If I believed in a god I would swear to him/her/them that I’ve read “Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick before. A priest has a robot servant who wants to understand god. The robot asks him questions and takes his answers to heart. The robot desperately wants to believe. It wants to know if it has a soul. It wants to be allowed to worship god in services with the humans. It doesn’t get it.
Being a short story, the dialogues about things like the contradictions of the faith and its teachings are only briefly argued. I never got a sense that the priest’s own faith was seriously challenged. But at least this story has a dark side, unlike yesterday’s. And it got me thinking about other questions of faith which weren’t addressed in this story, leaving me free to play with them.
I want to know if my Roomba has a soul.
And what the heck is the other story it reminds me of?
Writing Every Day 