These days, talk of “Artificial Intelligence” (AI) is everywhere. Depending on who you listen to, AI is either a source of boundless optimism or a thing of nightmares. Some promise that AI will usher in a utopian age of radical abundance and innovation. Others warn that it could supercharge social decay or even drive humanity to extinction. Whatever the legitimacy of these fears, one need not accept some sci-fi fantasy scenario to acknowledge that this technology, like the personal computer and internet before it, represents one of the most significant technological revolutions in human history.
For better or worse, AI promises to fundamentally reshape culture and social relations. Across every sphere—from media, to the classroom, to commerce, to the workplace—AI increasingly exerts a powerful shaping influence with tremendous economic and social implications. The key question underlying all of this is to what end? While Silicon Valley techno-elites like Sam Altman (OpenAI), Sundar Pichai (Google), and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), would like us to believe that AI holds the key to the final stage of human evolution, the truth of Scripture tells us that such aspirations are opposed to God and his design for man in Creation.
Since Adam’s fall in the Garden, man has sought to exalt himself above God. Like the techno-elites of our own day, the people in Genesis 11 were motivated by a similar aim, to rebel against nature and the limits placed on their authority. And like today, the post-flood civilization at Babel was defined, in large part, by technologies of language and knowledge oriented toward rebellion against God’s design for human society.
In what follows I will examine the parallels between Genesis 11 and our current day. Trusting that God’s Word is always relevant to interpret the world God has made, this inquiry into the techno-idolatry of Babel will help us make sense of AI from a biblical perspective. At the same time, by going back to the beginning I will suggest a framework from Scripture for grounding our technological aspirations in the truth of God’s moral law. Indeed, although many Christians today are finding practical ways to employ AI’s benefits while acknowledging certain dangers, we should begin by first developing something of a theology of technology. That is what follows below.
The Great Intersection: Human Society and Technology
At the outset, it’s essential to understand what is meant by the word, “technology.” By this term, I don’t just mean computers, software, and robots. Those are certainly “technologies,” but they do not fully capture the term’s essence. Instead, I want to suggest that “technology,” in its fullest sense, is something along the lines of what the philosopher George Grant understood as the co-penetration of knowing and making.[1] In other words, technology is “the actual means of making events happen.”[2] Such “means” encompass far more than physical tools—or “techne” (technique) in the Greek. They are also the methods and rules by which society is organized. In this sense, even alphabets, writing instruments, and cities are technologies.
1. George Grant, Technology and Justice, (House of Anansi Press, 1991), 12.
2. Ibid.
Technologies of Language
In his book, Technopoly, Neil Postman observes that language is a kind of invisible technology. This follows from language as “a system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar,” according to The Cambridge English Dictionary.[3] It consists of words, formed and ordered in accordance with certain shared conventions and norms, such that the words carry and retain meaning between speaker and hearer, author and reader, sender and recipient, and so forth. That quality is what makes language a technique. Language is a technology of meaning built upon various norms and conventions which evolve organically within human social environments.
3. Cambridge English Dictionary, s.v. “language.”
Human cultures are defined, in large measure, by linguistic differences. Those differences, in turn, shape the social conventions and categories of thought. This is why Postman views language as man’s “most powerful ideological instrument.” Much like ideology, language encompasses “a set of assumptions of which we are barely conscious, but which nonetheless directs our efforts to give shape and coherence to the world.”[4] It “instructs us not only in the names of things but, more important, in what things can be named. It divides the world into subjects and objects.”[5]
4. Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, (Vintage Books, 1991), 123.
5. Ibid.
In the beginning, God used words to divide and order Creation. For example, in Genesis 1:5 He “called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.” The Hebrew word for “called” (qara) means to “call out” or to name. [6] So, in the beginning, God—who according to John 1:1 is the “Word”—uses words to order creation. Each act of creation in Genesis 1 is denoted by words—God “calling” or “saying” something of or about his creative purposes.
By his Word, he divided the light from the darkness (Gen. 1:5); by his Word he created the firmament and divided the seas (Gen. 1:6); by his Word he “called the dry land earth” (Gen. 1:10); by his Word he decreed that the earth “bring forth” all plant and animal life (Genesis 1:11, 24); and by his Word he “said, ‘Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Gen. 1:26) In this way, God’s cosmological language inaugurates each act of creation.
