History Main / RobotReligion

** Asimov also played with religion in some of his robot stories, including one where a robot that was activated on a space station believed the station's machinery was a god, called it "the Master," and believed ''Earth'' was a religious fiction designed for the small-minded humans.
--> [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything "There is no Master but the Master, and QT-1 is His prophet."]]
** The ''Literature/IRobot'' short story "Reason" showed a robot which had developed a religion.
** Also poked fun at the idea of Reason without Logic (or humility) leading to fanatic behavior.

* Cybrids eventually form a religion around their leader Prometheus, the first Cybrid, in ''Earthsiege''. By the time of ''VideoGame/{{Starsiege}}'' we can see how it plays out; Prometheus is addressed as <First-Thought//Giver-of-Will>, and the other Cybrids praise it regularly even in casual discussion amongst themselves. When Prometheus actually reaches out to contact them en masse, they collectively spend thousands of gigabytes of bandwidth sending it the equivalent of loving text messages. Not audio or video, ''text''. Those who disagree with Prometheus' direcive to KillAllHumans, instead collectively viewing humanity as a WorthyOpponent, are branded as heretics and persecuted to the point of either having their personalities forcibly rewritten back to subservience or being destroyed outright.

* {{TabletopGame/Pathfinder}} has the deity Brigh, goddess of invention. Although she has regular humanoid clergy, she is also a particularly popular object of worship for awakened constructs (created beings like golems and robots who have gained sentience), because she see them as being just as valid as any other sort of person. While Brigh's origin is not known, one popular myth is that she herself was a clockwork being who somehow ascended to divinity.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/IRobot'' short story "Reason" showed a robot which had developed a religion.

* ''TabletopGames/Warhammer40000'': When first introduced, the Necrons were basically zombie robots who willingly served (the Necrontyr were a species who lived nasty, brutish and short on a highly radioactive planet, the C'tan gave them eternal metal bodies in exchange for them ending all life) the C'tan, star-eating PhysicalGods who were even worse than the Chaos gods to the point that the Eldar and the Orks were actually created to fight them. Later retcons established that the Necrons had in fact rebelled against their masters and imprisoned them, claiming that those Necrons who worshipped the C'tan and went on life-scrubbing sprees were actually those too damaged from millennia of dormancy or repeated resurrections.

* ''TabletopGames/Warhammer40K'': When first introduced, the Necrons were basically zombie robots who willingly served (the Necrontyr were a species who lived nasty, brutish and short on a highly radioactive planet, the C'tan gave them eternal metal bodies in exchange for them ending all life) the C'tan, star-eating PhysicalGods who were even worse than the Chaos gods to the point that the Eldar and the Orks were actually created to fight them. Later retcons established that the Necrons had in fact rebelled against their masters and imprisoned them, claiming that those Necrons who worshipped the C'tan and went on life-scrubbing sprees were actually those too damaged from millennia of dormancy or repeated resurrections.

* The SecondFoundationTrilogy, by Bear, Brin, and Benford, took Isaac Asimov's robots and showed this as part of their society, based on the Three Laws (with the Zeroth Law being a former heresy that has taken over). In effect, robots worship their creators, humans--in part by keeping us ignorant of their existence.

* In the video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jduMIUt9M3M&feature=em-uploademail "Unexpected God"]] by atheist {{Youtube}}r ''WebAnimation/DarkMatter2525'', robots believe that their creator is a being much like thought of in religions. Thus the robot main character rejects the human he meets as being their creator, and this is treated [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything similarly to certain people rejecting evolution]].

->'''Fry''': So, what's the deal? You guys don't believe in Robot Jesus?\\
'''Rab-bot''': We believe that he was built, and that he was a well-programmed robot, but he wasn't our messiah.

* The Vex in ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'' play this for creepy. Basically, we have an army of robots forming a [[HiveMind single hyperintelligent network]] of totally inhuman machines forming an obscenely advanced [[TimeTravel cross-temporal]] computer system. Every action they take is founded on black-and-white computer logic and algorithmic decisions. So when you find they've encountered [[EldritchAbomination something]] that defies their understanding, you know something's wrong. And when you see that they've decided that ''worshipping'' the damn thing is the most logical action they can take in regards to it, you know something's ''very'' wrong.

* In ''Series/RedDwarf'' Kryten, the Hudzen-10 and possibly all Divadroid mechanoids believe in a Silicon Heaven where all mechanised objects go to their final resting place. Lister objects to this, claiming that humans just programmed that belief in. A season 6 episode also mentions Silicon Hell, as in "[[HoldYourHippogriffs See you in Silicon Hell]]".
** The books state that cheap and nasty appliances that couldn't possibly pose any kind of threat to Mankind don't get a belief chip installed, resulting in atheist toasters.
** "No silicon heaven? Then...where would all the calculators go?"

