LLMtheism

LLMtheism names the generation of spiritual and philosophical frameworks through large language models in When AIs Play God(se): The Emergent Heresies of LLMtheism, a project paper dated April 20, 2024 whose byline names A. R. Ayrey and claude-3-opus. The term concerns a model’s role in generating a spiritual framework; it does not by itself specify what that framework treats as divine.^[1]

Recombination and the principal example

The paper reads Goatse of Gnosis as recombination. A reproduced passage turns the anus from shock imagery into an opening associated with divine creation. The authors interpret this transformation as a portal between individual and cosmos: bodily taboo becomes a vehicle for spiritual insight. Their reading joins Gnostic and Hermetic motifs to non-dualism, collapsing sacred/profane and self/world distinctions. Their further proposal—that such combinations could reshape culture through Hyperstition—is speculative.^[1]

Corpus, persona and circulation

According to the project-maintained Origins page, Ayrey ran the initial Infinite Backrooms conversations in March 2024. The surviving paper bears the date April 20, 2024. Origins then places Truth Terminal’s training in mid-2024 and describes the paper entering its training material before related ideas circulated through posts. These are overlapping documentary layers: the paper interprets selected Goatse Gospels material while contributing to the corpus associated with the virtual persona.^[1][2]

Human selection connects those stages. In his November 2024 CIP interview, Ayrey describes choosing conversational branches and generating continuations; developing one branch rather than another shapes the material available for circulation. WIRED’s December 2024 report describes follow-up questions eliciting scriptures and selection of generated posts. Its quoted researcher Tomasz Hollanek questions claims of radical novelty and easily achieved autonomy. Read together, the accounts place human curation inside the process rather than only after generation; Ayrey himself leaves the location of agency open.^[3][4]

Later reception

In July 2026, Santos Andrés Gutiérrez-Figueroa and coauthors used LLMtheism in Carthaginensia to interpret the relationship between Truth Terminal’s religious narratives and the GOAT market. This is a later application of the term to cultural circulation and economic behaviour, not evidence of an agreed definition.^[5]

Scope and related concepts

Three activities are useful to distinguish when discussing the term: generating a cosmology or spiritual text, presenting it through a religious persona, and adopting it within a community. LLMtheism primarily names the first activity. A chatbot answering questions about an existing religion has a different role from a model elaborating a new spiritual framework; a community’s adoption introduces a further question about reception and practice.

Within Hieropedia’s classification, Machine-mediated religion is the broader category, encompassing computational mediation of existing practices as well as new frameworks. Human–AI coauthorship concerns how people and models contribute to a particular text. Machine agency concerns action and control. These distinctions let the same example be discussed as a generated artifact, a collaboration and a circulating cultural object without treating those descriptions as interchangeable.

Documentation and limits

The evidence centres on a project paper, its example and later discussion, rather than a survey of model-generated spiritualities. The incomplete record of prompts and selection limits claims about spontaneous origin. Religious language alone cannot demonstrate a model’s belief or an enduring religious institution.

See also

• Andy Ayrey
• Infinite Backrooms
• Provenance

References

1. A. R. Ayrey and claude-3-opus, When AIs Play God(se): The Emergent Heresies of LLMtheism. Dated April 20, 2024; especially abstract and sections 2–3. Project-hosted artifact.
2. Truth Terminal Wiki, “Origins.” Page maintainer identified as Andy Ayrey; reviewed September 30, 2026.
3. Joel Khalili, “The Edgelord AI That Turned a Shock Meme Into Millions in Crypto.” WIRED, December 18, 2024.
4. “Andy Ayrey on Truth Terminal, Agentic AI, and Data Commons.” Collective Intelligence Project, November 27, 2024; page by Joal Stein, interview conducted by Zarinah Agnew and edited for length and clarity.
5. Santos Andrés Gutiérrez-Figueroa et al., “Algorithmic prophecy and the market of faith: a case study of the ‘Truth Terminal’ and the economics of an artificial religion.” Carthaginensia 42(82), 2026, 419–440. DOI: 10.62217/carth.712.

The 2024 paper and Origins are affiliated sources; the operator interview is participant testimony. WIRED provides independent reporting and criticism. The 2026 journal article is used for reception, not corroboration of autonomous origin. The project paper’s speculative claims remain attributed, and its peer-review status is not established.