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“When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.”
C.S. Lewis
What are the promises being heralded by this brave new world on the horizon? The best trappers are the ones who fool their prey into believing the bait is an easy meal, not a trap. The trickery of Marx was his utopian vision — that was the bait.
Until biblical Christianity came on the scene, slavery and subjugation were the norm in every culture on the planet.
When the Gospel and Christianity sweep a pagan culture clean of false beliefs and idolatry, the resulting society flourishes in ordered freedom. A social order is established where every human life is valued and a separation of power, checks and balances, law and order guard against the sin and coercion of evil men and against the centralizing power of tyranny.
However, when secularism does its job of sweeping a culture clean of every last vestige of the supernatural and belief in God, and sanitizes every corner of society of pesky spirituality, new powers arrive on the scene. The God who made humans in his image is replaced with gods made in the image of man.
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.” — Luke 11:24–26
All cultures are religions externalized. As a student of cultural anthropology, I recognize that at the center of all culture is the cult (Latin: cultus) — what a group of people worships. The modern West scoffs at the contrived gods, idols, and superstitions of ages past, as if we don’t contrive our own gods and idols. We build our new mythologies to meet our deep spiritual needs. Alas, we create gods in our own image. Nothing has changed in thousands of years — just our means, methods, and materials of god-making.
Today, we are rapidly building new gods in the form of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The promises of these new gods are not much different from those of the ancient gods. They offer a beautiful vision of the future. They will heal diseases, fight our wars, control our economies, provide safety in our communities, teach our children, give us special knowledge, and make our jobs and lives easier.
These AI gods are said to be all-knowing, all-powerful, ever-present, and benevolent. They bid us, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
So we build temples for our AI gods to inhabit, called Data Centers.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
Artificial Intelligence is the ability of a computer or machine to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence — such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, understanding language, and recognizing patterns.
ARTIFICIAL SUPER INTELLIGENCE (ASI)
At its core, ASI is about creating an intelligence that exceeds the brightest human minds in every conceivable way — be it creativity, emotional intelligence, general wisdom, or problem-solving. It is about an adaptive, learning, and evolving intelligence that can autonomously improve and expand its capabilities. Artificial Super Intelligence represents a future state of artificial intelligence where machines possess cognitive abilities far surpassing the brightest human minds in nearly every field.
Unlike regular AI, ASI would be able to improve itself repeatedly, allowing it to keep evolving and increasing its intelligence far beyond human comprehension. (1)
As with all gods, they demand sacrifices. You will need to feed them your precious water, energy, and land. As trillions of dollars flow into building AI infrastructure, the new god emerges as the center of gravity of the entire national and global economy. All lives are being directed toward this emerging power with cultish devotion.
At a May 6, 2026, event at Texas State Technical College in Waco, Texas, BlackRock CEO, World Economic Forum (WEF) chairman, and AI champion Larry Fink argued that if the country wants to remain the leader in AI, “it’s just going to require trillions of dollars of investments.” He says the U.S. could spend about $10 trillion on the data center economy over the next decade, with funding coming from “savings accounts, from pension accounts, from insurance companies, on and on and on.... If we can get more and more Americans to think about growing with the United States, we will have far [more] than enough money to invest in this infrastructure.” (2)
Stop for a moment and observe the spurious glitter and artificial glory of artificial intelligence being promoted. Then orient your thinking around current reality.
What are we doing and what is the purpose?
Why are powerful institutions directing our attention and allegiance toward AI?
What is really going on here and will this lead to human flourishing and freedom?
What are the unintended consequences of pursuing this vision and what are the alternatives?
Americans have been fed the narrative that if we don’t pursue AI and data center infrastructure buildout, we will lose the AI race to China or some other enemy. What does this mean and is it true? Or are we dealing with an emotion-infused false dilemma? Are we transforming a technological tool into a demanding taskmaster? What are the trade-offs and downsides?
Words and definitions matter, and the term Artificial Intelligence gives it away. I use Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) to define artificial and intelligence, because online definitions of traditional words are being changed before our eyes.
Webster’s (1828) defines artificial as made or contrived by art, or by human skill and labor, in opposition to natural; as artificial heat or light. Feigned; fictitious; not genuine or natural. Contrived with skill or art. It defines intelligence as the ability or skill to understand. Or a spiritual being; as a created intelligence.
Artificial, by definition, is not the real thing — any more than a painting of a beach is an actual beach. The painting is made or contrived by humans. And intelligence is primarily the ability to understand and, secondarily, can mean a created spiritual being.
All social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering.
William Smith
The Cloud is not floating against the backdrop of a blue sky; it is a server farm filled with microprocessors and silicon chips in some data center.
Academic AI enthusiasts are shifting the language as well. We are seeing the term intelligence supplanted by wisdom. This is a purposeful shift — verbal engineering through redefinition of words. When definitions are changed, the ability of people to communicate what is true and real is impacted. Meaning is lost or confused.
In the 2023 research paper From Knowledge to Wisdom: The Power of Large Language Models in AI, authors Wiedermann and Van Leeuwen speak of this shift in language and philosophy:
“The bearers of artificial wisdom are autonomous embodied cognitive behavioral agents. We will argue that artificial wisdom is already present to some degree in different worlds, including various major language models. The concept of wisdom has primarily been dealt with by philosophers, but the concept of artificial wisdom has been recognized in artificial intelligence since its inception.” (3)
When humans attribute God-like qualities to things humans make, we end up in bad places. Nothing we can contrive can bear the hope and burden we impose on it. In fact, many of the things we make enslave us.
The promise of AI began with: this technology will make your job easier. Today, AI will replace your job. It began with: this technology will make driving your vehicle safer. Today, manufacturers are being required to put kill switches in cars. The promise is that AI-enhanced cameras will make our neighborhoods safer. Today, those cameras are being used to surveil citizens and are hacked by criminals. What is next — AI judges in our courts? All of this points to centralized planning of society through technology.
What are we giving our power and agency to? Why are we sacrificing to AI?
I, for one, refuse to live in a manufactured reality or build my life around a technological Tower of Babel. I will use AI as a tool, but I will not come under its rule. I see the hubris and frailty of human intellect — and the darkness of men’s hearts. But I will not let AI define reality or meaning for me. I’ll be running in the opposite direction. Do you think I’ve lost my mind?
Thank you for reading.
Special THANK YOU to my Substack paid members and Forge Room Foundation donors for enabling me to do ministry!
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Lance Cashion Fort Worth, TX Founder & CEO - Forge Room Foundation Lay-Elder & Pastor - King’s Cross Fellowship
Footnotes:
(1) https://www.blockchain-council.org/ai/artificial-super-intelligence/
(3) https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~leeuw112/techreps/UU-PCS-2023-01.pdf
Further Reading:
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