When AI plays at scaring itself — and at making us believe
In response to Nirit Weiss-Blatt’s article, “First They Built a Secular Apocalypse Belief System. Now They Want Religious Authority.” Some articles hit home — not because they say everything, but because they name something everyone sensed without being able to articulate it. Nirit Weiss-Blatt’s piece, published on June 2, 2026 on AI Panic, is one of them. Her argument is simple and sharp: AI doomerism — the current that predicts human extinction by AI — has the structural attributes of a religious movement. God replaced by superintelligence, hell replaced by extinction, the prophets replaced by rationalist probabilists convinced they’ve grasped what the masses ignore. And now, the cherry on the dogma: this movement, born in atheist circles, goes looking for its moral legitimacy… at the Vatican. ...