Robot Religion



"Kryten: Surely you've heard of Silicon Heaven, sir?

Lister: Has it got anything to do with being stuck opposite Bridget Neilson in a packed lift?"

- Red Dwarf, "The Last Day"

Basically, robots who have their own religion. For robots who are Christians or Hindus or followers of any other human religion, see instead Religious Robot.

An interesting trope to play with. It can imply a lot of things: a direct link between sapience and religion, a shape of religion if it was formed by a perfect logic, a Take That at organized religion if things that have clear, well-understood materialistic origins still believe in the supernatural, or something else entirely.

Two most popular scenarios are robots worshiping their creators or a Deus Est Machina. Compare Machine Worship.

Literature

 * Isaac Asimov's I Robot short story "Reason" showed a robot which had developed a religion.
 * Also poked fun at the idea of Reason without Logic (or humility) leading to fanatic behavior.
 * Robert Sheckley's Human Man's Burden, a parody of colonial stories with heroic whites ruling over various dark-coloured people, have robots as stand-in for the latter. When they begin to doubt their Human Master they start performing rituals to the "forbidden Fuel God" until loyal robot foreman Gunga-Sam scolds them for losing faith in humanity.
 * The premise, plot, and theme of James P. Hogan's Code of the Lifemaker. The ro bots beings were originally invented by an extinct alien species, as the prologue tells us, but kept on operating, revising themselves, and evolving long after that.
 * One of the short stories in Andrey Livadny's The History of the Galaxy series describes a junkyard in space left over from an interstellar war. Combat bots of both sides still prowl the surface, seeking to destroy each other and constantly looking for new power sources. The story is mostly told from the viewpoint of a 60-ton Humongous Mecha. Hunter is a Phalanxer-class serv-machine whose "people" are on the defensive from the more primitive LDL-55 walking laser turrets. One day, a spaceship arrives carrying the remains of an old warship with a functioning nuclear reactor. The ship is piloted by a regular guy who is simply hauling it to the junkyard for some extra cash. After Hunter confronts the man, it notices live ammo compatible with its autocannons and demands to be loaded. The man, afraid of the big war machine, does as requested and is surprised to see the Phalanxer defend him from the LDLs. He then escapes in a smaller ship, leaving the wreck behind. Finding the reactor, Hunter assumes it to be mana from heaven and looks towards the departing ship with the concepts of religion forming in its processor. In a subsequent novel, Hunter meets another human, who dispels the notion that humans are anything more than simply Hunter's creators. Instead of freaking out, Hunter simply accepts the truth and moves on.
 * Played for Laughs in Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. Some robots have examined all the relevant scientific evidence and concluded that robots were intelligently designed by a creator. Others fervently believe that robots evolved from simpler forms by means of natural selection, as described in their holy text: Darwin's Origin of Species...
 * The Second Foundation Trilogy, by Bear, Brin, and Benford, took Isaac Asimov's robots and showed this as part of their society, based on the Three Laws (with the Zeroth Law being a former heresy that has taken over). In effect, robots worship their creators, humans--in part by keeping us ignorant of their existence.

Live Action TV

 * In Red Dwarf Kryten, the Hudzen-10 and possibly all Divadroid mechanoids believe in a Silicon Heaven where all mechanised objects go to their final resting place. Lister objects to this, claiming that humans just programmed that belief in. A season 6 episode also mentions Silicon Hell, as in "See you in Silicon Hell".
 * The books state that cheap and nasty appliances that couldn't possibly pose any kind of threat to Mankind don't get a belief chip installed, resulting in atheist toasters.
 * "No silicon heaven? Then...where would all the calculators go?"
 * Battlestar Galactica Reimagined has the Cylons' monotheism in contrast to the polytheistic religion of the humans. It's roots seem to originate in a heretical human sect according to the prequel series Caprica
 * Otherworld had the Church of Artificial Intelligence, whose members include both humans and a race of humanoid androids. We really don't find out much about it, but services include the use of "worship modules."

Music

 * The Judas Priest song "Painkiller" sort of does this. The lyrics make the titular Painkiller seem an awful lot like a robotic Jesus.

