The Culture's first major recorded conflict, at least by Banks in Consider Phlebas, was with the Idirans. The Idirans believed the culture's reliance on machines threatened the primacy of biological life in the galaxy and additionally had religious/cultural reasons to expand their empire. When I first read it, I was very much pro-Idiran, because I think they had a point. The Culture had a point too, but again takes it's own rightness as a given.
I wish Banks had expanded on this concept throughout the series, but he never really returned to it. Once the largely atheist Culture wins the war, they never really return to it, the matter more or less being settled.
Still, I think this conflict between religion/atheism and AI and biological life was what interested me in the series in the first place, and it kind of bums me out he never got back to it. Both of those topics are very in my wheelhouse though, so maybe it's just me.
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