Yuval Harari has few new ideas.
When asked by the New York Times whether his “broad conclusions about humanity” are “banal,” Harari answered, “Well, I discovered this: The more banal they are, the more impressed people are.”
Even more, his public commentary is a harvest of contradiction and self-refutation so easy to spot that “even a Homo neanderthalensis can do it.”
So why should anyone care about what Yuval Harari teaches? Because he has become a big deal. His rise as an intellectual force in the last decade requires that Christians care before we are “made to care.”
Harari regifts a “tale as old as time” in the shiniest new wrapping paper. And all the right people are as wide-eyed as a kid on Christmas morning tearing it open. So, who is Yuval Harari?
In what follows, I will introduce him and why this enemy of humanity is someone Christians need to know . . . and renounce.
Who is Yuval Noah Harari?
As the last wisps of smoke cleared from the smoldering battlefield on which the New Atheists and Christian apologists had clashed for the preceding decade, Yuval Noah Harari slid somewhat inauspiciously onto the scene.
The Israeli professor’s book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, originally written in Hebrew in 2011, was translated to English in 2014 and became an unlikely phenomenon, with endorsements from a parade of grandees including Barack Obama and Bill Gates.
While the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism – Richard Dawkins, Daniell Dennett, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens – were producing volcanic works like The End of Faith (Harris), Breaking the Spell (Dennett), The God Delusion (Dawkins), and God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Hitchens), Harari chose a different path.
Instead of “we hate this god you worship even though he doesn’t exist and you’re all mad for believing in him,” the slight and bookish Harari said something more like, “cool story, now let’s get to real talk.” Double order of the contempt, but easy on the bombast. Harari doesn’t much argue against the existence of God or for old school deterministic materialism. He begs the questions and moves ahead.
Harari went on to write Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century in 2015, along with other books, including a children’s series entitled Unstoppable Us. All told, Harari claims to have sold more than 45 million books translated into dozens of languages and has been a fixture on the media, speaker, and social circuits. In short, his influence now covers the globe.
What is Man?
The title of Harari’s massive best-seller Sapiens is a good place to start.
Notably, and purposefully, Harari drops “Homo” from the familiar scientific designation of human beings. His argument is that “numerous new species, such as Homo rudolfensis, ‘Man from Lake Rudolf,’ Homo ergaster, ‘Working Man,’ and eventually our own species, which we’ve immodestly named Homo sapiens, ‘Wise Man.’… were all human beings.”[1]
1. Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, First U.S. edition (New York: Harper, 2015), 8. Kindle.
Not only are humans not the only species of “animal,” we’re also not the only humans. We’re not special, except in one way. As Harari sees it “Sapiens” are especially bad. He writes, “The earth of a hundred millennia ago was walked by at least 6 different species of man. It’s our current exclusivity, not that multi-species past, that’s peculiar — and perhaps incriminating.”
Harari sees humans as:
one species among many, and we have no particular reason to think of ourselves as the apex of evolution. Instead, humans are just another species of primates who happened to develop the ability to cooperate in large groups and manipulate their environment.
He suggests that our intelligence, culture, and technological advancements don’t make us unique in a cosmic sense, as we are stubbornly bound to the same biological and evolutionary forces as any other species:
Archaic humans loved, played, formed close friendships and competed for status and power, but so did chimpanzees, baboons, and elephants. There was nothing special about humans. Nobody, least of all humans themselves had any inkling their descendants would one way walk on the moon, split the atom, fathom the genetic code and write history books. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.
Of course, Harari’s very ability to formulate and communicate this argument relies on a level of cognitive sophistication, reflective awareness, and symbolic thinking that is, in fact, exceptionally human and not reasonably explained by a long series of incidental biological spasms.
