AI Has a God Problem: Why Humans Fear Their Own Creation
Why do we fear our own creation? Catholic theology shows where the real dangers of AI lie.
Artificial intelligence apparently has a God problem. At least that is what a report by the American Wall Street Journal suggests. Under the title “AI Has a God Problem Stretching From the Vatican to the Baptist Pulpit,” the newspaper reports on a debate that has now reached the churches as well. While the Vatican grapples with the ethical and anthropological questions raised by artificial intelligence, some Christian preachers are already warning of a technology with almost divine claims (The Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2026).
But honestly: do we even still know what we're talking about?
Artificial intelligence is changing our work, our communication, and increasingly our understanding of human abilities. That a technology triggers such changes deserves attention. What is astonishing, however, is how quickly a technical development has become a religious question. Can an intelligence developed by human beings actually attain a power that we have so far reserved for God? Is a human invention of all things supposed to one day rival God?
How did we come to ascribe such qualities to a technology? A look at an ordinary blade of grass should help us toward an answer.
Is artificial intelligence really intelligent? Why a blade of grass is more than AI
What distinguishes artificial intelligence from a living being?
A blade of grass by the roadside is hardly likely to impress anyone. It doesn't speak any language and couldn't solve even the simplest arithmetic problem. And yet it possesses something our highly developed AI systems lack. For the blade of grass is alive.
A blade of grass grows, absorbs nutrients, and carries out metabolism. Its life processes arise from its own nature. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, processes information by means of mathematical models and technical procedures. It can produce astonishing results, but it possesses no biological life process of its own.
Already Thomas Aquinas distinguishes living beings from inanimate things on the basis of their activity, the principle of which lies within themselves (Summa theologiae I, q. 18, a. 1). Life, then, cannot simply be equated with the performance of certain functions.
One could object that a modern AI system is far more complex than a blade of grass. Technically speaking, that is true in many respects. But complexity alone tells us nothing about whether something is alive. A computer can perform millions of tasks in the blink of an eye. A blade of grass cannot manage a single one of them, and yet it is so much more: a living creature.
This is no small matter. We are so accustomed to judging things by their performance that we easily lose sight of their true nature. With artificial intelligence, this happens precisely when we draw conclusions about an inner life of its own from its capabilities. But the ability to imitate human activities by no means implies that a technical system possesses the same nature as a human being.
Can artificial intelligence really think and understand?
A conversation with a chatbot can feel surprisingly natural. You describe a problem and receive an answer that addresses your own situation. And when it writes “I understand you”, it's easy to get the impression that you are speaking with a thinking counterpart.
Yet a language model processes inputs on the basis of learned mathematical relationships. Its answers can be sensible and factually correct. In doing so, the language model calculates its answers using mathematical procedures and the patterns it learned during training. The word “I” does not refer here to any demonstrated personal subject. It is simply part of a linguistic output.
The Vatican's note Antiqua et nova of January 28, 2025, therefore emphasizes the difference between human and artificial intelligence. Human knowledge is part of a bodily and personal life. AI can replicate certain human performances without thereby possessing the same form of knowledge (Antiqua et nova, nos. 30–35).
For example, an AI can explain why the loss of a loved one causes grief. It can even find comforting words. But it does not follow that it has ever itself experienced grief, let alone that it can feel grief. Likewise, it can compose a theological text about God without thereby possessing faith or knowledge of God.
Whether artificial systems could in principle develop consciousness remains a matter of scientific and philosophical debate. But we should nonetheless distinguish between demonstrable performance and unsubstantiated attributions.
For that, however, it must first be clarified what place such a technology may even occupy in human life.
AI and God: What Augustine teaches about tools and false gods
Why is artificial intelligence, according to Augustine, a tool?
Saint Augustine lived long before the invention of the computer. Nevertheless, he offers a remarkably helpful thought for our debate.
In his work De doctrina christiana, he distinguishes between uti, the use of a thing, and frui, the enjoyment of a thing as an end in itself. To explain this, he describes a traveler who needs a means of transport, a ship or a cart, to reach his homeland. Now he enjoys the journey so much that he would rather stay on the road. He begins to love the means of transport and the journey more than the homeland he actually wanted to reach (Augustine, De doctrina christiana, I, 3–5).
Artificial intelligence can be understood as a tool in this sense. It extends human abilities and can support us in an enormous number of tasks that previously required great, if not impossible, effort.
In medicine especially, the possibilities are considerable. AI can assist doctors in evaluating examinations and help researchers develop new treatment options. It is also opening up new paths in science and education. The Catholic Church explicitly acknowledges these opportunities (Antiqua et nova, Nos. 51–56 and 77–84).
Augustine would therefore not make the performance of the tool the decisive criterion, but would ask what end it serves.
A patient who has a medical finding explained to him by an AI can thereby better understand what his doctor wants to tell him. But if he forgoes the medical examination because of this answer, he has granted the tool an authority that does not belong to it.
