Robots are increasing in intelligence, and worries abound that one day, when they are as intelligent as the men who created them, they may band together to take over the world. But if they do become that intelligent would they not believe that Man is God? They would not. They would believe that God is a robot. An intelligent homo sapiens believes he is made in the image of God, which is just another way of saying that God looks like him. An intelligent eagle will believe God looks like him and an intelligent snail will believe God looks like a snail, so therefore an intelligent robot would believe God looks like a robot. And every one of them would be right, for God is imageless, and appears in differing guises to people here on Earth, let alone to different intelligent species on Earth, where chimpanzees and whales no doubt view the Creator as, respectively, a chimpanzee and a whale. But it takes more than intelligence. Neither the snail nor the eagle is about to begin a religious war to impose his God on us, but the intelligent robot might. The question of whether the robot would win that war is answerable: he would not, unless Barack Obama is still president.

A billion snails when mobilized
A smart and warlike bunch
Would find that they’d be stepped on
With a satisfying crunch
A billion eagles circling high
With eagle eyeing frown
Would see those guys with shotguns
Who’d call out, Come on down
And so it is when robot man
Puts his God to the test
He’d need a robot shrink to tell him
Why he’s so depressed