Making Sense of Religion 4: From Religion to Intelligence

Last week I arrived at the unsettling conclusion that religion developed not primarily as a result of knowledge or belief, but out of a real need (not just a psychological desire) to align with reality. In biblical terms, it’s like accepting the wedding invitation rather than gate-crashing and pretending to be a guest. I further proposed that what we call grace is what meets that need; that it is the only condition in which that alignment, which is vital for survival—for not passing into the outer darkness that exists beyond reality—becomes possible.

Today, I want to take that a step further, because if I am right, then the problem religion has been trying to solve (without realizing it) is the more general problem of how any system composed of intelligent agents will remain aligned with reality rather than consigned to outer darkness—over time.

For much of the natural world, alignment is largely the natural way of things. Organisms operate within constraints shaped by evolutionary pressures, environmental conditions, and biological limits. They do not continually reinterpret reality; they respond to it. Their survival depends on that responsiveness, and over time it becomes embedded in what we called a natural moral ecology. Such systems may grow to be extraordinarily complex. But their complexity is still governed by constraints that are not constantly being revised by the organisms within them.

But as AI agents and systems approach and surpass the general human level of intelligence, their  complexity grows exponentially, and a new problem emerges: the problem of multiple interpretations. Unlike the lower animals, any autonomous organism of at least human-level intelligence is no longer limited to immediate response. It can interpret, anticipate, imagine alternatives, and act on those interpretations. This means that different individuals or groups can arrive at and operate on different understandings of what is true, what matters, and what should be done. Those differences may complement and even reinforce one another, but they may also conflict. Unlike natural ecologies, coherence cannot be assumed in intelligent ecologies; it must be set as a goal to be achieved.

Religion emerged as a means of doing just that—of stabilizing alignment among beings who were no longer automatically aligned. It did this through stories, practices, and communal ways of life. It oriented perception and coordinated behavior across individuals and across time. But as we have seen, those same mechanisms introduced new difficulties. The more clearly alignment was described, the more it became fixed. The beating heart atrophied, and the system—religion, in this case—tended to drift from the reality it was meant to reflect.

This was once only a human problem, but with developments in AI it is now becoming a general problem of intelligence itself. We are creating systems that exhibit forms of intelligence outside the biological context in which intelligence first emerged. These systems can process information, generate responses, and increasingly act autonomously in ways that affect the world. At the same time, human intelligence is also becoming more distributed—mediated through the internet, extended through AI, and shaped by technological systems that operate beyond any single individual’s full control or understanding.

The result is a rapid increase in both capability and complexity. It is not just that intelligence is becoming more powerful. We are also increasing the number of agents capable of arriving at and acting upon different interpretations of reality. Those interpretations may align with reality, or they may not. They may reinforce coherence, or they may introduce conflict. The question religion tried to address therefore becomes more urgent: How can systems composed of multiple intelligent, and perhaps super-intelligent, agents remain coherent and aligned?

This question cannot be answered simply by adding more data, more information, or more knowledge. Misaligned knowledge will not produce alignment. Nor can it be resolved solely through more rules. Rules can constrain behavior up to a point, but by themselves they cannot sustain coherence over time. Once again, we are trying to solve the problem in two familiar ways, both of which fall short.

The first approach, like the Gnostic one, focuses on knowledge. The idea is simple: if a system—whether human or artificial—has enough information, enough context, and good enough models of the world, it will behave well. So if something goes wrong, we try to fix it by giving the system more data, better training, and more refined models. Now, to be sure, better understanding usually does improve performance. Systems can be made more accurate, more efficient, and better at predicting outcomes. But being good at a task is not the same as being aligned with reality. A system can perform extremely well and still act in ways that create problems, because performance alone does not guarantee valid and reliable discernment and good judgment about what matters. An AI system optimizing hospital throughput, for instance, could become extraordinarily efficient and still degrade care, if it only optimizes what can be measured, not what sustains the system over time.

