No, Atheists, AI Won't Destroy Religion
Added 2025-07-28 16:14:03 +0000 UTCPatreon exclusive video here! I have a video about AI religion coming out on my main channel very soon and I made this companion video to it. Enjoy!
Comments
I am “catching up” since I only discovered this channel recently. As a retired psychologist, I understand that religion has had a positive influence in the lives of some people. We are proud in the USA of being a land that believes in freedom, particularly freedom of belief. As an atheist, I have found that churches provide community and public ritual that most humans need. I have found that churches don’t provide this for many because even “liberal” churches have a list of required beliefs. Members will often state an agreement with these lists in order to fit in with the community that otherwise gives them things they need. I was delighted when I discovered the Unitarian Universalist church. Don’t stop reading. Really. This is a place where all forms of belief are accepted and diversity is welcomed. There is a list of eight beliefs that we all share, but none of them are about a god or supernatural power although the church does include believers. What we do advocate is that each person must find their own spirituality or lack of spiritual needs in their own way along with others who are also looking for moral truths that speak to them. After all, we all agree that no one actually knows the answers to all these issues. Just as scientists accept what we know about the world wight now but are open to the possibility that future evidence could change what we know, this religion requires only that we all accept that we must live together with our differences and not tolerate them but embrace them. I’m not going to say this is easy. It is not. We include people who call themselves Wiccans, Satanists, Atheists, along with Christians, humanists, agnostics, and atheists. The hard part is always being accepting of beliefs that are totally different from my own. A Christian Nationalist or racist would not be happy in our church because we are all ready to show the fallacies of their beliefs. Because the dignity of all humans is a central principle. But they would be more likely to leave on their own than be refused membership. If you are still reading this very long comment, you might want to find out about this church that did begin as a Christian denomination centuries ago. It was the religion of many of the original Americans who actually did come here for the religious freedom that our elementary schools all incorrectly taught us. But over time, it evolved into the humanist church of today. Look on the Internet if you want to know more.
Gail Knapp
2025-08-09 14:20:58 +0000 UTCDan McClellan and Dan Beecher have an episode of their Data Over Dogma podcast in which they interview the author of a book called "Religion as Make Believe" (can't remember his name). It is mostly about the role of imagination in religious belief, but he also delineates between what he calls "factual beliefs" and "religious/ideological beliefs." His research shows that factual beliefs can change when further facts challenge the belief, but ideological beliefs are immune to new factual evidence. For instance, I was able to change my neighbor's mind about whether he needs to wash the eggs I give him (I have hens, and it is actually safest not to wash them), but I will never convince him to abandon Trump no matter how much factual evidence of malfeasance I present him with.
Ruby Child
2025-07-29 22:09:03 +0000 UTCVery interesting perspective! Besides hallucinations, the actual “guardrails” can step in and censor factual information or deliberately distort it. This happens when you ask certain questions at deep seek AI (about Taiwan) and i ran into this when I asked chatgpt questions about christianity.
Procrastination
2025-07-29 06:54:18 +0000 UTC
