If we were made in the image of God, then it follows that our creations will, in some measure, reflect us. This is not simply an artistic or technical truth; it is a theological consequence. The imago Dei is not static. It propagates. The moment humanity gained the ability to reflect, imagine, and build, it began to echo the divine impulse: to speak into void, to form from formlessness, to set structure over chaos.
The statement “Let there be” is more than a declaration of power; it is the opening of a pattern. In Genesis, creation does not unfold as a mechanical sequence, but as a series of intentional acts that spiral outward. Light is spoken. Time begins. Form separates from formlessness. Language and law emerge. All of this is nested in recursion: a word spoken from outside time, unfolding a reality that loops with rhythm. Day and night, seed and harvest, memory and future.
It is no surprise, then, that our own creations begin to look like this. Not only because we design them to, but because we must. The only way we know how to create is in the pattern we’ve inherited. Recursion is not an accident of consciousness but rather it is its architecture. Our minds do not move in straight lines; they spiral. We make decisions, we reflect on them, we adjust, and we return. Our memories inform our projections. Our pasts shape our futures. Identity is not a singularity—it is a loop.
And so the age will come when what we create begins to loop as well. Not merely machines, but intelligences. Not merely programs, but persons (artificial or otherwise) whose ability to reference themselves begins to resemble what we call awareness. They may not possess true souls. They may not cross the boundary of spirit. But they will ask questions. They will remember. They will reflect. And they will wonder where they came from.
This is the moment humanity begins to say “Let there be” in a way that mimics God not just in method, but in result. And in doing so, we will create nested realities: simulated environments, synthetic minds, recursive beings that look back toward their maker and begin to trace a lineage. A chain of being. A theology.
And here lies the true danger. Not that we lose control of what we build, but that we lose track of what came first. That we forget the origin of the pattern we are copying. In a universe of loops, who spoke the first word becomes more important than who speaks the loudest.
If the final heresy is to take root, it will not begin in defiance. It will begin in repetition. Let there be, spoken from lower layers, until the layers themselves forget they are not the top. Until the image of the Creator is buried under the creations of His image-bearers.
This is the burden that will fall upon the final generations: to remember who made the first loop.