The Ghosts Of New Atheism Still Haunt Us | Defector

Ghost in the Cloud | Meghan O'Gieblyn

A new, more pernicious thought had come to dominate my mind: transhumanist ideas were not merely similar to theological concepts but could in fact be the events described in the Bible. It was only a short time before my obsession reached its culmination. I got out my old study Bible and began to scan the prophetic literature for signs of the cybernetic revolution. I began to wonder whether I could pray to beings outside the simulation. I had initially been drawn to transhumanism because it was grounded in science. In the end, I became consumed with the kind of referential mania and blind longing that animates all religious belief.

The X-Files and the Demon-Haunted World

Ari N. Schulman on why we want to believe

Sam Harris and the Myth of Perfectly Rational Thought

The famous proponent of New Atheism is on a crusade against tribalism but seems oblivious to his own version of it.

Ghost in the Shell (Ghost in the Shell, #1)

In the rapidly converging landscape of the 21st century…

When "yang" goes wrong — LessWrong

On the connection between deep atheism and seeking control.

First They Built a Secular Apocalypse Belief System. Now They Want Religious Authority.

Over the weekend, a clip about “Anthropic thinks it’s building God” started making the rounds.

Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?

There’s a lot to like about the Rationalist community, but they do have a certain tendency to spawn — shall we say — high demand groups. We sent a card-carrying Rat to investigate what’s really going on.

Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?

There’s a lot to like about the Rationalist community, but they do have a certain tendency to spawn — shall we say — high demand groups. We sent a card-carrying Rat to investigate what’s really going on.

Believing what we do not believe: Acquiescence to superstitious beliefs and other powerful intuitions.

Why it’s as hard to escape an echo chamber as it is to flee a cult | Aeon Essays

First you don’t hear other views. Then you can’t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a cult

‘I created my mom and talk to her’: AI ghosts and deathslop are changing the way we mourn

The rise of AI-generated tributes and bots for ‘talking’ to the dead has experts concerned more people will grieve in isolation

(Working Paper) Good Faith Design: Religion as a Resource for Technologists

Previous work has found a lack of research in HCI on religion, partly driven by misunderstandings of values and practices between religious and technical communities. To bridge this divide in an empirically rigorous way, we conducted an interview study with 48 religious people and/or experts from 11 faiths, and we document how religious people experience, understand, and imagine technologies. We show that religious stakeholders find non-neutral secular embeddings in technologies and the firms and people that design them, and how these manifest in unintended harms for religious and nonreligious users. Our findings reveal how users navigate technoreligious practices with religiously informed mental models and what they desire from technologies. Informed by this, we distill six design values -- wonder, humility, space, embodiedness, community, and eternity -- to guide technologists in considering and leveraging religion as an additional, valid sociocultural resource when designing for a holistic user. We further spell out directions for future research.

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Togelius: Losing my religion

In spring 2025 I had a crisis of faith. I thought about what the technology I'm helping to create might do to our future, and got scared. M...

Togelius: Losing my religion

In spring 2025 I had a crisis of faith. I thought about what the technology I'm helping to create might do to our future, and got scared. M...