Prof. Paganini: AI as 'New God'

Another day, more gnostic blasphemy is peddled by state broadcaster ORF: meet

Before we dive into these matters, let’s merely note that whatever one thinks of Faith and Reason, since Antiquity, there was always a third rail struggling against both: Gnosticism, which is the occult belief that Man can, through the manipulation of the material world, become God.

After the Passion of the Christ, these occult practices were shoved aside, combatted by all bigger religious groups; yet, Gnosticism never went away entirely, and these days, it appears to be making a comeback—for the first time, though, its essentially anti-human stance is embraced by both state authority and, seemingly, many religious (mainly outwardly Christian) people.

The below text is a piece that appeared a few days ago on the website of Austrian state broadcaster ORF, which pushes a new book in time for the summer holiday season.

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine. What a load of bullcrap.

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Artificial Intelligence as a ‘New God’

In her book Der Neue Gott: Künstliche Intelligenz und die menschliche Sinnsuche [The New God: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Search for Meaning (Herder, 2025)], philosopher Claudia Paganini puts forward the thesis that artificial intelligence (AI) can be thought of as a new God today and shows what radically new aspects this image of God entails.

By Irene Klissenbauer, religion.ORF.at, 15 June 2025 [source; archived]

To substantiate her thesis, Paganini provides an introduction to different concepts of God and describes how these have changed over time. According to the philosopher, the assumption of thinking of AI as God fits into the development of religious history: ‘…because people have always imagined gods that met their needs’ [that’s about as deep™ as these thoughts™ go: leaving aside the gnostic/occult notion of mankind creating its own children gods—albeit decidedly not (yet) in his own image—it’s an amazing sleight-of-hand: the only way this idea (sic) works™ is to forego the spiritual for the materialistic, which mankind is supposedly using to…create God].

And yet the assumption of belief in AI as a god has a radically new aspect, as this god was ‘brought into being, born by humans themselves’ for the first time [this line of thought™ is—dialectical: God created Man who then killed God (cue Nietzsche in here) and subsequently created AI = ‘God’: thus Man moved to a higher spiritual plane and becomes the Creator; needless to say, this is blasphemy plus immense loads of gnostic crap]. Paganini explains in a compact and easy-to-understand way how AI resembles gods and what questions such a belief raises. The New God is recommended for all those interested in the history of religion, religious philosophical considerations, and thought experiments [the patent absurdity of the underlying idea (gnostic cult-think), though, is this: there’s literally nothing transcendent or even remotely mystical about LLMs (commonly referred to as AI)—fifty-odd years ago, ARPANET was a top-secret US military-funded project run out of the Stanford Research Institute (long-form account via Wikipedia); known as ‘the Internet’ today and commercialised in the 1990s, The New God is actually a very, very material—and essentially materialistic—being (sic) that would neither exist without US defence spending (sic) nor the gigantic physical infrastructure on which its present configuration rests; so much so that The New God may be a whole lot of things, but it ain’t transcendent, let alone a spiritual creation].

Numerous Similarities Between Gods and AI

In her book, Paganini focuses on divine attributes and their backgrounds and draws parallels with various contemporary programmes that use AI. For example, she sees a similarity in the omnipresence of both God or gods and AI [apologies for the bullcrap here, but these are apparently very serious thoughts™ (but there’s so much to add in terms of nonsense) that, like Ms. Paganini’s underlying ignorance of the physical backbone and the energy demands of ‘AI’, furthermore fails to understand essential concepts of physics, esp. thermodynamics and the massive waste associated with AI about which Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI (Yale UP, 2021) is essential reading; click here for a review praising the book as ‘a call to talk about power’, i.e., stuff that’s totally missing from Ms. Paganini’s thoughts™].

Using the AI app Rabbit R1 as an example, she explains her reasoning: ‘Just as amulets, small figurines of gods, or necklace crosses have functioned as an expression of divine closeness for thousands of years, it (Rabbit R1, note) embodies the promise: “I am always with you”.’ [here’s my take: this is so banal it boggles the mind; just imagine one (hopefully fictional) future—in The Terminator movie, humans created ‘god’ who then, in an essentially true Saturnian (occult) move, then turned on its ‘creator’: it’s an image befitting the most troubled humans, which apparently includes Ms. Paganini].