6. “קרא” (cara), in Ludwig Köhler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm, eds., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 3, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 3:1128. See also Michael Carasik, “God Names Day & Night (Gen 1:5): Reading Through the Story of Creation,” Substack, The Bible Guy (blog), October 23, 2022.
Later in Genesis 2, Adam exercises god-like authority by naming the animals in the Garden. While Adam does not create new existence in the same way God did in the beginning, he demonstrates his God-given authority to rule over creation by naming the creatures (Gen. 2:19–20). According to Genesis 2:19, God brought the animals to Adam “to see what he would call them.” The passage continues, “and whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name” (Gen. 2:19). Presumably, when Adam named the animals, he did so based on some linguistic form or structure that could be passed on to Eve and to their offspring. From the beginning, therefore, language is a kind of “open source” framework upon which humans build and modify the world. As God intended, mankind “fills the earth” and “subdues and rules” creation in accordance with God’s command to Adam in Genesis 1:28, and again to Noah and his family, in Genesis 9:1.
God created man in his image and likeness with the faculty of reason, from which stems communication by way of words ordered in accordance with linguistic norms and conventions. While God established language, he allows man to shape it. That is what Adam did in naming the animals. Through the exercise of their rational faculties, Adam and his offspring created words and linguistic conventions that enabled the transmission of meaning, memory, and even thought itself. This is why language can be understood as a form of technology. It is, in Grant’s terms, “the actual means of making events happen,” i.e., interpersonal communication and with it, the possibility of a shared culture.[7]
7. While Grant viewed language and technology as integrally linked, he likely would not have considered language itself a technology. This is an insight contributed by Postman, However, in examining the nature and role of language, it seems to fit Grant’s fundamental definition of technology.
Babel as a Critique of Technology
The story of Babel in Genesis 11 tells us a great deal about the relationship between human society and technology. Humanity’s prideful self-exaltation was possible because of the unified structure of language at the time. According to Genesis 11:6, “The people [were] one and they all [had] one language.” As Kenneth Mathews confirms, “The heavenly commentary [in Genesis 11:6] brings out what was only inferred before; by virtue of their common language they [were] also ‘one people.’”[8] This enabled a highly advanced technological society. Genesis 11:4 recounts how the people gathered in the land of Shinar aspired to build a “city, and tower whose top is in the heavens,” in order to “make a name” for themselves. Genesis 11:3 discloses that the people of Shinar used technologies of mortar and brickmaking in their quest to build a structure to compete with the glory of heaven.
8. K. A. Mathews, The New American Commentary, (Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 483.
On this point, if Postman is correct that language is a kind of invisible technology, then God’s condemnation of mankind’s “oneness” of language applies to technological structures with the same aim. God proclaimed in Genesis 11:6 that nothing they (the people of Shinar) proposed to do would be withheld from them. From a mirrored-reading, this suggests that man, through his technology, would be able to accomplish great evil if left unimpeded. The text seems to indicate that there was something about the unified structure of Babelite technology and society that was inherently perverse (cf. Gen. 4:17–24).
Mathews reads the lament that, “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them,” as “divine opposition” to the Babelites’ “innovation.”[9] Indeed, the sin of the those in Shinar was inextricably tied to their “oneness” of language and culture. The unified structure of their language was the source of their boundless power to do evil by glorifying themselves through the construction of a city and a tower reaching into the heavens. Mathews rightly interprets their statement here as a prideful assertion of autonomy.[10] This is so, he suggests, because whereas heaven is the dwelling place of God, man was created to reside on the earth.[11] Thus, by building a city and tower “whose top was in the heavens,” the men of Shinar were attempting to transcend their earthly limits by ascending into the heavenly realm.[12]
9. Mathews, 484.
10. Mathews, 481.
11. Mathews, 481-482.
12. Ibid.
From our vantage point, we do not know whether the Babelites aspired to build a tall skyscraper- like tower—as some commentators suggest—or whether they sought a structure that would afford them some kind of divine access (a temple or ziggurat, perhaps).[13] Regardless, the technologies and ends of the Babelites were inextricably tied together. They were, in Mathews’ words, seeking a kind of “self-empowerment” through technological means.[14]
Lessons from the Plains of Shinar
13. Mathews, 481.
14. Ibid.
So, what does Genesis 11 reveal about how Christians ought to approach technology, specifically AI, in our own day? There are many lessons to draw from this biblical account, but let me offer three.
