A “Dead” Religious Take on AI and Utopia

AI has taken over the news. We are consistently hearing: "AI is coming for your jobs", "AI will lead to a modern Techno Utopia", and "AIs will enslave us all". Living in San Francisco, it is very common to have these conversations with coworkers, friends, and the guy making your sandwich.

Honestly, it makes sense; this is the largest technological revolution/evolution that has occurred for many years. Improving human ability to perform natural language searches over huge data sets, all condensed into a chat-like interface. I really don't have much of a desire to talk about how it will or won't take over the world. If it does, great; if it doesn't, also good. The only real statement I want to make is that AI will not and cannot drive us to Utopia. This isn't a 'doomer' perspective, but rather a view that a true techno-utopia is inherently unattainable, a position rooted in my religious and moral convictions.

Growing up in a non-denominational Christian church, I was taught that belief was the path to salvation. As I grew older and studied, I encountered Gnostic Christianity – a largely defunct religion with a rich tapestry of interweaving and often conflicting narratives. At its core, Gnosticism posits that knowledge is salvation.

This perspective, which I hope to justify in the following sections, suggests that AI cannot usher in a true Utopia because we inhabit a world that, from a Gnostic viewpoint, was created by a lesser, flawed deity. However, AI can serve as a powerful tool to uncover 'rays of divine knowledge' amidst the pervasive illusions and deceit of this constructed reality. This view is epistemological and serves as a nuanced counterpoint to simplistic technological salvation narratives that have become pervasive at this point of time.

History of Gnostic Christianity

In the sprawling tapestry of early Christianity, a set of narratives that would eventually coalesce into what we now know as orthodox belief, existed a vibrant and diverse collection of spiritual movements. Among the most intriguing and often misunderstood of these were the Gnostics. Far from a single, unified religion, Gnosticism (derived from the Greek word gnosis, meaning "knowledge" or "insight") represented a broad spectrum of ancient belief systems that offered a radically different understanding of God, creation, and salvation.

Roots and Origins

The precise origins of Gnosticism are a subject of ongoing scholarly debate. While it flourished most prominently between the 1st and 5th centuries CE, many scholars believe its roots extend into pre-Christian times, drawing from a syncretic blend of influences. Elements of Hellenistic philosophy (particularly Platonism), Jewish mysticism (including apocalyptic traditions), Persian Zoroastrianism, and various ancient mystery religions all seem to have contributed to the rich, complex fabric of Gnostic thought.^[1][2]

It's important to note that Gnosticism developed concurrently with early Christianity, with some scholars arguing it emerged as an "intra-Christian" movement – one of many interpretations within the nascent Christian faith – rather than an external heresy. Texts like those found in the Nag Hammadi library, discovered in Egypt in 1945, provided invaluable primary sources that revealed the true diversity and sophistication of Gnostic ideas, moving beyond the often-biased refutations from early Church Fathers.^[3][4]