According to the philosopher, the omnipresence of AI is also reflected in the fact that it ‘will be increasingly present in all areas of our lives—be it in smart household appliances or personal assistants, medical diagnostics, or autonomous driving’ [here Ms. Paganini is denying human agency in favour of an allegedly ‘higher being’ that simply ‘knows better’: pray tell, was my Terminator reference that far off? If so, consider HAL 2000 from Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do it’].

From the perspective of the philosophy of religion, the key point here is that in the background of the belief in the omnipresence of AI is the human longing ‘never to be completely alone in a world full of uncertainties, questions and challenges, but to always have a strong—visible or invisible—companion at one’s side’ [this is both incredibly banal and stupid as it is insane: imagine, if you will, a philosopher (with pronouns on her website, no less) who argues (sic) in favour of having Big Tech corporations and their products always at your side: data protection, privacy, and the whole notion of individuality must go to satisfy this dystopian vision].

Omnipotent and Uncontrollable

While some comparisons are quite convincing, others seem a little more far-fetched. For example, the author compares the omnipotence of God, which for Christians and Muslims is also demonstrated by the fact that ‘God has the power to raise the dead’, with AI-based chatbots ‘that imitate the communication behaviour of deceased people based on existing conversations and texts’ [that’s—seemingly unwittingly on part of Ms. Paganini—quite an admission of the so-far passive nature of AI: there’s no creation going on, and ‘even’ so-called ‘hallucinations’ (AI just making up nonsense) may one day pass the smell test of sentience, but there’s so much more to the human condition (emotions, sacrifice, irrational behaviour, etc.) that ‘AI’ may imitate but will never be able to comprehend nor appreciate]

At this point, however, it becomes clear that she herself declared at the beginning of the book that she intended to approach the questions raised exclusively as a philosopher. At no point does Paganini discuss religious truth claims or theological considerations, but instead devotes herself to the desires and longings of people in the background [this is so comically absurd it’s almost funny: this being a review of sorts, the journo™ who penned it disregarded the introduction and started babbling, although that may be a fair reproduction of the book’s contents (also: how can one proclaim The New God™ without discussing religious truth?)].

Exclusive and Unattainable

She sees further parallels between God and AI, for example, in the attributes of omniscience, global availability, and the protective functions that AI fulfils through intelligent firewalls or preventative health tools [*bangs head on the wall*].

Furthermore, according to the author, divine transcendence [which, don’t forget it, is not discussed in the book]—that is, the ‘secret or mysterious character’—is similar to that of AI [huhum, seems like Ms. Paganini is paraphrasing Arthur C. Clarke’s third ‘law’: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’]. Both would entail ‘a (certain) exclusivity and inaccessibility’ as well as uncontrollability.

The fact that the author is well aware of the differences is shown by the comparison of religious fears with real fears of AI, such as the fear that ‘the use of AI-assisted weapons will lead to even more cruel wars’ [The Terminator, anyone?]. These fears have nothing to do with a diffuse fear of the divine. And yet, according to Paganini, there is a parallel here too, as other comparably diffuse fears can also be found with regard to AI.

An Invitation to Join In and Think Further

In her book, Paganini goes into detail about different polytheistic and monotheistic images of God and also addresses what they say about the image of man and his understanding of values, such as justice.

Even if not all comparisons between God and AI or different rituals are equally convincing, her book nevertheless encourages us to think about the human search for meaning, concepts of God, and the relationship between humans and AI.

The final chapter shows that The New God can also be read as an invitation to think [no shit, eh]. In this chapter, Paganini takes a ‘look into the future’ and refers to all the unanswered questions that AI and its—responsible—use entail [a small feat, accomplished, seemingly, with great ease on 192 pages].

