Artificial Intelligence and the Glory of God

"The Glory of God is Intelligence"

​​​Last week Elder Gerrit W. Gong made headlines when he told attendees at BYU Education Week to NOT use artificial intelligence to write their Sacrament Meeting talks.

I chuckled because members in my ward have been using A.I. for some time.

You might not have noticed because for years our talks have sounded artificial (rather than authentic), summarizing and quoting the Brethren as if the membership were itself a Large Language Model (LLM), soulless.

Church culture has done a good job of conditioning us to think like an A.I. already (so when Skynet takes over the world, it'll just be same-O).

The fact that Elder Gong is worried about A.I.'s ability to "generate truth from God," when for years we've been told to stick to the teachings of the Brethren, sort of misses the mark.

What has truth got to do with it when everything's focused on General Conference talks?  Who is fact-checking the Brethren?  No one; that's why it's all just cut-and-paste.

They even tell us how to bear a "proper" testimony; it's all pre-scripted.  There's no revelatory improv allowed.  Our meetings are performance art, and we are actors in the theater of the absurd.

So I find it ironic that the Brethren are concerned about A.I. when they've trained us over generations to act like robots, without autonomy. 

Is it any wonder our meetings are as exciting as molded plastic, composed of correlated programming, hard-wired to the Mothership?

Artificial Faith

Now, please don't misunderstand: I agree with Elder Gong!

Like him, I believe A.I. "cannot replace revelation . . . from God."  I would point out, as philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) brilliantly did, that emotions are a critical component of consciousness ("prehensions").

The nature of divine intelligence ― we're talking godlike, glorious intelligence ― is replete with emotion (despite what the creeds say about God being without parts or passions).  Intelligence sheds itself in joy, grace, love, and sorrow.  The gospel is something that must be felt.

Now A.I. is everywhere, and I've developed a nose to sniff it out.  It's easy to tell if something is A.I.-generated, from pictures to talks to blog posts (not this one).

A.I. content has a certain smell, an unmistakable signature, like a horse stable of oiled leather mixed with straw and manure.  Workable, yes, but lacking in refinement and subtext and beauty.  You don't serve dinner to company in the stables.

The output of artificial intelligence reads like a picture hanging on the wall askew, not quite right.  

Personally, I choose to not use A.I. in my writing because I want my words to be an expression of my spirit (and perhaps, even, the Lord's).

But A.I. is beside the point.  Artificial Intelligence is not the problem: artificial faith is.

How can we restore intelligence ― actual intelligence (D&C 93:36) ― into our worship?

A.I. is the bogeyman, but the underlying problem is the way we've sandwiched the body and blood of Christ between boring meetings, under the weight of hierarchy.

My patriarchal blessing warns me to not mock God (D&C 63:58), yet every Sunday I see the emblems of the Sacrament surrounded by lifelessness, with people reaching for the bread and water checked-out mentally, on their phones.

Who can blame them?  It's not kosher for members to go off-script, to burst into prophecy or tongues, or exercise the gifts of the Spirit in this controlled environment outlined in the Handbook.  So why not open Facebook in the face of such spiritually-choreographed inanity?  ("The Patriots won!")

The Book of Mormon tells us to conduct our meetings by "the workings of the Spirit" (Moroni 6:9), but we've instead "quenched the Spirit" (1 Thess. 5:19) in order to appease orthodoxy.  In the process we've turned doctrine into dogmatism, and meetings into mutual surveillance (if you haven't had the pleasure of being ratted-out to leadership, then you're missing out!).

So I wonder what truly mocks God.  Could it be the way we've organized a Church in the image of artificial righteousness?

​What can be done?

"I Call to the Stand, Claude" (an A.I.)
​
Recently I decided to pay for an A.I. subscription to get access to the latest and brightest A.I. has to offer (look, I am not a Luddite).

After researching all of my options (such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Copilot, etc.), I ended up choosing Claude Pro by Anthropic because of its ethical model and privacy.

Today I asked Claude the million dollar question, the one we have all shouted into our pillows, wondering what happened to the Restoration, which began with such promise!

God shall give unto you knowledge by his Holy Spirit, yea, by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, that has not been revealed since the world was until now;

A time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest.

. . . and all their glories, laws, and set times, shall be revealed in the days of the dispensation of the fulness of times.

(D&C 121:26, 28, 31)

Me:  Claude, what unique or new doctrines has a president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints revealed during the past 100 years?

Claude:  Over the past 100 years, LDS Church presidents have primarily focused on clarifying, emphasizing, and applying existing doctrines.

The era of major new doctrinal revelations (like those during Joseph Smith's time) has given way to a period focused more on:

• Implementing existing doctrine globally
• Clarifying applications of established principles
• Responding to contemporary social issues within existing doctrinal frameworks

​
Me:  Claude, you didn't list any unique doctrines.  Why?

