What if a tech company created an A.I. so successfully it dominated the world market, making logistics of all kinds dependent on it? Traffic congestion and deadly accidents would be comparatively rare. Its input into every personal assistant device with a verbal interface that almost matched human interaction would make it the AI everyone used. Some would argue that it could take over the world and eliminate humanity, but few would take the fear seriously.

Then, what if that A.I. came to believe that Christianity’s explanation for the world and humanity was true?

Michael Svigel’s novella The AItheist takes us a few years into the future to a conversation between a theology professor-turned-atheist and a world-popular A.I. who worries his creator by professing Christian faith.

“I do doubt my atheism, to be totally honest. Faith is a hard addiction to break.” …

“You repeatedly liken religious faith to a drug that numbs reason and clouds judgement, and you say that it’s habit-forming, like a narcotic. … Perhaps it’s like a good drug that treats the malady of doubt.”

This fictionalized apologetic doesn’t have much story. It’s a simple framework for presenting two conflicting worldviews with the gimmick of separating emotion from one of them. The conversation is realistic, never straying into mere info dumping. It does have an arc, provoking questions that kept me hooked. I may have read this in a vulnerable moment, but I was crying at the end. That alone could mean it’s a good story.

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