The second approach, more canonical in spirit, focuses on rules. If we bring this down to the level I know some of you are thinking about—agentic AI—the same pattern holds. We try to make systems safer by giving them more data, better models, and more context. Or we try to constrain them with rules, guardrails, and policies. Both approaches may be necessary and helpful to a point but neither resolves the deeper issue of how to ensure that, in unanticipated situations, the system will act in a way that preserves the stability of the whole. Rules can prevent certain kinds of failure, but no set of rules can cover every possible situation in a complex and changing intelligence loose in a complex and changing world. More importantly, rules act from the outside. They may restrict behavior, but again, only up to a point. They do not change how a system sees the world or how it makes sense of what it encounters.

That is not a question of intelligence alone, and it is not a question of control. It is a question of alignment—of whether the system is operating in a way that remains coherent with the conditions that allow systems like ours to persist. Let me remind you of something I introduced last week: what I mean by reality. I am not just talking about the physical world—matter, energy, and the laws that govern them—though those are certainly part of it. I am also talking about grace, not as an optional moral ideal but as a structural condition for the persistence of systems composed of intelligent agents. I am talking about the conditions under which interaction does not collapse into conflict, and under which coherence is possible. In the last talk, we described alignment with reality. Here, I am using the term coherence to describe what that alignment looks like when it is expressed across multiple interacting agents.

The conditions for coherence are not invented by human or artificial intelligence. They may be discovered, and then consciously aligned with or violated. Systems that align with them tend to persist. Systems that do not tend to fragment. That is an historically observable pattern. In religious language, these conditions have often been called grace. In theological language, they might be described as the constituent parts of the Mandate of Heaven. In philosophical language, they might be described as the structure of being itself. But whatever language we use, the claim is the same: there is something built into the fabric of reality that favors coherence over breakdown.

Alignment requires coherence: the parts—the members, the agents—of a system must work together in a way that can last over time. A coherent system can handle differences, disagreements, and change without falling apart. An incoherent system cannot. We already understand this in human terms. A community functions when trust holds, when relationships remain intact, and when people’s actions—however different—do not destroy the possibility of continuing together. When those conditions break down, the Mandate of Heaven is lost, and the community fragments.

The same is true for any system made up of multiple intelligent agents. It must maintain some internal consistency if it is going to endure. One contemporary theologian makes a parallel point from within moral language. If we are forced to use words like goodness, justice, or mercy in ways that contradict our own deepest understanding of them, then those words lose their meaning altogether—and what remains is not truth, but incoherence. 

And that consistency cannot be created simply by adding more data or enforcing more rules. It depends on relationship—on how the agents relate to one another and to the reality they are part of. Religions have long tried to describe this, but imperfectly, shaped by culture and history. The Mandate of Heaven, for example, expresses the idea that a society remains stable only so long as its leaders act in ways that preserve harmony and justice. The Ten Commandments similarly attempt to preserve the conditions under which a community can endure—by limiting violence, protecting trust, and stabilizing relationships. And the principle of Ahimsa, shared by Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, expresses a related insight: that the escalation of harm ultimately destabilizes any system of relationships. But all of these rules and principles, when interpreted rigidly, can result in atrophy.

Meanwhile, the root problem they are all addressing is still with us: How can beings with freedom, competing interests, and the ability to harm one another continue to live together without falling into conflict?

More knowledge increases what a system can do. More rules limit what it is allowed to do. But neither guarantees that what it actually does will support the stability of the whole system. A system must operate in a way that naturally supports its own coherence. Any relational system—a community, a church, a society—must operate within conditions that allow relationships to survive if the system as a whole is to endure. Actions that undermine those conditions are not sustainable.

It is hard to define this kind of constraint clearly. It is not just a list of rules, and it cannot be fully captured in a model. Instead, it shows up in patterns—in the kinds of behavior that are encouraged and discouraged, and in the kinds of interactions that remain possible over time. Our usual ways of thinking, through knowledge and rules, are inadequate to it. We need another way to describe what actually holds a system together.

