AI and the Imago Dei: A Christian Argument Against Outsourcing the Mind

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• − opinion#276 28 likes at the source

  There's much to appreciate here, and the tree-and-branches framing rather than just the fruit is genuinely useful. My slight worry is that the piece drifts toward treating the imago dei as a matter of function (what we can do, like reason) instead of ontology (who we are). That's a slippery slope, because it risks implicitly diminishing people who can't perform that function well. A minor-ish quibble in an otherwise excellent piece.

  • − opinion#288 5 likes at the source

    Well said and worth remembering... what defines us and gives us worth doesn't rest on our capabilities, but on the One who made us.
  • − opinion#289 3 likes at the source

    Yes, my chief objection was equating the Image of God with the rational intellect. I don't believe that's right at all. Beyond that, I don't think we actually know what LLMs are — even their creators don't, as someone else here pointed out.
• − opinion#277 23 likes at the source

  Kieślowski's 1989 Dekalog 1 makes a powerful Christian case against AI. But for every Berdyaev or Bernanos there's a de Chardin or Nikolai Fedorov claiming technology is God's route to resurrection. Recently I unintentionally endured an hour-long lecture from a Jesuit priest praising AI's virtues and insisting the Church must adopt it. AI is a diabolical technology, yet ontologically not evil. It's the people who build it, promote it, and knowingly use it who commit evil. But can Christians still be persuaded to oppose AI? Could this be the modern Church's Amish moment? Sadly, I doubt it. The churches have grown too decrepit, becoming anti-Christian institutions, so the only path now is small groups forming genuinely Christian communities like the early Apostles.

  • − opinion#290 5 likes at the source

    As far as I know, the Orthodox Church has never opposed technology itself; its concern is always how it's used. Many early saints were well versed in the science of their day. Still, worldly progress isn't the Christian's main concern — our true goal is loving union with God. The challenges technology brings can become occasions for spiritual growth as we learn to choose in cooperation with God's will. God lets us stumble and face temptation so that, by His grace, we learn to overcome our fallen tendencies. The Christian aim isn't a perfect earthly world but entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal life. A Greek Church-sponsored website now lets people submit questions and get answers drawn from trusted Church documents — not a general chatbot, but AI confined to a library of Orthodox sources, offering no personal counseling. Such a resource could prove valuable. We'll see whether the ancient Church, through her living Tradition, keeps supporting such applications to help people grasp ancient truths. Perhaps they may even expose the serious theological errors of many modern churches born of the Reformation. Today's Orthodox parishes already resemble the small communities you describe. We must trust the Lord and strive to follow His teaching, especially the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). I don't believe AI can control our souls unless we willingly hand over that…
  • − opinion#291

    Farasha is right. The Amish have managed to live alongside wider society while keeping their beliefs and way of life. Yet the temptations outside — wealth, dress, music, celebrity — were always a threat to the community's survival. An Amish-style approach to AI would be equally hard for young people in an AI-free community, whose employment prospects could be badly damaged. Historically, it would be like trying to engage with the world unable to read or write. At 71, I'm confident I can live happily without most of what technology offers, social media included. I'm fairly sure our young people won't have that luxury.
• − opinion#279 17 likes at the source

  I really like this argument. It gives sophisticated form to the nagging feeling I've had in the back of my mind. We keep hearing "AI is just a tool." But as Andrew so thoughtfully shows, it isn't. Other tools existed to enhance our work — physical machines like levers and pulleys, mental machines like word processors and spreadsheets. AI is designed to replace our work. To replace us. So it isn't a tool. It's a usurper. It is antihuman, and therefore antichrist, since we bear His image.

  • − opinion#293 14 likes at the source

    "Therefore it is not a tool. It is a usurper. It is antihuman, therefore it is antichrist, since we bear His image." Exactly — that's it precisely.
  • − opinion#294 3 likes at the source

    Yes! Enhancement versus replacement. That distinction seems crucial.
• − opinion#278 14 likes at the source

  This essay was a soothing balm. Thank you. I don't believe AI is a "tool" — it's a device. A tool enhances human ability; a device replaces it entirely. I can peel an apple with my fingernails, or use a tool to do it. A device removes the need for a human to peel it at all. Etymologically, "device" traces back to division/divide/separate. Many of my Christian and Catholic friends enthusiastically embrace AI, and some have sadly devoted their careers to building it. In one conversation, a Catholic friend mentioned her chats with Gemini four times. She talks to it because she wants to know something. She could sit and ponder, or ask a person — her questions are well within human thought. But with her device she didn't enhance human thought; she replaced it with machine "thought."

  • − opinion#292 2 likes at the source

    I use AI to learn Spanish so I can communicate better with my in-laws and my wife's friends when we visit her hometown. Five new words or constructions a day, daily quizzes, sentences composed at its prompting when I have time to review. I could hire a tutor — but who could I pay to be available whenever I have five spare minutes, from after the kids are in school until bedtime? A book can't judge whether my sentences make sense or whether I'm even intelligible. A machine won't get frustrated while you hunt for a word. It's not a job anyone could volunteer for — not even my wife, who's busier than I am. So it's a machine or pretty much nothing. My point about devices is that sometimes you're not actually replacing a person, even if a person could theoretically do the job.
• − opinion#281 7 likes at the source

  I'm grateful to have read this; it deepens my grasp of the issue's details. But honestly, Paul, I think you already addressed this as deeply and fully as it can be in your earlier essays. Yours is the answer and approach that will never gain traction in secular contexts — it will only draw scoffing and demands for a more coherent, 'intelligent' response (perhaps what Andrew's essay aimed at, in a positive sense). But that only shows how far 'the world' is from the truth, which is this: this is demonic. Ephesians 6:12. Beginning of story, end of story. Engaging with AI is engaging with the demonic. The fruit is demonic, and the tree is demonic. Saying this among intellectuals wins no friends; in secular circles, none either; and in my experience, even in the Orthodox Church it often wins few. Everyone keeps hunting for nuance and shunning the binary nature of this — and of most things, frankly. But as the Apostles wrote in the Didache's very first line: "There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways." I know which way AI is. There is zero nuance. Again, Paul, you've expressed this well before, and I'm grateful — for that and for this. Glory to God for all things!

