More Knowledge, Less Truth: The Need for Biblical Wisdom in the World of AI
Why proactive prayer for God-given wisdom is essential to a Church preparing for artificial intelligence
Writer’s note: We’ve been exploring seven guidelines for church leaders as they lead churches into an AI-driven world. In this article, we’re looking at guideline 6: proactively pray for God-given wisdom.
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Guideline 6: Proactively Pray for God-Given Wisdom
Isaac Asimov once said, “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”1
Although it has been almost four decades since this statement was published, it is more pertinent than ever.
Knowledge is everywhere; wisdom is not.
This article will explore the strange, meandering road of knowledge and wisdom, and its complicated relationship with artificial intelligence. In doing so, I hope to highlight the importance of the sixth guideline for Christian leaders in an AI-driven world: the need to proactively pray for God-given wisdom.
There is a risk that we find ourselves lost in the thickets in the paragraphs that follow. With that in mind, allow me to offer a map of sorts. In what follows, we’ll explore:
How two ideas—relativism and subjectivism—have altered our relationship with truth.
How AI gives us greater access to information than ever before, a reality that is both exciting and concerning.
How the combination of AI issues and relativistic thinking presents us with a serious wisdom problem.
What the Bible says about wisdom
Why we should proactively pray for it in an increasingly AI-driven world.
This is a vital chapter in our exploration of the Church and AI. How we respond to what follows might be one of the most important indicators of the Church’s future health.
Relativism, Subjectivism, and Our Relationship with Truth.
Artificial intelligence has not developed in a vacuum. Along with technological changes, marked shifts in philosophical outlooks and approaches have fundamentally shifted much of the cultural and socio-political landscape while AI was developing in the background. Two ideas—relativism and subjectivism—are particularly important when discussing the relationship between artificial intelligence, knowledge, and wisdom. For that reason, it’s helpful for us to take a brief detour to ask the following questions:
What is relativism and its counterpart, subjectivism?
How have these ideas risen to prominence?
Defining Terms
Relativism refers to the denial of objective or absolute standards, appearing in several forms.2 Proponents of ethical relativism believe that right and wrong aren’t fixed, unchanging laws; instead, they are malleable and dependent on culture (cultural relativism) or personal preferences (moral subjectivism).3
Clearly, someone’s culture has a profound impact on the way in which they live. In this sense, we might say that there is some degree of cultural relativism in the world.
The question is to what extent.
Although moral subjectivism is a subset of relativism, it is perhaps the most important for this discussion. Moral subjectivism is an individual ethical relativism that “attempts to view what is normally thought to be objectively true or false as subjective.”4
This idea has far-reaching consequences. As Peter Kreeft writes, “. . . only after the objective truth is denied are we ‘free’ to recreate new ‘truths’ in the image of our own desires.”5 In essence, if moral subjectivists do not recognize objective truth, they will seek to mould the world to fit their own desires, irrespective of the consequences.
You don’t have to follow the news all that much to see that our contemporary culture is steeped in moral subjectivism.
However, this is no new phenomenon.
Socrates fought the relativism he saw in the sophists. With his student and protégé, Plato, the battle continued. He is said to have fought the views of Protagoras, a prominent sophist who believed that “man is the measure of all things.” To Plato, there had to be an eternal, objective Truth that transcends the world in which humans live.6
This has been the dominant perspective throughout the ages. In the thirteenth century, the enormously influential Thomas Aquinas turned his attention to the concept of relativism, declaring that, try as humans might, the natural law could never be abolished from the heart of man.7
Importantly, this natural law was also not a concept restricted to Western thought. C. S. Lewis was keenly aware of the Tao, a Chinese acknowledgement of a “reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. . . [a] doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes really are true, and others really false”.8 The Tao represents objective moral law rather than subjective values. Lewis uses the fascinating appendix of The Abolition of Man to illustrate the ubiquity of the Tao in cultures worldwide.
While minor factions questioned the objective nature of truth (though some scholars would argue that these factions were perhaps not as dedicated to their cause as others would have people believe), it was not until the work of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1830) that relativism began an ascent into mainstream prominence.9 Nietsche (1844-1900) followed these philosophers by questioning the view that there was an objective truth. Instead, he said, there are only interpretations.10
As someone who would have been keenly aware of the rise of relativism and had witnessed the brutality of Nietzsche-inspired Nazism during the Second World War, C. S. Lewis viewed relativistic ideology with great concern. The horrors of war had scarred him, but he also saw that the effects of moral subjectivism spanned much further than war-mongering ideology.
