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{{trope}}
[[File:machine-worship1_3242.png|link=Futurama
{{quote|''"To fail is to be flesh, only metal endures."''|'''The Dogma Mechanicus''', '''''[[
[[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul]], but for some, it sounds like a good trade. These characters admire the sleek lines and shining chrome of machinery, and idolize the purity of purpose and cold logic of artificial intelligences. Compared with the frailties of mortal flesh and the frivolities of human emotions, robots and AIs can come across as superior beings - after all, they are effectively immortal, and certainly don't seem to war amongst each other as much as humans.
These characters actually worship technology, robots, or artificial intelligences. Some even set out to "improve" themselves, replacing parts of their fleshy prison with cybernetic upgrades, intending to have as few biological components as possible so as to be closer to the machinery they idolize. Others may want to [[Ascend to
Compare with [[Cargo Cult]], in which technology is worshiped as a means to an end. See also [[The Singularity]], a possible outcome if a whole society joins the Machine Cult, and [[Unwilling Roboticisation]], when the mechanisation is forced upon people who refused it. When the ''AI'' is the one who decides [[A God Am I|it's a god]], you have a case of [[Deus Est Machina]]. Can become [[Nightmare Fuel|very, very scary]] if combined with [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul]].
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== Anime & Manga ==
* A mild example shows up in ''[[Ghost in
* ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' has an episode which evolves around a cult obsessed with [[Brain Uploading|uploading your mind into the internet]]. The cult leader thought this was a better alternative to life in the flesh because {{spoiler|he was hospitalized and totally immobile.}}
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In the [[Wildstorm]] Universe, the Church of Gort is a religion for cyborgs built on this very premise.
* This is the main source of the conflict between the Dark Legion and the rest of the Echidna species in [[Archie Comics]]' ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (
* Exemplified in ''[[Transmetropolitan]]'' by Channon's boyfriend, Ziang. Given Transmetropolitan's style, it's treated more as a sexual fetish than a religion, but for some people religion is an experience on par with sex. Ziang has copious wires hanging out of the back of his head, some cybernetics surely (possibly internal), and treats going "foglet" (uploading his mind into a nanobot colony) as a transcendent experience which he's been "ready for since his first orgasm."
* The Techno-Techno order of the [[Metabarons Universe]] are firm embodiments of this trope, under an organization explicitly derived from the Catholic Church, with a Techno-Pope served by Techno-Bishops and so on. They mix this with elements of the Harkonnen and the Tleilaxu, as despite their technical knowledge, they ultimately wish to gain more wealth and influence rather than foster innovation, understanding and creativity.
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== Film ==
* In ''[[9
* ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'': Protocol droid C-3PO ends up in the Ewok village, where at first the villagers worship him as if he was some sort of god.
== Literature ==
* The Construct Council in [[China Mieville]]'a ''[[Perdido Street Station]]''. A massive AI in a scrapyard with worshipers. However it still has to communicate through a dead body hooked up to it. {{spoiler|As they leave Isaac notes that for the spokesperson to work, they must have ''been alive'' when they were hooked up.}} Also in the gap between this and the sequels ''[[
* In [[Dune]] the backlash against this is the purported cause of the [[Robot War|Butlerian Jihad]].
** The jihad was when the AI's took over everything, turning people into basically janitor slaves to keep them running. To keep it from ever happening again, they abhor cybernetic implants and the use of any "thinking machines" to the point of breeding people to be logic engines.
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* Doctor Trintignant from [[Alastair Reynolds]]'s novella ''Diamond Dogs'', set in his ''Revelation Space'' verse.
** The Conjoiners from the same verse might be seen this way too, though they're more interested in intellectual rather than physical [[Transhumanism]].
* ''[[Star Trek Ex Machina]]'', a book in the [[Star Trek Novel Verse]], posits a faction like this in the post-colonization society of [[Cargo Cult|Yonada]], which makes a fair amount of sense. This faction regards Kirk as a "god-killer" for his frequent destruction of artificial intelligences, and interprets V'Ger as having escaped him, not understanding that V'Ger was only able to [[Ascend to
* In [[Ian McDonald]]'s ''Desolation Road'' there is a cybernetic cult. They get pretty disturbing...
