Can something written/edited by AI be considered the inspired word of a God ?

[RedTagAlan]

I am atheist, ex-born again Christian, and in a recent thread there appears to have been a fair bit of AI "tidying up" going on with a Christians posts.

I am making no accusations of course, nor commenting on the rights and wrongs, but it sure got me thinking about theists using AI for religious matters.

If a Vicar/Minister/Priest/Iman/ Theist etc uses AI, and considers that AI output to possibly be "inspired by God", and if AI can fake it, then, then do Theists believe their God can influence AI ?

It's a rather big can of worms when one thinks about it.

I’m firmly against the use of AI for a tidy up for sermons. If you look closely at the Bible you find that many a time words are phrased in an unusual way, or phrases constantly repeated. This is because God wanted certain phrases to have emphasis or an impact. If you put the Bible into AI for a tidy up, it would no doubt remove a lot of it due to repetition and rejig sentences, but would loose what God had wanted to say beyond the type

There are so many inaccuracies, mixed messages and impossibilities in the bible, AI would have a field day making sense of it!

It’s a really interesting question! I’m an ex-vangelical now but can totally see how earnest evangelical “spirt filled” me would have totally believed God could speak through ChatGPT. In the same way as I believed He could speak to me by me drawing lots or opening my bible at a random page.
(obviously now I think it’s bonkers but was very comforting to believe!)

I think it will become a thing - people praying and then asking chat gpt what God wants them to do about a situation! Perhaps it already is a thing.

I am atheist, as I stated in my OP.

My thinking is along the lines of 1- it's dishonest to pass off AI work as ones own, and 2 - if AI can simulate so called "inspired thought and work", then it casts the whole notion of "inspired" into doubt.

If I say to a Christian for example. " the bible is man invented" in response to their "inspired" notion, and they reply to me in turn using AI, then they are actually reinforcing my point.

This

Bearing in mind that most religious texts have been “tidied up” by successive writers over the years I don’t see why it being AI doing it makes any difference….

Theists could say that manual tidying/ editing is inspired by God.

By my reasoning, as soon as AI is introduced into things, surely any God input is out the window?

So if a theist uses AI, they are accepting that God does not inspire.

I think that in very rare instances a minister could be inspired by God to use AI as a tool.

However the minister's process of discernment here should be very rigorous, and almost certainly they should also should check what AI has come up with.

From a theistic point of view, I would argue that AI might be the work of Satan.

If I was a believer of course.

I think it's the work of people, and that many of those who developed it were originally well meaning, but possibly lacked foresight.

Now that it's here, it's how AI is used that's important. It's not in itself evil I don't think.

Unfortunately I do believe that it's much more likely to obfuscate the truth than aid it, but I think now it's here that God could (but rarely)
Inspire someone to use it with Grace.

I can't see why this is an issue at all. If god can communicate his work via flesh and souls, why can't he do it via software created by human souls, and trained on the collective words of billions of those souls?

I mean, even bluebells and mountains etc are spoken of as communicating aspects of god, so what is the problem with AI doing the same?

In a way, if you think of AI as a distillation of all the billions of human inputs it is trained on, then it seems like something metaphorically perfect for harbouring divinity.

I don't believe in god, but if I did, I'd see AI as being as much 'that of god' as anything else.

A minister is likely to be using AI because it makes their life easier - same as anyone else. Again, everyone should review the outputs of AI regardless of the purpose it’s being used for

@MyThreeWords I do like the idea of billions of souls collectively coming together to form AI.

My problem is that, in general, many of those souls are not particularly trying to work for good. The result is therefore generally not a force for good.

Bluebells and mountains are, in essence, the work of Nature, or God, or Good, however you would like to see them.

Oh I do agree with you completely.

But the hope is in your word 'likely' because perhaps, just occasionally, a the minister is trying to go above the easiest life.

Sorry about the spare a.

I guess you could say that AI is 'fallen', just as we all, as its inputs, are fallen. The task then, when using AI, is that of discernment - i.e. working out what is really the word of god and what is just the flawed prompting of our collective fallen natures.

But that is the same task that a priest (or any Christian) has to engage in when s/he looks into his/her own soul for the word of god, and when interpreting religious reading.

Same as anyone else who uses AI, a priest needs to find the right prompts, and assess the results of his/her query. But for a priest, the process of assessment is already set out in the disciplines of religious readings and religious introspection.

My only acquaintance, as an adult, with religious practice has been attending Quaker meetings in the past. They are very big on the notion of 'discernment', and it is interesting to think of it in this context.

Can we expand of your billions of souls thing a bit ?

Chinese AI. Officially atheist country. Would you trust Chinese AI to write a sermon ?

And no, I am not moving the goalposts here. This is just a general (human) chat :-)

Yes.

The billions of souls idea comes from @MyThreeWords , but I like it!

No, I wouldn't trust Chinese AI to write a sermon in general circumstances. However, I would trust God to show me how to relate to it if I ever heard one, or any sermon actually.

If I were a minister, I would trust God to help me use aspects of the sermon to help with my own, if I felt my circumstances truly aligned on a specific unusual occasion to need some AI input.
An example would perhaps be if I felt very ill but didn't want to let the congregation down

I even believe it could be possible to use the whole sermon if that seemed right. I can't emphasise enough though, that I feel such an occasion would be vanishingly rare.

There's not much better than human chat!
Anyway, I'm off to Morrisons for a bit now, then coffee with friends, so I'll catch up with the thread later.

Interesting.

So you would trust God more to influence AI than the humans who develop it ?

Musk has said he want's his AI to be more right wing. Chinese AI will promote the CPC values more. And both will be able to do it in subtle ways the casual reader might not notice.

This Sky news article should be of interest. The latest AI iteration not only has the errors, it can also lie, and be dishonest.

Claude Opus 4.6: This AI just passed the 'vending machine test' - and we may want to be worried about how it did | Science, Climate & Tech News | Sky News

God in control or man ?

I don't think God would usually influence AI because, for one thing, the people developing it will not usually ask for his help.

I think God or man or sometimes both are in control of each individual, depending upon each person's own interpretation of their particular life.

I think it is a person's choice. However, if they do choose God then they must often listen very carefully to what they are hearing to make sure that it's not just what they wish they had heard.

I think God can use the most unlikely ways of showing his presence, but it's very relational and different things are right for different people.

Also the point that @Parker231 emphasised is important here; regardless of God we all need to use our intelligence if we decide to make use of AI.

I'll read the article a bit later, but generally that's how I feel about it.

Just because everyone’s using it, doesn’t mean it’s right for every context. I wouldn’t use it for sermon writing because then it’s not my work. It’s an algorithm’s work. A non thinking, emotionless, non spiritual algorithm, coming up with a sermon that’s meant to speak of God and to the human condition in some way. I think you need humans to do that, not machines.
Theres also something for the preacher in preparing the sermon themselves; their wrestling with the text, the context, what they feel God is saying both to them and the congregation through the text…. It changes the preacher as well as the congregation through congregation. I don’t see how AI can possibly do any of that.

AI is amazing but then I’m an atheist so don’t get any messages from any god or attend any church services.

And I think AI can be useful in some circumstances, as long as it’s used carefully. I’m very sceptical that it’s a good thing in anything related to religion, or ‘people focussed’ requirements. So I wouldn’t be happy having an online AI counsellor or therapist, for example.

It's not a case of AI being scoffed at. It's about AI being man made and understood. While each individual, me for example, do not understand how it works, plenty of people do.

If AI was asked to create a sermon, then the people who designed that AI could explain exactly how the process worked. There is no supernatural woo involved.