In around 2011 or 2012, I worked as an MSP engineer and one of the clients was a large mega church. The pastor used software that basically wrote his sermons for him - it would pick the verses that matched the themes he wanted to cover, referenced past sermons to make sure it’s not pulling the same quotes over and over, and pulled in common interpretations preprogrammed into its library.
I can’t imagine how worse it has become. No soul left in the grift.
It’s not a lot of steps from this to prayers to the machine spirit. Just saying.
Can he ask them to stop fucking children next or how far down the list is that?
Well, you can’t spell God without AI (in ancient Hebrew):
I guess it’s just a matter of time before some sect starts worshipping AI as a god
Luminous Intensity * Amps * Ohms
Divine Cybermancy
Like, I’m sure a lot of it ends up just feeling like most jobs, but fuck…isn’t the whole point that they have unique insight into these things? Do they think God is “speaking through the chatbots” or something?
Well, you see, the thing is, it’s all bullshit. Always has been.
I genuinely think that there is nothing in any form of Christianity that really prevents that type of “adaptation”, or even adds much friction to its incorporation into doctrine. It’s one of the scarier things about Ai, especially when I see a guy like Peter Thiel getting interested in eschatological matters and religion in general.
Whatever one thinks about any ultimate truth a given religion holds, religion in general and Christianity in particular has been used to pacify, influence, and control masses since its inception. It’s arguably one of its original purposes.
So knowing that, and knowing how fundamentally malleable it is - and I mean fundamental; malleability is built in - I fear that God will increasingly speak through Ai.
On the one hand it is so straightforward it is pedestrian; tech bros are basically building a new Great and Powerful so they can be behind the curtain. But I do worry that it may be one of the more potent latent Ai threats.
Certainly I am here to tell you as someone raised in evangelical Christianity, the ‘vangies are primed for this, and that should scare us.
It’s these priests who are maybe accelerating this by their usage - an LLM can’t rape an alter boy, or not directly. If God is speaking through ChatGPT and they are just delivering the message, that increasingly seems like a messy and unnecessary middle man.
It’s sad he has to ask that. I guess if AI is now providing morality lessons to modern man it leaves the priests more time for “crafts and activities”.
No priest’s idle hands are the devil’s playthings.
Don’t they have a 2000 years worth collection of sermons already written? Why bother writing new? Not like their religion has changed much since its founding…
You don’t really “get” church do you? A sermon is supposed to be a type of lecture on moral philosophy and ethics as it relates to current events. Taking a sermon from 200 AD that’s talking about the evils of Roman gladiatorial games or a sermon from Medieval France about the black plague won’t be relevant to a community facing ICE raids in Minneapolis.
I’m not religious at all…but I have attended a few churches.
Good pastors (or whatever a church calls their leaders) tie biblical stories to current events.
“Gospel”, itself, literally means “good news”.
So, yeah, maybe there could be some recycling, but with some tweaks.
Honestly this is the sort of thing that LLMs are really, really good at: You’re combining current events with bullshit stories anyway, so who cares if the output is a little bullshit?
Dunno why you’re being downvoted. It’s absolutely true.
Sermons are just motivational bullshit with bible verses mixed in, and there’s billions of words already written on both of those subjects.
Not only that, but in Catholic mass the Bible is reread every 3 years so the sermons are about the same crap every 3 years.
I don’t have a perfect memory but I do have a good one, and I can confirm that the pastor at my parents church when I was growing up re-used sermons from multiple years prior.
So at least some recycle. As expected, they are still just as (ir)relevant.
Priests job: spread the word of god.
Use chat GPT.
Chat GPT is god.
The Omnissiah.
The Butlerian
JihadCrusade has begun.Avenged Sevenfold called it: Creating God
Reverend Lionel Preacherbot wouldn’t agree
Based
It’s all made up anyway what difference does it make?
a lot of people here don’t understand what churches are for and what they offer. i’m not religious per se but i’m a church musician. some churches want to see what you can do for them and pick your pocket while they’re doing it. some churches want to see that your emotional, spiritual, and physical needs are met while you’re there, and hopefully you can get a little solace from whatever is bothering you at the moment.
i use two things to judge: are they affirming, and do they offer coffee in the fellowship room. it better be a big fat yes to both.
do they offer coffee in the fellowship room
What kept me going to Sunday School as a kid was the donuts. Also my parents making me go.
yeah that’ll do it
I am not religious. I think sermons can be useful.
a sermon is to discuss current events and remind people to behave well, among other things. a good sermon is somewhat personal, related to the community, and meaningful. knowing that the person in front of you, whom you presumably respect, is saying things that they wrote and believe and spent effort forming the wording of, that has weight. some dude regurgitating AI slop removes all of that meaning.
Because it’s a lot easier to discredit a religious argument when the sermon cites “4th Thessalossians 67:B” and gives the most generic sounding paragraph with the one weirdly specific phrase they instructed the bot to include and em—dash thrown in for good measure.
At least if they all use the same manual, it’s easier to pull over the ones who are on the fence.
