AN AI CHRIST IN THE CONFESSIONAL, YES YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY….
November 26, 2024 / Joseph P. Farrell / Comments Off on AN AI CHRIST IN THE CONFESSIONAL, YES YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY….
Sometimes a story is shared by the people that contribute articles to this website which vaults immediately and directly into the "finals" folder, and today's story shared by W.G. (with our gratitude) is no exception. And to me it is a kind of icon - pardon the usage of that term here - of everything that is spiritually and morally wrong with the modern west.
And here - again, not to coin any pun - is the crux of the story:
The small, unadorned church has long ranked as the oldest in the Swiss city of Lucerne. But Peter’s chapel has become synonymous with all that is new after it installed an artificial intelligence-powered Jesus capable of dialoguing in 100 different languages.
“It was really an experiment,” said Marco Schmid, a theologian with the Peterskapelle church. “We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI Jesus. What would they talk with him about? Would there be interest in talking to him? We’re probably pioneers in this.”
The installation, known as Deus in Machina, was launched in August as the latest initiative in a years-long collaboration with a local university research lab on immersive reality.
After projects that had experimented with virtual and augmented reality, the church decided that the next step was to install an avatar. Schmid said: “We had a discussion about what kind of avatar it would be – a theologian, a person or a saint? But then we realised the best figure would be Jesus himself.”
Short on space and seeking a place where people could have private conversations with the avatar, the church swapped out its priest to set up a computer and cables in the confessional booth. After training the AI program in theological texts, visitors were then invited to pose questions to a long-haired image of Jesus beamed through a latticework screen. He responded in real time, offering up answers generated through artificial intelligence.
People were advised not to disclose any personal information and confirm that they knew they were engaging with the avatar at their own risk. “It’s not a confession,” said Schmid. “We are not intending to imitate a confession.”
Now I am so appalled by this I don't even know where to begin. "It's not a confession," we're told. Ok, but if it isn't, then why install this monstrous avatar in a confessional?
It took me some time to think about this whole article, trying to identify why I am so appalled. What is it about this that is really at the root of my difficulties?
I think there are two factors at the root of my disgust. The first is the explicit nature of the assumptions being made about the essence of Christian belief and piety, namely, that it is something that can be normally experienced or formed apart from the liturgical, and sacramental, context, or rather, that it is reducible to a set of theological propositions than can be spit out by a machine, like a fortune being told by one of those antique carnival fortune-telling machines, and that mere mental or psychological assent to said propositions constitutes Christian belief, faith, and practice. In other words, it is bypassing the genuine humanity of the experience and replacing it with a similacrum - an avatar, an appearance - of that experience and of the Person with Whom one is having that experience. It's that "appearance-similacrum-avatar" aspect of things that actually has a formal name, a name taken from the most ancient heresy in the history of Christianity: Doketism, or to give it its more familiar spelling, Docetism, from the Greek word dokein, meaning "to appear." The early Docetists believed that because the material world was perpetually entangled with evil, that matter itself (and hence the physical part of human nature itself) was evil, and thus that God the Son would hardly become incarnate in it. What one encountered in Christ was the mere appearance of normal natural human existence, a hologram, a movie, a projection, an avatar. Correspondingly, as St. Ignatius of Antioch, one of the earliest disciples of the disciples (in this case, of St. John the Apostle) noted that the Doketists also abstained from the Eucharist (another horribly material thing) and martyrdom. In other words, what the Doketists believed about Christ - that He was a hologram - affected all aspects of the piety deriving from that central core belief. And now it's back with force majeur in Switzerland.
But there's something even deeper and much more subtle and nuanced here that also disturbs me even more profoundly, and that is the underlying assumption that the processes or operations related to persona are equivalent to personhood itself, that the entirety of that Second Divine Person of the Trinity is reducible to an algorithm and a process, an assumption that, in some respects and for the theologically-inclined out there, means also the confusion of personhood with the processes of the natural soul, and with that the confusion of personhood and nature, two categorically distinct things that St. John of Damascus would state is the root assumption of all heresies, of all false doctrinal formulations. For those really paying attention, this phenomenon, this hideous icon in the barren Swiss church, is yet another working out of that mentality that so captured the church in the theological formulations of Augustine of Hippo.