Harari concedes that a “cognitive revolution” – marked by the introduction of language, storytelling, and society-level cooperation – allowed us to outcompete other species and create civilization, technology, and art. And he mumbles a wholly unsatisfying answer to the anticipated challenge:
The most commonly believed theory argues that accidental genetic mutations changed the inner wiring of the brains of Sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using an altogether new type of language. We might call it the Tree of Knowledge mutation. Why did it occur in Sapiens DNA rather than in that of Neanderthals? It was a matter of pure chance, as far as we can tell.[2]
2. Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, First U.S. edition (New York: Harper, 2015), 21. Kindle.
So, it just kind of happened. Human agency “isn’t a scientific reality. It is a myth inherited from Christian theology” and that our choices are a “result of biochemistry and neurology.”
If humans are not exceptional, then the tools he uses to make his arguments (and then to explain away their weakness) would also have to be considered non-exceptional. The argument itself requires the very qualities that Harari claims are not exceptional. Harari is using human exceptionalism to argue against human exceptionalism.
As Christians, we recognize his rejection of human exceptionalism, manifested in the “tools” our Creator has provided to us and no other creature, as a direct attack on man’s unique status as God’s image bearers. As Steve Wellum wrote recently,
Unlike any other creature, humans, both male and female, are created in the “image and likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26). This fact reminds us that humans are unique, valuable, and significant, distinct from the rest of creation and made for covenant relationship with God himself.
In sum, Harari’s view of man is wholly lacking, because it caves in on itself. To criticize man he must appeal to ideas and concepts invented by men, and to do so with no acknowledge of man’s status as God’s image, nor the God who made humanity.
What of God, Whose Image We Bear?
Whether or not Voltaire ever said “In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since” a persistent theme of man’s fist-shaking history – from the foot of Mt. Sinai to the glass temples of Silicon Valley – is one of humanity preferring the god of our own invention to the God of all Creation.
Harari claims that humans invented the entire concept of “god” to answer the unknowable and then adopted this great “fiction” as true and explanatory. God is part of an “imagined order” that allowed humans to arrange society, establish cooperation, and provide meaning to the world and their lives. God only “exists” because groups of humans have agreed to the proposition.
Every person is born into a pre-existing imagined order, and his or her desires are shaped from birth by its dominant myths. Our personal desires thereby become the imagined order’s most important defenses. For instance, the most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order.[3]
3. Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, First U.S. edition (New York: Harper, 2015), 115. Kindle.
As stated earlier, Harari won’t be bothered to make a case for the nature of God, which is purely fictional in his estimation. Rather, he focuses primarily on the implications of believing in a sovereign power outside and above our involuntary impulses. Nevertheless, he does see some value in the intent of shared stories that underly the imagined order, writing that “Humans believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society.”[4]
4. Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, First U.S. edition (New York: Harper, 2015), 110. Kindle.
Further, “people are free to believe in gods if they find it helpful.” But he says in another place, “it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.”[5] Clearly, Harari’s view of God is defined and determined by his view evolutionary view of man.
5. Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, First U.S. edition (New York: Harper, 2015), 134. Kindle.
Continuing this line of thought, these “natural and inevitable claims” lead their proponents to believe that they are universally normative and that the claims are to be enforced. Accordingly, Harari warns that the ultimate outcome of adopting a fiction (the greatest fiction in his estimation being God) and establishing it as truth, is human suffering, up to and including war.
The cause of the war is fictional, but the resulting suffering is 100 per cent real. The blood is real, the pain is real, the grief is real. This is exactly why we should strive to distinguish fiction from reality.
Of course, the carnage of the twentieth century, which stacked 100 million corpses, was the evil work of atheist, communist, and eugenicist regimes. All raised-under-the-same-roof kin to Harari’s materialistic determinism. But let’s move along.
Oddly, in at least one other venue, Harari claims that there two gods: The spiritual god and the religious god. He says:
There are two kinds of gods in the world and people tend to mix them. There is one god – the mystery god – about which we know nothing. The chief characteristic of this god is that he is mysterious. Humans can’t understand or say anything about this god. People ask, ‘who started the Big Bang?’ or ‘how did life start?’ All the things that science doesn’t know; people say, ‘This is god.” We don’t know anything about him or her or it and I am perfectly happy with this god. Then there is a completely opposite kind of god; the concrete [inaudible] god. And about this [religious] god we know far too much…This is the god in which I don’t believe.
