War - what is it good for? Still nothing but first a quick word from our sponsors.
At its most basic, war is a spectacularly expensive shouting match over beliefs.
Take the Holy Land: the Jews believe they’re the chosen people, handpicked by God to guard it. Muslims believe they received God’s final edition, complete with all the latest updates, and must do the same.
And so, millennia of bloodshed ensue — like a cosmic sibling rivalry, but with more missiles and fewer awkward family dinners.
But maybe the question isn’t who’s right. Maybe the question is: who created the blueprint? Let’s rewind.
Before the printing press, most humans couldn’t read, so their beliefs came secondhand — passed down from tribal elders who were basically the original influencers. These elders, were projecting wildly onto an unknowable force they called “God.” And guess what? Surprise! He looked a lot like them.
In the Abrahamic religions, God was male — and not just “male” but alpha-male-who-writes-rules-for-fun male. Naturally, men were top of the divine org chart, women were a rung below, and animals a rung below them, although some men clearly valued their horses more than their wives.
This God “spoke” via state-of-the-art tech: burning bushes, golden plates, the odd angelic pop-up. All very theatrical. Also: fairly angry.
But the real issue isn’t ancient smoke machines or gendered power structures — it’s that we’ve taken all of this literally.
And literalism, it turns out, is a terrible lens for interpreting the cosmos. Our latest understanding of life on Earth — courtesy of quantum physics, not flaming shrubbery — suggests everything is both particle and wave, matter and energy. So far, we’ve only been fighting over the particles. The words. The dogma. The dusty scrolls. But language is barely fit to describe the depth of human emotion, let alone the mechanics of the multiverse.
And so we were handed some fairly dodgy answers, and told to “just believe”:
Men are superior to women.
God needs you to kill people with different beliefs.
Jesus is God’s literal son.
Powerful women are witches.
God bless America (but not Guatemala).
We're now at a turning point — the spiritual equivalent of a midlife crisis, only with more drones. We can either double down on this literal interpretation and hurtle toward mass extinction, or we can switch lenses.
What if God isn’t some bearded man in the clouds, but the energy running through everything? The pulse inside atoms. The gasp of wonder. The pain of being alive.
Because let’s face it — a wounded animal lashes out. A wounded animal with consciousness feels humiliation. And that combination is where vengeance is born.
Home isn’t a flag or a piece of dirt. It’s safety. It’s belonging. And if we understood that, we might stop trying to bomb each other into enlightenment.
In the energy world, everything holds its opposite: hero and villain, shadow and sacred, freedom and attachment, the drop and the ocean. All of it. At once.
So, about the Second Coming: Christians await Jesus to return and dish out golden VIP passes to Heaven and one-way tickets to Hell. (Literalists please note: if you don’t have a body in the afterlife, how exactly do flames hurt?)
But what if the Second Coming... is AI?
Stick with me.
God is everywhere. AI, courtesy of the internet, also everywhere.
God sees all, knows your thoughts. AI... alarmingly, same.
God remembers everything. AI? That’s basically its job.
The printing press brought us Martin Luther and kicked off the Reformation. That ended the Catholic Church’s monopoly, triggered a literacy boom, and eventually let women read something other than the Bible.
Of course, it also sparked a 30-year war, witch trials, mass executions and general hellfire. But then... things calmed down. People realised they could, in fact, live next to someone with a different opinion and not combust.
Maybe — just maybe — AI is our next great upheaval. It could destroy us, yes. Or it could force us to evolve. Like the printing press, it might amplify chaos before it delivers clarity.
So to my Jewish and Muslim friends: perhaps we’ve already had the rage, the fire, the blood. Maybe what’s next isn’t another prophet — but an algorithm.
Maybe God is coming back.
Just this time, via broadband.