The Butlerian Jihad Was Never About the Machines
The Butlerian Jihad is a pre-story event referenced in Frank Herbert’s Dune series that describes a revolt by humans to destroy all machines that can “think like man.” In the centuries following the Jihad, humanity slowly comes back together (because the destruction of thinking machines has crippled the ability to do interstellar travel) and constructs a new set of religious principles that includes the commandment: Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. The Orange Catholic Bible, Dune Frank Herbert never really describes what happens in the Butlerian Jihad. But if you read enough Dune (and I have), you can start to get a picture. The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines…[h]umans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed. God Emperor of Dune, Frank Herbert (pg. 242) A more specific, and perhaps too detailed, picture comes i