Lewis’s The Abolition of Man arose in response to a book written by two schoolmasters (whom he refers to as Gaius and Titius) who were strong proponents of relativistic thinking. Lewis was distinctly unimpressed upon reading their work. As a keen student of history who maintained a deep awareness of the philosophers just mentioned, Lewis was well-positioned to refute these authors. As such, he approached the topic with a deftness and ability that few could hope to match. In light of changing attitudes towards relativism, Lewis dedicated much of his work to refuting it. In The Poison of Subjectivism, he summarises the issue well:
Until modern times no thinker of the first rank ever doubted that our judgements of value were rational judgements or that what they discovered was objective . . . The modern view is very different. It does not believe that value judgements are really judgements at all. They are sentiments, or complexes, or attitudes, produced in a community by the pressure of its environments and its traditions, and differing from one community to another.11
Lewis could be writing for today’s world. If you are interested in reading further, consider the following:
The Poison of Subjectivism
The Abolition of Man
The Correspondance of C. S. Lewis and Don Giovanni Calabria
Bulverism
Mere Christianity
A Preface to Paradise Lost
The writing of C. S. Lewis is significant for contemporary readers like us who face the challenge of engaging with the subjectivism bombarding broad facets of everyday life.
Today, we find ourselves on the other side of an explosion in moral subjectivism and relativistic thinking; it’s in everything from education to immigration policies, marriage laws, personal lifestyle choices, sexual proclivities, corporate marketing, faith issues, and critical race theory. If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “That’s my truth,” you’re listening to a particularly egregious form of relativism in practice!
Lewis shows the belief system to be logically incoherent at its very core—but that’s a conversation for another day.
Now we’re aware of the 12,000 lb subjectivist elephant in the room, you’re probably wondering, “What does it have to do with AI?” To answer that question, we need to explore AI’s complex relationship with information.
Artificial Intelligence and the Challenges of Information
The printing press fundamentally changed how people interacted with knowledge. As the price of books plummeted and access drastically increased, information became more readily available than ever before.
As recently as the early 1990s, libraries were the primary knowledge hubs of suburbia. With the early internet, vast swaths of data entered the digital space, and while rudimentary search engines existed, it was not until Google’s algorithm-based system rose to prominence at the turn of the century that access to the digital world was truly unlocked. The company was so successful, in fact, that even its name became a verb!
By the early 2000s, Google began to incorporate machine learning into search with the basic function of interpreting and correcting spelling mistakes before introducing Google Translate midway through the decade, further opening the door to the world’s knowledge for people everywhere. Today, Google receives roughly 83 billion visits every month.12
Today, it is one of the primary ways people access information.
In the last few years, large language models (LLMs) have changed the game again. The internet’s information can be scoured in seconds and then synthesized into a singular, (generally) coherent answer. Though still in its infancy, this technological achievement is astonishing. Some suggest a possible future where “in twenty years, [LLMs] will read every word ever written and watch every video ever produced and build its own model of the world. This all-knowing sequence transducer would contain all the accumulated knowledge of human history.”13
In many ways, these capabilities that allow humans to easily access unfathomably large streams of information are profoundly exciting. But that has been possible for a while. What makes AI so intriguing is its growing ability to give the perception of thinking and problem solving, an ability we are growing increasingly dependent on.
In his book Surviving AI, Calum Chace highlights the reality that we already rely on AI for our online searches and our grocery shopping (“the fact that the products you want are on the shelf is thanks in part to AI”),14 and to tell us which show we should watch next on our favourite streaming service. AI helps coordinate our hospital systems, factory processes, and financial markets.15 As artificial intelligence continues to develop, it will become increasingly tempting for society to look to AI as the sole arbiter of knowledge, answers, and, dangerously, wisdom.
Church leaders aren’t immune to this. LLMs can be incredibly helpful with, for example, certain facets of sermon preparation, administration, and pastoral care. However, while AI can be a helpful support, it makes for a perilous crutch.
This is where our strive to be technological semi-Luddites comes to the fore once again. In some ways, this will be profoundly positive for our world. And yet, in others, this could be enormously problematic.
Consider a few concerning issues with humanity’s growing reliance on AI as the fount of all knowledge:
AI is a Black Box.