I'm certain there are probably more unspeakable horrors with the Artificial intelligence Avatar "Swiss Christ", not the least of which is that the term "anti-Christ" can also, in the Greek, mean "in the place of" as well as "opposed to", a fitting epithet for an essentially Doketic avatar. But additionally, this AI anti-christ is also being programmed by modern scholars, who in Europe's case, long ago jettisoned any ties to traditional theology because their "assured results of modern scholarship" issued in a biblical criticism having little connection to anything but the German Enlightenment.
I could go on and on, but I hope that what I have said is sufficient to make clear my reasons for being appalled, and why I will continue to say my prayers from books in front of real candles burning real incense in a real censor before real icons reading biblical translations based upon the traditional text type and ecclesiastical canon, and not the latest Baphotmet and severed head of some computer-tech-savvy secret society of some techno-Temple.
See you on the flip side...
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Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".
No Comments
Brendanon November 30, 2024 at 1:37 am
I heard about this during the week and thought “No this is definitely something which could definitely be not b.s.” … run fast and run FAR!
SoCal Gon November 27, 2024 at 12:46 pm
Good Grief, what an abomination.
marcos toledoon November 27, 2024 at 4:29 am
What came to mind was a scene from the Frederick Phol novel Gateway. In the novel, the lead character goes to see his shrink, who happens to be an AI and who has as it Avatar Albert Eiestein.
BlueWrenon November 26, 2024 at 10:12 pm
So when you confess and the priest blesses you, that priest is an ordained priest. How does that work with a computer? And if the ai blesses you are you really absolved ??? This is horrible !
Scarmogeon November 26, 2024 at 7:48 pm
… False Premiss … There is no “him” with which to speak.
… False Premiss … Marco Schmid is a theologian.
… False Premiss … “We’re probably pioneers in this.”
… “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” – F. Nietzsche
Although I love reading Nietzsche it is, nonetheless, always disturbing when he turns out to be correct.
Nidster -on November 26, 2024 at 5:44 pm
This statement about the linked article caught my attention. “We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI Jesus.” Also, warnings were given, “People were advised not to disclose any personal information and confirm that they knew they were engaging with the avatar at their own risk.” My take on why the Swiss Church did this is to conduct a trial experiment to see how Christian believers would react to an alternative view of Christ, and how it would, or could change their long-held beliefs. My questions are, “What risk would there be?”, what “paradigm shift” are they attempting to invoke, and most importantly, what do they fear is coming?
Robert Barricklowon November 26, 2024 at 12:50 pm
[Just reading from title]
Of course, this was a given.
Despite the misdirection; generative AI is programmable[on-the-fly, as well]
What better; than a “religion”, where one controls the moving goal posts?
[now to read today’s blog]
Perfect!
“Icon” fits to a t [ or, is that a cross; and/or a, double-cross?]
Of course, it’s all the rage:
Experimental Religions.
But wait!
Not just experimental.
Digital and programmable.
Like your new CBDCs..
And, if “they” have their way…
You too, will become programmable.
[But I digress]
Best Friends of Skinner are all about social engineering.
After all, that is the definition of religion.[those that get internet-positioned ink]
Especially, the copy religions…
aka digital.
Nothing is so quaint as a “collaborative religion”….
With an authentic Vichy patina, of course.
At fist I thought their avatar was targeting a Mexican population..
But, they meant the “real” Jesus.
An AI, of course.
Another benefit will be replacing those Priest Homies.
HUGE cost benefit analytics there in.
Paying homage to Pope Benedict
[can’t have more than live one].
Of course religion isn’t personal.
So don’t go there – says the true Church
Which, in these days…
is a true given/given what the “new” mirror Churches are.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi
or the convinced communist, but the distinction between fact and fiction
and the distinction between true and false no longer exists
ragizaon November 26, 2024 at 10:44 am
I take the view of welcoming the efficiency of this approach.
In fact, I’m going to develop my own AI avatar to facilitate doing regular confessions (even though I’m Protestantish) to alleviate any guilt vulnerabilities to whatever god(s) are probably just waiting for my demise.
And, happy Thanksgiving.
