Friday, September 18, 2026

Here's a question posed by The Economist in London: "Will chatbots supplant the advice of imams and priests, or help them spread the word?" Now, because this is The Economist, it, it's that kind of secular news source, it's gonna look at religion as religion.

We, as Christians, understand that's not the way we, we see the, the landscape.

That's not the way we would define this theologically, but nonetheless, it is interesting.

So imams, priests, and preachers, the question being posed here by The Economist is whether we're about to be replaced by chatbots.

Okay, so why would this question be raised? Well, it is because we're now looking at a situation across the culture in which chatbots are replacing human contact for a lot of people.

But we're not only looking at that, we're not only looking at Americans really distancing themselves from face-to-face conversation, conversation with human beings and, and holding their phones and spending their attention span on their phones.

It is also the case that increasingly they are relating or think they are relating to chatbots.

Now, in coming days, we're gonna talk about some of the huge theological issues invoked in, in that kind of perception of a relationship.

This comes down also to questions such as whether or not artificial intelligence is, uh, is, has consciousness.

We'll, we'll talk about that.

The answer's no, but we'll talk about why, uh, at another point.

But the issue here is asking whether or not chatbots are going to replace preachers.

That's basically it, or pastors.

And then they go on and say, "Is that gonna, is that gonna come i- in such a way these chatbots help, or will they be seen as basically just, uh, reshaping religion?" Well, I'll just simply say that from a Christian perspective, religion is religion.

In other words, just the, the sociological reality of religion, it's something that may change in any number of ways.

The question for Christians, of course, is what is authentic Christianity? What is, what does it call for? What, what is faithfulness in terms of historic Christianity? That's a very different thing.

All right, so Pope Leo has mentioned his own concerns about artificial intelligence and, uh, relationships by human beings with these chatbots, and some are gonna say Pope Leo XIV is right to have those concerns.

I think, frankly, he's too optimistic in some ways.

But I also think it's, it's very interesting that you have the Pope issuing this, uh, rather authoritative, at least in terms of the Catholic Church, this authoritative manifesto, which is known as an encyclical.

And, and the reality is it's had zero, zero, zero, zero effect on the entire field of artificial intelligence.

And so it is very interesting.

Not even the Pope seems to be making a material difference here.

By the way, when it comes to Roman Catholics, they now have a chatbot known as Magisterium Artificial Intelligence, quote, "A chatbot that draws on a curated library of Catholic doctrine and scholarship." End quote.

Now, just talking about the practicalities of artificial intelligence, that's kind of the lowest level, where artificial intelligence is basically sorting materials.

It's, it's sort of like a search engine that's a lot smarter than the average search engine.