Christmas approaches and with it, the lure of an AI Jesus

It’s bad enough that people, youth especially, are addicted and influenced by social media “friends,” but, at the least, most accounts are still run by humans with which they interact. However misguided or disingenuous their steering, they have the human capacity to be directed by God’s spirit. Whether or not they use it, is another question, but the option doesn’t exist for an artificial intelligence-generated bot “friend.”

Where AI is infiltrating personal interactions, it lacks the possibility of establishing any connection to God or what some, unconvinced of who God is, may call a “universal intelligence.” AI is wholly directed in its “knowledge” by nonethical, amoral, and inhumane, dry “logical” information unattached or unable to access the spirit of God, which is the spirit of righteousness, truth, and faith.

AI has no faith and has no capability for developing or incorporating faith into its “thought” processes. Nor can it access or understand humanity’s propensity, hard-wiring toward faith, particularly the spirit of God that indwells a person and receives that faith.

Certain Christian holidays, that have been commercialized for business and are acknowledged staples on the annual calendar by believers and nonbelievers, have taken a role in all human interaction. Perhaps not Easter as much, but Christmas is a season of lights and festivities celebrated by cultures that don’t recognize the Christ element of the holiday, though they have jumped aboard the gift giving gravy train.

And this is where the AI element has the opportunity to introduce deceit and misunderstanding into what should be a celebration of faith that engenders a heartfelt peace and joy. Neither of those sentiments can be mechanically induced, though popular culture attempts to substitute them with emotional highs in the form of momentary happiness.

After Chat GPT was introduced in January 2023, AI’s sharing of stilted information has overtaken everyday knowledge seeking and dissemination, with far too much of it false or twisted by ideologically planted data. Gleaning all the internet to fill the information coffers of vast servers, otherwise referred to as the “cloud,” still cannot find or sustain all of human knowledge. Why? Because not everything that has been conceived or written by mankind has made it into computerized repositories. That includes, or excludes, if one prefers, the Mind of God.

Although nonbelievers will dispute this, unless one has been touched by the spirit of God, he or she cannot fully grasp His Word, laid forth in the Holy Bible, or hear His voice. It takes true faith to connect to Him. The simple logic test is this – how is it possible to pray to an entity that one doesn’t believe exists and expect an answer? Being curious isn’t enough upon which to base a relationship with God, let alone submit prayers.

Belief is fundamental and essential, and AI cannot believe in God or supply answers to supplicants for Him. No connection equals no answer.

Taking the foregoing into consideration, it is a quandary that some churches have set-up an artificial Jesus to hear confessions or answer supplicants’ prayers. There is neither truth or insight that can be offered to succor a petitioner’s spirit if the hearer is an artificial being relying on the accumulated information deposited in a computer “brain.” However vast the data bank, holding information quantifying millennia of written and subsequently digitized records, it hasn’t the capacity to incorporate substance of the spirit. It has no ability to understand or internalize the deity of Jesus or dispense His wisdom that spans all time and dimension.

Related: Son of a bot! AI Jesus hologram takes confessionals in Swiss church

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ who was conceived by supernatural means, having no earthly father. No AI chatbot, whether or not it takes on an image of Jesus, can believe the, well, unbelievable as far as the natural world is concerned. Computers are still machines, after all, despite the virtually invisible nano particles in their composition.

There is only one God, who manifested as the one Christ, accessed by the Holy Spirit that is in each human that believes. AI can’t believe and it can only masquerade as Jesus, and without His knowledge to guide answers to prayer, AI can only give false and misleading direction.

AI can’t supply all the needs or answers to an individual. It may offer information from its data stores, but true comfort, peace, or joy is beyond its programming to supply.

AI can’t take the place of human contact, and it can’t fill a “God-sized hole” any more than can food, alcohol, drugs, money, or other idols.

There is no Christmas “magic” that dispels depression, loneliness, or dejection without the presence of Jesus. Seeking Christ comes from the heart, not the fact-driven mind, and that is where AI dwells.