Lauraon November 26, 2024 at 6:49 pm
At the risk of being excommunicated, God is everywhere and it’s not a simulacrum that is the point, it is the reverence that is evoked from the interaction with the representation and the retuning of the spiritual connection that is polluted by daily distractions.
Kevin Ryanon November 26, 2024 at 9:29 am
The article refers to this hi-tech Jesus puppet show as an experiment. A two-month experiment. Now over. But experiments have a way of being repeated, refined, dare I say “resurrected,” as this one is likely to be until a greater number of – let’s call them consumers of religious puppetry – have what they call a “spiritual experience.” However they define that slippery term. If Satan popped into the booth during their session with puppet Jesus, would they call that a spiritual experience? It would seem to qualify. The lesson of the Fall of Adam and Eve was to declare man’s prime directive to be obedience ti higher authority. Choosing knowledge over obedience is punishable by a life sentence of toil and suffering. So, whose hand is in the Jesus puppet? Maybe it’s Yaldabaoth’s hand. That old serpent, the devil or Satan. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but when the fishers of men, whatever they may be, learn to set the hook in men’s mouths. To whom do we surrender responsibility for feeding us consumers a “spiritual experience?” Why do we want a spiritual experience? What is a human being? What are we?
eccentric1on November 26, 2024 at 9:21 am
A “must see” film from George Lucas, 1971’s “THX 1138” brought us this scene:
THEY like to predict what they will push, decades in advance?
This would do well in CS Lewis Space trilogy as well.
Maisonon November 27, 2024 at 4:16 am
But Jesus Himself was way ahead of “them” because He foresaw this millenia in advance: “And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; lo, he is here: do not believe. For there will rise up false Christs and false prophets, and they shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce (if it were possible) even the elect. Take you heed therefore; behold I have foretold you all things.”
Most priests bring their smarphones into the confessional so AI has been listening in on confessions for a long time even if penitants are not aware of it.
It reveals a very sad, sad situation in people’s minds, souls if they actually participate in this or worse yet, believe their sins are absolved from confessing to a thing.
InfiniteRUson November 27, 2024 at 9:36 am
Jesus’s warning is part of the reason of why I’m very skeptical of the whole Book of Revelations. Jesus’s previous description of the signs of the End Times when asked by the apostles was quite different and more in line with a coming Super Nova and act of God himself far into the future. But I’m no expert. Even the “Elect” might have been deceived in this later Revelation after Jesus warned he was telling all of them together everything now because of this.
Bizanturaon November 26, 2024 at 6:07 am
What is strange that every time some huge paradigm shifting event occurs within a Christian intitution, so little movement is experienced. Yes, an odd duck protests vigorously and gets exiled thru excommunication. Within my lifetime that would be MGR Marcel Lefebvre and MGR Carlo Maria Viganò. One would expect an uproar and eventually an exodus. Seem those institutions have transformed into succesfull ideological indoctrination centers. I suppose a lot of clerics of various ranks are not up to date, so we will have to wait if and when this becomes common practise if we will see independant thinking skills.
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I heard about this during the week and thought “No this is definitely something which could definitely be not b.s.” … run fast and run FAR!
Good Grief, what an abomination.
What came to mind was a scene from the Frederick Phol novel Gateway. In the novel, the lead character goes to see his shrink, who happens to be an AI and who has as it Avatar Albert Eiestein.
So when you confess and the priest blesses you, that priest is an ordained priest. How does that work with a computer? And if the ai blesses you are you really absolved ??? This is horrible !
… False Premiss … There is no “him” with which to speak.
… False Premiss … Marco Schmid is a theologian.
… False Premiss … “We’re probably pioneers in this.”
… “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” – F. Nietzsche
Although I love reading Nietzsche it is, nonetheless, always disturbing when he turns out to be correct.
This statement about the linked article caught my attention. “We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI Jesus.” Also, warnings were given, “People were advised not to disclose any personal information and confirm that they knew they were engaging with the avatar at their own risk.” My take on why the Swiss Church did this is to conduct a trial experiment to see how Christian believers would react to an alternative view of Christ, and how it would, or could change their long-held beliefs. My questions are, “What risk would there be?”, what “paradigm shift” are they attempting to invoke, and most importantly, what do they fear is coming?
[Just reading from title]
Of course, this was a given.
