"Algorithmic Rationality” and “Ultimate Concern”: Reconfiguring Religious Rationality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The rapid diffusion of artificial intelligence has not only transformed economic production, social communication, and political governance, but has also reconfigured the epistemic and existential conditions under which religious meaning is articulated and sustained. This article examines the tension between “algorithmic rationality”—a data-driven, predictive, and optimization-oriented mode of reasoning—and religious rationality, understood here through the category of “ultimate concern.” While technological rationality has long been analyzed as instrumental or functional, algorithmic rationality increasingly operates as a comprehensive cognitive environment that mediates attention, interpretation, and judgment. This paper argues that such rationality challenges religion not primarily by negating belief, but by subtly reshaping the conditions under which ultimate questions, transcendence, and existential orientation become intelligible. Drawing on philosophy of technology, contemporary theology, and religious studies, the article proposes a redefinition of religious rationality that neither retreats into anti-technological defensiveness nor capitulates to computational reductionism. Instead, it conceptualizes religious rationality as a non-optimizable, reflexive, and responsibility-bearing mode of reason that resists full translation into algorithmic terms. The paper concludes that the future viability of religion in highly computational societies depends on preserving the irreducibility of ultimate concern against the expanding horizon of algorithmic governance.