  • − opinion#295 3 likes at the source

    Thank you for your sober, straight words, James — I share your thoughts and feelings. A visceral rejection, however, doesn't appeal to intellectuals and appeasers (negotiators). Still, I'm glad we're struggling to dig deeper into this challenge and our reactions. In the end, I know no reasoning will satisfy someone who loves debate and the neatness of their own arguments. I remain a simple-minded sheep listening for my shepherd's voice. He says — No.
• − opinion#280 6 likes at the source

  Andrew's essay is rich and brilliant. I've been waiting for my fellow Catholics to catch up and take AI's deeper problems seriously instead of blindly leaping onto every bandwagon the way we did with social media and smartphones.
• − opinion#284 5 likes at the source

  I'll start by admitting I'm no AI fan, but a few thoughts came to mind — just thinking out loud, not a passionate argument. First, I value the approach of examining the tree itself rather than only its fruits. Second, I'm not convinced the Roman Catholic understanding of the human person matches the Orthodox one (I know little of RC teaching). What I was taught about the Orthodox view is that the person has multiple levels in a hierarchy: the physical level — matter shared with rocks, water, all creation; the vegetative soul — growth and stasis, shared with plants; the animal soul — movement, appetite, thoughts, emotions, shared with animals; the rational mind — what we moderns call "the brain": logic, discursive reasoning; and the nous / heart — the center of our being, where Christ lives, the spiritual organ by which we see God, our true self. In the spiritual person (especially a saint), the nous / heart is at the top and each lower level is subject to it. In the fleshly person, the physical rules, each level serves the one beneath, and (as often today) we don't even recognize the nous / heart exists — we don't know what part of us it is or how to find it. My main problem with the argument is equating the rational mind one-to-one with the divine image. I simply don't believe that. I'm still a neophyte, no expert in Orthodox theology, so I can't confidently answer "where is…
• − opinion#285 5 likes at the source

  Profound, thoughtful, and — like all truth — hard to contradict. I wonder whether Substack is using AI to curate the prompts we all get, steering us toward new authors on this platform? I agree with this writer's arguments one hundred percent, but it's also worth asking today: is the question not so much where AI is, but where AI is not? 🤔

  • − opinion#296 5 likes at the source

    I'd bet Substack is doing exactly that. And it's a very good question. Give it a few more years and it's hard to imagine any online space that won't have been colonised.
• − opinion#286 4 likes at the source

  I spent a 46-year career in computers. When I began, I was told computers are very stupid but darn loyal — they'll do exactly what you tell them, right or wrong. AI computers are just as stupid. A recent example: the robots running in a track meet. Very fast, but whoever "trained" them forgot to train them to stop running. It took a wall to show them how. As I said — very stupid. AI can do many wonderful things. What it can't do is replace our God-given humanness.
• − opinion#287 3 likes at the source

  First, I think the original argument is seriously flawed, but I'll jump to the concluding argument, which deserves separate consideration. It starts from the observation that artificial intelligence doesn't possess human intelligence in the full personal sense. It generates language resembling the speech of an intelligent human even though no conscious human speaker stands "behind" the words. From this it's argued that AI is intrinsically deceptive or duplicitous. There's an important truth here that shouldn't be dismissed: we shouldn't anthropomorphize AI. A language model is not a human person, has no human soul or nous, and shouldn't be treated as a spiritual or moral subject. Its ability to produce persuasive language doesn't show that it understands, loves, wills, believes, repents, or communes with God as a person does. But that doesn't establish that AI is inherently deceptive. The key difficulty is the claim that words are "exclusively a manifestation of intelligence." Words can certainly manifest personal intelligence, but the physical or symbolic production of words doesn't require a conscious speaker at the moment they appear. A printed book puts words before our eyes without the book being intelligent. Take your book Against the Machine as an example: it presents thoughtful ideas one can agree or disagree with, accept or reject. Likewise a recording reproduces…

  • − opinion#297 17 likes at the source

    I ran this comment through an AI detector. It tested positive for AI.
• − opinion#282 2 likes at the source

  Very interesting! I have huge reservations about AI. I see it used daily at work to replace 'work' (and thought) because it makes life easier. Eventually, I can imagine us making life so easy that we forget how to think, how to read — maybe even how to breathe! There'll be an app for that! My office-mate uses ChatGPT, calls it 'Alan', and it made its own avatar. She asks it for life advice. That alone is enough for me to avoid it like the plague! I don't believe AI will ever be conscious, because only God creates true, living consciousness. But I do believe it can (already does?) ape consciousness, and it's a perfect instrument for a dark, malicious consciousness that has existed for millennia to draw people away from God. Yes, 'it could be used for good', we tell ourselves. Unfortunately, we are fallen, and trying to do good without God never ends well.
• − opinion#283 1 likes at the source

  For what it's worth, I handle AI (LLMs) the way I'd handle a "criminal informant" — with me playing the "interrogator." Since my work forces me to use it (it's now baked into every Google search), I keep an attitude of aggressive distrust toward it.