Christianity and TESCREALism Are Merging in the MAGA Movement

Yes, seriously.

“If God manifested himself as a human in the form of Jesus Christ, then why not as a posthuman in the form of superintelligent AI?” — quoted here.

The MAGA movement is birthing a new monstrosity: a syncretistic amalgam of Christianity and TESCREALism — specifically, their end-times narratives. Skeptical? Sure, you should be. But there’s a heap of accumulating evidence that this merger has already commenced, and my guess is that it will continue apace in the coming months and years.

On the one hand, Christians are beginning to integrate key aspects of TESCREALism into their religious worldviews. A growing number explicitly see superintelligent AI as somehow linked to the Antichrist, while a whopping 77% of pastors surveyed affirm that God can work through AI. On the other hand, MAGA TESCREALists like Elon Musk are starting to embrace aspects of Christianity — once an “atheist icon,” Musk now says that he’s a “cultural Christian.”

In my newest article for Truthdig, titled “Machine Learning MAGA: Rise of the Christian Cyborg,” I explore this fusion of eschatologies in some detail, noting the striking similarities between the narrative structures of TESCREALism and Christianity. In a sense, the TESCREAL narrative just is the Christian one with a few minor differences. I have been meaning to write this article for a while (and another focused on how cultish EA and Rationalism are; perhaps I will write this once Yudkowsky’s book promoting AI doomerism is published this September) — and I think it fits nicely with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s recent piece in The Guardian on “end times fascism.” If you haven’t read that article by Klein and Taylor yet, you should!

I’d love to know what you think about my argument: what am I missing? Which claims do you think miss the target, and which strike you as interesting and on-point? Do you agree that these ideologies are merging and will probably continue to merge in the future? What frightens you the most about this new monstrosity of end-times fervor, built upon fantasies of paradise made possible through advanced tech like AI?

Let me know below or on (ugh) Twitter, where I’ll be posting a long thread on the topic! I hope everyone is well.

(Image from Truthdig.)