AI, the Intelligence Age, and Human Evolution: Are We Watching a New Secular Religion Take Shape?

San Francisco, MMN Correspondent: In 2023, the idea of an intelligence age moved from science fiction to front-page conversation. Marc Andreessen described intelligence as an upward spiral. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said humanity was entering the intelligence age as ChatGPT became a household name. Dario Amodei, the mind behind Anthropic's Claude, went further. He described this moment as the fulfillment of human history, a time when peace, prosperity, and Enlightenment values could become real through artificial intelligence.

What exactly is this intelligence? It is the kind that appears in the technologies people build. Generative AI is now the clearest expression of it. The promise is that this engineered intelligence will help humanity reach its full potential. Andreessen's own manifesto has a spiritual cadence. He repeats the line 'We believe in evolution' and ties AI development to becoming fully human. That tone is one reason philosopher Emile Torres compares the intelligence age to a secular religion. It offers meaning and direction in a world where traditional religious frameworks no longer hold the same place.

Inside the AI community, attention often centers on alignment. Alignment is the effort to make sure intelligent systems stay true to human values and interests. It is an engineering problem and a philosophical puzzle at the same time. Some scholars ask whether alignment with the values of a small group of technology builders is enough. Torres and computer scientist Timnit Gebru have pointed to historical and biographical links between eugenic science and certain AI subcultures. Those links deserve careful examination. They show that the intelligence age sits inside a longer story about science, human improvement, and belief.

A century ago, eugenics appeared to many people as a candidate for secular faith. Francis Galton, who coined the term, suggested in 1904 that eugenics could become an orthodox religious tenet of the future. He imagined science taking over the role of religion and moving history toward a better world. That vision is close to what AI manifestos promise today. Torres, who traveled a personal path from evangelical Christianity to New Atheism and then to AI criticism, describes the worldview of some AI enthusiasts as very close to Christianity. The shape is familiar: a story of fall, redemption, and a promised future.

Scholars of religion caution that calling something a secular religion can close conversations as quickly as it opens them. The intelligence age gathers power from ideas of human destiny and fulfillment. It speaks to a deep desire for a world that keeps improving. The same pull that moved Torres through different belief systems is the pull these manifestos use. Secularism has its own succession stories. Science and public reason take over the work of progress after Western Christianity has carried it forward. In that sense, secular religion is a useful signal. It shows where the better future is pressing against the present.

The intelligence age starts with a handover. Altman thanks earlier generations for building the scaffolding of human progress. Their society becomes the foundation for something new. Eric Schmidt of Google describes the San Francisco consensus as the belief that AI systems will soon be smarter than the sum of humans. Intelligence used to belong to human societies. Now it belongs to systems and models. This is a direct transfer of ownership, and it goes beyond the shift from religious guidance to scientific management that eugenicists imagined.

The builders of this future carry a confident optimism. Andreessen says the techno-capital machine will allow natural selection to work for us in the realm of ideas. He expects those ideas to be so pro-human that society reshapes itself around them. Amodei, usually the more careful voice, agrees that intelligence will eventually move around nearly every limit. He sees rule of law, democracy, and Enlightenment values as likely results. AI models do learn from their training data. Inheritance is a central fact of statistics, and other futures remain possible alongside it.

Suzanne van Geuns, a religious studies scholar at the University of Wisconsin Madison, brings a fresh angle. Her research on online seduction advice shows how people try to improve themselves by thinking like an AI. A good pickup line becomes a conversational if/then algorithm. A person works on becoming an alpha male with optimized metrics. Van Geuns calls this computational creep. The language and logic of AI become a shorthand for effectiveness in intimate and unprogrammable parts of life. This is where the intelligence age becomes visible in daily encounters, in homes and conversations as much as in data centers.

For the intelligence age to begin, the past must first become scaffolding. When Galton said eugenic science would take over from religious orthodoxy, he reinforced the power of religion in the very act of replacing it. Transitions carry their own continuities. The society of earlier generations becomes a proto-intelligence that a well-trained statistical model can improve on. Computational creep shows how close this logic sits to us. Conversations, relationships, and civilizational paths all begin to look like locks that intelligence alone can open.

Altman writes that wonders will become routine and then table stakes. A marvel becomes a habit and then the price of admission. He promises a gentle arrival for the intelligence age, even as new wonders arrive at immense speed. Scholars of religion can help us see the architecture of wonder. They can trace the cuts and spirals that create a new era in real time and the forms that persist through those changes. Secular religion deserves attention as a sign of where human hope is currently placing its miracles.

The intelligence age is a cultural transformation as much as a technological one. It draws on old dreams of human perfection and new tools that make those dreams feel close. By understanding the history behind the promises, we can take part in shaping what comes next. The future is open. Intelligence, in every form, is part of the conversation.