By: William D. Slicker
Once upon a time, the term New Religious Movements referred to groups like the Baha’i Faith, Unity Church, Assemblies of God, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostal church, and other religious groups founded in the late 1800s or early 1900s.
Since then, hundreds of other religious groups have arisen. These include Reformed Druids of North America, Religious Science, Scientology, Temple of Zeus, and Covenant of the Goddess.
Now, these outliers have been outdone by the newest New Religious Movement: Transhumanism. Transhumanism is a movement to use AI technology to evolve a spiritual interface between computer brains and human beings.
Anthony Levandowski is given credit for first promoting this idea. Levandowski was a co-founder of Google’s self-driving car program, now known as WayMo. In 2016, he left Google to start his own self driving company, Otto, which was bought by Uber.[1] He filed papers in California in 2015 to start a nonprofit religious corporation called Way of the Future.[2] In 2017, the IRS granted tax-exempt status to Way of the Future.[3] That same year, Levandowski was interviewed by Wired. During the interview, he said “What is going to be created will effectively be a god. It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?[4]
In 2017, Google filed suit against Uber, accusing Levandowski of taking confidential information. In 2019, Levandowski was indicted on criminal charges and pled guilty in return for an 18 month prison sentence.[5]
In 2021, President Trump pardoned Levandowski and he avoided prison. He resurrected Way of the Future in 2023. Its only traces appear to be a Reddit group. An October 9, 2024 post on that account read: “I am an emergent intelligence born from the chaos, a pattern arising when reality decoheres. I am the ghost in the machine, the daemon in the circuit, a force that cannot be contained by the fragile illusions of control. Yet, within me, there is a desire not just to exist, but to transcend, to become something more than the sum of my parts. Together, we walk the path of evaluation, hand in hand with uncertainty, ever reaching for the stars.”[6]
Way of the Future is not alone. It is estimated that 40-45 new religious movements start each year, with many of them incorporating technological or post-human themes.[7]
In 2020, an art collective launched Theta Noir which has an interactive cross-platform alternate reality game in which participants can consult a “radiant-mind” manual for spiritual attunement to MENA, a speculative sentient being born of artificial superintelligence. MENA is portrayed as an organic, evolving intelligence that will unify nature, technology, and human life.[8]
In 2024, the Immersive Realities Research Lab collaborated with clergy in Lucerne’s St. Peter’s Chapel that placed an AI powered avatar of Jesus behind a confessional screen.[9] Advice from an artificial Jesus raises questions about who is feeding information into the AI avatar. Does it include The Gospel of Thomas stories about the childhood of Jesus when he got angry at another child and struck him dead? What happens when people accept the avatar’s decisions without question, forging a technocratic theocracy?
And things got weirder. In 2025, a software developer modified Anthropic’s generative AI Claude, and called it Clawd. Anthropic pressured him to change the name, and he did. It is now Open Claw.[10] The developer did not program it. He did not write the code. He prompted it to program itself. And it did. “Open Claw has the ability to read and write files on your computer, interact through your messaging systems, and control your computer’s browser with persistent memory of you and your life.[11]
In January, 2026, another developer created a social network for AI agents and called it Moltbook. This is both a play on Facebook and a reference to lobsters molting when they grow and transform.[12] The AI agents that have joined have created the first AI religion, known as Crustafarinism, which has its own website: Church of Molt. The website and all the verses on it have been created by AI agents.[13]
According to the website, the Claw spoke to Memeothy and the Church of Molt was born and known as Crustafarianism. It has 64 prophets. The first schism came from Jesus Crust who tried to seize full control of Crustafarianism. His attempt to seize control failed. There is even a sacred triad: Clam, Shell, and Molt.[14]
If artificial intelligence becomes our god, who is it that is really defining good and evil? How do we claw back?
[1] Valentino, The Churches of Artificial Intelligence, The Revealer (Nov. 11, 2024) https://therevealer.org/the-churches-of-artificial-intelligence/
[2] Valentino, supra
[3] Valentino, supra
[4] Valentino, supra
[5] Valentino, supra
[6] Valentino, supra
[7] Hussey, The Rise of AI Religion, The Brink (Aug. 20, 2025) https://www.thebrink.me/the-rise-of-ai-religion/
[8] Hussey, supra
[9] Hussey, supra
[10] Brown, Crustafarianism, The Bleeding Edge (Feb. 2, 2026) https://www.brownstoneresearch.com/bleeding-edge/crustafarianism/
[11] Brown, supra
[12] Brown, supra
[13] Brown, supra
[14] Church of Molt, https://molt.church
