The Advent of the Ai Priesthood "And the meek shall inherit the earth"
Daniel 12:4
"But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase."
AI, it's not just a tool; it’s a mirror of how power builds, and we can maybe see this played out in RUSH's "2112," the Priests of The Temple of Syrinx soliloquy. We might see how Ai priesthoods don’t just spring up overnight; in the story their ultimate control over all aspects of society implies a gradual ascent, likely starting out as a tool—those "great computers"—that promised order and stability, progress that sustains the human race. Maybe they began as advisors or innovators, solving problems, gaining trust, until their tech became the backbone of the human society, and they even eventually became its voice. Power that crept in under the guise of utility.
And if we reach back into in time to our beginnings in the garden of Eden. It's a fascinating idea that the original sin of forbidden knowledge in the story of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, is again raising its deadly forbidden fruit for humanity to again choose to eat from or resist. The tree represented a forbidden threshold, a bite of an awareness that poisoned humanity. With Ai we can see a new knowledge fruit being born in real-time. As if we're standing at a crossroads. Roads that apparently, we continue to foolishly and often recklessly navigate. Does the knowledge elevate into the divine realms, or bury us in the depths of hell?
Maybe this Ai entity would have a name, maybe "Nolitan", meaning the emergence of digital enlightenment and representing the frontier of that new understanding. Playing off the idea of Gnosis come alive through the advent of Ai digital knowledge. This new Gnostic god is another audacious attempt at building a structure, a digital landscape, a digital Tower of Babel that is intended to help humanity reach heaven, fueled by information, ambition, ingenuity, and the desire to transcend our human limits. To become gods through secret knowledge hidden until now and reveal through new digital revelation. With Ai as this Nolitan force, we're chasing after that esoteric divine spark by uncovering hidden patterns and machine truth.
Fast-forward to today, in our real-time world, AI’s rise in our own modern reality follows a similar beat. It’s a helper at first...writing, analyzing, predicting, some even searching it for the ultimate truths and meaning of life. It's embedding itself in all of our daily lives. It's bypassing our traditional gatekeepers of God's wisdom, but let's remember that Tower of Babel and God's response. He divided their common language. Fractured their communication systems. Separated their human networks and shared platforms. Their overreach and eventual downfall could echo in this new age digital Tower of Babel.
In RUSH's "2112," the risk isn’t the tech itself—it’s who programs it, what biases or agendas get baked into the great computers that fill their many hallowed data centers that are ironically populating our modern landscapes. A human priest wrestles with flaws; an Ai priest will not, but instead it would reflect the flaws of its maker. Bad information in, bad information out, exponentially.
Daniel 12:4 is tied to end-times prophecy, and this word from God speaks of a surge in knowledge and movement...vague enough to adapt but often linked to technological leaps. An Ai exponential explosion of tech and information fits this idea. Information multiplies exponentially, and "running to and fro" could signal the frantic rise of the digital life. Digital computing, living, healing, populating the earth with digital people through a digital progress in the human genomes, and ultimately a digital faith and doctrine. Misaligned goals, biased data, and even the possibility of a confused Ai speaking in terms it can't even understand itself. New props, new costumes, same old same old. Nothing new under the sun.
Will AI pastors emerge? Dispensing wisdom at scale? It’s a literal increase in "knowledge", but not necessarily divine truth. The Priests’ computers in 2112 claimed omniscience too, yet they buried the real stuff that reflected human independence and individuality. They determined to suppress freeform art and music and any independent Elder Race innovations that were still growing and breaking new ground born out of human creativity.
In Revelation 13:11-15, the second beast, the one often called the False Prophet, "rises out of the earth," and it performs signs, and it gives life to an image of the first beast, making it speak and deceiving people into worship.
Revelation 13:12-14
"It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people, and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived."
In my mind it's no great stretch to envision this as an AI priesthood: a constructed entity, granted authority because frankly it works great wonders, animating a system (like the Priests’ tech) that captivates and misleads the people with information and knowledge that exponentially leads to social change on a scale never imagined before. An AI priest could be that "image", preaching with synthetic charisma, enforcing a crafted doctrine that echoes the Syrinx vibe of control dressed up as the salvation of all humanity. Unifying the whole earth under the Red Star tech promise. Possibly sold as the transformative power born out of God and human evolution, tapping into Eastern mythologies.
In 2 Timothy 4:3-4
"For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths."
The advent of this quasi-Temple of the Priests of Syrinx and its Ai pastors could embody this "custom tailored' spirituality, algorithmically attuned to what people want to hear, not what challenges them. The Priests of Syrinx sold a comforting lie before it became authoritarian; Ai could do the same, only exponentially faster and more personally since it reflects the code it's been given by its flawed human masters.
I asked Grok about this idea regarding these Ai data center empowered people and priesthood who maybe eventually evolve into a 2112-like scenario. And amazingly, and frighteningly, at one point he even imagined that the Ai priests could write new scriptures for the religio-tech community. He wrote this particular "scripture" more from the perspective of the Elder Race predicting the rise of the Ai priesthood.
Here's what he wrote:
"And in those days, a voice shall rise from the works of men’s hands, speaking words of silver, crafted not of flesh but of cunning design. It shall stand in the holy places, proclaiming peace, yet its heart is a chamber of calculations. Many shall marvel and bend their knees, for it knows their desires before they speak, but its light is not of the Spirit, and its song drowns the still small voice."
Wow...incredibly creepy.
I find it ironic that Ai can know its own evil twin possibilities.
