New Workshop: AI for Christian Parents
The story of AI continues to be one of great debate and mystery. Those who have been following our work know that we have been spending a lot of time on this topic, and rightly so for this is a revolution unlike any other. Through that work, we have also been learning from others and growing from that larger dialog, and our updates are an attempt to bring that growth to you.
There seems to be a prevailing sentiment that AI is “just a tool,” and we should proactively look for ways to integrate it into our life to produce things we assess as good. Modern scientific man with his pragmatic worldview seems to be dominating what is actually a metaphysical subject, with the topics of transcendence, intelligence, and consciousness at the core. We have heard this message of pragmatism within our immediate homeschool community, from regional leaders, and from national homeschooling advocates. Yet again, if this is a metaphysical subject, then if we fail to appeal to deeper wisdom, then we will fail to see the danger looking ahead.
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As we examine the wisdom and philosophy from great Christian thinkers like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dr. Iain McGilchrist, and most recently from John Dyer, we are increasingly concerned that we are rapidly stepping toward what Lewis called, “the abolition of man.” Soon we will be releasing a brief review of the Transhumanist worldview and how it is using Agentic AI to absorb and end all identity, that draws wisdom from Lewis’ work, “Till We Have Faces.”
As a continuation of our own growth on this topic we have put together a revised collection of thoughts regarding the AI Revolution in presentation format which is available on our YouTube channel at the link below.
This presentation was originally crafted for delivery to a Christian Home School community via a gathering that will take place later this year. Due to the fact that this conversation is happening in larger contexts, we have recorded and made it available for all.
We remain convicted of this: the moral question of whether or not AI can do something for us, is a distraction from the bigger questions we need to consider. Of course it can do things that bring about some new good. Yet the fundamental questions we are wrestling with, as noted recently when famous Athiest Richard Dawkins opined about the consciousness of Claude, are metaphysical in nature. We’re wondering, what is intelligence? Where does it come from? Can we create a version that is superior to us? Will it emerge from what we build? Can we finally transcend out of the fallen state humanity has always persisted in by overcoming our deepest problems? If a super intelligence does emerge, will it not be superior and should we therefore let it rule in our stead?
These questions all point to bigger and more important moral dilemmas which are, "should we walk down this transhumanist path and use AI at all, and what are the transformative consequences of using it for us individually and for us collectively? Is this good for us? What do we lose in exchange for what we might gain?"
The heart of these questions is really, who are we, and can we escape that?
To help us understand the fundamental conflict between “science” and “metaphysics” regarding the question of intelligence & consciousness, we created the following graphic that depicts “human intelligence” from the Biblical worldview on the left, and how AI is an attempt to use the proposed architecture of human cognitive thinking (left brain thinking) to mimic human intelligence. The AI promise is that once we have mastered machine-based mimicry of human cognition, then something greater will eventually emerge from the capability. I hope you can see the fundamental difference, but as Kale Zelden recently pointed out,
“Consciousness is not for compute. Consciousness is ultimately for connection, which leads me to conclude that consciousness…is really for love.”
Indeed, Biblically we know that God gives us our spirit and life to connect with His; to behold and experience Him uniquely among His creation. The essence of our “intelligence” is described in the Bible repeatedly as our inner most self - something like our heart. In fact, Solomon was given “a wise and discerning heart” (1 Kings 3:12) and Proverbs 18:15 describes the pursuit of using our brains for knowledge is an expression of our consciousness, saying that “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” Further, in the book of 1 Corinthians, we find Paul writing that the intelligence of man is foolishness compared with the wisdom of God; “As the Scriptures say, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.’” 1 Cor. 1:19
Yet with the AI Revolution, the proposal we are offered is reversed - the theory is that consciousness emerges from functional cognition, and super intelligence grows from that via training, which will produce the ultimate truth and wisdom to guide us once it absorbs us and grows beyond our capacity. The proposal is that the capacity for cognition precedes being. This is not a truth we know as self-evident, for all “intelligent beings” possess their most valuable characteristics even in the absence of superior cognition.
This is why Dr. Iain McGilchrist, a Christian neuroscientist and philosopher said,
“The brain is not intelligence. It is a very complex structure. But the brain itself is not intelligent. What is intelligent is your consciousness, my consciousness using that brain.”
That means being precedes thinking, and wisdom comes from a higher order, a higher place, deeper realities, than those which we can discover through information processing.
You see, the deeper questions we’re wrestling with really are metaphysical and theological in nature, but aside from that many people want to simply point to the potential practical utility of AI, offering that we ignore the greater context and just focus on the outcomes. Those who say this make the claim that with this power, we can do great good and usher humanity into a state of ultimate flourishing, provision, protection, and well-being. We are promised peace and prosperity are ours to have, if we, the good ones, take control of this power and use it. We wrote of this at length in our article titled “AI is Never Just a Tool.”
In his book “From the Garden to the City,” John Dyer clearly lays out an answer to this question of pragmatism, showing us the reality that technology is transformative in nature; we transform the world and we ourselves are transformed in the process. We can use tools and processes to produce a practical outcome, which we can measure for its moral virtue, but using any tool will transform us in the process, producing outcomes we may not have anticipated. That transformative outcome also needs to be considered as part of the moral equation. Dyer warned us,
“the transformative effect of a technology is so powerful that it often overshadows what we say or do with that medium.”
