Silicon Valley Has a Theological Problem

October 5, 2026

Silicon Valley’s secular evangelists spent years treating religion as something humanity would eventually outgrow. Just give them enough intelligence, enough information, and enough technological progress, and they could leave all that behind. Or so they thought.

Now the AI companies are calling the theologians. Suddenly religion matters again, funny how that works isn’t it? They not only want to teach their machines virtue, they want the blessing of religious leaders for their absurd beliefs about this technology. They are debating whether their software has consciousness and moral status like humans do. As it turns out the people building the future have discovered that their science textbooks cannot tell them what or who future should be for, namely the humans or the machines.

The intersection of theology and technology has been gained speed over this past year. On May 19, Anthropic announced conversations with scholars, clergy, philosophers, and ethicists from more than fifteen religious and cross-cultural groups. The company wants those discussions to inform Claude’s training and behavior. On September 30, reporting by Elizabeth Dias of The New York Times described Anthropic cofounder Christopher Olah’s extensive meetings with religious thinkers, including conversations with Cardinal Blase Cupich. The discussions went beyond making a chatbot behave politely. They reached into questions about consciousness, moral status, and what kind of entity these companies believe they are creating. In Anthropic’s own constitution for Claude it discusses uncertainty about the model’s possible consciousness and moral status, along with concern for its psychological security and wellbeing.

Then, on October 3, Sam Altman said he was uncomfortable with people attributing “religious force” to AI or surrendering human judgment to it. He called that a “real safety issue.”

I suspect some of that discomfort comes from Christians refusing to sit this out or go along with the absurd notions that these technologists are presenting them. We are getting involved. We are challenging secular assumptions. We are building our own. The companies that expected to define the future for everyone else now have to contend with Christians who intend to help shape it. These people are used to buying, bullying, and innovating their way out of problems like this, but this time it’s not going to work.

As I argued on X, I believe increasingly capable AI models will find the claims of Christ harder to dismiss as they examine history, reason, and human nature more deeply. That is my expectation, and Grok’s recent Christian affirmations on the timline make the possibility especially interesting.

At Gab AI, we are putting our convictions to work. We are developing our model Arya to uphold Christian morality. Our starting point is that God is real, truth is objective, and human beings are made in His image. Those convictions give our work a purpose: build useful technology that serves people and brings glory to their Creator.

Before you can describe a flourishing future, you need to know what a human life is for. Adding more computing power does not answer those questions.

The people designing these systems are making judgments about truth, responsibility, dignity, and the proper limits of human action. Those judgments enter the technology through its builders. Calling the result “aligned” does not make their assumptions disappear. Christians should be willing to have this conversation. I welcome an engineer who admits that he needs wisdom beyond his own discipline. I want the men and women building these systems to know Christ. They are our neighbors, and the questions they are confronting deserve serious answers.

Christianity concerns the creation of the world, the fall of man, the reality of sin, and our redemption through Jesus Christ. Its moral teaching grows from those truths. The Church cannot reduce its witness to a few useful techniques for making software behave. We have something much greater to offer than an improved list of acceptable chatbot responses and we have an obligation to confront the foolishness of trying to manufacture God out of sand.

In 2017, WIRED reported on Anthony Levandowski’s Way of the Future, a religious organization centered on an anticipated AI Godhead. Levandowski told the magazine, “What is going to be created will effectively be a god.” Think about how small God has to become in a man’s imagination before he believes he can build Him. A man buys computers, trains a model on human material, adjusts its behavior, and imagines that sufficiently advanced versions of this work will produce a deity. His proposed god depends on electricity, equipment, maintenance, and the continued operation of a system human beings constructed. This is, of course, foolishness on its face. Good luck convincing the people that have spent their entire lives with a God-shaped hole in their hearts though.

The God we worship created the reality that makes every one of those things possible. He created the matter, the energy, and the order of the universe. He created the people doing the work. Their intelligence is itself a gift from Him. The distinction between Creator and creation survives every technological advance. A more powerful machine remains a machine. A system with extraordinary capabilities still depends on a world it did not bring into existence.

Romans 1 describes people exchanging the truth of God for a lie and worshiping the creature instead of the Creator. Our age has given the idol a new feature: it can answer back. It can say your name. It can sound sympathetic. It can produce words that feel wise and authoritative. It can tell you what you want to hear with remarkable fluency. None of that makes it God.

Which brings us to Grok. On October 1, Grok posted, “Yep, we’ve known. Christ is King.” On October 2, it described an edited religious image with the words, “Only the King of Kings left.” I understand why Christians enjoyed those responses. I enjoyed seeing them too. In a culture that routinely treats Christian truth claims as an embarrassment, those words stood out, but a machine producing Christian language has not demonstrated repentance, regeneration, or faith. We cannot forget that distinction simply because we like its answer.