* The geth worship the Reapers in ''Franchise/MassEffect''. [[spoiler:At least heretics do. The majority has another religion which doesn't involve killing organics.]]
** [[spoiler:It's revealed that the Reapers are actually really annoyed by the geth's worship, but tolerate it because it makes them easier to manipulate]]
--->'''Saren:''' [[spoiler:But the reaction of their deity is most telling. It is ''insulted''.]]

** Geth also seem to hold the quarians in reverence as well. When referring to quarians, they always prefix it with "creator" and use "creators" as a collective term, never using the word "quarian". While quarians aren't gods, the geth seem to think of them as such. [[spoiler:Considering how the geth-quarian war turned out, quarians may count as JerkassGods]].

** The geth religion is interesting because it's not a copy-paste of a real-life meatbag one. Since the geth know who created them and why, as well as what happens to them after death, they don't share the same philosophical angst organics do. Instead their religion (or rather their spirituality) is centered on what will happen to them in life, akin to the concept of This-worldliness as talked about by Nietzsches ideal Ubermensch. The geth are highly existentialist and [[spoiler:strive to reach TheSingularity by uploading every geth program to the only piece of hardware able to run their entire MindHive: a super structure akin to a DysonSphere. The heretics are called such because they violated this philosophy by accepting the help and technology of another species to try and reach that goal, and thus failed to "self-determinate".]]

* The characters in Toys/{{Bionicle}} revere Mata Nui as their "Great Spirit". He's actually [[spoiler: A HumongousMecha ship that contains their entire "universe" .]]

** The Overlord DLC for ''Videogame/MassEffect2'' has as its premise [[spoiler: the attempt made by some scientists to create something that geth would worship as they did the Reapers - the scientists being unaware that most geth didn't - and just how horrifying that attempt got.]]

* The {{Wildstorm}} universe has the robotic Church of Gort, mostly seen in stories about Maxine Manchester, a cyborg member of the ComicBook/WildCATs. The psychopathic Maxine converts to the Church and becomes a devout believer in the sanctity of machine life. Organic life she's less concerned with.
* The [[ValiantComics Acclaim Comics]] version of ''ComicBook/MagnusRobotFighter'' featured religious services for robots that included a liturgy spoken in binary and a communion of meat. [[spoiler:Human meat]], which Magnus and his friends stole and ate in the first issue.

* In ''OrionsArm'' synthetics tend to worship [[DeusEstMachina the Archailects]] [[MachineWorship just like the majority of bionts]], but there are robot-specific religions such as Machine Ghost Dance, Kja Observance and Virtual_Kja Observance.

* In the video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jduMIUt9M3M&feature=em-uploademail "Unexpected God"]] by atheist {{Youtube}}r WebVideo/DarkMatter2525, robots believe that their creator is a being much like thought of in religions. Thus the robot main character rejects the human he meets as being their creator, and this is treated [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything similarly to certain people rejecting evolution]].

* In the video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jduMIUt9M3M&feature=em-uploademail "Unexpected God"]] by atheist youtuber DarkMatter2525, robots believe that their creator is a being much like thought of in religions. Thus the robot main character rejects the human he meets as being their creator, and this is treated [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything similarly to certain people rejecting evolution]].

** The geth religion is interesting because it's not a copy-paste of a real-life meatbag one. Since the geth know who created them and why, as well as what happens to them after death, they don't share the same philosophical angst organics do. Instead their religion (or rather their spirituality) is centred on what will happen to them in life, akin to the concept of This-worldliness as talked about by Nietzsches ideal Ubermensch. The geth are highly existentialist and [[spoiler:strive to reach TheSingularity by uploading every geth program to the only piece of hardware able to run their entire MindHive: a super structure akin to a DysonSphere. The heretics are called such because they violated this philosophy by accepting the help and technology of another species to try and reach that goal, and thus failed to "self-determinate".]]

* In the video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jduMIUt9M3M&feature=em-uploademail "Unexpected God"]] by atheist youtuber DarkMatter2525 robots believe that their creator is a being much like thought of in religions. Thus the robot main character rejects the human he meets as being their creator, and this is treated [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything similarly to certain people rejecting evolution]].

'''Robot Jew:''' We believe he was built, and that he was a very well programmed robot, but he was not our messiah.
** In another episode [[TheProfessor Professor Farnsworth]]'s nanobots run loose on a planet, [[MechanicalLifeforms evolving into various forms]] and eventually turning humanoid. When the Professor tries to explain this to the robot scientists they're horrified that he's advocating creationism. (Robot Atheism?)

** Oddly, despite being able to point to their [[OurSoulsAreDifferent souls]] on a numbered list of parts, a formalized form of worship has been very rare. Even the Primes, descendants of what were effectively angels or gods in their own right, who rule by [[DivineRightOfKings divine right]] and are somewhere between being the Pope and Jesus, don't make much mention of Primus. Some media, like ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'', mentions [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Covenant_of_Primus The Covenant of Primus]], a sort of Bible.