God

Something weird is happening in the world of AI. On Jesus-ai.com, you can pose questions to an artificially intelligent Jesus: ‘Ask Jesus AI about any verses in the Bible, law, love, life, truth!’ The app Delphi, named after the Greek oracle, claims to solve your ethical dilemmas. Several bots take on the identity of Krishna to answer your questions about what a good Hindu should do. Meanwhile, a church in Nuremberg recently used ChatGPT in its liturgy – the bot, represented by the avatar of a bearded man, preached that worshippers should not fear death.  Elon Musk put his finger on it: AI is starting to look ‘godlike’. The historian Yuval Noah Harari seems to agree, warning that AI will create new religions.

We descended, one weary traveler at a time, down an ancient stone staircase that winds underneath one of the oldest churches in the world. When we arrive in the tiny grotto, we sing Silent Night, our faces dimly lit by the light of a single lantern. This is where many believe a peasant couple, traveling for the Roman census, gave birth to the baby Jesus as described in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel. The Church of the Nativity, commissioned around 330 AD by Constantine, was destroyed by an invading army in 529 AD and then rebuilt by Justinian. Situated in perhaps the most highly contested piece of real estate in the world, it hosts millions of pilgrims every year. This would have been a surprise to the Bethlehem of Jesus’s day.

The support group groupies have issued another ban. They have attempted to slap an exclusion order on another long-standing member, in addition to the one they have meted out to my friend, the bricklayer. This latest victim hasn’t been to a meeting in Surrey for seven years because the last time he went, the local area committee accused him of something so Orwellian it was impossible for him to do anything other than leave. They accused him of believing in God too much. During a ridiculous row over whether members should be forced to applaud the giving out of sobriety chips, this fellow wouldn’t back down in his belief that they should not be forced, because where was God in that sort of regime?

The number of Americans who believe in God has reached an all-time low, according to a Gallup survey that’s been tracking our nation’s “values and beliefs” since 1944. For a God fearin’ woman such as myself, it’s a disheartening statistic. But we are told never to abandon hope, and recent events — the Supreme Court rulings against abortion and in favor of prayer, a million swing voters switching their registrations to Republican, Keeping Up with the Kardashians finally airing its last season — betoken a more God-centered future. Gallup reports: The vast majority of US adults believe in God, but the 81 percent who do so is down six percentage points from 2017 and is the lowest in Gallup’s trend.

Usually, Cockburn is somewhere on the pessimistic side, talking about how so-and-so isn’t good, how who-knows-what is corrupting society. But today he's feeling nice for once. Mark Wahlberg, in a recent Instagram video, congratulated his son Michael for getting confirmed and praised other young people who want to serve God by way of the Catholic Church’s teachings. And it's got Cockburn feeling light. “Congratulations to my son Michael on making his confirmation,” Wahlberg said. “All the young people out there who are confirmed and taking their relationship with the Lord into their adulthood, what a commitment you guys have made.

Got slightly wrecked over the bank holiday weekend and had hoped to kind of glide through the early part of the week without too much requirement for that bane of the columnist, research – looking stuff up, talking to people, etc. But I crawled downstairs on Tuesday, switched on the laptop and there was a message bearing the address s.fidelis@almighty.com: ‘Hey Rod, I might have something for you. Give me a call x.’ I hadn’t heard from Semp for three or four years, when he was a canny and ambitious junior press officer, helpful, disinclined to panic, never obsequious. Slightly grating Cardiff accent but other than that, a good sort. Now it seemed he was actually ‘Director of Communications’. For God.

Early in our marriage, my wife vetoed the idea of celebrating Christmas in the Alpine tradition: by having Santa Claus accompanied by Krampus, your friendly neighborhood ice-demon. Of course, Mrs. Davis was amenable to the idea of a horned monster beating our children with birch rods. At least when they’re naughty. Then she realized that, since neither of us are Swiss, it would technically be cultural appropriation. That was the end of that. Speaking of demons, here’s a little Christmas meditation for you: more Americans believe in the Devil than in God. According to a recent survey, 56 percent of us believe that “Satan is not merely a symbol of evil but is a real spiritual being and influences human lives.” That’s compared to 51 percent who believe in an all-powerful Creator.