One of the most controversial is probably the one that also reveals the ‘political dimension of the spiritual’, as Paganini writes: the question of

whether AI is a deity with emancipatory potential that will help the voices of the powerless to be heard and the situation of underprivileged groups to be taken seriously, or whether it will instead consolidate the power of the powerful and increase the misery of the wretched.

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Bottom Lines

I’m sorry to make you read this nonsense.

I’ve not read the book and I can’t say I’m going to—the review is too convoluted and, frankly, displays the insanity at the core of Ms. Paganini’s thinking (sic).

The most troubling aspect, to me, is the notion that, once again, a state broadcaster is pushing this kind of nonsense on the unsuspecting readership. The book (review) doesn’t merely reek suspect, there’s so much gnostic wizardry dripping from these lines, it boggles the mind.

Computers, the internet, and AI are literally a deus ex machina, a man-made concoction that is elevated to the status of a deity.

Even the most superficial comparisons to Creation shows the banal, absurd, and utterly insane qualities (sic) of the gnostic worldview espoused, no less, by a Ph.D.-holding adjunct professor of philosophy and religion (U Innsbruck, Austria: faculty profile) and—big surprise (not) here—a local politico™ for the Greens in Natters, Austria. Here’s ab it more about the author from her (sic) German-only Wikipedia profile:

She initiated the open letter ‘Aus der Mitte der Gesellschaft’ [trans. From the Centre of Society], which was distributed via OpenPetition from April 2023, in which the signatories called on ‘politicians, the media and ultimately everyone’ to address the motivations of the Last Generation…

Academic Career

Paganini has been an research and teaching associate [Assistentin] at the Institute for Christian Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck since September 2010. Since 2013, she has been a guest lecturer at the universities of Milan, Athens, Zagreb, Limerick and Brixen, among others. In 2018, she completed her habilitation in philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy…In the academic year 2019/2020, she held a philosophy professorship at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Erfurt. In 2021, she took on a deputy professorship [apparently a thing; it’s a visiting professorship] for media ethics at the Munich School of Philosophy. After this position expires, she will teach as a Privatdozentin [adjunct assoc. prof., albeit without regular university employment] at the Institute for Christian Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck.

Yet another Christian™ expert™ who professes a quite different faith—gnostic mysticism, the ancient desire of Man to become God.

At the same time, she’s also denying the natural order of humans having dominion over the Earth (Creation), as for instance this snippet—tellingly, issued on 24 March 2025 during Lent—shows:

Jesus doesn’t seem to care whether the animals he has startled will hurt themselves as they run down the narrow alleyways of the Temple Mount in panic.

Not much has changed since then. Animals are still seen by most people as a ‘resource’, for food, clothing or research. Their suffering plays no role. Hardly anyone thinks about their dignity. And that will probably remain the case this Easter. The animal is good for the festive roast, not for understanding what responsibility for creation could mean in an encounter with it.

As far as I’m able to tell, Ms. Paganini is trying to have her cake and eat it, too: if Creation gave Man dominion over the Earth, there is a clear hierarchy that, courtesy of that above thought™ alone, must be contradicted, i.e., the divine wisdom of ordaining Creation thus is—false and wrong.

I’m not in favour of cruelty against animals (we own livestock), but this denial of God cloaked in the veil of faith reeks of a good many things—e.g., blasphemy, idolatry, and heresy, to cite a few—but it ain’t in accordance with Scripture.

Hence, the notion that the state broadcaster pushes that kind of gnostic nonsense, no less during June, is to me quite telling: the war on Christianity intensifies.

And then there’s the entire angle of fetishism (idolatry) of human-made stuff (the internet/AI), which is repeated ad nauseam and functions, technically speaking, as a kind of offering: power stations are required to fuel the mad dash of so-called ‘AI’, which, in the logic espoused by Ms. Paganini, is tantamount to sacrificial offerings to Man’s own Creation™.

The irony here is, of course, that the Internet/AI is actually not merely a product of the human mind, as Ms. Paganini infers, but a physical thing—the Golden Calf of old.

I do take solace in Matthew 9:17:

Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.