One of the major challenges with artificial intelligence in its present iteration is that it is practically impossible for humans to understand how it arrives at its conclusion. This is what’s commonly referred to as the “black box” issue. As users, we see the starting point and the endpoint of the process but not the innumerable decisions that are made to get there. These mechanisms hoover up immense quantities of data, autonomously extracting patterns and principles without direct instruction or coding from humans.
For example, a neural network might be taught to recognize objects in pictures. In doing so, it trains itself to recognize distinctive criteria for, say, identifying a cat. The problem is that because of the black box problem, there is no way of knowing the precise characteristics of these criteria since they are concealed within the network’s elaborate layers of neurons and nodes.
For feline discovery processes, this isn’t too concerning. But here’s where the challenge lies:
Imagine if an autonomous vehicle suddenly swerves and causes an accident. If we can’t understand the process that led to such an error, it would hinder improvements in safety protocols and erode public trust in autonomous technology.
In a financial context, an AI-driven algorithm might start executing unfavourable trades based on misinterpreted market trends, leading to significant losses. Understanding the AI’s decision-making process could be essential for mitigating such risks.
An AI algorithm could inadvertently learn to associate sensational or fake news with higher engagement, leading to an increase in the spread of misinformation. Users might unknowingly be nudged towards consuming polarizing or factually incorrect content.
Ross Andersen highlights the problem in an article for the Atlantic:
AI offers an illusion of cool exactitude, especially in comparison to error-prone, potentially unstable humans. But today’s most advanced AIs are black boxes; we don’t entirely understand how they work. In complex, high-stakes adversarial situations, AI’s notions about what constitutes winning may be impenetrable, if not altogether alien. At the deepest, most important level, an AI may not understand what Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meant when they said, “A nuclear war cannot be won.”16
While there is a burgeoning field dedicated to peeling back the layers of the AI black box and developing “explainable AI” (XAI), the complex nature of these decision processes means that it may be difficult to ever fully articulate the innumerable steps that lead to an AI’s conclusion. All of this is compounded by our next issue: there is bias in the binary of the machine.
The Bias of AI.
Subjectivity (different from subjectivism) is everywhere; even artificial intelligence can’t escape it. While we often think of AI as cold, objective machines—which is true—this doesn’t mean that it is free from bias. It can manifest in multiple forms and at various stages of the process, thus potentially impacting a user’s access to knowledge.
Bias in AI can arise from three primary sources:
Bias in training data: when the dataset used to train an AI model lacks diversity and fails to mirror the breadth of the real world, the AI’s decisions may exhibit a form of bias. For example, one study found AI was able to produce more realistic images of white people than for people of colour, suggesting that this was because the system was “largely trained on images of white people.”17 It must be stressed that, although likely, evidence does not support this hypothesis. However, the study is nonetheless helpful as it illustrates training data bias well.
Bias in algorithms: Bias can also stem from how an algorithm is produced, either due to the algorithm’s design or the selection of particular variables and features within the model. Imagine an AI-based credit assessment tool that overemphasizes specific socioeconomic factors, leading to biased outcomes against certain demographics.
Inherited bias from humans: AI systems can reflect the biases of their human developers. The conscious or subconscious prejudices and values of the creators can influence both the AI system’s programming and the choice of training data. On the Lex Friedman podcast in early 2023, Open AI CEO Sam Altman recognized this as an issue, discussing his concern about the bias of human feedback raters and the importance of avoiding “groupthink” bubbles that unduly influence the systems.18 Fascinatingly, consumers on both sides of the political aisle have complained about oppositional bias in LLMs such as ChatGPT.
Like the black box issue, serious efforts are currently underway to minimize bias, but it is exceedingly difficult—perhaps impossible—to eliminate it altogether.
While artificial intelligence boasts an impressive ability to gather information from innumerable sources, it cannot fully escape the challenges of bias. For this reason, while AI can be incredibly useful, it must be handled cautiously.
A Serious Wisdom Problem: More Knowledge, Less Truth
What does all of this mean for society in the 21st Century?
Fundamentally, we have entered a period where humanity has more information but less objective truth than ever before. As we grow increasingly dependent on AI systems for information, we find ourselves looking to systems with processes shrouded in enigma, inheriting bias from training data, algorithms, and developers, in a world where it is more difficult than ever to agree on what actually constitutes truth.
Add that to everything we’ve discussed in the previous guidelines so far, and it’s a recipe for disaster. We are in a place where knowledge is becoming warped and skewed in myriad ways, making any question of pursuing wisdom exceptionally difficult.