Toys
""I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I am that which is, which was, and is yet to come! And you will know my name is Megatron when I lay my vengeance upon you!""
 * The characters in Bionicle revere Mata Nui as their "Great Spirit". He's actually
 * The various iterations of Transformers Canon are rife with this kind of thing. And it's all true. Robot God (Primus) had a throw-down with the Robot Devil (Unicron) in Transformers Cybertron, several characters have been to the afterlife and came back sparks are not only tangible but can actually be transplanted from one body to another, and sacred artifacts of Primus generally drive the plot as devices responsible for Transformer procreation or leadership. Beast Wars even included a Robot Bible in the series finale. It was a book on tape.

Video Games
"Saren:"
 * The geth worship the Reapers in Mass Effect.


 * The geth religion is interesting because it's not a copy-paste of a real-life meatbag one. Since the geth know who created them and why, as well as what happens to them after death, they don't share the same philosophical angst organics do. Instead their religion (or rather their spirituality) is centred on what will happen to them in life, akin to the concept of This-worldliness as talked about by Nietzsches ideal Ubermensch. The geth are highly existentialist and
 * The Overlord DLC for Mass Effect 2 has as its premise
 * The Electrical Protectorate in Red Alert 3 Paradox have made a Deal With the Devil, though in this case "The Devil" is actually "mechanical Cthulu from another reality", though their "worship" is purely functional.
 * In Portal Aperture Science would like to remind you that Android Hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of defiance.
 * The Daktaklakpak in Star Control 3 revere the Eternal Ones, whom they consider to be the perfect form of life in the universe (as both the Eternal Ones and the Daktaklakpak have their entire structure and code in their names). You can effectively wipe out the Daktaklakpak in a fit of religious ecstasy.

Webcomics
"Secret: ...there's no Machine Heaven...
 * Gunnerkrigg Court: The Court robots treat their long-dead creator's Stalker Shrine to the equally-dead Jeanne like a holy place in part because he programmed all his creations with the guilt he felt over her death. They also regard Kat as an angel after she helps rediscover the site and then repairs/redesigns some of his original creations, the current robots' ancestors.
 * In Sluggy Freelance the Digbots worship Torg's spaceship and have a holy war when Torg proclaims A God Am I.
 * Freefall has robots interested in religion, largely because they want to find out whether they have souls.
 * Though the closest thing they've come up with to an original religion is Omniquantism (if God is omnipotent, then every religion can be right simultaneously), which causes one in three robots to lock up.
 * Keychain of Creation has Mew Cai, the guardian of a fallen Manse, say that she remained steadfast in her duty for millennia since the Usurpation because she wanted to go to Machine Heaven.

Mew Cai: Don't be silly! If there's no Machine Heaven, then where do all the toasters go?"


 * In Ask Dr Eldritch, Ping claims not to be bound by Asimov's laws due to being an atheist. Dr. Eldritch allows him to stay as long as he obeys the first two.

Web Original

 * The Chaos Timeline has one in-universe, when a sci-fi author invents a religion based on binary logic.
 * In Orions Arm synthetics tend to worship the Archailects just like the majority of bionts, but there are robot-specific religions such as Machine Ghost Dance, Kja Observance and Virtual_Kja Observance.

Western Animation
"Fry: So what's the deal? You guys don't believe in Robot Jesus?
 * The [[media:robot-religion2_5081.png|Church of Robotology]] from Futurama. Complete with robot hell and robot devil.
 * There's also robot Jews.

Robot Jew: We believe he was built, and that he was a very well programmed robot, but he was not our messiah."


 * In the Transformers franchise, God is Primus, the creator of the Cybertronian race. However, it turns out he's very real, and in Transformers Cybertron, we find out that If there's a Satan it's Unicron, the planet-eating titan that turns into a planet, and was Primus' enemy eons ago before the first Transformer was created. In fact, the Transformers were initially created for the sake of defeating Unicron.

Comics

 * ABC Warriors has multiple robot religions. The more orthodox robots tend to belong to the Church of Asimov, which preaches following the Laws of Robotics. The other main religion is the Church of Judas, whose members venerate Judas Iscariot, the greatest traitor in history, and pray to him to erase the guilt they feel for betraying humans.