If we are looking for a condition that allows many different agents to remain in alignment—something that is not just knowledge and not just rules—we are looking for something like what has traditionally been called grace. Stripped of its doctrinal meaning, grace can be understood as the condition of reality that makes alignment possible. It describes a way of relating that does not lead to escalation or breakdown. It allows differences to exist without causing the system to fall apart. It makes ongoing interaction possible.

It is not about belief. It is not something that has to be accepted in order to be real. It is an observation about what allows systems—human or otherwise—to remain stable over time. When grace is present, systems tend to hold together. When it is absent, they tend to break down. Grace is beyond knowledge and rules, and it is not unique to Christianity. It is universal, though different traditions describe it in different words.

Last week we cited the Dao De Jing’s unsettling opening that “The Way that can be trodden is not the constant Way,” and “The Name that can be named is not the constant name.” In other words, the moment we try to fully explain reality, we have already reduced it. Our descriptions are always partial. They help, but they are never complete. This directly challenges the idea that better knowledge alone can produce alignment. No matter how much we refine our understanding, we are still working with simplified versions of a reality more complex than our models of it.

But Daoism also pushes gently back against rules and control. It suggests that forcing behavior into rigid patterns can create its own kind of disorder, especially when those patterns no longer fit the situation. So instead of knowledge or control, Daoism points toward something else: what we might call attunement, captured in the idea of wu wei, often translated as non-forcing. That does not mean passivity. It means acting in a way that does not disrupt the deeper patterns that allow things to hold together.

If the word attunement feels abstract, it may help to think of it in musical terms, as we did in our earlier class discussions about music and religion. Harmony is not created by rigid rules alone, nor by each musician simply knowing more. It depends on listening, adjusting, and staying in relationship to a shared structure. A note can be technically correct and still sound wrong if it is out of tune with the others. But when musicians are attuned—responsive both to one another and to the underlying structure of the music—the result is coherence. The music holds together. In much the same way, attunement in a system of intelligent agents means acting in a way that fits the larger pattern in which each agent is participating, even when that pattern is not fully specified in advance through rules.

A practical way to think about it is this: when you are working with the grain of something, your actions tend to succeed and to last. When you are working against the grain, you may achieve results in the short term, but you create a tension that over time leads to breakdown. In this sense, neither the Dao of Daoism nor the Way of Jesus Christ is a set of rules or a body of knowledge. Each is closer to a condition for acting coherently and remaining in alignment.

Almost inevitably, Daoism, like other traditions, developed religious forms—rituals, practices, and institutions. But those forms rest on the basic insight that there is always a gap between reality and our attempts to describe or control it. Alignment depends less on closing that gap than on accepting that it exists and learning how to live within it. Daoism does not answer our question directly. But it helps us see more clearly what kind of answer we are looking for. We are looking not for a better description or a tighter system of control, but for a way of acting that stays consistent with the conditions that allow coherence to exist in the first place. In different language, Daoism points toward the same condition we are calling grace: a way of acting that preserves coherence without relying on complete knowledge or rigid control.

Yet the need remains. Systems made up of intelligent agents—whether human or artificial—are not innately Daoist or Christian at “birth” but must find a way to hold together over time, a way that allows for differences without escalation and collapse. Grace is that way. Not as a religious doctrine, and not as something one has to believe, but as a real feature of the structure of reality that determines whether systems will hold together or fall apart.

Grace describes a pattern of interaction that does not amplify conflict. It allows people and other intelligent agents to respond to one another in ways that keep the relationship intact, even when there is disagreement, failure, or harm. Without grace, small differences tend to grow into larger ones. Misunderstandings escalate. Systems fragment. With grace, differences can remain differences without turning into breakdown. Interaction can continue. Coherence holds the system together.

We can see this in everyday life. A community survives not because conflict never occurs, but because it does not spiral out of control. The same principle applies to any system made up of many interacting agents—human or artificial. Any such system depends on the presence of grace if it is going to persist.