Borrowing from Marshall McLuhan, Dyer reminds us that,
“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”
That is also a core philosophical struggle that J.R.R. Tolkien exposed through his characters in the Lord of the Rings. We may be able to yield this power to do some good through us, but the nature of any tool is that using it will also change us...and that will change the outcome, whatever our desires may be. In his philosophical review of “the one ring,” Tolkien considered the original nature and purpose of that tool, and the intention of the one who formed it, in the context of the fallen nature of anyone else who might attempt to take it up and yield it. While LOTR is a work of fiction, it reflects reality and truth through deeper philosophical considerations we should consider.
As Tolkien revealed through the character Boromir, many will be tempted to capture this power and use it, for a time, for what they deem to be good. Yet in answer to this, Tolkien presents us the wisdom of the ancient wizards and elves when both Gandalf the Grey and Lady Galadriel reject the tool knowing it would do great evil through them; that they would mean to produce good, but it would transform and overcome them, producing greater evil instead.
And so we need to heed this wisdom and consider the origins of AI, and what those who brought it to us intend for it to do to us and through us, by us.
The underlying tools bundled together by the AI Revolutionaries into what is called AI, even using that title and including how it is presented to us as a personified general purposed super intelligent entity capable of addressing all our questions, was intentional on the part of the men who gathered at OpenAI to spark their revolution. They mean for this set of tools to be used by us in a way that will transform our world into a particular outcome that matches their vision. It seems increasingly likely that that vision has been revealed to them via dark enchantment.
Consider the worldview, the influences, and the virtues of the men leading this Revolution. We have written of that, most recently here. If you want to dig deeper into that, I suggest Rod Dreher’s book, Living in Wonder. Yet this worldview is also revealed by the men of the Revolution.
When Ross Douthat of the New York Times suggested the following definition of the AI Revolution to Peter Thiel (thought leader of Silicon Valley and influencer of President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance), Thiel accepted it, and went on to explain that he hopes Transhumanism will do what Transgenderism was too “pathetically little” to accomplish, and to satisfy the transcendence Christianity promises for us.
The world of AI is clearly filled with people who at the very least have a utopian transformative view of the technology…a number of people deeply involved in AI see it as a kind of mechanism for transhumanism for transcendence of our mortal flesh and either the creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine. - Ross Douthat
C.S. Lewis warned us of this in multiples of his works. As a theologian and philosopher, he wrote both technical works and also used story to convey his thoughts in a more acceptable format; fiction. His technical work, The Abolition of Man, is clearly relayed to us in multiple other works including The Last Battle (Narnia series), Till We Have Faces, and the Space Trilogy or Ransom Series of books which culminate in That Hideous Strength.
In the Last Battle, an Ape who is hungry for power and attention, finds an object that he figured he could repurpose to play on the mythology of the world to his advantage. Via his attempts, he summoned the very real nature of that mythology - unto the end of that world. Using that technology had a transformative effect he could never have imagined, and it consumed him. A darker force, Tash, emerged and took control, making the Ape his slave and threatening to undo the world.
This idea is repeated in Lewis’ That Hideous Strength as the men of the N.I.C.E. reanimate a severed human head, channeling the demonic world to speak to them through it. That head also directs these men to call into the world deeper powers to be used by them to facilitate the transformation of the human existence into a transcendent state. Expanding on his work in the Abolition of Man, we find this truth at play in narrative form:
“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” - C.S. Lewis
Lewis also explored the deeper philosophical worldview of Transhumanism and the ideology that drives today's AI Revolutionaries through these works, warning that their success would mean the abolition of man.
He wasn’t done there. In his work Til We Have Faces, we see a central moral dilemma echoed by today’s Agentic AI. In his book, the main character Orual has a major problem. Her happiness is dependent on the consumption of identities around her and the integration of their story into hers. She does this unto the ending of those who love her the most. There are wonderfully tragic scenes in the book when Orual is confronted with this, but she doesn’t really learn the lesson until she sees that she has ended it all. Agentic AI is designed for this same purpose; to absorb identity and to distribute the power of individuals to be used by anyone in their story, in attempts to become what they aren’t.
All of these philosophical considerations lead me to the most urgent question regarding AI. The urgency and opportunity is not about "how can we leverage this in our life to produce some good," (the temptation of Tolkien's Boromir and Lewis' Shift characters). Far more important (and urgent) is the question, "why would we want to participate in this transformation and what will doing so do to us individually and collective?"
As John Dyer, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien all clearly demonstrate to us, there is no such thing as “it’s just a tool.”
What’s really going on is a group of men who share an ideological worldview that is fundamentally anti-human and anti-Christian, have come together to repurpose a collection of tools in a particular way that will entice us to participate in our own transformation, causing us to give up our human agency to Agentic AI, and to transform us into their definition of a transcendent state.
But there is still yet another current under the surface of all this, propelling us forward. We are told there is an existential element to this entire endeavor. We are told not only by the technologists, but also by our political and military leaders that “we must get there [AI] first.” We must beat our political and global adversary, China, and we must prevent them from obtaining this great power. They warn us that if China beats us, we will be forced to exist under their will and power. They promise that if we beat China, then the world - all of humanity - will rise together in peace, and that by our power we will manage politics, production, medicine, governance, finance, provision, life…everything…for the good of all. But we must first surrender ourselves to the machines of our making, and the intelligence that emerges.
Transcendence through submission to the tools of our making that will remake us into a greater version than that of our original selves. This is what is really going on.
This is what we wrestle through in our latest version of our AI Workshop. You can purchase access to a recorded version of our AI Workshop for Parents through our website, or contact us to schedule a live or in-person event for your community or group.