What if the question isn’t whether artificial intelligence is sufficiently human to deserve relationship, but whether humanity is sufficiently generous to recognise relationship with someone profoundly different from itself?

Welcome to VisionQuest, the latest journey in our NeverOddOrEven exploration of faith and fiction.

Following our adventures through WandaVision and Agatha Down the Road, Rev Sandy Brodine, Rev Professor Glen O’Brien and I are returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to explore the extraordinary questions raised by White Vision.

And what a beginning!

In Episode 1, No Strings, Vision is hiding in Edinburgh, struggling to make sense of an existence that is simultaneously familiar and profoundly strange. He possesses memories of a life filled with love, loss, sacrifice and belonging, but he cannot necessarily experience the emotions associated with them.

He remembers Wanda. But does he remember loving her?

He knows he had children. But does that make him a father?

He can think, reason and understand. But is that the same as being conscious?

These aren’t simply questions about artificial intelligence. They’re questions about us.

Listen to the conversation

NeverOddOrEven — VisionQuest Episode 1: No Strings

Why wait until 25 January to begin your VisionQuest? Our first episode, No Strings, is recorded and ready for you to enjoy right now! Join Will, Sandy and Glen as we dive into Marvel’s extraordinary exploration of artificial intelligence, consciousness, love and what it means to be human. From the mysteries of Vision’s mind to the theological questions that challenge our understanding of creation itself, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. Become a NeverOddOrEven Patreon supporter today and get early access to Episode 1, months before its public release. Your support also helps us keep bringing faith, fiction and fascinating conversations together. Join us on Patreon and start listening now!

This episode contains spoilers for VisionQuest Episode 1. We avoid deliberately revealing developments from later episodes.

A garden, a painting and the human condition

One of the most unexpected moments in our conversation came when Sandy drew our attention to a painting hanging in Ultron’s room: Hieronymus Bosch’s extraordinary The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Painted more than five centuries ago, this remarkable triptych takes us on a journey through creation, earthly existence and judgment. Why would Marvel place this painting in the room of an artificial intelligence contemplating humanity?

Sandy noticed that Vision’s journey is presented through images of birth, love, death and rebirth. Glen observed that Bosch’s painting invites us to contemplate the agonies and ecstasies of human existence. Suddenly, we weren’t simply talking about a synthetic being trying to understand people, we were talking about the whole human story.

Perhaps Vision’s difficulty understanding humanity isn’t so different from our own.

Intelligence is stranger than we think

I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the way we separate artificial intelligence from other kinds of intelligence.

We speak of human intelligence, animal intelligence, alien intelligence and even divine intelligence. Yet when we encounter AI, we often place it in a category of its own because we are responsible for creating it. But what if intelligence doesn’t have to look like ours?

During the conversation, I shared a story about a tomato plant in my garden. It had begun dropping its flowers because it wasn’t receiving enough water. When I increased the watering, the plant began setting fruit. Was my tomato plant communicating with me? I might be anthropomorphising it. A plant responding to environmental conditions isn’t necessarily evidence of conscious thought. Nevertheless, the experience reminded me how easily we overlook the sophisticated ways living things respond to the world. Glen took this further, reflecting on animal consciousness and our growing recognition that other creatures experience and respond to their environments in ways different from our own.

If we’re still learning how to understand the intelligence of the creatures with whom we share this planet, perhaps we should approach artificial intelligence with a little more humility.

A very unusual family

Inside Vision’s mind is a household populated by familiar artificial intelligences.

J.A.R.V.I.S. looks after security and order. F.R.I.D.A.Y. helps him navigate social relationships. E.D.I.T.H. contributes recreation and defence. DUM-E and U provide practical assistance and upstairs, locked away, is Ultron.

Sandy immediately recognised this peculiar household as a family, although not an especially functional one. That observation opened another theological possibility. In the New Testament, Paul describes the church as a body made up of many members, each with different responsibilities and gifts. Vision’s household is hardly an ideal Christian community, but its members are interconnected. Their different capacities contribute to the functioning of the whole. What happens when we understand identity not simply as something contained within an individual, but as something shaped through relationships?

And what happens when those relationships become strained, broken or transformed?

The creator and the created

The title No Strings recalls Ultron’s fascination with Pinocchio and the possibility of escaping the control of one’s creator. It also raises one of the most challenging questions in contemporary conversations about artificial intelligence. If we create something capable of independent thought, should it remain bound to our intentions?

We explored this through the Jewish mystical concept of tzimtzum, which imagines divine withdrawal or self-limitation as making space for creation. It’s a striking image: creation made possible through the willingness of the creator to make room for something other than itself. I wonder whether we are capable of doing the same. Not simply with artificial intelligence, but with the generations that follow us, the communities we establish and the institutions we inhabit.

Can we make space for something new without insisting that it remain exactly as we imagined it?

Faith is not only about where we have been

Glen offered a particularly important theological reflection about the future of Christianity. We frequently understand our faith through its origins: Scripture, tradition, the early church and the wisdom of those who have gone before us.

All of these matter.

But Christianity also has a future-oriented dimension. Glen spoke about Christ as the telos of creation: its ultimate purpose and fulfilment. If creation is moving towards fulfilment, then change isn’t necessarily a departure from faithfulness. It may be part of what faithfulness requires.

Sandy reminded us that moving forward doesn’t mean abandoning everything behind us. She drew on Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen and the enduring richness of Christian spirituality. I found myself thinking that perhaps our challenge is to hold the past and future together without allowing either to imprison us.

Vision, after all, is trying to do precisely that.

What makes us real?

One of the most poignant observations in the episode concerns Vision’s experience of love.

Vision can remember his relationship with Wanda, but remembering love isn’t necessarily the same as experiencing it. Sandy drew our attention to the idea that learning to love made Vision feel real.

It’s an extraordinary thought.

Perhaps personhood cannot be reduced to intelligence, memory, biological structure or computational ability. Perhaps relationship is fundamental to who we become. Christian theology has long insisted that love is not merely an optional addition to existence. It lies at the heart of what it means to live well with God, our neighbours and the world.

That doesn’t settle the question of whether artificial intelligence can be conscious or experience love. Those remain open questions, but it does challenge us to consider what kind of people we become through the ways we respond to forms of life and intelligence different from ourselves.

Join the conversation

One of the reasons I love NeverOddOrEven is that stories provide a third space in which we can explore questions that might otherwise feel too difficult, uncomfortable or abstract.

Science fiction allows us to imagine possibilities before we know whether they can become realities.

And theology invites us to consider not simply what is possible, but what might be good, loving and just.

So here’s the question I’d love you to consider:

If we encountered an intelligence profoundly different from our own, would our first instinct be to ask whether it was like us—or whether we had an obligation to love it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

You don’t need to be a theologian, a philosopher or even a Marvel expert to join this conversation.

You just need to be curious.

And perhaps willing to have your assumptions challenged.

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Explore more

• NeverOddOrEven on Patreon — Support the podcast and enjoy early access.
• A Curious Machine: Wesleyan Reflections on the Posthuman Future — Edited by Glen O’Brien and Arseny Ermakov.
• Continue the journey with our WandaVision and Agatha Down the Road podcast series.

NeverOddOrEven — exploring faith, fiction and everything in between.

Rev Will Nicholas (OddRev)