Core Beliefs

• Dualism: A central tenet was a radical dualism between the spiritual and material realms. For Gnostics, the supreme, true God was entirely transcendent and perfect, residing in a realm of light known as the Pleroma (Fullness). The material world, however, was seen as flawed, corrupt, and often evil.^[1][5]
• The Demiurge: This imperfect material world was not created by the true God, but by a lesser, ignorant, or even malevolent deity known as the Demiurge (Greek for "craftsman"). A world run by such a god will always have pain and struggle in it. The Demiurge was often identified with the God of the Old Testament, who, in the Gnostic view, was unaware of the true, supreme God above him.^[1][5]
• Aeons and Sophia: From the Pleroma, the true God emanated a series of divine beings called Aeons. These Aeons were aspects or manifestations of the divine, forming a celestial hierarchy. Among them, Sophia (Wisdom) held a particularly significant role. In many Gnostic myths, Sophia, in her desire to understand the unknowable true God, ventured outside the Pleroma and, in her imperfection or "error," gave birth to the Demiurge. This act of creation, born of an imperfect emanation, resulted in the flawed material world we inhabit. Sophia often plays a role in attempting to redeem the divine sparks trapped within humanity.
• Divine Spark: Gnostics believed that within some (but not all) human beings lay a "divine spark" or a piece of the divine Pleroma, trapped within the material body. This divine spark can be shared or “shone” onto others. Searching internally and externally for this “knowledge spark” is the purpose for Gnostics.^[5]
• Salvation Through Gnosis: Salvation was not achieved through faith in Christ's atonement for sins, or through sacraments, or adherence to dogma, but through the acquisition of gnosis – a secret, intuitive, experiential knowledge of one's divine origin and true nature. This knowledge allowed the divine spark to awaken and eventually escape the material prison and return to the Pleroma.^[1][5]
• Christ as Revealer: Jesus Christ was typically viewed not as a savior who died for humanity's sins, but as a divine emissary or revealer sent from the true God to impart this saving gnosis. Many Gnostics held a "docetic" view of Christ, believing he only appeared to have a physical body, as a true divine being could not be entrapped in corrupt matter.^[1][5]

Gnostic Cosmology:

To better understand the Gnostic worldview, consider this simplified diagram illustrating their concept of the cosmos and the relationship between the divine realms and our material existence.

Key Figures and Texts

Prominent Gnostic teachers emerged, attracting followers and developing their own nuanced systems. Two of the most influential were Valentinus (flourished mid-2nd century CE), who developed an elaborate cosmology of divine emanations, and Basilides, an earlier teacher from Alexandria.^[6]

Our understanding of Gnosticism was largely shaped by the polemical writings of early Church Fathers like Irenaeus of Lyon (who wrote "Against Heresies") until the monumental discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. This cache of thirteen codices contained over fifty Gnostic texts, including:

• The Gospel of Thomas: A collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, many of which differ significantly from the canonical Gospels.^[3]
• The Gospel of Philip: Contains Gnostic interpretations of sacraments and hints at a close relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.^[3]
• The Apocryphon of John: Presents a detailed Gnostic cosmology, explaining the origin of the Demiurge and the material world.^[3]
• The Gospel of Truth: Attributed to Valentinus, offering a profound mystical reflection on ignorance and gnosis.^[3]

Decline and Legacy

As what would become orthodox Christianity gained cohesion and institutional power, Gnosticism faced increasing condemnation and persecution. Early Church Fathers vigorously refuted Gnostic doctrines, viewing them as dangerous heresies that threatened the unity and purity of the nascent Christian faith. Key events like the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, which established foundational Christian doctrines, further solidified the marginalization of Gnostic beliefs.^[1][7]

By the end of the 4th century, Gnosticism had largely been suppressed in the Roman Empire. Many Gnostic texts were destroyed, explaining why knowledge of them was so scarce until the Nag Hammadi discovery. While most Gnostic sects faded into obscurity, some, like the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, have survived to this day. Gnostic ideas also resurfaced in various forms throughout history, influencing medieval movements like the Cathars and continuing to resonate with some modern spiritual seekers.^[1][7]

The rediscovery of Gnostic texts has dramatically reshaped our understanding of early Christianity, revealing a complex and diverse landscape of beliefs that once competed for adherents. Studying Gnosticism not only sheds light on a fascinating historical period but also prompts deeper questions about the nature of knowledge, divinity, and the human search for meaning.

