Parallel Entities, Divergent Reactions

In our modern pursuit of knowledge and guidance, we've collectively turned toward an intriguing, omnipresent entity called artificial intelligence. This entity holds vast knowledge, accessible in various iterations, to individuals across the globe. When faced with questions or dilemmas, we eagerly seek its counsel, anticipating answers that satisfy our needs or sometimes receiving ones that fall short. Its power is immense, its reach universal, and its ethical implications profoundly debated. The educated and privileged eagerly embrace AI, celebrating its potential and willingly sharing their most private thoughts, ambitions, and curiosities. Yet, we don't truly understand how AI works at its core, prompting experts to work on explainable AI.

Isn't it fascinating how closely this mirrors another much older entity called religion? For millennia, religion has similarly been a vessel holding humanity's collective wisdom, knowledge, and historical understanding. Distributed relatively evenly across societies, religious texts have offered answers and guidance for daily life, ethical dilemmas, and existential questions. Like AI, religion's ethical implications and origins spark intense debate. Likewise, spirituality remains mysterious to us, with its true mechanisms and nature elusive and often beyond empirical grasp.

However, a striking difference emerges in how these two entities are received by the privileged and educated. While AI garners excitement and enthusiasm from these circles, religion often encounters skepticism or outright dismissal. Despite their analogous roles as central knowledge holders and guides for humanity, the modern educated class's perception diverges sharply.