"Dataism" is the new religion

Dataism is the new religion. The worth of every animate and inanimate entity is measured by its capacity to process, retain and transfer data. According to Yuval Harris, the author of the highly acclaimed book “Homodeus”, Data is god. You might think the internet and social media has occupied a large part of your social life, but that would the least of your worries in the near future.

You now see yourself as a customer/subscriber of the world wide web. But when the world wide web gains consciousness and becomes a nearly sentient being knowing you more than you know yourself, you and all humans would become small processing chips in the highly intricate system that would run “the internet of all things”. You would no longer be a customer or subscriber of the web but an insignificant spare part with no inherent value. This may seem very far fetched to you now, but there are people working day and night to make it happen.

Yuval Harris forecasts, when the info-tech and biotech advancements reach their peak, they would merge on the human body. Humans would have so many electronic chips inside them like the heart pacemaker, the optical recognition system in their eye, the electronic payment chip in their hand, the small memory chip under their cerebrum it would be impossible to tell whether they are humans or machines and this is actually happening today.

The author relegates this as a minor evolutionary step, he proposes when a genetically advanced human being is merged with nanomachines with a processing capacity of a supercomputer we would have a new race of humans we cannot even fathom to call homosapiens, but rather a Homo Deus, a man-god. This man-god would merge with another god called the internet. The race to become a god or create a god in one’s own image might sound all familiar to you.

Lucifer was cast down from the heavens because he wanted to be God. Humans were trying to create gods, myths about gods, Idols and temples since the beginning of the pre-historic period. This new tech gurus are trying to create tech temples and preach the gospel of dataism unabashed. The author of the above book tells us that these people intentionally use Messianic diction to advance their cause in their electronic books, highly packed seminars, and TedX talks. But the ambition to be a god or create a god through myths and Idolatry has failed all the time.

Humans had great civilizations like Egypt, Incas, Mayans, Babylon, Persia, Greek, Rome, Axum and etc. that had kings with a status of divinity. These kings were at some point considered human gods, you were supposed to prostrate yourself before the Pharaoh when you appear before him because he was considered god. All this civilization lay in ruins now. But we still want to be gods or create one. I wonder why and how did this ambition arise in us? Why do we want to be gods so helplessly? Is it because we want to make up for our scandalous fall from grace?

Ever since we were kicked out from the garden of Eden (the presence of Divinity in its entirety) we are trying to get back to that place of Godliness through so many shortcuts, but all have failed. Amazingly the way, though simple, has himself dwelt among us as human carpenter and rabbi to tell us how to get back to that place. He told us in very clear terms and with great certainty our problem with the true God and how we can regain our status as sons of Divinity. It is either its simpleness or our wickedness that is hindering us from understanding it.