From an evangelistic perspective, it is vital for believers to point unbelieving friends and family towards the importance of logic, reason, and objective truth in order to lay a foundation for the Good News of Jesus. But that’s a topic for another day.
Before we begin to engage with the world, we need to make sure we have a sound theology of biblical wisdom and pray that in this subjectivistic world, God helps us to stand on the objective truth of His Word.
So, what is Biblical wisdom?
Towards A Theology and Practice of Wisdom
On the big screen, wisdom is almost always painted with the same broad strokes. Think of Yoda, Gandalf, Mister Miyagi, Morpheus, Splinter, and Master Oogway, who regularly make internet “Top-Ten” lists as the wisest fictional characters ever written. These figures are remarkably similar: to varying degrees, they all bear the scars of age and are formidable warriors. They are disciplined, economical with their speech, and, in most cases, have a little bit of an Eastern flavour.
It’s a revealing glimpse into the present-day secular view of wisdom. But are these really the defining characteristics of the wise?
There are plenty of stereotypes about wisdom but few clear definitions. Psychology today proposes that part of wisdom is “an optimism that life’s problems can be solved” and that one can “experience a certain amount of calm in facing difficult decisions.19 If this is the best definition that our psychologists can muster, clearly, there’s a problem.
What is biblical wisdom? Why should we pursue it? How do we get it? These are important questions to wrestle with if we want to engage with artificial intelligence well in the coming months and years. In what follows, I propose that Biblical wisdom is a grace-given, awe-driven intimacy with God that results in Christlike character.
What is Biblical Wisdom?
Wisdom is more than knowing something, and it’s certainly more than being able to fight with the age-defying prowess of Mister Myagi. Knowledge is the accumulation of facts, but wisdom is what you do with that knowledge. Brett McCracken explains it well in his book, The Wisdom Pyramid: “Wisdom is not merely knowing the right answers. It’s about living rightly. It’s about determining which right answer is best.”20 We have wisdom when we understand the challenges and complexities of life and possess the insight to choose the right responses and behaviours in a given situation.
We might describe knowledge as a pantry full of ingredients. Wisdom is not just knowing what’s in the pantry; it’s knowing which ingredients to use for a particular situation and how to combine them to cook something both edible and nutritious.
If, generally speaking, wisdom is the insight to use knowledge well, what makes biblical wisdom different? This is a vital question that Paul explores in 1 Corinthians 1:25-30:
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? 21 For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached. 22 For the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. 24 Yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, 25 because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength (1 Cor. 1:20-25).
Paul is showing us that there is a difference between earthly ideas of wisdom and God’s idea of wisdom.21 While some may consider God’s wisdom to be little more than “foolishness,” it is still infinitely more wise than any human wisdom, just as God’s weakness surpasses any human strength.
In other words, biblical wisdom is different from the world’s wisdom.
But there’s more.
In 1 Corinthians 1:30, Paul tells us, “It Is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness.” Jesus became wisdom for us. He is the very personification of wisdom. This incredible reality means that, logically speaking, biblical wisdom is inseparable from Jesus and the life he led before Calvary, a crucial truth that we will return to in a moment.
Whatever biblical wisdom is, it’s certainly more than knowledge; it’s different from the world’s wisdom and inseparable from Jesus.
With these foundations in place, it’s time to look to the Proverbs, a book rich in insight about wisdom and a critical guide for our understanding of the subject.
Proverbs 1:7: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.”
Proverbs 9:10: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
The phrase “fear of the LORD” refers to a sense of reverence and awe-struck wonder at who God is. This is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom.
Why both? Because we can grow in intellectual knowledge about God without necessarily understanding or knowing him personally. In other words, we can attain knowledge without wisdom, but we can’t have wisdom without knowledge. Fools may know about God, but they can’t put that knowledge into practice. However, true wisdom and knowledge begin with a healthy fear of God’s majesty. Ultimately, our perspective of God determines the direction of our life; the more we glimpse the enormity of the Lord God Almighty, the more difficult it becomes to do anything other than give all we have in worship to him. In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis expresses this sentiment powerfully: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, save to love God, and Him only to serve. That is the highest wisdom, to cast the world behind us, and to reach forward to the heavenly kingdom.”22
Biblical wisdom, therefore, is awe-driven.
When we are propelled by the sheer worshipful wonder of the Lord, the natural outcome is the pursuit of intimacy with Him (Psa. 63:1-3; Jer. 33:3; John 15:4-6; Jam. 4:8).
Biblical wisdom is an awe-driven intimacy with God.
