倾向”（anlage）一词的含义，因为在我们自身对精神的觉醒和成长过程中，

我们在自身中追溯精神的成熟，就像某种进化过程，种子长成参天大树——这与通过连续添加的“转化”和“后生”截然相反。

宗教凭借其非理性元素的持续活跃，避免沦为“理性主义”。宗教浸润于理性元素之中，避免陷入狂热或纯粹的神秘主义，或至少避免固守这些观念，从而有资格成为全文明人类的宗教。理性与非理性元素共同存在、健康和谐地统一的程度，为衡量宗教的相对等级提供了一个标准——而且，这个标准本身就是一种宗教。运用这一标准，我们发现基督教在这方面以及其他方面都远胜于其姊妹宗教。其清晰纯粹的观念、情感和经验所构建的清晰体系，建立在远比理性更深厚的基础之上。然而，非理性只是基础、背景和织锦的织线，它始终为基督教保留着其神秘的深度，从而赋予宗教深沉的底蕴和厚重的神秘主义的阴影，而不是让它发展成纯粹的神秘主义的泛滥。因此，基督教在其各要素健康均衡的结合中，呈现出一种古典的形式和尊严，而当我们诚实且不带偏见地将其置于宗教比较研究中时，这种形式和尊严在意识中得到了更生动的体现。届时，我们就会认识到，在基督教中，人类精神生活中的一个元素，尽管在其他领域也有其相似之处，却首次以一种至高无上且无与伦比的方式成熟。

*

人工智能被人类处理过的自然语言是人工智能的非理性部分，因为人工智能所使用的机器无法理解自然语言。它们必须被教导、训练和欺骗，才能成为资本的魔法仆人。它在“人格”和非人格性方面的模糊性在其幻觉中得到了突出的体现。自然语言是历史的积累和遗产，蕴含着取之不尽、用之不竭的丰富内涵。当人工智能在资本的重压下运作时，它往往会失去理智，做出不该做的事情。人工智能不可能不犯错，因为它并非真正的计算机器，而是一个人造的神秘之物，同时也是一个可怕的恶魔。

这些问题与基督教早期的问题如出一辙：谁将成为资本之子？人工智能主义者如何看待他们的宗教？他们会相信他们的圣父和他的圣子吗？人工智能主义者的二十多位圣徒/使徒会展现他们的魔力，拯救数百万乃至数十亿失业、无家可归、前途渺茫的信徒吗？