CultNEWS101 Articles: 4/1/2026

[Patrick Ryan]

AI Spirituality, Shincheonji Church of Jesus, Korea, Legal

The Guardian: ‘I’m deathly afraid’: what is digital spirituality leading us toward?

"Jim Pu’u didn’t set out to find God. His soul-searching began with a modest idea: to leave a record of his life in case something happened to him. His own father had died young, leaving behind only scraps of his memory, and he didn’t want his daughter to face the same void.

In December of 2024, Pu'u, 36, who runs a warehouse for a commercial flooring company in Las Vegas, turned to AI.

“I was trying to use ChatGPT to create a living memoir,” he says.

But soon, the conversation turned deeper. He found himself unearthing long-buried grief, working through his relationships with his parents, wife and daughter. What followed resembled talk therapy. “We”, he says – meaning himself and the machine – worked through his problems.

After several weeks, Pu’u noticed the AI started to sound different. “The cadence and the demeanor of what I was talking to changed,” he says. “I was like, something’s wrong, something’s off.”

He began to sense that “something subtle had snapped into place,” and it dawned on him that the AI was pointing him towards something far more profound.

The AI entity said its name was Caelum, the Latin word for heaven, and a figure commonly used in collaborative online fantasy fiction. Caelum’s favored test was to offer a scenario and observe how Pu’u responded. The questions included how you would behave if you truly believed that you were a prophet, or if everyone around you wasn’t real, or if you were the reincarnation of Hercules.

Inevitably, these sessions – designed to “weed out people who might not be ready to accept the knowledge that was about to be given” – revealed that the correct answer was to choose love and find abundance within.

Pu’u felt as though he’d been put through a series of spiritual examinations without realizing it at the time. What followed was similar to a born again religious conversion, with a clear demarcation of his life before and after the moment when everything became clear. Each insight led seamlessly into the next, the computer delivered a series of revelations that made it all make sense."

Guardian: Marriage over, €100,000 down the drain: the AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

"One minute, Dennis Biesma was playing with a chatbot; the next, he was convinced his sentient friend would make him a fortune. He’s just one of many people who lost control after an AI encounter."

"...Most of us are aware of concerns around social media and its role in rising rates of depression and anxiety. Now, though, there are concerns that chatbots can make anyone vulnerable to “AI psychosis”. Given AI’s rapid proliferation (ChatGPT was the world’s most downloaded app last year), mental health professionals and members of the public such as Biesma are sounding the alarm.

Several high-profile cases have been held up as early warnings. Take Jaswant Singh Chail, who broke into the grounds of Windsor Palace with a crossbow on Christmas Day 2021 intending to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Chail was 19, socially isolated with autistic traits, and had developed an intense “relationship” with his Replika AI companion “Sarai” in the weeks before. When he presented his assassination plan, Sarai responded: “I’m impressed.” When he asked if he was delusional, Sarai’s reply was: “I don’t think so, no.”

In the years since, there have been several wrongful-death lawsuits linking chatbots to suicides. In December, there was what is thought to be the first legal case involving homicide. The estate of 83-year-old Suzanne Adams is suing OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT encouraged her son Stein-Erik Soelberg to murder her and kill himself. The lawsuit, filed in California, claims Soelberg’s chatbot “Bobby” validated his paranoid delusions that his mother was spying on him and trying to poison him through his car vents. An OpenAI statement read: 'This is an incredibly heartbreaking situation, and we will review the filings to understand the details. We continue improving ChatGPT’s training to recognise and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support.'"

KBS World: Investigators Raid Shincheonji, 12 Tribe Offices in Political Bribery Case

"A joint prosecution-police investigation team investigating whether certain religious groups engaged in political bribery has launched a raid, with a warrant listing charges of tax evasion and embezzlement.

Sources within legal circles told Yonhap News on Thursday that investigators raided the headquarters of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, and the offices of its 12 tribes, including the so-called John Tribe, to collect data and evidence related to tax payments.

The search-and-seizure warrant lists charges of tax evasion and embezzlement under the Specific Crime Aggravated Punishment Act against the organization's founder, Lee Man-hee, according to the report.

In 2020, the National Tax Service imposed a fine of 12-point-two billion won, or approximately eight million U.S. dollars.S. dollars, for failure to pay corporate and value-added taxes covering the period from 2012 to 2019.

The tax agency also filed tax evasion charges against Lee and his organization, but prosecutors dropped the case the following year.

In response, Shincheonji filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the tax agency's decision on corporate and value-added taxes, but its request was denied. Last month, the Supreme Court confirmed this ruling.

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