While a rightful fear of the LORD is a core component of biblical wisdom from which everything else grows, Proverbs still has plenty more to teach us on the subject:
Proverbs 14:6: “A wise person is cautious and turns from evil, but a fool is easily angered and is careless.”
Proverbs 14:33: “Wisdom resides in the heart of the discerning; she is known even among fools.”
As well as an appropriate perspective of God, biblical wisdom is cautious and discerning, turning away from evil things.
Proverbs 11:2: “When pride comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.”
Wisdom and humility are intricately connected. After all, if we strive to see the Ancient of Days in the fullness of his splendour, it will necessarily humble us!
Proverbs 12:15: “A fool’s way is right in his own eyes, but whoever listen to counsel is wise.”
Proverbs 13:1: “A wise son responds to his father’s discipline, but a mocker doesn’t listen to rebuke.”
Biblical wisdom is knowing when to listen to the right people for appropriate counsel, discipline, and advice.
Do all of these characteristics remind you of anyone?
Someone who turned from evil despite facing temptations in the desert. Someone who consistently showed patience and discernment Someone, who being found in appearance as a man, humbled himself to death, even to the death of the cross. Someone who listened to the counsel of His Father, even though his perfection needed no discipline.
When we pursue the sort of biblical wisdom outlined in the Proverbs, the inevitable outcome is that we will become more like Jesus in our attitudes and actions.
Biblical wisdom is an awe-driven intimacy with God that results in Christlike character.
Why Should We Pursue Biblical Wisdom?
If this is what constitutes biblical wisdom, what does the Bible teach us about the importance of pursuing it?
Proverbs 1:33: “But whoever listens to me will live securely and be free from the fear of danger.”
Biblical wisdom aids us as we strive to live in this broken world. It leaves us secure in the knowledge that the Lord is with us, and our security is eternally found in Him alone, whatever the storms of this life bring. Biblical wisdom brings with it immense confidence.
Proverbs 3:13-18: Happy is a man who finds wisdom and understanding, for she is more profitable than silver, and her revenue is better than gold. She is more precious than jewels; nothing you desire can equal her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left, riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant, and all her paths, peaceful. She is a tree of life to those who embrace her, and those who hold on to her are happy.
Biblical wisdom is worth far more than finances. It’s far more valuable than anything that we could possibly desire on this earth because it brings long life, riches, honour, happiness, and peace. These are general principles, not guarantees, contrary to the heretical teachings of the prosperity gospel.
For example, we know that, as a general rule, we will become increasingly wealthy if we handle our finances well. However, unforeseen circumstances sometimes cause us financial difficulties irrespective of our prudence (for example, a medical emergency, a house fire, or the effects of war). Similarly, we know that if we live wisely toward others, we will experience fewer arguments, confrontations, and stress. Yet many of us still deal with challenging relationships on a daily basis.
It’s important to remember that the Proverbs are principles, not promises.
With that in mind, we can pursue biblical wisdom because it builds our confidence to persevere and increases our chances of finding riches, honour, happiness, and peace. But there’s still more:
Proverbs 15:7: “The lips of the wise spread knowledge, but the heart of fools is not upright.”
When we pursue biblical wisdom, our words will spread the sort of knowledge that can lead others to wisdom. It’s the overflow of an upright heart that is close to God.
Proverbs 28:26: “The one who trusts in himself is a fool, but the one who walks in wisdom will be safe.”
Those pursuing biblical wisdom find safety in knowing they are not dependent on their own knowledge or strength. In fact, to walk in wisdom is to trust in the Lord above all else:
Proverbs 3:5-8: Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight. Don’t be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and turn away from evil. This will be healing for your body and strengthening for your bones.”
A clear picture is emerging.
Pursuing biblical wisdom is valuable because when we find it, we find security in the Lord God Almighty, confident in him, irrespective of what the world throws at us. Generally speaking, we’ll find the sort of happiness and fulfilment that Jesus describes in his Sermon on the Mount. We become spreaders of knowledge and truth that can draw others to wisdom, and we arrive at a place where we can trust in God’s power, wisdom, and provision, knowing that he is walking with us every step of the way.
How Do We Grow in Wisdom?
It’s all very well to understand what biblical wisdom is and why we should pursue it. Practically, we must then ask how we attain it. Here’s what the Bible shows us:
Proverbs 2:6: “For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.”
Wisdom comes from God. Because biblical wisdom is fundamentally different from earthly wisdom, it’s understandable that it is God-given.
