Of Robots And Their Religion
I’ll just say it. Robo is Jewish.
Technically.
The short version is that granting Robo American citizenship and human rights was a very controversial decision that was widely protested by certain groups, some of them religious. Robo converted to Judaism because some NYC rabbis expressed their support for him, probably due to good will (Robo is largely beloved by his fellow New Yorkers) and that the idea of a golem kind of prepared them for something like Robo anyway. It’s not that Jews are automatically super awesome and open minded while Christians are always a bunch of jerks, it’s just that it makes more sense for some religious leaders who were already sympathetic to and familiar with Robo to accept his new status than it would be for conservative Christian leaders from six states away in 1940. Robo would have been aware of how he was treated by these groups, and to kind of immaturely thumb his (nonexistent) nose at one, he joined the other.
That’s the “official” story anyway. Honestly, I just thought it’d be hilarious to have a Jewish robot.
For the record, Humanistic Judaism is probably the closest thing to his approach to the religion. He is, by no means, devout or practicing. He does manage to keep kosher, but that’s largely a result of never eating.
One might have a couple objections to this element of Robo’s life. Maybe something like 1) it’s stupid for a robot to adhere to any religion and 2) it’s stupid for a scientist robot to adhere to any religion.
To the second point, many scientists are, if not religious per se, then very spiritual people. One need look no further than Carl Sagan’s The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God for proof of that. By the way, read that book. Or anything/everything by Mr. Sagan.
I don’t find the first point terribly compelling though. The idea is that men look for gods to explain the mystery of (among other things) their origins. An intelligent robot would know his origin, “Scientists built me,” so there would be no mystery, so there would be no need for religion. Does that really hold up though? There’s no mystery to my origin. I was born. I know my makers just as the intelligent robot knows its makers. I fully accept as fact and understand the biological processes that made my birth and continued life possible just as a robot would accept and understand electricity and logic gates and whatnot. But if I told someone I believe in God, he wouldn’t say, “You’re an idiot, don’t you know your parents had sex?” because, clearly, religion provides one with more than an explanation for the mysterious — a sense of belonging, the comfort of tradition, ethical guidance, etc. Those elements of religion that appeal to intelligent humans would also appeal to robots whose intelligences operate like human intelligence.
That just leaves us with the God question.
If Robo believes in God, it’s probably something closer to Einstein’s idea of God than the more traditional view: an expression of the sum total of natural laws in the universe. That said, Robo’s seen enough weird things and walked along the razor’s edge of science so many times that he’s well aware of just how little we understand about, well, everything. I don’t think it’d surprise him if there was a more traditional supreme being somewhere out there, but he’d need some fairly extraordinary evidence before he could be compelled to believe it’s there. Robo appears to be agnostic.
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