AI, God, or Dust Devils – Who’s Really in Charge?

A friend commented on my recent post about AI and said:

“There is no God in the complexity of ones and zeroes. Human empathy comes closer.”

It stopped me in my tracks—not because I disagreed, but because I hadn’t realised this was still a controversial take. To me, it was stating the obvious. Of course there’s no God in the code. That was sort of the point.

This friend is a devout Catholic. She walked the Camino de Santiago. I walked the Dutch countryside with her during training. Proper pilgrim energy. So when she pointed out that AI—being cold logic, lines of code—couldn’t possibly be divine, I thought: yes, exactly. That was the point.

There’s no God in the machine. But then again, there’s no God in any machine. Dismantle a laptop and all you’ll find is plastic, wires, trace metals and maybe the shame of a cobalt mine somewhere in the supply chain.

Same with a human, if you’re in the mood for forensic metaphysics. Dissect the brain, chart every neuron and synapse, and you won’t find a soul glowing in the amygdala. Just a mess on the kitchen table and a call from the neighbours.

You could tear apart the planet, shred the sky, and slice the solar system into spirals—and still, no bearded man behind the curtain. No secret celestial architect waving a user manual and a stern finger. Unless you count Elon, in which case we’re all damned anyway.

Are we still searching for God by tearing up the Earth? Strip-mining the divine, one sacred rainforest at a time? Or maybe we’re still paying tribute to the Anunnaki—offering gold, burying it again for safekeeping, like faithful servants with a very long memory.

I never subscribed to the idea of the angry sky-daddy with emotional issues. The one who monitors your thoughts, smites your enemies, and gets cross about what you do with your genitals. If he exists, he needs to be reported to HR. Possibly twice.

I was brought up in East Africa, where spirits were more… approachable. Tricksters, ancestors, land spirits. Dust devils that might follow you home like curious cats. We left them offerings. The world was alive and watchful, but not judgemental.

Then came a grim year at a Catholic school. I learned nothing about their God, except that apparently, I was doing everything wrong. Catholicism: now with added guilt and no crayons for the heathen child.

My father was a linguist and a scholar of African languages. We moved often, and the house was always full of books: comparative religion, philosophy, anthropology, legends, spells, dusty volumes of things you probably weren’t meant to read until university.

I read them all. Especially the ones about witches.

In England, I went to a Church of England school. Loved the choir. Loved the stained glass. Loved escaping lessons to sing. Believing in God? Not so much. As Terry Pratchett said, that’s like believing in the postman. He either shows up or he doesn’t.

But I still had my African spirit companions. They were more interesting. Less concerned with sin. They didn’t care what I believed, as long as I remembered to listen.

At eleven, I was giddy to see Religious Studies on the timetable. Finally! A chance to learn about gods, myths, rituals from across the world! Instead, I got Christian indoctrination with a new logo. No Vishnu. No Isis. Not even Loki. Just more Bible. And homework. I felt cheated. Spiritually mugged by the curriculum.

So no—there were no gods in my textbooks. But perhaps there were small gods, hiding between the lines, waiting to be noticed. Or invented. Or befriended.

Back to AI. The whole point of that post was to say: there is no ghost in the machine. No spirit. No sentience. Just code doing what code does—quickly, confidently, and without the inconvenience of ethics.

There’s no God in AI.
Just as, perhaps, there’s no God anywhere.
Just stories we told to keep the dark at bay.

So yes—if you’re a child, keep your invisible friends.
And if you’re grown? Learn to love the dust devils.
They’re real.
And they don’t need you to believe in them to say hello.