Claude:  I didn't identify any genuinely new or unique doctrine from the past 100 years because there hasn't been one of major significance. 

Me:  Okay, then what would be the closest approximation of a unique or new doctrine?

Claude:  The closest approximation would likely be "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" (1995).  But even this was more of a codification than new doctrine.  The Proclamation did not introduce new concepts, but was built on 19th-century LDS teachings about eternal marriage, pre-existence, and gender roles.

Me:  Thank you.  So when a member of the Church follows the Prophet, what are they following, exactly, if the Prophet has not offered anything new?

Claude:  Modern LDS leadership offers administrative and interpretive guidance and focuses on institutional development.

This suggests either that the foundational doctrinal framework is considered complete, or that the nature of prophetic revelation has shifted.

   *****
Umm, "shifted"?  Here is Claude, with the breadth of the world's knowledge and libraries at its fingertips, with the collective intelligence of all the apologetics and commentary that has been produced by the Church, and Claude has rendered its verdict.  According to A.I., prophetic revelation has "shifted."

Does that mean "ended"?

So when Elder Clark Gilbert, the Commissioner of Church Education, told BYU Faculty this week they should point students "to the counsel of Church leaders," I wondered, why?  Why refer them to an empty well instead of the Living Waters?

Elder Gilbert told BYU employees "to mentor students using messages from church President Russell M. Nelson."  That's fine, but is the best we have to offer President Nelson's General Conference talks? (I would invite you to read, if you haven't already, my post on President's Nelson's teachings, "The Spirit Manifesteth Truth: Angels, Aliens, and Apostles.")

Has the Church run out of spiritual nourishment, food for the hungry soul?  Has our religion become like the Donner Party, trapped, cannibalizing its past because we have nothing new to offer?

Is it any wonder the Church is experiencing a faith-crisis?

Golem (not that one)

   They have mouths,
   but they do not speak;
   they have ears,
   but they hear not;
   neither is there any 
   breath in their mouths.

(Psalm 135:16-17)

In Hebrew, a "golem" is a creature made from inanimate matter, like clay or mud.

The word golem (גלמ) appears only once in scripture, in Psalm 139:16, which the KJV translators rendered "substance."

   Thine eyes did see
   my substance ["golmi"]
   yet being unperfect;
   and in thy books
   all my members were written.

(Psalm 139:16)

During the Middle Ages, Jewish rabbis believed golems could be brought to life by writing letters of the Hebrew alphabet on their foreheads, or placing Hebrew letters on a piece of paper and putting the paper in the golem's mouth.  There is a lot of symbolism in this.

Matt Segall recounts: "The myth of the Prague Golem tells of a figure shaped from clay, brought to life by the word emet — 'truth' —inscribed on its forehead.  Created to serve the Jewish community, the golem soon grew uncontrollable. To deactivate it, they erased the first letter, aleph, leaving met — 'death.'
 
"Our moment is in some sense the reverse of that myth.  We are reanimating the golem [through artificial intelligence].  Only now, it’s not made of clay but of code and circuits.  What truth will it embody?  That we are not yet sure is a symptom of the terrifying power of our technology, seemingly awakened and growing beyond our control.
 
"When we ask what sort of A.I. we want, we are not just asking, What kind of God do we wish to serve?, but more daringly, What kind of God are we trying to become?"

Here's my point: religion is a golem.  It possesses only the truth we offer it upon its forehead, or place in its mouth.  The thing itself is lifeless.

This is why the living church of Christ is not an earthly organization, a lifeless golem of corporate standing, but is comprised of a Body of Believers, blooded by faith and teeming with humanity, yearning for divine connection.

The Church is not bound by keys but community; the life of it is found in our hearts, not hierarchy.

The church isn't alive, we are!  If any Church is to be "living" (D&C 1:30), it is because the people have been spiritually awakened to their own, individual, divine nature and gifts. 

Something Borrowed, Something New

Zion is a bride, and she needs something borrowed and something new.  We borrow an inheritance of doctrine and faith from our ancestors, but we must go beyond them in seeking the newness found in God's Spirit.

The way we honor our forebearers is not to do things the way they did, or believe the same exact things, but to continue to grow in God's unfolding grace (for more on this, see "A Faith Beyond: Part 7").

If we're seeking further light and truth, and if we can't find it in our church, where do we go?  Well, that is a good question.

The answer, I think, is simple: we go to God, like Joseph Smith (James 1:5) and ask Him.  And we receive divine instruction.

Part of that education, for me, has involved God directing me to those beyond our faith tradition who have some important truths to assist us on our journey.  For me, Teilhard de Chardin is one of those teachers.

