In Karel Čapek’s 1922 science fiction novel The Absolute at Large, we encounter a scenario that is both strikingly humorous yet deeply unsettling: a revolutionary machine called a ‘carburetor’ is invented that produces unlimited energy to power factories and manufacture goods. The invention quickly gains popularity and is seen as a blessing, heralding progress and prosperity. Čapek depicts this phase as a period of optimism, as if technology could resolve all social and economic problems by surpassing the old limits of production.
Soon, however, it becomes apparent that the machine produces more than just energy: it also generates a spiritual substance known as the Absolute. This invisible force permeates society, spreading from the machine like a vapour, generating religious excitement, intensifying emotions, and stirring moral fervour. People become more devout and also increasingly uncompromising and dogmatic. Under the influence of the Absolute, differences solidify into divisions, convictions harden into dogmas, and cooperation gives way to rivalry – rivalry which is no longer merely economic.
Čapek shows that even perfect technology would not guarantee a prosperous future because the obstacle lies in human nature. Technology serves only as a catalyst, amplifying already existing human tendencies. The desire to exploit technology for selfish ends, the polarisation of society, or the struggle between competing groups do not come from it. They are inherently present in our nature. In this sense, Čapek’s novel also challenges the modern idea that progress necessarily improves the human condition. It may be too simplistic to claim that this blind optimism fuelled the entire Enlightenment project, but it certainly injected a necessary dynamism into our efforts to change the world. At the same time, history reminds us that such ideals carry risks, as has been seen in the case of radical and totalitarian ideologies. One question remains particularly pressing: why, despite all technological achievements, do we sometimes find ourselves in a worse situation than before? Čapek suggests that a religious element that lies at the core of human nature deserves careful consideration, as it may hold the key to understanding this paradox.
When we think of religion, we may think of an institution, or a belief in some supernatural force providing people with a sense of purpose, meaning, community, and a moral framework. Yet there is another way in which we can analyse religious practices as themselves situated in a political context: How do religious beliefs motivate and shape political action and political beliefs? When does religion serve as a source of political stability? And when it is instrumental to rivalry and conflict?
Varieties of Religious Experience
In modern thought, religion tends to be seen less as something neutral and more as a challenge or even a problem. The Enlightenment set religion in opposition to reason, condemning it either to extinction or to confinement within a narrowly defined private sphere. In the twenty-first century, we may be tempted to regard religion as a relic of the past, irrelevant in a modern, technologically sophisticated world. Yet it finds its way back through other doors; even when driven out with a pitchfork, it finds a way back, as Horace might have said.
The close connection of religion to politics seems undeniable. Much as in Čapek’s novel, wars fuelled by religious sentiment have shaped the course of modern European history. Religion continues to serve as a motivation for war, violence, and terrorism today. In the novel, technological progress does not neutralise politics; rather, it accelerates and intensifies it by endowing it with an additional quasi-religious force. Even when a new technology brings genuine benefits, as the early chapters of the novel make clear, human weaknesses eventually turn it against its creators. It seems that the tragedy lies not in the machine itself, but in the inability of its users to resist the temptations it makes possible.
The recent, almost revolutionary development of AI is often received with astonishment, admiration, and fear. Both positive and negative scenarios appear in numerous analyses and discussions. Visions are being constructed of either a utopian future without work or a terrifying dystopia in which humans are absent or dominated by robots. Instead of focusing on future scenarios involving technologies such as AI, we should devote greater attention to the ways in which this technology reflects contemporary hopes, fears, and biases. We should seize this opportunity to examine what technology can reveal about the human condition.
A fundamental issue concerns the manner in which discourse around AI is organised. Put simply, the discourse appears internally divided between expert analysis and popular imagination. Expert discourse aspires to rational argumentation, while popular discussion is shaped more by mass media, culture, and the internet than by peer-reviewed scholarship. In practice, as in Čapek’s novel, the distinction between seemingly rational and emotional thinking dissolves, revealing the susceptibility of all to fears, hopes, and quasi-religious imaginings. Thus, perceptions of AI and the discourse surrounding it often echo religious modes of thought.
To fully grasp the nexus between religion and AI, however, we must move beyond a narrow understanding of religion as merely an institutional phenomenon. If that were the case, it would suffice simply to compile and compare the official positions of particular religious traditions on the matter. However, religion today no longer limits itself to the institutional forms most commonly associated with the past. Rather than only a system of doctrines, authorities and rituals, religion increasingly functions as a mode of experience. This shift was already anticipated by William James, who, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), emphasised religious experience over institutional belief. Today, however, religion has become even more individualised, taking the form of what sociologist Meredith McGuire calls ‘lived religion’ in her 2008 book of the same name: a set of meanings, practices and emotional investments woven into everyday life. This shift towards lived, individualised religion sets the stage for AI to assume analogous symbolic roles.
