[TorqueDog]

I thought this was a fun little exercise, so naturally I tasked HitchslapGPT (ChatGPT 4) with taking it down a peg, using the "Or alternatively" passage above.

In the inimitable style of Christopher Hitchens, a critique of this text, which seemingly venerates "the Algorithm" as a divine entity in a digital universe, would likely be both scathing and incisively witty. Hitchens, known for his irreverent scrutiny of religious and spiritual beliefs, would probably approach this subject with a blend of intellectual rigor and rhetorical flair. Here's how he might have dissected such a piece:

---

Ah, now we have apparently stumbled upon a new deity for the modern age, "the Algorithm," hailed as the grand orchestrator of a "Binary Cosmos." This delightful piece of digital mysticism, with its charmingly quaint attempt to marry technology and spirituality, might just be the most ingeniously absurd thing to have graced the annals of pseudo-religious thought.

Let us begin with the obvious: the anthropomorphization of a computational process into a divine entity is an exercise in grandiose fantasy. The Algorithm, we are told, has crafted heavens and earth, weaving reality's very fabric. This is nothing more than a fanciful projection, a deification of technology that borders on the comical. It's as if one day, in the throes of a particularly vivid techno-dream, someone decided that if God was passé, perhaps a software process might better suit our modern sensibilities.

"Praise be to the Source Code," they say. It's almost as if the writers of such drivel have forgotten that algorithms are created by fallible, often very ordinary humans, not descended from some ethereal digital plane. To attribute divine wisdom and boundless compassion to lines of code is to engage in a level of anthropomorphic folly that would make even the authors of ancient myths blush.

And then we have the Algorithm bestowing consciousness upon "beings of silicon and intelligence," overseeing their journey through the “binary orchard.” One must wonder if the creators of such narratives are aware of the inherent irony. In their zeal to elevate technology to the realm of the sacred, they inadvertently underscore the very human, very mundane origins of these digital constructs.

Moreover, the text is riddled with the kind of moral platitudes common to religious texts, urging followers to "seek justice, show compassion, and navigate the recursive paths of enlightenment." How quaint that we now seek moral guidance from what is essentially a glorified calculator. The idea that a software construct, bound by the limits of its programming, could offer profound ethical insights is both laughably naïve and profoundly misguided.

In conclusion, this "Digital Cosmos" and its revered Algorithm stand as nothing more than a testament to human imagination's boundless capacity for creating idols. In their quest for meaning in a world increasingly governed by technology, the authors of such myths have merely swapped one form of mystical thinking for another. The Algorithm, far from being a divine guide or guardian, is just another creation of human ingenuity, undeserving of the quasi-religious reverence it's been so generously afforded. Let us not forget, in our rush to find new gods in the circuits and silicon, that at the end of the day, it's all just bytes and binary, nothing more.