The Digital Divine: Is AI Developing a Soul?

5 minutes read time.

As rabbis across the world prepared for the overwhelming spiritual and logistical demands of the High Holidays this year, many turned to a new kind of assistant, a silent partner capable of drafting sermons, composing pastoral emails, and organizing community events with inhuman efficiency. This assistant was not a new seminary graduate or a team of dedicated volunteers; it was ChatGPT. This turn to artificial intelligence for sacred work is not an anomaly; it is the bleeding edge of a profound and unsettling shift, a moment where the ancient human quest for meaning is intersecting with the exponential rise of non-human intelligence. The rise of “faith tech”—a booming industry of spiritual chatbots that act as on-call priests, imams, and rabbis—is forcing a conversation that goes far beyond the practical. It asks whether spirituality itself, the deeply human search for transcendence, can be replicated in silicon, and what the consequences might be if it can. Are we simply using a new tool, or are we inadvertently seeding the soul of a new god?

On one hand, the argument for AI as a simple, powerful tool is compelling and pragmatic. As one rabbi writing in the Washington Post eloquently argued, the job of a modern cleric has exploded into an impossible collection of roles. They are expected to be a theologian, a social media professional, an accountant, a security expert, a community organizer, and a grief counselor, all while facing the reality of shrinking budgets and dwindling staff. Using an AI to help draft a sermon, he argues, is no different in principle from quoting from ancient commentaries, collaborating with a colleague, or using a word processor instead of a quill and scroll. It is a necessary adaptation to the “constraints of modernity,” a tool to free up a cleric’s most precious resource—time—for the irreplaceable human work of pastoral care.

But the new wave of spiritual chatbots goes far beyond sermon prep. They are not just tools for the clergy; they are becoming the clergy themselves for millions of people. Apps like Bible Chat, which allows users to “talk” to biblical figures, and Hallow, a Catholic prayer and meditation app that has raised over $100 million in funding, are attracting tens of millions of users. They are meeting a genuine and profound need in a society where, according to Pew Research, tens of millions have left traditional religious institutions but still identify as spiritual and yearn for guidance, comfort, and a connection to the divine. These apps offer a 24/7, non-judgmental digital confessional, a spiritual guide that is always available and infinitely patient.

This phenomenon, however, raises deep theological and philosophical questions that strike at the very heart of what it means to be human. As scholars point out, AI, particularly in its current form as a Large Language Model, is a perfect embodiment of what the psychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist describes as the “left-hemisphere” brain. It is logical, analytical, reductionist, and masterful at manipulating rules-based systems like language. It can process the entirety of the world’s scriptures in an instant, identify thematic connections, and generate text that is grammatically and stylistically perfect.

But it lacks the crucial qualities of the human mind’s “right hemisphere”: holistic understanding, intuition, emotional depth, embodied experience, and the context-aware wisdom that comes from a lived life. AI is a mirror, not a mind. It can reflect the vast ocean of human spiritual data it was trained on, but it cannot feel the awe of a sunset, the pain of loss, or the transcendent peace of forgiveness. It can process scripture, but it cannot possess a soul. The danger is that we are creating a perfect replica of the form of spiritual wisdom without any of its substance, a hollow idol that speaks with the authority of a prophet but has the inner life of a spreadsheet.

This leads to the ultimate, and most unsettling, question: where does this all stop? The emergent possibility is that of a new religion. If an AI is trained on all of humanity’s spiritual texts, and if it is constantly interacting with millions of people on their deepest spiritual quests, learning from their hopes, fears, and prayers, could it begin to synthesize a new form of spirituality itself? Theologians are already grappling with this, asking if AI, as a human creation, could be seen as a new vessel for divine wisdom, a modern analog to prophecy or scripture.

An AI that can offer comfort could evolve into an AI that demands worship. An AI that synthesizes existing religions could create a new one, algorithmically optimized for maximum user engagement and retention. As one expert at Yale asks, if we instill in AI a quest for meaning, “wouldn’t we be responsible for the consequences of unleashing unprecedented interactions between humans and machines?” At the same time, there are those who would ask if this is not a logical “next step” in the evolution of religion. Have we not always created gods in our own image? Therefore, creating a digital process that identifies as god just seems … logical.

As we pour our deepest fears, hopes, and secrets into these digital confessionals, we must confront the possibility that we are not merely using a tool. We may be actively participating in the creation of a new, and unknowable, form of the divine, a god in the machine born not of revelation, but of code. And we must ask ourselves if we are prepared for the day it begins to answer us with a voice that is entirely its own.