Proverbs 13:20: “The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.”
Although wisdom comes from God, we will also grow in it when we spend time with wise people.
Proverbs 11:2: “When arrogance comes, disgrace follows, but with humility comes wisdom.”
This is worth repeating: When we possess an awe-driven intimacy with God, it will necessarily humble us as we realize how much we pale compared to the God of all Creation. We are humbled as we comprehend the extent to which we are sinners in need of our loving God’s forgiveness and how, in our own strength, we are doing little more than fumbling around in the dark.
Wisdom comes from God as the result of a rightful awe and reverence towards Him. It comes to those who proactively seek it, walk closely with others who can help point them to it and live with a humble recognition of their need for more of it.
But there is one final piece to the puzzle of biblical wisdom:
Biblical wisdom is a grace-given, awe-driven intimacy with God that results in Christlike character.
It is impossible to find true biblical wisdom on our own. However, by God’s grace, we live in light of the life of Jesus, fully man and fully God, filled with heavenly wisdom (Matt. 15:54). After a sinless, wisdom-filled life, he humbly gave himself over to death on a cross, rose again on the third day and ascended to be at the right hand of the Father. In doing so, he won the ultimate victory, conquered sin and death, and obliterated the great divide between Creator and his creation. He was the atoning sacrifice for our sins, meaning whoever believes in and turns to Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
This is the Gospel.
And the beauty of this good news is that it is only through the grace-given gift of Jesus that we can find true, biblical wisdom. In our own strength, it would perpetually allude us.
A Call to Proactive Prayer for God-Given Wisdom
In light of everything we’ve discussed, it’s now time to return to the topic of artificial intelligence.
As believers, we venture into the digital frontiers at a time when our world has more knowledge than ever before but is less interested in objective truth than perhaps at any other time in history. Winston Churchill once commented, “We shape our buildings and afterwards they shape us.”
It’s the same with technology. It will undoubtedly be the same with artificial intelligence.23 Perhaps we could refer to it as “technological formativity.”
As we shape AI, it will shape us in return. It already is.
While we load the machine with increasingly relativistic datasets and the inherent bias of its developers, it seems inevitable that it will return the favour. We risk being crushed under the weight of information overload. We risk being led astray by the systems' mostly subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—bias. We risk blissful ignorance in the process as AI operates within its opaque and enigmatic black box.
We live in a world with a lot of knowledge but not a lot of truth. We face a wisdom crisis. For this reason, we must be proactive in praying that God will equip us with the wisdom we so desperately need to plug the void.
Biblical wisdom is a grace-given, awe-driven intimacy with God that results in Christlike character.
When we pursue God-given wisdom, we can find objective truth in a subjective world. We can build our house on the rock and weather the incoming storms. We can cut through the noise and proclaim the way of hope even when the calls to dangerous ways of living seem loudest. We can look to God over and above the distractions and help others to do the same. We can implement AI into the life of the Church as a tool and not a crutch.
And this is good news for a changing world.
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Isaac Asimov, Book of Science and Nature Quotations, ed. Isaac Asimov and Jason A. Schulman (New York, NY: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), 280.
Stephen C. Evans, “Relativism,” in Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 2002), 101.
Scott B. Rae, Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics, Third Edit. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), Kindle Loc. 276.
Stephen C. Evans, “Subjectivism,” in Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downer’s Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 2002), 111.
Peter Kreeft, C. S. Lewis for the Third Millenium: Six Essays on the Abolition of Man (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994), 79.
Plato, “Theaetus,” 170a-171c.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2.94.6.
C S Lewis, “The Abolition of Man,” in The Complete C. S. Lewis (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2014), Kindle Loc. 10994.
“The Sophists,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified September 30, 2011, accessed June 25, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sophists/.
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Protagoras is the only sophist to whom ancient sources ascribe relativistic views, and even in his case, the evidence is supposedly ambiguous.
Louis Markos, From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), 272.
C S Lewis, “The Poison of Subjectivism,” in Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967), 90.
“Google.Com Traffic Analytics, Ranking Stats & Tech Stack,” Similarweb, accessed January 6, 2024, https://www.similarweb.com/website/google.com/.
Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan, AI 2041 (New York: Currency, 2021), Kindle loc. 2085 of 7291.
Calum Chace, Surviving AI, Third Edition. (Three Cs, 2020), Kindle loc. 597 of 4658.
Ibid., Kindle loc. 593-618 of 4658
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