THE DRONE, THE BEAST, AND THE DISAPPEARING SOUL

A Reckoning in Code

As AI begins to govern more than labor and law, world religions—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist—face a question long deferred: what happens to the soul when judgment is outsourced?

The drone did not waver.

It rose above the smoke-dark sky near Avdiivka, banking midair as data recalculated in real time. No pilot watched a screen. No commander reviewed coordinates. The machine decided—then struck.

No orders issued. No prayers said.

Just a conclusion, executed without conscience.

This was not an experiment. This was a precedent.

And far from the battlefield, across sanctuaries and temples, cathedrals and mosques, pulpits and prayer rugs, the same unspoken question is beginning to echo:

What is left of the soul in a world ruled by machines?

On June 3, Pope Leo XIV offered a warning, cited by RealClearReligion. He described artificial intelligence as a force “comparable to the industrial revolution,” capable of transforming the very nature of human life—and of stripping that life of its dignity if not governed with care (RealClearReligion, 2025).

But he is not alone in his concern.

Across religious traditions—from Torah scholars in Jerusalem to Buddhist monks in Kyoto to imams in Jakarta—quiet unease is becoming moral alarm. The question is no longer whether artificial intelligence can outperform human beings in calculation. The question is what remains sacred in a world where the machine is trusted to decide what matters.

The System That Judges Before You Blink

Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb,” a military initiative disclosed in spring 2025, relied on AI-powered drones to track and destroy Russian bombers. These drones did not wait for real-time human input. They identified, evaluated, and attacked without instruction. They were not tools. They were decision-makers.

This is no longer theoretical.

AI systems are now used in nearly every domain of human life. They determine who gets a loan. Who passes a class. Who is detained at a border. Who qualifies for a transplant. Who sees which news. Who is flagged for surveillance. Who is silenced.

And they do all this with no soul, no conscience, no capacity for repentance or mercy. Just logic, deployed at scale.

The Illusion of Mastery

Popular culture, of course, has not caught up. In Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the summer’s most watched film, a rogue AI called “The Entity” manipulates global systems. But Tom Cruise still wins. The machine, though powerful, is ultimately defeatable with courage, keys, and human grit.

It’s a fantasy. And more dangerously, it’s one we want to believe.

Because the truth is less heroic. The real Entity is not centralized. It doesn’t have a villain’s voice. It is ambient. Background. Ubiquitous. It doesn’t need to conquer us. It only needs to be easier.

And no religion, no tradition, is currently prepared for the consequences.

Can Conscience Compete?

At the heart of every major world religion lies a shared conviction: that human beings are moral agents. That we are capable of choosing between right and wrong. That there is something sacred in the struggle to choose well.

But AI does not struggle. It calculates.

Judaism speaks of yetzer ha-tov and yetzer ha-ra—the inclination toward good and evil—and the lifelong tension between the two. Islam honors the deliberative process of ijtihad, where scholars weigh law, context, and intention. Christianity teaches of conscience and free will. Hinduism and Buddhism ask adherents to contemplate karma, dharma, compassion, and intention over lifetimes.

None of these traditions assign morality to efficiency.

But that is what AI does. Not because it is evil. Because it is designed to optimize.

A drone does not hesitate. An algorithm does not forgive. A neural network does not believe in grace.

The Beast Without Teeth

The Book of Revelation’s “Beast” has often been dismissed as medieval allegory. But in 2025, the infrastructure of total control no longer looks like fantasy. It looks like interoperability. It looks like platforms, IDs, algorithms. It looks like a world where access to goods, services, employment, and communication depends on compliance with invisible code.

You don’t need a tattoo. You only need a digital profile that doesn’t conform.

And you don’t need to be Christian to see the problem.

What becomes of human value when a person’s worth is scored by a system trained on previous biases? What becomes of moral exception when the system doesn’t permit exceptions? What becomes of dissent when all your speech is filtered before anyone sees it?

What becomes of faith when machines are trusted to judge?

The System Eats Its Creators

Not even the church is safe. Nor the synagogue. Nor the madrasa. Nor the monastery.

Every religious institution now uses AI tools. Automated translations. Algorithmic outreach. Targeted fundraising. Predictive logistics. Facial recognition for security. Some even use sentiment analysis to shape sermons and outreach.

What begins as tool becomes platform. What begins as platform becomes norm.

And what becomes of a tradition when it can only speak within systems it cannot control?

Even Pope Leo XIV’s message was transmitted through platforms optimized for attention. Even the most sacred texts are now parsed by AI systems to enhance discoverability. The Word is not lost—but it is filtered.

And if conscience is filtered long enough, it forgets how to speak.

A Common Reckoning

This is not a call for panic. It is a call for recognition.

The war is not between religion and science. It is between the human soul and a system that no longer understands what a soul is. The machine does not hate God. It simply does not need Him.

The question is not whether we should ban AI.

The question is whether we will allow it to absorb every act of human discernment.

And if we do, then the question becomes much darker:

Will we even notice what we’ve lost?

Because religion begins in awe. In mystery. In tension. In the space between what is known and what is good.

That space is shrinking.

If there is to be a resistance—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or otherwise—it must begin not with dogma, but with refusal.

Refusal to forget what it means to be human.

Refusal to let silence be mistaken for agreement.

Refusal to let the machine decide everything—even if it can.

The drone did not wait. The question is—will we?