Interesting that Harari would acknowledge the “known” God and gods of established world religions and go on to claim that there is another god separate from those. The unknown god.
Here he exposes his ignorance of the most basic Christian doctrine: that the one true and living God, who makes Himself known to all creation, most especially to His covenant people, spectacularly punctuated the centrality of the imago Dei by sending his Son to live, die, and rise again. At the same time, the deep and hidden things of God remain a mystery (Deut. 29:29).
Harari calls his faithful to be suspicious of religious authority, but he names his own quasi-religious authority. In the heat of COVID-19 hysteria, he praised religious institutions who complied with state mandates to shut down worship:
Fortunately, in the current emergency most people indeed turn to science. The Catholic Church instructs the faithful to stay away from the churches. Israel has closed down its synagogues. The Islamic Republic of Iran is punishing people who go to mosques. Temples and sects of all kinds have suspended public ceremonies. And all because scientists have made some calculations and recommended closing down these holy places.
Turn from God. Trust Science. Humorously, Hurari’s argument is little better than Nacho Libre’s fellow luchador, who refuses baptism because he only believes in science.
Why does Yuval Harari Matter In 2025?
Boiling down Yuval Harari’s work into two points: (1) Man is a result of natural evolutionary processes over the course of billions of years. And (2) God did not create man but was invented by man.
None of this is new. It’s Genesis 3 de novo.
We and our far-up-tree ancestors recognize this immediately as a well-worn trail, but Harari knows much of his audience hasn’t heard the tale, so it is something altogether new. And in this Influencer Age, he is the Hot New Prophet.
Ted Talks. Davos. Silicon Valley party-hopping. Joe Rogan’s recommended reading list. Oprah’s book club. Millions of followers across social media platforms. Podcasts. Non-stop. Harari is everywhere. But he is telling old stories made new. Again, to cite his 2015 book,
So here is that line from the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.[6]
6. Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, First U.S. edition (New York: Harper, 2015), 110. Kindle.
Denying the image-bearing nature of mankind requires an abandonment of inherent rights, endowed by our Creator. As transparent and audacious as Harari’s rewrite above is, he leaves no doubt below about where this leads.
But human rights are just like Heaven, and, like God, it’s just a fictional story that we’ve invented and spread around. It may be a very nice story. It may be a very attractive story. We want to believe it, but it’s just a story. It’s not a reality. It is not a biological reality. Just as jellyfish and woodpeckers and ostriches have no rights, homo sapiens have no rights, also. Take a human, cut him open, look inside. You find their blood, and you find the heart and lungs and kidneys, but you don’t find any rights. The only place you find rights is in the fictional stories that humans have invented and spread around.
We must not only leave individual freedom behind, but the entire project of liberalism is in for a reboot.
Liberalism has developed an impressive arsenal of arguments and institutions to defend individual freedoms against external attacks from oppressive governments and bigoted religions, but it is unprepared for a situation when individual freedom is subverted from within, and when the very concepts of “individual” and “freedom” no longer make much sense. In order to survive and prosper in the 21st century, we need to leave behind the naive view of humans as free individuals – a view inherited from Christian theology as much as from the modern Enlightenment – and come to terms with what humans really are: hackable animals.
Harari has been a main attraction at influential global events, such as the annual conference hosted by the World Economic Forum and is currently on a world tour promoting his newest book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI.
Like the “Swifties” who flock to Taylor Swift concerts, so the Tech Bros chase after Harari. And why? As the New York Times writes, “The futurist philosopher Yuval Noah Harari thinks Silicon Valley is an engine of dystopian ruin. So why do the digital elite adore him so?” Because he provides a solution to their digital dystopia.
Humans, according to Harari, possess no independent agency, but are instead directed by biological algorithms. He warns that unregulated development of AI will lead to that organic algorithm being replaced by synthetic algorithms controlled by malicious actors which will lead to the destruction of democracy.
