
Robot Priests Will Change Human Spirituality - mmonihan
https://onezero.medium.com/how-robot-priests-will-change-human-spirituality-913a19386698
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AnimalMuppet
What? No.

A real priest/minister/pastor/rabbi/imam is someone who... well, let's split
this into two possibilities.

Possibility 1: God is actually there, and has told us real things about
himself and how we are to relate to him. A real
priest/minister/pastor/rabbi/imam has _lived_ some of that, and can relate to
you as you try to live it, and hopefully help you. In contrast, a robot can
give you answers programmed into it by some Silicon Valley engineer.

Possibility 2: God is not actually there. All that spirituality is junk. The
only thing religion has is, maybe, some wisdom in how to live well. As I'm
trying to live life and run into challenges, a real
priest/minister/pastor/rabbi/imam has still lived some of those challenges,
and has some idea of how to live as a human being, and can maybe help me as I
try to do so. A robot, on the other hand, give me answers programmed into it
by some Silicon Valley engineer.

In both cases, the robot is less helpful, because it doesn't actually know
what it's like to _live_. But it's worse if case 1 is true. It's still worse
if I, the seeker (or whatever term) _think_ that case 1 is true, because I'm
just about dead certain that the robot _hasn 't_ lived the spirituality that
it's trying to help guide me to.

