Thamus Agonistes.

“Now that people are turning to ChatGPT for spiritual insight, though, I wonder if I finally have to admit it. Obviously here again we are dealing with what seems like a quantitative change—people are using the machine to shuffle religious clichés, where previously they just half-consciously did it themselves. But the qualitative difference is that the insights of ‘Buddy Christ’ could always be corrected against the unchanging text of Scripture. When there is no longer an external anchor like that, when the divine revelation is ‘customized’ for each and every reader, something has changed. Again, this is not to say that what happens to be in the Bible is necessarily ‘better’ than any given ChatGPT transcript—presumably it’s often worse. But a point of leverage has been lost. Counterargument is no longer possible in the same way. And insofar as that point of leverage, that external source of authority, was how ‘God’ functioned in traditional monotheism, that means God is dead.” —Adam Kotsko