AI is the first technology in history that can make decisions by itself, create ideas by itself, and take power away from humans. Silicon chips can create spies that never sleep, financiers that never forget, and despots that never die.
But Harari cannot explain why this is objectionable, given his view of man as mere biological matter and his rejection of human rights. He also warns that unfettered technological advancement will create a small cadre of ultra-wealthy “superhumans” and a massive “useless class.” In his first best-seller, he notes,
The most important question in twenty-first-century economics may well be what to do with all the superfluous people. What will conscious humans do, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better?[7]
7. Yuval N. Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, (New York: Harper, 2015), 321.
He continues, “This ‘useless class’ will not merely be unemployed – it will be unemployable.”[8] There is no hope for humanity here, but for those who see science as their god, then a man-made evolution in technology is both the natural and necessary course of history. As Harari says himself, “Homo sapiens are going to evolve again. Technology is taking us there and technology is evolving much faster than we are.” And Harari is providing a kind moral order for the next stage of humanity.
8. Yuval N. Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, (New York: Harper, 2015), 329.
With built-in inconsistencies, Harari has a kind of moral order. He insists on affirming justice, ethics and morality (on what basis?), eliminating suffering (can he define suffering?), love (what is that even?), and “the good life” (according to whose standard?). He even promotes delayed gratification, writing, “To attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of pleasant sensations, not accelerate it.”[9]
9. Yuval N. Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, (New York: Harper, 2015), 41.
Ironically, Harari warns against the dangers of technology in our own hands.
Every day, millions of people decide to grant their smartphone a bit more control over their lives or try a new and more effective antidepressant drug. In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.
And how technological advancement impacts society.
The information revolution disintegrates the human individual, which is the foundation of humanism and liberalism. As far as I could see, the new foundation becomes the flow of data information in the world to the degree that even the understanding of what is an organism, what is a human being — it’s no longer that a human being is this magical self, which is autonomous and has free will and makes decisions about the world. No, a human being like all other organisms is just an information-processing system that is in continuous flow.
But Harari’s “standing athwart the tech revolution yelling ‘slow down’” doesn’t trouble the Tech Lords. And it is easy to see why, except to Harari.
When asked why Silicon Valley CEO’s love him, Harari responded “One possibility is that my message is not threatening to them, and so they embrace it? For me, that’s more worrying. Maybe I’m missing something?”
He is.
Harari has essentially taken aspiring global princes to the highest peak and showed them the kingdoms that will be theirs, but then he tells them not to do anything evil with their power.
He has taught them that humans are fleshy matter driven by impulse who are ripe for hacking, that God is a “fiction,” that inherent rights don’t exist, that the Lords of Tech control the future, and that they may even crack the immortality code.
Despite all the talk of radical Islam and Christian fundamentalism, the most interesting place in the world from a religious perspective is not the Islamic State or the Bible Belt, but Silicon Valley. That’s where hi-tech gurus are brewing for us brave new religions that have little to do with God, and everything to do with technology. They promise all the old prizes – happiness, peace, prosperity and even eternal life – but here on earth with the help of technology, rather than after death with the help of celestial beings.[10]
10. Yuval N. Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, (New York: Harper, 2015), 358.
But don’t take it too far, guys.
This audience generally has little grounding in history, philosophy, anthropology, ethics, theology, or any other discipline that would allow for discernment regarding Harari’s sweeping claims in all these fields. They don’t have the tools to know how “banal” Harari’s work really is.
But they do hear that learning history is useful to “free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies.” And this is why Harari is their muse.
“Whoever wins the AI race wins the world,” they have been told. And the two most powerful countries in the world, China and America, are investing furiously to win this race for the future.
And for Harari why not strive to gain the world by any means necessary? After all, if there is no soul, then hacking the material world is all that matters. Yet, in this Harari is only offering to the world what the devil offered Jesus (Matt. 4:8–11). And that is why Christians must see him for what he is, an enemy of humanity, and reject him in order to hold fast to Christ.