First, Babel reveals the centrality of language-based technologies for creating or recreating culture. In short: Language shapes culture. But harkening back to Postman’s insight, we can read Babel as a technological critique precisely because language and technology are intertwined, and to borrow a term popular among AI futurists, they are something of a singularity. Using this paradigm of language as an invisible technology, we can begin to make sense of the nature and moral implications of AI by conceiving of it as a technology of language. We see this in at least two ways.
(1) AI relies on code, “programming languages” comprised of 1s and 0s, written to enable “thinking machines” to solve increasingly complex problems. Because programming languages are numeric, they bridge translation gaps typical of human languages. The language of the computer is binary, and thus, universal. Without it, computing and AI would be impossible.
(2) The most powerful AI models today, such as Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are called “Large Language Models” because they are trained on billions or even, trillions of human words, from images, books, websites, and videos. Such models are designed to replicate human speech and thought patterns. One measure of their level of “intelligence” is called the “Turing Test,” created by Alan Turing in 1950. It was designed to measure a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior by testing whether a human subject is able to accurately determine whether he or she is in conversation with a machine or a real human being. If the human subject is unable to distinguish between the language responses of the computer versus the human interrogator, the computer generating the text responses is said to exhibit human-like intelligence.[15]
15. For more on the history of Artificial Intelligence, see Jeremy Peckham, Masters or Slaves? AI and the Future of Humanity (London: IVP, 2021), 12–31. Editor’s Note: Stay tuned for a upcoming podcast with Jeremy and Daniel.
To “pass” the Turing Test, a machine must create speech in a manner that is persuasive to the human subject. Consequently, AI isn’t merely helping humans construct words and sentences. Nor is it merely repeating pre-programmed responses. Rather, like human beings, AI is creating language. That is why the social, economic, and spiritual stakes of AI technology are so high. We are dealing with a technology that not only shapes our ability to exercise human intellect, but a technology that seeks to replicate and even replace human intelligence.
Truly there is nothing new under the sun. As one unified language on the plains of Shinar extended man’s potential beyond its proper limits, so history repeats itself. With the advent of AI technology, the nations once divided by language are being reunited (e.g., see this new feature from OpenAI), and with their reunification returns the spirit of Babel.
Second, AGI is far from a “value-neutral” endeavor. If the Babel account teaches us anything, it teaches that technology, like the humans responsible for its creation, is laden with values and moral judgments. The unified structure of language before Babel facilitated and predisposed the human race to pursue autonomy from temporal limits on their nature and God-ordained telos. It was not merely the manner in which the men of Shinar used their language to disobey God that was the cause for judgment. Rather, the nature and structure of the language extended human potential beyond its proper limits and necessitated God’s divine intervention in Genesis 11:7–8.[16]
16. Space does not permit a full inquiry into the role that angelic beings played in Genesis 11, but with Genesis 6:1–4 in the background and with Deuteronomy 32:8–9 recounting the way that the nations were put under the rule of various sons of God (i.e., angels), we should not discount their role.
Applying this principle to our own day, George Grant argues that it is inaccurate to say that “the computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used,” precisely because the words of the statement, “are concerned with the capacities of these machines, and these capacities are brought before us as if they existed in abstraction from the events which have made possible their existence.”[17] In other words, one cannot separate the purpose of a technology from the events and social contexts—or to borrow from Charles Taylor, “social imaginaries”—in which it is rendered both possible and desirable.[18] Grant understands paradigms of knowledge as “the aspiration of human thought and the effective conditions of its realization.”[19] Every paradigm of knowledge is oriented toward the material realization of its ontological and epistemological premises.
17. George Grant, Technology and Justice, (House of Anansi Press, 1991), 21.
18. Charles Taylor defined “social imaginaries,” as “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.” See Contemporary Christian Imaginaries – Theology Everywhere.
19. George Grant, Technology and Justice, (House of Anansi Press, 1991), 21.
Computing technology emerged—and is only conceivable—in light of what Grant refers to as, “the new science and its mathematics.”[20] This “new science” encompasses an entire paradigm of knowledge concerned with “the project of reason to gain objective knowledge.”[21] By “reason,” he means, “the summoning of anything before a subject and putting it to the question, so that it gives us its reasons for being the way it is as an object.”[22] These conceptions of “knowledge” and “reason” are laden with ontological, epistemological, and ethical meaning. The ways in which these categories are defined carries significant implications for the kinds of technologies that emerge from them. Put more simply, technological neutrality is a myth.