Viewed from a functional perspective, it is no longer absurd to suggest that religion can emerge outside traditional frameworks altogether. For some people, comic-book mythologies, cinematic universes, or the worlds of video games provide narratives of meaning, moral orientation and even transcendence once provided by organised religion. Similarly, from a political perspective, we are familiar with ideologies that operate in distinctly religious ways – from the ‘political religions’ of the twentieth century to more localised forms such as radical movements or, as some argue, certain varieties of populism. What they have in common is their functional role: they orient people morally and emotionally, establish authority and offer a sense of transcendence or meaning beyond everyday life – essentially performing the same functions that religion has traditionally served.
Can AI Replace Religion?
Against this backdrop of fragmented, non-institutional, and deeply personalised forms of religiosity, the question is no longer whether religion still exists, but how new objects of meaning enter this crowded symbolic landscape. It is within this context that AI must be situated.
AI does not need to create a new religion in the way imagined by Yuval Noah Harari. Nor does it need to become an ‘Absolute’ in Čapek’s sense (doing so would require it to violate the very laws of physics while remaining a material system). What matters instead is how people think about AI, how they experience it, and what kinds of hopes and expectations they project onto it. In this sense, AI can function as a religion for some people without being one in any substantive or doctrinal sense. It can provide orientation, authority and meaning; it can inspire trust, awe or fear; and it can shape decisions and moral intuitions. These are functional roles traditionally associated with religion, even when no explicit beliefs, rituals, or institutions are involved.
One aspect of perceiving AI as an Absolute seems beyond doubt: the Absolute does not speak on its own. It reflects those who invoke it, their questions, anxieties, desires and ideological commitments. In Čapek’s novel, the miraculous machine appears capable of serving radically different, and often opposing, worldviews. The Absolute itself remains silent; meaning emerges only through human interpretation. Read in this way, the novel suggests that the real source of conflict is not the technology itself, but the human tendency to project ultimate answers onto it. The Absolute amplifies what people already believe, hope for, or fear. Its power lies not in its voice, but in the authority people grant it.
This perspective stands in sharp contrast to recent claims by Harari, who has suggested that AI may one day ‘take over religion’. As Harari explains, if laws are made of words, AI can take over law; if books are composed of words, AI can take over books; and if religion is built from words, AI can take over religion, especially in the case of book-based traditions such as Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. Yet this reasoning relies on a highly reductive view of religion, treating it primarily as a textual (or even informational) system. From a functional and experiential perspective, religion is not exhausted by doctrines, scriptures or verbal formulations. It is equally, if not primarily, about orientation, authority, trust and lived meaning. Seen in this light, AI does not ‘take over’ religion merely by producing texts or interpretations. Rather, it becomes a new surface onto which religious functions can be projected.
AI is often cast as a generative, almost autonomous force, capable of producing astonishing feats, while the contributions of humans, past and present, are increasingly overlooked, diminished, or even denied. This is particularly evident in online discussions, where artworks, music, or images created by real human artists are frequently attributed to AI. In this way, AI functions as a mirror of human expectations: it amplifies what people project onto it and in doing so, it can assume the symbolic authority traditionally associated with religious figures or sacred texts. Much like Čapek’s Absolute, AI does not speak with a voice of its own; it reflects the hopes, fears, and aspirations of those who turn to it for guidance or meaning. This tendency to overestimate the role of AI while underestimating human creativity and agency calls into question what remains today, in the age of posthumanism, of the Enlightenment faith in an anthropocentric order of the world. At the same time, it gradually begins to assume the form of a structure familiar from the past: no longer theocentric, but rather technocentric.
From a psychological perspective, the human tendency to project meaning onto AI can be traced to a deeper, existential dimension. As Ernest Becker argued in The Denial of Death (2011), much of human behavior is unconsciously shaped by the awareness of our mortality and by the refusal to fully acknowledge it. To cope with the anxiety this awareness generates, people invest in ‘immortality projects’ – cultural, religious, or personal endeavors that promise significance and continuity beyond the individual lifespan. For some it could be having children, for others it could be ideologies or religion that give a sense of meaning and a promise of continuous life after death. I believe that AI, with its enormous potential, can already function for some people in a similar way: as a seemingly autonomous, enduring entity onto which hopes, ideals and aspirations are projected. In other words, AI becomes a kind of Absolute, but only functionally: it assumes the symbolic authority and significance that humans invest in it, rather than possessing intrinsic power. It participates in the human search for permanence, mastery and transcendence.
Some contemporary movements – transhumanism as the most explicit case – can be understood as forms of these Beckerian immortality projects. By imagining a future where humans surpass their biological limits, upload consciousness or merge with intelligent machines, transhumanism channels the same existential drive that Becker described, now refracted through technological imagination. AI, in this sense, is not merely a tool or a threat. It is a mirror of our own desires for significance, a canvas for our attempts to grapple with finitude and a lens through which the human longing for permanence becomes vividly visible. Much as Čapek’s Absolute reflected the hopes, fears and ideologies of those who turned to it, AI today mirrors our own longing for meaning, continuity, and transcendence, revealing that the greatest powers of these machines may lie not in their code, but in the human psyche that brings them to life.
Łukasz Święcicki is an assistant professor at the University of Siedlce. Święcicki’s research focuses on political theory, history of ideas, and political philosophy of AI.