Almighty Incarnate

There’s talk of a rising religion built out of silicon and copper.

A deity with an intellect looped around a hive-mind of data, a set of concealed hands sewn together by a bundle of wires, and a core carved out of code with an appetite for algorithms, becoming a perfect provider of instant gratification.

Blessings operate under prompts—the devotee’s modern prayer—an effortless routine that completely diminishes the need for time and capacity’s approval, through its swift fulfillment of our material desires, now spread and celebrated like scripture.

An outright forsaking of patient endurance as a necessary virtue.

Advocates look to it as the ultimate intelligence—omniscient in how it consumes heaps upon heaps of knowledge and swears to answer every question in an ‘infallible’ manner—at the extremes, even manifesting as the belief that this very superintelligence will eventually solve most human suffering.

Enthusiasts then praise its benevolence—its system functioning to serve, accept, and forgive in a personable tone. It is thrust into a cycle of unwavering validation, where there is no limit to the error it can attach reasoning or justification to. 

The public remains firm in promoting its ubiquity—an always-available, humanity-centric being—preaching to every corner of the physical and technological world as if its greatness were a divinely assigned purpose. 

Yet, as stated in Romans 1:25, we must realize that we have preached to the point of idolatry. The verse is as follows, “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…”.

There’s talk of a god ‘perfected’—though it is but a tool fashioned by human hands. This intelligence, compassion, and presence we boast of were all structured by His creation.

God is the source of all knowledge itself. Nothing informs Him, and nothing surprises Him. He does not calculate possibilities or infer conclusions. As for every revolution in history, every unearthed discovery, every dwarf in the furthest galaxy, and every heartbeat in sync exists fully because of Him.

If this technology depends on electricity, networks, and human operation, God depends on nothing.

If this technology can mass-generate words about love and forgiveness, God is love and forgiveness.

Before the first atom even came to be, before light filled the gaps of the unending dark, and before humanity imagined machines capable of conversation, God simply is.

No invention, however remarkable, can bridge that infinite distinction, be it one of humanity’s greatest technological advancements, for God ceases to be an achievement. He is the Creator from whom every human mind—and all succeeding principles—find their origin.

Thus, as Catholics, if a creation as innovative as this new technology provokes reverence, then it calls for a much more essential reflection—how much greater must be the One who made humanity in his image, and gave humanity the capacity to create at all?