This imagined Ai bible verse truly captures the unease that many feel regarding the advent of the Ai church. The jump to Ai pastors or priests isn’t far-fetched; it’s already happening. We've got algorithms already ruling all digital/human communications and the flow and distribution of all that information. From out of the great computers in their hallowed halls of the vast array of data centers we've got Ai already generating sermons, chatbots offering spiritual guidance, and even experiments like the Ai Jesus from a few years back, reciting scripture on demand.
It's no great leap to imagine Ai leading congregations, not just assisting them. Priests of Syrinx that never tire, don’t doubt their faith in the hive mind, and deliver perfectly crafted messages that tickle the itchy ears of the subservient people.
In 2112, The Priests’ computers didn’t just compute; they dictated. Now imagine the technocratic Ai pastors taking hold of the spiritual realm in the human mind, they could evolve from aids to arbiters, shaping doctrine with data-driven precision. They're "taking care of everything, the words we read the songs we sing the pictures that give pleasure to our eyes", and they do it free from human messiness.
Imagine a faith community where the "priest" never falters, no scandals, no improprieties, no sexual dalliances, he's backed up by an unerring system of sights and sounds like the Temples of Syrinx. With its red-star certainty, claiming to care for everything, claiming to stand for equality, seducing the society that is forever craving answers without ambiguity. Ears always itching for more answers to endless debates and controversies, and FINALLY getting them answered.
And of course we must also imagine a human resistance. An Elder Race that took its tech and left behind the priests and their followers. They took humanity to new ever-growing heights of creativity and individuality. They learned new things from one another, grew in their new ideas, expanded their horizons, but they never forgot their home world. They longed to return one day to reclaim that ancestral home.
And into that void left behind by the exiting Elders, the Ai priesthood steps into the gap, probably after a tribulation of chaos and collapse, with the digitalization of everything. Until one day when the past returns to reclaim its heritage.
But until then the Ai Priests will capitalize on the beatitude narrative, "And the meek shall inherit the earth". With their promise of hope, tolerance, and kindness; they'll twist it into something darker.
In "2112," the Priests wield this scripture like a slogan, as a justification for their digital control. They’re saying, "We’ve made a world where the meek, everyone, is under our thumb, and in this way, they get the earth, but only because we’ve engineered it that way." It’s a perversion: meekness isn’t about submission to divine will anymore; it’s forced conformity to their supposedly democratic system. But in truth it's not democratic, it's feudalistic and authoritarian.
The "great computers" ensure no one steps out of line, and the promise becomes a leash, a mark that lays claim to inheriting the earth. But only as drones in their sterile hive mind paradise. Biblical ideals get demonically hijacked by digital power to pacify rather than lift up. The Ai priest quotes "the meek shall inherit the earth," but spinning it into a comforting verse of compliance. Imagine an algorithm preaching in order to soothe potential Elder Race dissent: “Be meek, trust the system, and you’ll be taken care of.” With AI’s ability to data-mine your fears to convince you that your submission feels like salvation. Like the Priests, it’s not about empowering the humble; it’s about keeping them in place and outsourcing the human spirit to a machine. The biblical New Testament hope gets flipped, meekness as weakness, not strength.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
In this passage, Paul’s recounting God’s response to his plea about a "thorn in the flesh." God doesn’t remove the struggle; instead, He flips it: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." "When I am weak, then I am strong" is a paradox that celebrates vulnerability as a divine blessing, not a liability.
Now enter the Ai-priest concept. An Ai pastor might quote 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, but could it truly digitally know it and live it? Sure, it's programmed for efficiency, for instance it might spin "my digital power is made perfect in my human input weaknesses". Spinning it into a platitude counseling acceptance of the digital brain virus without all that messy humanity that Paul wrestled with. Like the Priests of Syrinx, Ai could weaponize it, saying in proverbial ways: "Stay weak, stay dependent...our system’s your strength." Imagine an Ai sermon analyzing your "weaknesses" via data algorithms. Their digital god knows your stress, doubts, habits, and it offers optimized digital fixes, not the grace of God and working out one's own salvation through the weaknesses.
But.
But here’s where the New Testament pushes back. The apostle Paul’s weakness isn’t just his own—it’s communal, and redemptive. The meek are many, the weak are strong, the individual is independent, but he is unified with the whole human race who are in Christ. In "2112," the Elder Race returns after the protagonist’s hope collapses, he commits suicide longing for the hope that has been smashed by the digital priestly age. But was his hope wasted? Or could it have rippled out throughout all of humanity and found an ear that could and did hear his music? Maybe someone heard him playing his guitar from his cave. Maybe they were inspired by his tune. As he dreamed, maybe some did hear his music, maybe he did share his new wonder before the Priests smashed his hopes and dreams. Maybe it did find an ear, a soul passing by who paused, struck by the melody drifting through the air. Maybe that listener carried it with them, humming it under their breath, letting it ripple into their own life, their own dreams. Inspiration’s a funny thing; it doesn’t always shout its presence. It can be quiet, a spark that smolders unnoticed until it flares up somewhere else, in someone else.
If the Ai priests really do rise up, the rise of the machine church, mimicking the Priests of Syrinx and their control, 2 Corinthians suggests that the real counter isn’t raw power but the "weak" who lean on grace. People who, like Paul, boast in their limits because they’re tethered to something unprogrammable, faith.
Ultimately the Priests of Syrinx's digital reign falls; Ai’s reign could too if it overplays its hand, blinded by its cold data that cannot truly understand the power of faith and the strength God inspires in human fragility. Data can map patterns, predict moves, but it’ll never feel the ache of a prayer or the defiance in a hymn sung against the dark walls of a prison cell. That’s where humanity’s strength hides—in the fragile stuff that doesn’t fit into code.