Abstract
To speak of a religious robot might seem to be maximum silliness at the least, and downright blasphemous at the most, and so let me start this chapter with a little history before we get into the theological SF. In 1936 the English mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954) started what is today called ‘computer science.’ He didn’t actually call it that—the very first electronic digital computer was still almost a decade in the future—but Turing was a genius and he nevertheless quickly realized that a possible goal for the theoretical framework he had created was the eventual construction of an artificial (non-human) intelligence (AI). That is, the creation of an intelligent robotic brain. Turing’s AI work was parallel in time with the famous contributions of the MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894–1964): Wiener’s 1948 book Cybernetics, and then the 1950 book The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society in which he warned of the possible misuses of automata. Years later, in 1964, came his short work God and Golem, Inc., in which he commented “on certain points where cybernetics impinges on religion.” But it was Turing, not Wiener, who directly and enthusiastically embraced the concept of a thinking machine.
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- 1.
Turing’s pioneering 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers, …” is not easy reading. But, if you want to give it a try, a good place to start is with the following book-length expansion of what Turing wrote, with each line by Turing expanded into a quite long (and quite good) explanation: Charles Petzold, The Annotated Turing: a guided tour through Alan Turing’s historic paper on computability and the Turing Machine, Wiley 2008.
- 2.
A. M. Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Mind, October 1950, pp. 433–460.
- 3.
Jefferson’s talk, “The Mind of Mechanical Man,” was reprinted in the British Medical Journal, June 25, 1949, pp. 1105–1110.
- 4.
The novel (and the movie) had clear religious overtones, with the appearance at the end of the more-than-human “Star-Child.”
- 5.
Frank Tipler, The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead, Doubleday 1994, p. xi.
- 6.
See Asimov’s essay “Religion and Science Fiction,” his introduction to the story collection Close Encounters with the Deity, Peachtree Publishers 1986.
- 7.
In Jewish legends the word golem was applied to any mechanical device constructed to imitate one or more actions of a human.
- 8.
This is the first of the famous ‘three laws of robotics’ formulated in December 1940 by Isaac Asimov and his then editor at Astounding Science Fiction Magazine (today’s Analog), John W. Campbell, Jr who appeared back in Chap. 2. I’ll say more about the laws (and of the surprising literary classic that might well have been their inspiration), and of Asimov’s intelligent robots, in the next section. By the time Lewis wrote his story in 1994, the laws had become such an accepted part of the dogma of the SF genre that post-Asimov writers felt little need to explain them to readers.
- 9.
This is a variation of “Get thee behind me, Satan” (the rebuke by Jesus of Peter for refusing to accept that Jesus had to die, in Mark 8:33); in Lewis’ story it is used in its non-theological form to express the rejection of an unacceptable proposal.
- 10.
See, for example, Leonard Pinsky, “Do Machines Think About Machines Thinking?” Mind, July 1951, pp. 397–398, and W. Mays, “Can Machines Think?” Philosophy, April 1952, pp. 148–162.
- 11.
Here’s a ‘proof’ of the immortality of the human soul that may appeal to mathematical theologians. If A = B then of course 2A = 2B. Define A = ‘half alive” and B = “half dead,” and so we have A = B in the same sense that a half-full glass is also half-empty. Now 2A = “fully alive” and 2B = “fully dead.” Thus, 2A = 2B means to be dead is to be alive and so the human soul is immortal. QED. If you aren’t convinced by this, why not?
- 12.
This is a clear reference to the literary heritage of deus ex machina (literally, a “god out of a machine”). It found its origin in ancient Greek plays (particularly those of Euripides) where, when the twists and turns of a plot became so convoluted that there appeared to be no way out, a crane would suddenly appear over the stage and set a god down to put things right. This technique is, today, considered a bit of a cheat.
- 13.
See the essay “And It Will Serve Us Right,” Psychology Today, April 1969, reprinted (as “The Son of Thetis”) in Asimov’s collection Science Past—Science Future, Ace Books 1975.
- 14.
The penname for the British writer John Beynon Harris (1903–1969), whose SF novels have been made into some classic SF movies; The Village of the Damned (1960) and The Day of the Triffads (1963).
- 15.
‘Eando’ is the fused pen-name of the brothers Earl (1904–1965) and Otto (1911–1974) Binder.
- 16.
See Baum’s Tik-Tok of Oz (1914).
- 17.
This title is from the Old Testament, Psalm 8:4: “What is man, that thou is mindful of him…? ” The significance of the title will soon be clear. The story opens by quoting the three laws.
- 18.
This name was an ‘inside joke’ by Asimov, as one of his close friends was Marvin Minsky (born 1927), one of the early pioneers in artificial intelligence in computers at MIT.
- 19.
There is an amusing, subtle reference to Asimov’s “Reasoning” that many readers of “The Search for Saint Aquin” may well have missed (the two stories were written ten years apart). When the emissary and his robotic companion get into a philosophical discussion on robotic logical processes, the robot says “I have heard of one robot on an isolated space station who worshipped a God of robots and would not believe that any man had created him.”
- 20.
This is, of course, an ironic play on the name of the Church’s great thirteenth century intellectual, Saint Thomas Aquinas, famous for his multiple ‘logical proofs’ for the existence of God.
- 21.
This is a reference to C. S. Lewis’ humorous 1941 The Screwtape Letters (and its equally funny 1959 sequel, Screwtape Proposes a Toast). Screwtape, a senior devil who serves “Our Father Below,” writes friendly letters of advice to his nephew Wormwood (a junior demon-in-training) on how best to subvert a human soul.
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Nahin, P.J. (2014). Religious Robots. In: Holy Sci-Fi!. Science and Fiction. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0618-5_4
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