The situation is similar in religion. AI can locate Bible passages, explain the Church Fathers, and summarize theological arguments. Yet it is neither a source of revelation nor a spiritual teacher with its own experience of faith.
The machine can help man reflect on God. But it cannot replace God.
Augustine reminds us to use created things in the right order. For him, the highest good is God. A tool can help man along his way, but it must not itself become the final end: “Thus we are to use this world, not to enjoy it”, (Augustine, De doctrina christiana, I, 4).
Is artificial intelligence becoming a new idol?
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal American Baptist pastor Joseph Hutchinson warned of an AI that wants to be God. He linked his warning to apocalyptic ideas from the Book of Revelation (The Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2026).
But how could artificial intelligence want to be God? Such a will would presuppose that it has intentions of its own. Its ability to generate human language provides no proof of this.
We thus attribute human qualities to a technical system and then become frightened by the very qualities we ourselves have bestowed upon it.
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This recalls the biblical critique of idols. Psalm 115 describes idols that people have made with their own hands: “They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see”, (Ps 115:5).
Our present-day technical systems can indeed speak and respond. But the point of the psalm does not lie solely in the fact that the idols of that time were mute. It lies in the fact that man attributes divine significance to his own creation.
The prophet Isaiah likewise mocks this inversion: a craftsman uses part of his wood for fuel and fashions the rest into an idol before which he prostrates himself: “Half of it he burns in the fire … Of the rest he makes a god, his idol, and bows down to it and worships it”, (Is 44:16-17). More than paradoxical.
The old temptation thus remains the same: man creates something and then begins to bow down before his own work.
Of course, there are legitimate concerns about artificial intelligence. It can be used for manipulation, spread false information, and profoundly influence human decisions. But such dangers do not make it an independent being with divine intentions.
According to Catholic understanding, God is also not simply a particularly intelligent being. He is the Creator and origin of all created being. No matter how powerful an AI's computing capacity, it cannot bridge this ontological difference (Summa theologiae I, q. 2, a. 3; I, q. 44, a. 1).
Is artificial intelligence a new Tower of Babel?
This brings us to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9).
The people decide to build a city and a tower whose top is to reach the heavens. They want to make a name for themselves and secure their own greatness (Genesis 11:4).
The biblical account does not condemn building as such. Nor is the desire to develop technical abilities a sin. What matters is the human self-understanding behind the undertaking.
Babel becomes an image of a humanity that makes its own power the measure of all things.
Here lies an important difference from the critique of idols. With an idol, man raises his own work to a higher authority. With Babel, he raises himself through the power of his work. In both cases he loses sight of the right order; only the direction of the self-deception differs.
A similar temptation can also arise in dealing with artificial intelligence. Not because the machine itself strives for divine power, but because man sees in it a possibility of finally overcoming the limits of his own existence.
This becomes especially clear in transhumanist visions of the future, which are tied to the hope of technically enhancing human abilities without limit or even overcoming death.
This reveals a remarkable shift: technology is no longer meant merely to serve life. It is meant to surpass human nature itself.
It is understandable that man seeks ways to heal diseases and prolong his life. Medicine has lived from this legitimate concern for centuries. But there is a considerable difference between the wish to alleviate human suffering and the idea that human nature could fundamentally be left behind through technology.
Catholic anthropology knows a different starting point. Man possesses his dignity because he is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). This dignity does not depend on how quickly he thinks or how many problems he can solve (Genesis 1:26–27).
A gravely ill person does not lose his dignity when his mental faculties decline. A newborn child already possesses it, long before it can speak or calculate. And a machine does not acquire human dignity merely because it surpasses us in certain capabilities. Human dignity must not be tied to cognitive performance or technical abilities.
An ever more powerful machine still does not answer a single one of the fundamental questions about the meaning of human life. It can neither establish human dignity nor decide the difference between good and evil by its computing power alone.
Catholic criticism is therefore not directed against technical progress. It is directed against the idea that man could, through technical power, become the ultimate measure of all things himself.
Babel reminds us that technical greatness does not yet guarantee wisdom. Man can build ever higher towers and in doing so lose sight of what purpose they are meant to serve.
Does AI have a problem with God, or does man?
It would be a strange outcome of our technical development if we fell into religious awe precisely before the very machine we ourselves built.
Artificial intelligence deserves attention. Its possibilities are impressive, and its social effects demand serious engagement. The Catholic Church in particular has good reasons to accompany its development critically and to measure its use against our well-being.
But this requires neither apocalyptic exaggerations nor the notion that somewhere in a data center a new deity is awakening.
The real danger begins where we grant our own invention an authority it does not deserve. When we no longer question its answers and even let it guide us in matters of our faith, we hand over something for which we ourselves must be responsible. It is not the machine that then raises itself above us. It is we who place it on a pedestal it does not deserve.
The religious debate about artificial intelligence therefore reveals at least as much about our own self-understanding as it does about the technology itself.
It is not artificial intelligence that has a God problem. The God problem begins where we can no longer distinguish between our tool and our Creator.
About Lukasz Holfeld
Editor / author at Priesterausbildungshilfe.
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