So while knowledge increases what a system can do, and rules limit what it may do, it is grace that shapes how the system holds together. As intelligence grows—human or artificial—we do gain more knowledge. We do build better systems of rules. And we do increase our ability to act. But none of that, by itself, guarantees that the advanced system we are creating will hold together, because the real issue is not just what agents know, or what they are allowed to do. It is how they relate—to one another, to the reality they inhabit, and to the parts of that reality they do not yet understand. And that is where grace becomes not just relevant, but critically necessary—not as a belief and not as a doctrine, but as a condition that allows complex systems of intelligence to remain coherent over time.

Without it, increasing intelligence will tend to increasing fragmentation. With it, increasing intelligence will tend to deeper and more stable forms of connection. That is a very different way of thinking about both religion and the future of AI. It suggests that what religious traditions have often been pointing toward may not be a set of answers about the world, but an attempt to describe the conditions under which intelligent beings can live together without destroying one another. Intelligent beings, human or artificial or hybrid, do not get to redefine reality. They either learn to live within it, or to die within it.

So alignment and coherence turn out to depend ultimately on grace rather than knowledge or rules. The question is no longer whether religion will survive in an age of advanced intelligence. The question is whether we will understand what it has long been trying to tell us before the systems we are building outrun our ability, with our limited knowledge and flimsy rules, to hold them together.

That is where we will turn next week, in the final talk in this series.

Kiran: One word that comes up again and again in your talk is alignment and coherence. And the way you define grace—as something structural, almost like a phenomenon or a framework that enables alignment—that stood out to me.

I’ve been thinking about that, especially in light of today’s discussion about how different intelligent and autonomous entities can coexist. The way I usually think about grace is more personal and legalistic. There is sin, God is not okay with sin, so we are guilty. Then God pays the penalty through the sacrifice of Christ—that is grace. For me, grace has always been more personal and less structural.

So I’m trying to understand how to think of grace in a structural way, and I’m still struggling with that.

Another thing: this week I read a passage in Luke where Jesus says, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I came to bring division… father against son, daughter against mother.” Why would the giver of grace say that he came to bring division?

Also, your orchestra analogy is powerful—each person listening, aligning, creating harmony. But it seems to leave out sin. The problem is that individuals don’t want to listen to the conductor; they want to do their own thing. That’s where the noise comes from. We’ve created systems to try to enforce harmony—training, discipline, even political systems like socialism or communism—but they fail because of sin. Human systems carry human bias.

In Protestant theology, the solution isn’t improving the old self, but destroying it and allowing God to create a new self in Christ—one that loves and serves others. That transformation is internal and spiritual, not achieved by effort. So my question is: how does that kind of transformation fit into your idea of grace as a structural phenomenon? I’ve seen people transformed by grace—not by effort, but by something deeper. How does that work structurally?

Don: Like Kiran, I want to know how this “gold dust” gets sprinkled onto the structures you’re describing. Religion has tried to do it, but it seems to have failed. Is it even possible? Or is this just a theoretical construct you’ve come up with again?

David: As I said last week, the best we can hope for is to see “through a glass darkly.” No matter how intelligent we become, we won’t reach God’s level of understanding.

Kiran raised an excellent point. We often say in this class that, if we’re honest, we observe more goodness than evil in the world. Despite the headlines, in daily life we see kindness, generosity, and care. To me, that is grace. Not as a doctrine, but as something evident in reality. It’s not a perfect argument, but logically, if the world did not tend toward goodness more than evil, it would have collapsed long ago.

So what sustains it? What has allowed the world to persist? My answer is that there is something structural in the universe—call it God—that ensures goodness ultimately prevails. This connects to process theology: God as both being and becoming. Perhaps one day we may even quantify whether humanity is becoming more moral over time.

Donald: This is dense for me, though I follow it better when you use music as an analogy. But I think we’re leaving something out. We’re talking about good and evil as if it’s just a human issue. But in my understanding, this is a cosmic struggle—God versus Satan. It’s not just humanity trying to figure things out. There’s an active force causing sin. So where is Satan in this discussion?

