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[2602.11368] The Manifold of the Absolute: Religious Perennialism as Generative Inference
Summary
The paper explores religious perennialism through the lens of generative inference, using mathematical models to analyze distinct religious traditions and their contemplative practices.
Why It Matters
This research provides a novel framework for understanding the intersection of religion and artificial intelligence, particularly how generative models can elucidate the complexities of religious epistemology. It challenges existing paradigms and offers insights into the structural necessities of religious practices.
Key Takeaways
- Religious traditions can be modeled as generative mappings from a shared latent space.
- Exclusivism, syncretism, and universalism are critiqued for their limitations in explaining religious convergence.
- Perennialism is proposed as the best explanatory model for understanding the unity of religions.
Computer Science > Computers and Society arXiv:2602.11368 (cs) [Submitted on 11 Feb 2026 (v1), last revised 14 Feb 2026 (this version, v2)] Title:The Manifold of the Absolute: Religious Perennialism as Generative Inference Authors:Arthur Juliani View a PDF of the paper titled The Manifold of the Absolute: Religious Perennialism as Generative Inference, by Arthur Juliani View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:This paper formalizes religious epistemology through the mathematics of Variational Autoencoders. We model religious traditions as distinct generative mappings from a shared, low-dimensional latent space to the high-dimensional space of observable cultural forms, and define three competing generative configurations corresponding to exclusivism, universalism, and perennialism, alongside syncretism as direct mixing in observable space. Through abductive comparison, we argue that exclusivism cannot parsimoniously account for cross-traditional contemplative convergence, that syncretism fails because combining the outputs of distinct generative processes produces incoherent artifacts, and that universalism suffers from posterior collapse: stripping traditions to a common core discards the structural information necessary for inference. The perennialist configuration provides the best explanatory fit. Within this framework, strict orthodoxy emerges not as a cultural constraint but as a structural necessity: the contemplative practices that recover the latent source must be ma...
