It’s getting very weird out there. In India, some Hindu worshipers are now outsourcing their time-consuming and labour-intensive religious rituals to robots that perform the rites on their behalf. In Japan, some Buddhist monks have invested in robotic priests to lead people in their meditations. When we combine these two innovative cost- and time-saving solutions, and get to the point where we have outsourced both our worship and our pastoral services to machines, having robot pastors preach to robot congregants, one has to wonder, what is the point?

Why bother at all if humans don’t experience any sort of comfort or meaning from the religious performance? What could a robot possibly care about its immortal soul, or yours, for that matter?