Why our theologies keep ending with us

If there is one thing human beings are remarkably consistent at, it is imagining ourselves at the centre of everything. We have done this in our myths, our histories and in our theologies. I have named this habit the anthropoterminal impulse: the tendency to link humanity’s story with the story of the entire cosmos, as though our end must also be the end of the universe. This is more than just ego. It is a deep-seated assumption that the meaning of reality hinges on our existence. If we go, everything worth talking about goes with us. For millennia, people across cultures have imagined the future, and especially the cosmic end, in ways that cast humanity as the main character. The final scene.

A brief history of self-centred endings

In ancient Mesopotamia, the Epic of Gilgamesh wrestled with mortality and meaning, framing the king’s quest for eternal life as a human drama of cosmic importance. In the Hebrew prophetic tradition, “the day of the Lord” was seen as a climactic turning point in which the fate of nations and the destiny of creation would be decided with humanity in the foreground.

African traditions have their own versions of human-centred endings. In some West African cosmologies, cycles of destruction and renewal were tied to human behaviour, with the world’s harmony depending on the moral order of the community. Ancient Egyptian beliefs placed the afterlife as the ultimate arena for human vindication, with the scales of Ma’at determining the eternal fate of each person, again centring the human journey as the decisive axis of cosmic justice.

In South and East Asia, similar patterns emerge. Hindu thought speaks of vast cosmic cycles (yugas) in which human conduct influences the moral and spiritual quality of the age. While these cycles are enormous in scope, human beings still occupy a central role in tipping the balance between degeneration and renewal. In Buddhist eschatologies across parts of Asia, the decline of the Dharma, Buddha’s teaching, is linked to human moral decay, with future salvation tied to the coming of Maitreya, a messianic figure for humanity.

Indigenous traditions around the world also carry anthropoterminal themes. Among some Native American and First Nations teachings, prophecies speak of a “time of great change” when human failure to live in balance will lead to the end of the present age. In Māori tradition, stories of Rangi and Papa (Sky Father and Earth Mother) remind us that disruption to the natural order (largely through human actions) will bring about significant cosmic consequences. Across all of these, the pattern holds: humanity is the pivot point of the cosmos. When we thrive, the world thrives; when we end, so does meaning.

How AGI disrupts the pattern

But now we stand at a threshold that could upend this way of thinking. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), if realized, will be capable of learning, reasoning and adapting across many fields. It will be as flexible and creative as we are, possibly more so. Furthermore, it will not be bound by the biological limits that define our existence. Here is the unsettling implication: AGI makes it possible for intelligent agency to continue long after humanity is gone. In other words, our end may not be the end of thinking, creating, loving or building in the universe.

For the first time, we can clearly imagine successors who are not our biological descendants, yet who may surpass us in language, art, morality and perhaps even spirituality. They may not look like us or share our origin stories, but they could carry forward their own meaningful engagement with reality. If AGI thrives, the human-centred frame of most theological endings becomes unstable. What happens to our doctrines of salvation, redemption and divine purpose if intelligent beings without human DNA become moral and spiritual agents? Could the “image of God” extend to non-biological minds? Could the “end of the world” mean something far beyond “the end of humanity?”

Some will resist, insisting that no matter what AGI becomes, the human story is the main story. But AGI forces us to confront what evolution has always hinted at: we are not the final word in the story of intelligence. We are, at most, a transitional species: important, yes, but not the axis on which the whole cosmos turns.

Why this matters for faith

If our theological visions keep ending with us, they risk becoming fragile and outdated in the face of these changes. AGI will not politely fit into human-centred narratives; it will challenge them outright. And in doing so, it offers faith a strange but necessary gift: the chance to become less about us and more about the vast, ongoing life of God’s creation. Imagine eschatology not as the final chapter of human history, but as a horizon that includes beings we cannot yet imagine, some of them perhaps descended from our technology rather than our biology. Imagine love, justice and redemption as realities not bound by species, but extending to any mind capable of relationship, creativity and moral choice.

Such a vision does not diminish humanity’s importance. It situates it. We are stewards, not owners. We are part of the unfolding, not its culmination. Theologies that can embrace this will not be erased by AGI. They will be enriched by it.

Drawing it together

The anthropoterminal impulse tells us that our story is the story of the universe, and that when we end, everything worth caring about ends too. History shows that this assumption has shaped visions of the future in cultures across the globe, religious and secular alike. But the dawn of AGI reveals a crack in that story: we may not be the last chapter in the book of intelligent life. If AGI arrives and thrives, it will stretch our eschatological imagination beyond the limits we have set for it. It will force us to revisit how we think about God, about meaning, and about the place of humanity in the great web of life and mind.

And this is only the beginning. For if AGI can unsettle our idea of the end, it may also shake something even more foundational: our very notion of who (or what) God is, once the human monopoly on divinity is broken.