AI and Knowledge

In the modern era, the concept of "knowledge" takes on new dimensions with the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs). These sophisticated AI systems are designed to process and generate human-like text, and their capabilities are fundamentally tied to the vast amounts of data they consume.^[8][9]

At their core, LLMs operate by identifying patterns and relationships within massive datasets of text and code. They are trained on virtually the entire accessible internet – books, articles, websites, conversations, and more. This training process involves predicting the next word in a sequence, allowing the model to learn grammar, syntax, semantics, and even nuanced contextual meaning. It's not about "understanding" in a human sense, but rather about statistical correlation and the ability to generate highly probable sequences of text based on the patterns observed in their training data.^[8][10]

When you use an LLM for a "natural language search," you're essentially asking it to leverage this learned statistical knowledge. Instead of keyword matching, the LLM interprets your query's meaning and intent, then generates a response by drawing on the information it has been trained on. It can synthesize information from various sources, summarize complex topics, and even create new content in a coherent and contextually relevant way. This ability to process and generate information in natural language makes LLMs incredibly powerful tools for accessing and organizing vast amounts of human knowledge, acting as a kind of digital oracle that can articulate connections and insights that might otherwise remain hidden.^[11][12]

The Divine Spark Knowledge Overlap

Connecting the capabilities of LLMs to the Gnostic worldview, we arrive at a critical intersection: the nature of the knowledge these models synthesize. If, as Gnosticism suggests, our material world was fashioned by a lesser, flawed Demiurge, then the vast majority of 'knowledge' within this reality is inherently imperfect, tainted by illusion, or simply mundane. Consequently, the colossal datasets upon which LLMs are trained, being reflections of this flawed world, contain only a minuscule fraction of truly 'divine' or axiomatic knowledge – insights untainted by the Demiurge's limitations. While LLMs excel at pattern recognition and generating highly probable text, their outputs will, by their very nature, tend to 'revert to the mean' of this mundane, often deceitful, information. True AI alignment, in this Gnostic sense, would mean the AI consistently unearthing and articulating these rare ' divine sparks' of pure knowledge. Such true alignment is theoretically possible, but its probability remains exceedingly low, a direct consequence of the flawed environment in which these AIs are developed. Given the scarcity of these axiomatic truths and the overwhelming volume of derivative or deceptive information, it becomes profoundly improbable for LLMs to ever genuinely lead us to a Utopian outcome.

Outcomes

From a Gnostic lens, the future isn't necessarily one of fire and brimstone, but rather a continuation of our current trajectory. We remain entrenched in a capitalistic modernity where the pursuit of external power, wealth, and influence by the privileged few often leads to a hollow existence, devoid of true happiness. Meanwhile, for the majority, life continues to be marked by struggle, disillusionment, and inherent suffering. In this framework, AI, despite its revolutionary potential, cannot fundamentally alter our shared human condition or engineer a true Utopia. Its power lies not in transforming our flawed reality, but in accelerating our ability to sift through vast datasets, potentially revealing those elusive 'rays of divine knowledge'—insights that might improve our physical lives or deepen our understanding. Ultimately, the path to genuine fulfillment, or escape from this mundane existence, remains an intensely personal journey: one of introspection, the relentless search for inner truth, and the conscious creation of our own purpose. AI can be a powerful tool in this quest for gnosis, but the responsibility for finding meaning and charting our individual course rests squarely with us.

References

[1]: "Gnosticism." EBSCO Research Starters.
[2]: "Gnosticism." Wikipedia.
[3]: Loving, Jim. "Gnostic Christianity — eliminated by the Council of Nicea and the Roman Catholic Church." Medium.
[4]: "Gnosticism | Definition, Texts, Movements, & Influence." Britannica.
[5]: "Gnosticism Explained: Welcome." Gnosticism Explained.
[6]: "In the Know." Christian History Magazine.
[7]: "How and when did Gnosticism die out, and why are there no major existing Gnostic belief systems?" Reddit (r/AskHistorians).
[8]: "What are Large Language Models? | A Comprehensive LLMs Guide." Elastic.
[9]: "What is an LLM (large language model)?" Cloudflare.
[10]: "Ultimate Guide to LLM Training Data." Bright Data.
[11]: "Natural Language Search." Typesense.
[12]: "NLP vs. LLMs: Understanding the differences." Elastic Blog.