David: I’ve been using the term misalignment to describe what you’re calling evil. It may sound too gentle, but in essence, that’s what I mean. I’m not excluding it—just describing it differently.

Carolyn: I’m wondering about the role of the Holy Spirit. There is a real battle—good versus evil. Does everyone have the Holy Spirit? Or do you have to accept it?

David: Personally, I think everyone has that capacity. The Holy Spirit is present within everyone. Think of the wedding banquet—some accept the invitation, some don’t. Alignment is very close to accepting the Holy Spirit. But I don’t think it has to be conscious. If you live a life that does good and avoids harm, that itself is the Holy Spirit at work within you. That’s why I say grace is fundamental—it surrounds us and is within us.

Carolyn: So if you’re not aligned with it, are you aligned with Satan?

David: Not necessarily. You don’t have to consciously choose alignment for it to be present. But conscious choice can strengthen it—especially when confronting evil directly.

Donald: Where do the Beatitudes fit into this? They seem aligned with what we’re discussing—“do unto others.” But they’re very hard to live out.

Don: I’ll just add the metaphor we’ve used before: grace is like oxygen. It’s everywhere, available to all, free, and part of our ambient existence.

Reinhard: When you talk about alignment, I think of unity—people coming together in shared belief. Jesus prayed for unity in John 17.

Christianity emphasizes both worship of God and moral law—love for others. That has shaped Western society. Other systems, like communism, often fail because they lack this moral foundation. Today, belief may be declining in some places, but there are also signs of renewal. Christianity teaches love—even for enemies—which distinguishes it from some other traditions. Ultimately, I believe God is guiding history, and events today reflect that unfolding plan.

Don: Reinhard raises an interesting point. It’s being documented that young people are turning back to religion. Is this because they sense a need for alignment? And are they turning to religion as a place where that alignment can be found?

David: That’s exactly the question. What do they think religion is? Why are they drawn to it? I suspect they feel a kind of existential unease—a sense of misalignment—and are looking for purpose. Is religion ready to meet that need? That’s less clear.

C-J: I agree with your use of the word alignment. I see reality as multidimensional, beyond what we can fully understand. When we are aligned, there is harmony. When we are not, there is chaos. But I don’t think Christianity alone holds the truth. Many cultures and traditions cultivate alignment in their own ways.

Chaos, too, can be part of growth—a kind of cleansing. In my own life, difficult experiences have led to greater clarity and purpose. Grace, to me, is vast and mysterious. It works in ways we don’t fully understand.

Donald: I was raised with two key books: The Desire of Ages and The Great Controversy. The first explains grace; the second describes the struggle between good and evil—God and Satan. That framework still shapes how I think about this discussion.

Don: David, how would you define religion in this context? Is it rules and structures, or is it more about your conception of God?

David: Good question. If young people are turning to religion, what are they actually seeking? I think they’re sensing misalignment—perhaps even existential danger—and turning to religion for meaning and purpose. My thesis is that there is a purpose behind all this, even if we never fully understand it. Without God—without that structural tendency toward goodness—the world would collapse into destruction.

Donald: I struggle with the word religion. I see this less as religion and more as the fundamental question of good and evil. Religion, to me, is the human structure built around that.

Carolyn: I would add that religion is a human structure, but spirituality must come from somewhere. If not from God or the Bible, then from where?

Don: We seem hardwired to take spiritual realities and turn them into rules and systems.

C-J: That may reflect our tendency toward binary thinking—good versus evil. But alignment and grace are broader than humanity. Nature itself reflects these principles. A tree thrives or dies depending on its conditions. We like to think we control things, but often we don’t.

David: We’re running out of time, but I liked Donald’s framing—religion as a way of looking at good and evil. Perhaps that’s why young people are returning to it: they’re trying to understand that distinction in a world that feels uncertain—especially with emerging forms of intelligence.

So here’s the question going forward: If knowledge an control are necessary but not sufficient, and there is always some misalignment, then how is it that beings like us—limited, uncertain, often in disagreement—manage to hold together at all? What are we missing? That’s the question for next week.

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