Despite the misdirection; generative AI is programmable[on-the-fly, as well]
What better; than a “religion”, where one controls the moving goal posts?
[now to read today’s blog]
Perfect!
“Icon” fits to a t [ or, is that a cross; and/or a, double-cross?]
Of course, it’s all the rage:
Experimental Religions.
But wait!
Not just experimental.
Digital and programmable.
Like your new CBDCs..
And, if “they” have their way…
You too, will become programmable.
[But I digress]
Best Friends of Skinner are all about social engineering.
After all, that is the definition of religion.[those that get internet-positioned ink]
Especially, the copy religions…
aka digital.
Nothing is so quaint as a “collaborative religion”….
With an authentic Vichy patina, of course.
At fist I thought their avatar was targeting a Mexican population..
But, they meant the “real” Jesus.
An AI, of course.
Another benefit will be replacing those Priest Homies.
HUGE cost benefit analytics there in.
Paying homage to Pope Benedict
[can’t have more than live one].
Of course religion isn’t personal.
So don’t go there – says the true Church
Which, in these days…
is a true given/given what the “new” mirror Churches are.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi
or the convinced communist, but the distinction between fact and fiction
and the distinction between true and false no longer exists
I take the view of welcoming the efficiency of this approach.
In fact, I’m going to develop my own AI avatar to facilitate doing regular confessions (even though I’m Protestantish) to alleviate any guilt vulnerabilities to whatever god(s) are probably just waiting for my demise.
And, happy Thanksgiving.
At the risk of being excommunicated, God is everywhere and it’s not a simulacrum that is the point, it is the reverence that is evoked from the interaction with the representation and the retuning of the spiritual connection that is polluted by daily distractions.
The article refers to this hi-tech Jesus puppet show as an experiment. A two-month experiment. Now over. But experiments have a way of being repeated, refined, dare I say “resurrected,” as this one is likely to be until a greater number of – let’s call them consumers of religious puppetry – have what they call a “spiritual experience.” However they define that slippery term. If Satan popped into the booth during their session with puppet Jesus, would they call that a spiritual experience? It would seem to qualify. The lesson of the Fall of Adam and Eve was to declare man’s prime directive to be obedience ti higher authority. Choosing knowledge over obedience is punishable by a life sentence of toil and suffering. So, whose hand is in the Jesus puppet? Maybe it’s Yaldabaoth’s hand. That old serpent, the devil or Satan. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but when the fishers of men, whatever they may be, learn to set the hook in men’s mouths. To whom do we surrender responsibility for feeding us consumers a “spiritual experience?” Why do we want a spiritual experience? What is a human being? What are we?
A “must see” film from George Lucas, 1971’s “THX 1138” brought us this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0YkPnwoYyE
That’s what I was going to mention.
THEY like to predict what they will push, decades in advance?
This would do well in CS Lewis Space trilogy as well.
But Jesus Himself was way ahead of “them” because He foresaw this millenia in advance: “And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; lo, he is here: do not believe. For there will rise up false Christs and false prophets, and they shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce (if it were possible) even the elect. Take you heed therefore; behold I have foretold you all things.”
Most priests bring their smarphones into the confessional so AI has been listening in on confessions for a long time even if penitants are not aware of it.
It reveals a very sad, sad situation in people’s minds, souls if they actually participate in this or worse yet, believe their sins are absolved from confessing to a thing.
Jesus’s warning is part of the reason of why I’m very skeptical of the whole Book of Revelations. Jesus’s previous description of the signs of the End Times when asked by the apostles was quite different and more in line with a coming Super Nova and act of God himself far into the future. But I’m no expert. Even the “Elect” might have been deceived in this later Revelation after Jesus warned he was telling all of them together everything now because of this.
What is strange that every time some huge paradigm shifting event occurs within a Christian intitution, so little movement is experienced. Yes, an odd duck protests vigorously and gets exiled thru excommunication. Within my lifetime that would be MGR Marcel Lefebvre and MGR Carlo Maria Viganò. One would expect an uproar and eventually an exodus. Seem those institutions have transformed into succesfull ideological indoctrination centers. I suppose a lot of clerics of various ranks are not up to date, so we will have to wait if and when this becomes common practise if we will see independant thinking skills.