If we know technology always pushes us in a particular direction, the question is not whether we might be able to use it for “good” or “evil” purposes. Rather, our starting question should be, in what direction does a given technology tend to direct our thoughts, desires, and behaviors? What are the values and social imaginaries underlying its creation? Why was it created to begin with? And who is behind its design, development, use, and governance?
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
These questions can help us begin to discern the hidden technological structures and patterns shaping our lives and society. Only when we begin to think about technology as inherently teleological do we become aware of its influence and able to bring it into alignment with God’s design.
Finally, Babel is a critique of technological systems and structures opposed to God’s design for man and Creation. And in this way, it suggests a framework for grounding our technological aspirations in God’s moral law (i.e., the morality revealed in Scripture). The technological aspirations of the men in Genesis 11 were rooted in a desire for societal autonomy from God’s authority. They sought to ascend into the heavens and claim glory apart from their Creator. This is a lesson for our day when an increasing number of technologies shaping our society are rooted in ideologies of scientism and transhumanism. We live in an age when transhumanists, like Yuval Noah Harari, proclaim that technologies like AGI, will allow man to acquire “divine powers of creation and destruction” by replacing the human mind with intelligent software. Underlying all of this is the same sinful desire for autonomy and rebellion against the proper limits God has placed on man and Creation.
In a society where Christianity no longer grounds man’s technological aspirations, technology itself becomes the new divinity. America’s own history bears this out. Neil Postman traces the beginning of what he refers to as American “Technopoly” (a society in which technology is deified) to Frederick Taylor’s philosophy of “scientific management” in the early twentieth century. Taylor championed early forms of bureaucratic management in industry—which later took hold in almost every social organization—on the premise that efficiency is the “primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought.”[23] In the face of this totalizing efficiency, all differences and distinctions must be levelled, and the judgments of individuals “replaced by laws, rules, and principles of the ‘scientific management.’”[24] Underlying “Taylorism,” is a kind of leveling unity and “oneness” which reserves no place for limitations on so-called “human progress.”
23. George Grant, Technology and Justice, (House of Anansi Press, 1991), 51.
24. Ibid.
The deification of technology described by Postman resembles something of a Babelite flavor. Indeed, this is the kind of technological system and structure that Christians must learn to identify, critique, and uproot. But what do we put in its place? A full exploration of that question is beyond the scope of this essay. However, the account of Babel provides a starting point.
Genesis 11 reveals that technology, including AI, reflects both man’s fallenness as well as his God-given faculties of reason and creativity. On the one hand, like all man-made technology, AI is tainted by sin. But it is also derived from human intelligence—including rationality, creativity, and ingenuity—faculties which are ultimately derived from God Himself.
AI reflects God in the sense that it is derived from him by way of man through the exercise of human rationality. This of course is not to say that AI or any other man-made technology is created in the Imago Dei. Rather it is to say that man’s technology is a direct result of his exercise of reason which flows from God’s divine nature.
Because of common grace, technology created by fallen man still possess redemptive qualities. Christians who advocate for its wise use are not entirely wrong. For in fact, when God divided the language at Babel, he did not destroy technology lock, stock, and barrel. Rather, He placed it within the confines of competing social, geographic, and political contexts. He limited human potential for evil by dividing humanity such that all technological aspirations would be chastened by the aspirations of others. Indeed, God’s confusing of language and scattering of the peoples was thus a call to build outwards, not upwards (what man was attempting to do at Babel). But also, outward expansion would be constrained by competition with others.
In this way, God put friction in the world by means of competing languages, cultures, and technologies. Today, that friction is being replaced by technology that is attempting to make everything seamless, integrated, and one. Such technological advances are welcomed by the masses, but we open our Bibles to Genesis 1–11 and ask: Is it good?
What Babel Means for Today
Today, we must again place technology within its proper bounds. This is not a call to become Luddites who spurn technology or return to some imagined agrarian utopia. It is a call to re-ground culture’s technological aspirations in God’s design for man and Creation.
Admittedly, this article does not provide a complete or constructive answer to what Christians ought to think about AI. Such a question is too large and nuanced for an essay of this length. Instead, my reflections here have sought to provide the reader with a framework for discerning the hidden assumptions underlying America’s tech-obsessed culture.
Such a project is indispensable for the modern American Church. We can no longer remain blind to the immense culture-shaping implications of technology—and neither can we afford to continue ceding its trajectory to the powers of this world.