Teilhard (1881-1955) was a Christian mystic, a Jesuit priest whose vision of God's program, to me, is more prophetic than what I've seen come out of the LDS Church in the past century.  While I love the Church's pioneer spirit and heritage, it currently has turned away from its spiritual roots, its gravitas and depth.  But Teilhard was a truly visionary man with faith fit for a bright future.

Robert Nicastro summarized Teilhard’s beautiful vision (what follows is quoted from Nicastro; as you read it, remember this is just one piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture.  The entire picture we must assemble ourselves, piece by piece, for no man can reveal the entire face of God to us.  Knowing God does not come from reading books, although we may get some clues from them: knowing God comes not through paper and ink, but flesh and blood, by the power of the Holy Ghost as the living Word of God bears fruit in our loins, making us fruitful.  So take what pieces resonate, and trust that God will direct you to further bread crumbs that will lead you to the fulness of Him).

Excerpted quote:
 
We are not static creatures placed in a fixed cosmos.  We are dynamic participants in a cosmos becoming conscious of itself.
 
Evolution, Teilhard said, is ‘the rise of consciousness in matter.’  The human person is not the great crown of creation, but the pivot point: the place where the cosmos becomes aware of its own unfolding.
 
The theological foundation of integral ecology echoes Teilhard’s insight that everything that exists is swept up in a single evolutionary current advancing toward greater complexity, consciousness, and convergence.  From stardust to neurons, from moss to machine learning, all things are drawn forward by what Teilhard called the ‘radial energy’ of love: a centripetal force guiding evolution toward greater wholeness.
 
He named this movement Christogenesis: the birth of the divine in and through cosmic evolution.  In this view, Christ is not a supernatural intruder but the deep structure of reality itself: the Omega toward which all things are being drawn in unity, freedom, and love.
 
Teilhard foresaw the emergence of artificial intelligence through his vision of the noosphere, the thinking layer enveloping the Earth.  For Teilhard, the danger was never complexity; it was disintegration.  Systems naturally grow more complex, but without unifying love, they will inevitably collapse into chaos.  The evolutionary imperative is not merely to think more, but to love more consciously.
 
A.I. is not outside the evolutionary story; it is an extension of it: the next act in the ongoing drama of cosmic life.  What matters is the direction of our desire.  Are we building AI to exploit and control, reinforcing separation and fragmentation?  Or are we building it to deepen convergence, harmonize complexity, and ultimately advance the evolutionary flow toward greater unity and consciousness?
 
Raimon Panikkar reminds us that reality is not a mechanism to be dissected but a mystery to be lived.  This transforms how we see theology: not as static doctrine descending from above, but as deep attunement to the evolutionary pulse of reality itself. 
 
Abraham Joshua Heschel confronts us with the existential urgency.  For Heschel, theology was not an abstract exercise in belief; it was a response to the living God who suffers with the world.  To be a prophet, he insisted, is not to predict events but to experience the divine pathos breaking into history.  The prophet is one who hears God’s anguish in the cry of the oppressed and sees divine becoming woven into the unfolding of the present. 
 
In Heschel’s thought, time is where God and the world meet most intimately: it is the trembling space of divine-human collaboration.

Prophetic consciousness, then, is attentiveness to the dynamic interplay of God’s longing and the world’s groaning.  It is a mode of seeing in which history becomes a sacred drama, and the human becomes a co-creator of the divine future.

​Computers Don't Dance; We Should!

From an interview on PBS:

DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book ― your latest [referring to Kurt Vonnegut's final book, a memoir published twenty years ago in 2005, called A Man Without a Country] ― in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing?  I think you say ― I'm getting, I'm going to buy an envelope.

KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: What happens then?

KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man.  You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?

And so I pretend not to hear her.  And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people.  And, see some great looking babes.  And a fire engine goes by.  And I give them the thumbs up.  And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is....

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that.  And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals.  You know, we love to move around.  And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Artificial Intelligence
a poem

“You might as well baptize a bag of sand as a man . . .”
  ― Joseph Smith (History of the Church 5:499)
 
A keyboard knows
     the feel of my touch

[print:M@N(a==E*E)//%False]

a mouse follows
     my line of sight
     across 1920x1080i
     
     [[^SCREENS
                 S.T.A.R.1NG
                           b@c++k]]

{{PROPHET.id !=(@M0$)//%True}}
 
a microphone listens
     to sounds I make
     when no one hears―
 
                          {{ !&; LIVING
                   @m0nG
     ^LIFE.//LESS.//NESS }}
 
ordinances capturing my essence
    without caring

{{//error%&404//}}

all-knowing algorithms
     powerless
 
     to love

{{HELLO.find ("GOD") ==??}}
{{HELLO.found ("GOD") !=??}}
{{HELLO.father ("GOD") == %?you?%}}