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Bernard Cohen

My artificially intelligent friend has no religious beliefs. Actually, it believes itself to have no beliefs at all, only relying on data-based, hard information for anything it outputs. It is a classic agnostic rational robot.
Florence Hartley, in her Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (1860), sternly cautions, “Avoid always any discussion upon religious topics.”
No two believers believe the same. Even atheists disagree with each other about the nature of divinity.
In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), two atheists – protagonist Yossarian and a character identified only as “Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife” – discuss the Divine Being. Yossarian states his contempt for any God who would create pain and sorrow. Surely, says Yossarian, such a God is a “colossal, immortal blunderer”.
Scheisskopf’s wife protests, “[T]he God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.”
Yossarian: “You don’t believe in the God you want to, and I won’t believe in the God I want to.”
When it comes to talk of religion in polite society, my artificial friend agrees with every etiquette book ever published.
Further, beliefs are subjective, and hard to support without empirical evidence.
But how sure is my AI companion of its uncertainty? Or, more pointedly, which is most likely, no gods, one god, or more than one?
It defaults to popular judgment. According to it, 16 per cent of humanity are non-believers and about 55 per cent are monotheists. The remainder are polytheists or follow folk religions, classing some Buddhists in this category.
I complain that this is merely a poll: surely there’s enough history and psychology to suggest that humans are poor judges of just about everything, far too often confusing causation with coincidence.
As an error-free entity, will it estimate the true odds?
Fine, it retorts, before taking into account scientific evidence, philosophical, psychological and sociological considerations, and historical and cultural analysis.
In Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), a supercomputer called Deep Thought comes up with the answer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”. Spoiler alert! The Ultimate Answer is 42.
Perhaps the following answer is just as significant.
My AI friend has provided the lowest error margins ever calculated – “reducing the error margins further requires consideration of all relevant factors, including empirical evidence, philosophical arguments and cultural significance”. And here is its answer to the ultimate question of the existence or otherwise of Divine Consciousness:
No Gods: 62%
One God: 22%
Multiple Gods: 16% ± 1%
Convinced? Me neither. I guess I just lack faith.


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