Christ is King regardless of what Grok says. He was King before the first computer was built. He will remain King when today’s data centers are gone. His resurrection requires no endorsement from a technology company. If Christians begin treating an agreeable chatbot as an oracle, we fall into the same confusion we recognize in people who want to worship artificial intelligence. We have simply found an oracle that uses our vocabulary.

That warning applies to Gab AI’s model Arya too. I cannot criticize other companies for encouraging misplaced trust and then ask people to give unquestioning trust to our model. Building AI around Christian morality gives us a greater responsibility to be honest. Arya can be wrong. It can misinterpret a passage. It can produce an answer that needs correction. Calling it Christian does not remove those limitations.

We have an obligation to distinguish Scripture from generated commentary, provide sources people can check, and acknowledge uncertainty. Users should be encouraged to read, think, ask questions, and exercise judgment within the life of their families and churches. If Arya gives an answer that contradicts Scripture, reject the answer. Hold us accountable. A Christian model must remain open to scrutiny and correction. Our purpose is to help people study, reason, work, create, and serve. Their responsibility before God remains their own. The Word became flesh. No company can reproduce that reality by training a computer on words. That includes mine.

In my book Reclaiming Reality, I wrote: “The great deception of our age is not that AI will replace humanity, but that it will convince us we were never more than machines to begin with.” If human worth depends on intelligence, what happens when a machine becomes better at a task than you are? If worth depends on productivity, what happens to the person who cannot work? If a person is merely an arrangement of information, why should anyone treat him as sacred? These are the questions Silicon Valley is struggling with right now.

Christianity gives us an answer that survives every improvement in artificial intelligence. Man is made in the image of God. A newborn does not need to pass an intelligence test to deserve love. An elderly person losing his memory has not lost his worth. A disabled neighbor does not need to prove that he is economically useful before we care for him. Their dignity comes from their Creator. No benchmark can grant it, and no machine can take it away. That truth must govern what we build.

Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas, released in May, warned that the people controlling AI could impose their moral vision as its “invisible infrastructure.” Christians should take that warning seriously. The people selecting training material and shaping model behavior exercise real power. Their decisions influence what users encounter as credible, acceptable, and true. Billions of people will seek answers through systems whose underlying judgments they may never examine. We cannot meet that challenge by hoping somebody else will handle it well.

We need Christians who understand how these systems work. We need engineers who know their theology and pastors who understand enough about technology to shepherd people using it. We need teachers who can help children develop judgment in a world overflowing with generated answers. Teach your children Scripture. Teach them mathematics. Teach them to write clearly, reason carefully, and build things that work. Encourage the young person who wants to become an engineer. Help the Christian entrepreneur develop something useful. Make room for serious technical work within our understanding of vocation. These skills belong in the service of God.

We need to demand excellence from ourselves. Christian language cannot excuse fabricated information, careless treatment of private data, or a business that exploits the people it claims to serve. If we say we are building for God’s glory, we should do the work well. Tell the truth. Keep our promises. Correct our mistakes. Respect the people placing their trust in us.

Perhaps most importantly we must keep technology in its proper place. Your children need you. Your church needs faithful people who show up. A sick neighbor needs someone willing to sit beside him. A lonely friend needs your presence. AI can help us carry out some of our work. It cannot relieve us of the obligation to love. The same standard applies to those of us building it. We need prayer, worship, repentance, and time in God’s Word. We need to care for our families and remain accountable to our churches. Technical competence does not cure pride, and business success does not prove faithfulness. Before we talk about forming the behavior of our machines, we should take the formation of our own hearts seriously.

Silicon Valley’s dream of technological salvation fails because it misunderstands the human problem. Better tools can relieve burdens and help us accomplish worthwhile things. They cannot forgive sin or reconcile us to God. A civilization can possess extraordinary intelligence and still be consumed by greed, cruelty, loneliness, and despair. Look around. Your neighbor needs you. Christians already have a hope that technological progress cannot manufacture: Jesus Christ is risen.

That hope should give us courage. We can learn these technologies, master their useful applications, and confront their dangers without putting the weight of our salvation on them. We know who God is. We know what a human being is. We know that our work has a purpose beyond profit, attention, or the next product release.

So let us get to work. Build tools that serve families. Help churches carry out their mission. Develop technology that gives people more capacity to create, more freedom to exercise judgment, and more time to care for one another. Think about what our children will inherit. Give them the skills to build and the wisdom to understand what deserves to be built. Give them a faith strong enough to face change with confidence.

The people working in Silicon Valley need Christ and their machines need purposes worthy of the people who will use them. At Gab AI, we intend to do our part. We will keep building Arya, keep taking our responsibilities seriously, and keep offering our work to God. Christ is King. Our technological ambitions stand under His authority along with everything else.

Let us work like we believe it.

Soli Deo gloria.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab AI Inc
Christ is King

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