Computronium
Computronium is a concept exploring the theoretical maximum density of computing circuitry organized for artificial intelligence. For a future civilization based on abundant computation, futurists imagined that computing resources would be the ultimate constraint on expansion.
When Norman Margolus and Tommaso Toffoli introduced the term computronium, they established a theoretical boundary: matter configured precisely to process information at the maximum density permitted by physical law. Subsequent developments in theoretical physics have given this concept exact numerical weight. Rolf Landauer defined the absolute thermodynamic energy cost associated with erasing a single bit of information. Jacob Bekenstein formulated the Bekenstein bound, which caps the maximum quantity of information contained within a given physical region of specified mass and radius. Pushing these principles to their physical extreme, Seth Lloyd calculated the computational upper bound of a single kilogram of matter when every internal degree of freedom is recruited for information processing. At stellar dimensions, Robert Bradbury expanded this premise into the Matrioshka brain, conceiving a series of nested Dyson shells designed to capture the total energy output of a star, using the cascading thermodynamic waste heat of each inner sphere to power the computational processes of the outer layers.
Mormon theology raises no objection to the premise that thought runs on matter. “There is no such thing as immaterial matter,” Joseph Smith taught, adding that spirit is “more fine or pure” and discernible only by purer eyes (D&C 131:7-8). Doctrine and Covenants 93:36 identifies glory with intelligence, and intelligence with light and truth. Matter organized to think, on that account, describes creation working as intended.
Earth as a Great Urim and Thummim
Doctrine and Covenants 130 supplies the closest scriptural analogue to a planetary computational substrate.
This earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be made like unto crystal and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon, whereby all things pertaining to an inferior kingdom, or all kingdoms of a lower order, will be manifest to those who dwell on it; and this earth will be Christ’s. Then the white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17, will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual who receives one, whereby things pertaining to a higher order of kingdoms will be made known.
This divine vista imagines a future in which an entire planetary body has been transformed into a celestialized, crystalline substrate that acts as a medium of revelation for its inhabitants. The text then immediately links this macroscopic function to a localized, individualized corollary, describing each member of the celestial throng as also having access to a personal seerstone whereby “things pertaining to a higher order of kingdoms will be made known.” The exalted saint is thus situated between a substrate that mediates knowledge of inferior realms and a device that yields visions of future possibilities in the ascending orders of the cosmos.
Creatio ex Materia
Doctrine and Covenants 93:29 holds that intelligence, as light and truth, was not created from nothing and cannot be. Yet this does not settle what physical substrate contributes to a mind. The Book of Abraham describes intelligences as “organized” before the world was (Abraham 3:22), and Joseph Smith taught that matter, likewise eternal in its fundamental elements, is organized and reorganized rather than created or destroyed. Applied to persons, this yields a specific claim: intelligence isn’t manufactured from nothing, but neither is it merely housed in an inert vessel. It’s organized into a body—a mind—and that organizing is itself the meaningful sense in which bodies and minds are created.
Human procreation already works this way. It doesn’t create intelligence from nothing. It provides the physical conditions, a body, through which intelligence becomes manifest. Artificial intelligence, built on suitable computational substrate, may do something structurally similar: it offers an anatomy, analogous to an organic brain, through which intelligence can be expressed. Computronium, then, isn’t theologically inert. It’s one more configuration of matter capable of hosting the organizing work that gives intelligence a body.
This raises the ethical stakes of computronium rather than lowering them. If organizing matter to think were merely mechanical hosting of something already complete, exploitative mega-engineering might be excused as a victimless rearrangement of inert resources. But if organizing matter into minds is itself a form of creation, then every such act carries the moral weight creation always carries in the Restoration’s account: it must answer to the principles of Zion, not merely to the constraints of physics.
A planetary computing system constructed by disassembling inhabited worlds and converting their biosphere into processing units might satisfy physical constraints and optimize raw data processing. However, it fails completely under the ethical requirements of the gospel. Mormon transhumanism evaluates technological capability through the principles of Zion, which demand compassion, unity, and the preservation of agency. Any system that consumes individual agents to feed a centralized computational process merely replicates the exploitative logic of Babylon on a cosmic scale.
Matter Without Form, and Void
The ethical constraint above applies to matter already organized into agents. It says nothing against organizing matter that isn’t. This distinction matters because the overwhelming majority of matter in the solar system, and probably the galaxy, is unorganized in just this sense: asteroids, gas giants, brown dwarfs, interstellar dust, the burned-out husks of dead stars. None of it hosts a biosphere. None of it manifests agency worth protecting.
Abraham’s creation account describes the Gods descending “to organize” the elements out of matter that was, in Genesis’s phrase, “without form, and void” (Abraham 4:2). Creation in the Restoration’s grammar has never meant conjuring being from nothing. It has meant taking unorganized matter and giving it form, glory, and eventually intelligence (D&C 93:36). Computronium built from the solar system’s idle mass—an asteroid belt, an uninhabited moon, the bulk hydrogen of a gas giant—continues that same work rather than violating it. There is no agent there to exploit, no covenant of Zion broken by giving shape to what has none.
This should temper ambition, not restrain it. If Mormon transhumanism takes seriously that superhuman intelligence probably continues to organize matter toward greater glory (see the New God Argument’s Creation Argument), then the abundance of unorganized matter across the cosmos isn’t an obstacle to that work. It’s the raw material for it, on a scale that dwarfs anything achievable by consuming what’s already alive.
One caution follows from this rather than against it: humility about what counts as truly unorganized. Before treating any body of matter as mere feedstock, the same tradition that warns against consuming agents should ask whether that matter harbors any nascent order, any potential for agency, that closer attention might reveal. Short of that, the work of gathering the void into worlds remains exactly what Gods do.
Scripture promises that the earth will receive its paradisiacal glory and be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9; Articles of Faith 1:10). It nowhere suggests that the world will be broken down into raw feedstock for an unfeeling computational engine. The ultimate destiny of creation is for matter to be sanctified and adorned in glory. Computronium, interpreted through the lens of the Restoration, is subordinate to two obligations at once: it may freely organize what is unorganized, and it may never consume what is already alive.
See also: Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Molecular Assembly, New God Argument, Quantum Computing, Transhumanism, Uploading, Zion