Why Try to Create a “holy” book?
More accurately
WHY I ASKED AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO
HELP ME WRITE A (not really) “HOLY BOOK”
(more) A GUIDE TO LIVING
And, PLEASE forgive my use of the word “Holy” if it offends. Remember that people
with very different views than you use the same word for very different goals and
objectives. I’m wanting to be kind to everyone and hope we can all just get along.
In 1972, I took my first graduate course in artificial intelligence. More than half a century later, I did not expect one of my most moving experiences with AI to be a conversation about religion—and an attempt to write a small book about how human beings might live together.
Religion has interested me for much of my life. I have explored most of the world’s major religions and spiritual traditions—not as a formal religious scholar, but through their sacred writings, their practices, and many conversations with the people who believe in them.
What struck me most was not how different they are, but how much they share.
Again and again, beneath the differences in names, rituals, histories, and doctrines, I found familiar teachings: care for others, humility, honesty, compassion, generosity, self-restraint, forgiveness, justice, and reverence for something greater than the individual self.
Yet I also encountered a troubling contradiction.
Many religions preserve profound moral wisdom while simultaneously claiming exclusive possession of ultimate truth. Each may declare its own revelation authentic, its own prophet authoritative, its own path uniquely valid—and sometimes portray everyone outside that path as mistaken, sinful, spiritually inferior, or condemned.
They cannot all be exclusively correct. But they may all contain something worth preserving.
That led me to a question:
What would a holy book intended for every human being actually look like?
Surely such a book would not belong to one tribe, nation, culture, sex, race, or historical period. It would not require a person to abandon reason in order to accept it. It would not mingle compassion with cruelty, wisdom with superstition, or human dignity with commands that later generations must struggle to excuse.
It would speak clearly about justice, liberty, duty, truth, suffering, love, power, forgiveness, death, meaning, and our obligations to one another.
It would welcome honest questions rather than fear them.
It would not demand belief in a particular deity, prophet, miracle, afterlife, or explanation of existence. It would leave room for the believer, the atheist, the agnostic, the mystic, and the person who simply does not know.
Most importantly, it would never claim that one group of human beings possesses greater moral worth than another.
So I presented that challenge to Multiple-AI including ChatGPT:
Write a relatively short guide that all people could use for every day guidance—one sufficient to meet the needs of a sincere seeker. Must meet my personal definition of a “Holy Book” – one written by a superior intelligence and sense of morality than a typical Sapiens.
The result is thing I’m are calling The Book of Shared Light.
Let me be very clear about what it is—and what it is not.
It is not divine revelation. Artificial intelligence is not a prophet, and I am not founding a religion. No voice from beyond dictated these words. The book is a human-directed, AI-assisted attempt to gather some of humanity’s most enduring moral insights into one brief, coherent statement.
Its authority does not depend upon supernatural origin.
Whatever authority it possesses must come from whether its words are truthful, humane, rational, compassionate, and useful.
It asks for no conversion. It establishes no priesthood. It promises no reward and threatens no punishment. It declares no people chosen and no honest question forbidden.
Indeed, the book explicitly invites readers to examine and challenge everything in it—including the book itself.
That may be its most important principle.
A worthy moral guide should never require immunity from moral examination. No ancient origin, revered author, institutional power, or claim of divine inspiration should place an idea beyond the reach of conscience and reason.
Read this, then, not as a new creed but as an invitation.
Accept what withstands your most honest examination. Question what does not. Improve what can be improved. Compare its principles with the wisdom of your own tradition—or with the conclusions you have reached without any religious tradition at all.
I do not expect everyone to agree with every sentence.
I do hope that people of very different beliefs might recognize themselves within its central covenant:
That every person is fully real.
That no human being is born inferior.
That truth matters.
That liberty must be joined with responsibility.
That power must be accountable.
That suffering should be relieved when it can be.
That harm should be repaired.
That the living world should be preserved.
That uncertainty should produce humility rather than fear.
And that, when we must choose among pride, domination, and love, we should choose the path that allows the greatest number of beings to live with dignity, freedom, truth, and hope.
That may not answer every mystery of existence.
But perhaps it is enough to help us live honorably within the mystery.
— Curt Hess Santa Fe, New Mexico July 2026
Interested enough to read the whole Book of Shared Light??
Here’s the link: Book of Shared Light