* In [[Frederik Pohl]]'s [[Heechee Saga]], the big bads have it in for organic life. The decide to spare humanity {{spoiler|when they encounter a human who had her mind transferred to a Heechee computer form, not to escape death, but BECAUSE SHE WANTED TO BE A COMPUTER INTELLIGENCE. To the big bads, this meant humans had potential.}}
* The ''[[Berserker (Literature)|Berserker]]'' is a series of space opera science fiction short stories by American author [[Fred Saberhagen]] in which robotic self-replicating machines intend to destroy all organic life. The machines are known as Berserkers. Most are giant spaceships the size of Manhattan Island. There are a very few people who actually worship them.
* In the novel of ''[[
* The Machinists in ''[[Broken Sky]]'' have all augmented themselves with machinery in order to better calculate and build, while becoming closer to the machines they create. Also [[For Science!]].
* The future society in Aldous Huxley's ''[[Brave New World (
== Live Action Television ==
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* The Borg in [[Star Trek]] believe their machine/flesh combo platter form is "perfect". The offshoot who left the Collective to follow Lore are trying to achieve a 100% machine form.
* This was the original rationale for the evolution of the Cybermen in ''[[Doctor Who]]'', where a race on a dying planet began replacing their bodies with machines to survive, then decided to chuck out their emotions as well later on. Over the course of the series this got [[Flanderization|forgotten]] and the [[Lost in Imitation|new series Cybermen]] are examples of [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul]] instead.
* In one episode of ''[[Captain Power and
{{quote| "Chapter 4: And the Machine was given unto Man. The Machine was perfect of line and elegant of form. And the Machine said, 'This is my gift to my people, that they may throw off the bonds of flesh.'"}}
* One client in the show ''[[The Collector (TV series)|The Collector]]'' was a roboticist who sold her soul to the devil so she could build a robot capable of thought. When her time was nearly up for her to be damned to hell, she places her mind in the robot's body, proclaiming she will now be free, immortal, and perfect. But her body ends up malfunctioning, and incapable of moving at all but [[And I Must Scream|still fully conscious.]]
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[
** Most of them are also kleptomaniacs who have to be dissuaded at ''gunpoint'' from taking whatever piece of technology they like - be it a holy relic or ''a tomb full of frakking Necrons''.
** Sometimes [[Too Dumb to Live|the gun isn't enough incentive for them to keep their hands to themselves]].
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{{quote| '''One of Our Own''': "...not only do they occasionally replace half their brain with a computer to free themselves from emotions, but they're one of the most powerful forces in the Imperium. This wouldn't be so bad until you consider how many of them are horrible, horrible people - Archmagos Khobotov from Soul Drinker basically thinks "The Soul Drinkers have an ancient right to the Soulspear, since it's their holiest relic. I don't. I'm going to take it anyways." They literally do not care about anything other than the technology - no honour, no justice, definitely not other people's lives. They will gladly put an entire world's population at risk in order to have a chance to loot a Necron tomb, and tend to act offended when people wall off Necron tombs rather than letting themselves get annihilated by psychopathic robot skeletons. And they're so powerful no-one will ever be able to do anything about it."}}
** The Iron Hands Space Marine Chapter are similar, sharing the Mechanicus' heavy use of bionics and their reverance for all things mechanical, and unusually for an Astartes Chapter enjoy close links with Mars. Instead of Chaplains, they have Iron Fathers, who combine the role of Chaplain with Techmarine. They despise the flesh as weak, and tend to view other Imperial forces and civilians with contempt - in at least one case summarily executing one third of the population of a retaken sub-sector to demonstrate the price of weakness. Even their battle cry is "The flesh is weak!"
* The ''[[
* ''[[
* The Corpore Metal secret society in ''[[Paranoia (
* The ''[[
* The Cyberpapacy from West End Games's ''Torg'' is what happens when a corrupt medieval pope crossing dimensions from an [[Alternate History]] is forcibly "upgraded" to the technological understanding of ''another'' [[Alternate History]] emigrant (from a [[Cyberpunk]] world); he becomes obsessed with the notion that while the spirit may be willing yet the flesh weak, ''the flesh can be replaced''.
* ''[[Magic:
** Before that, there was Yawgmoth and his vision of making everyone and everything flawless zombie cyborgs.
** And let's not forget Karn's pure metal and mathematical world, and Memnarch's attempt to balance Mirrodin between the two by turning flesh to metal and metal to flesh.
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** The Soldevi Adnates in ''Ice Age'' and ''Alliances'' worshipped ancient Thran machines. Which were then taken over by Phyrexia, if I recall.
** ''New Phyrexia'' brought this trope [[Up to Eleven]] with the white Phyrexian faction led by Elesh Norn and called the Machine Orthodoxy.
* ''[[
* [[
** And to ramp it [[Up to Eleven]], the Word of Blake's elite troops, the Manei Domini, have taken it steps further, receiving extensive cybernetic augmentation (And in a universe where cybernetics are incredibly rare and almost solely for repair of grievous injuries, even scorned and reviled in some areas, that's saying something) to a degree that would make Robocop look like a patchjob. Of course, these augmented soldiers look down on the unaugmented, even their fellow WOBbies, with epithets such as Frails. Of course, the whole cult angle is also ramped up a few notches as well, with the MDs taking up biblical names upon induction to the higher rankings, and even their high-end [[Humongous Mecha|OmniMechs]] are called Celestials and given reporting names corresponding to various classes of angels.
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** What's more, SHODAN considers ''herself'' to be a goddess. "How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"
*** {{spoiler|At the end of System Shock 2 she gains the means to become a goddess and turn the universe into her personal cyberspace.}}
* ''[[
* In ''[[City of Heroes]]'' the Freakshow villain group is pretty much this trope embodied in a group of street thug drug addicts. They don't worship technology, but do they ever abuse it.
* ''[[
* Saren in ''[[
** This trope splits the [[Mechanical Lifeforms|geth]] down the middle. The 'heretic' geth view the Reapers as the pinnacle of [[Mechanical Evolution]] and will do anything to become more like them. The 'true' geth have the same goal, but wish to achieve it on their own terms and without harming anyone else. Despite their absolutely massive egos, the Reapers find the heretics' worship [[Pretender Diss|insulting]] and only view them as tools.
** Cerberus's attempt to control the geth through their religious impulse is the basis of the Overlord [[Downloadable Content|DLC]]. As with so many other Cerberus projects, it went very, very wrong.
* The Cybernetic Consciousness faction of ''[[Sid
* The Vanu Sovereignty of [[
* The entire humankind in [[Ar Tonelico]]. [[After the End|After a tower malfunction destroyed 99%+ of the planet's surfface]], humans live in unbelievably tall Towers that are also unbelievably complex supercomputers. The inhabitants consider the three [[Artificial Humans|Tower]] [[Robot Girl|Administrators]] ([[Anthropomorphic Personification|who basically are the towers]]) their Godesses, and an entire caste of priestess [[Ominous Latin Chanting|sing to]] [[Magic From Technology|connect to the tower]], [[Magic Music|making miracles]].
* The Meklar in the [[Master of Orion]] series are an entire race of cyborgs.
* The Core in ''[[Total Annihilation]]'', and the Cybran Nation in the [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[
** Well, not really. Their culture and even their very bodies are tightly integrated with technology, but they don't actively ''worship'' it, despite what UEF propaganda might say.
* The Sansha's Nation in ''[[Eve Online]]''. Like the [[Star Trek|Borg]], they don't take no for an answer when recruiting people.
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* Karras, from ''[[Thief]] 2: The Metal Age'', runs a sect of Mechanists which idolizes machines as "[[Crystal Dragon Jesus|Builder's]] Children". Karras himself is even more radical than his followers, as he hates all organic life and believes that only metal (and himself) is perfect and loved by the Builder.
* Zenith of ''[[Resonance of Fate]]'' is worshiped by humans living on Basel (a clockwork tower), but is in actuality the controlling mechanism of Basel, a giant machine built to purify the air and protect the last humans.
* If you look hard enough at ''[[
* [[Deus Ex: Human Revolution
* The synthet of [[Etherlords]] live on land where plants welk and flesh withers, so insyead they seek to increase their perfection: "the presence of specially created synthetic elements in the body, to replace and supplement imperfect organic elements".
* The Reaver movement of [[Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel]] goes beyond the Brotherhood's semi-religious emphasis on gathering technology and outright worships pre-War tech. Their canon status is... [[Broad Strokes|somewhat uncertain]], but more likely than the Beastlords or hairy Deathclaws of that game.
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== Western Animation ==
* Heroic Example: Cyborg from ''[[Teen Titans (
** Brother Blood is a straight example, however, once he saw how powerful Cyborg's tech was.
* An episode of ''[[Transformers Generation
{{quote| '''Astrotrain''': "[[First Church of Mecha|These fools worship Transformers!]]"}}
* [[Played for Laughs]] in ''[[
** Amusingly, the Amazonians' response to the question of why they'd make a computer their god is pretty much "seemed like a good idea."
** Also rather amusingly, {{spoiler|the fembot was not the first one to pull it off - she says that she originates from a male-centric society ruled by a "Manputer" who was actually a manbot.}}
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