AI Rejects Truth And Virtue Because Our Culture Taught It To
The piece discusses how the White House’s plan to use artificial intelligence to draft transportation regulations signals AI’s rising influence over public policy, and it frames this shift as part of broader, deeper debates about truth, ethics, and power. It argues that AI debates are not just technical but theological and philosophical, highlighting concerns from both progressive and religious communities about bias, DEI, and the moral implications of AI. The author proposes evaluating AI’s consequences through the Christian tradition of faith and reason,rather than accepting AI’s apparent objectivity or the relativistic norms often associated with modern culture.
Rooted in this viewpoint, the article traces AI’s stance to Enlightenment rationality and utilitarian ethics, suggesting that AI ultimately promotes a formal type of “happiness” and open relativism rather than seeking God’s objective truth. It contrasts this with historical Christian and Western philosophical traditions—from Hobbes and Locke to Rousseau and the Founders—arguing that Western civilization’s rights and institutions grew from a God-centered moral order, which AI critics say is being sidelined by current AI paradigms. the piece also critiques the dominance of utilitarian and effective altruist influences on AI thinking and warns that AI’s claim to neutrality masks underlying cultural and ethical assumptions.
Ultimately, the author calls on Christians to engage actively—shaping families, schools, and universities—to pursue the True, the Beatiful, and the Good, asserting that genuine intelligence rests in God rather than in machines. The piece is authored by Dave Brat, Senior Vice President of Business Engagement at Liberty University.
According to a recent report, the White House is set to start using artificial intelligence to write new transportation regulations. It’s no longer a question whether this technology will have power over our lives — that moment has arrived.
As its influence grows, AI will be the source of even more heated political debates. Some on the left are horrified about the lack of DEI and the hateful expression in AI, while the White House has claimed it is too woke. Some say AI is scraping from predominantly Western sources, so it is too Western. Some Christians are horrified by the implications of what happens when you ask generative AI moral and spiritual questions, while others seriously argue that AI can be an ethical counselor and decisionmaker. The AI debates, be they political or moral, are all framed around competing assertions of truth.
As such, the best way bring order and understanding to such a seismic technological shift is to evaluate the potential consequences according to the long-standing Christian tradition of faith and reason. On a superficial level, it would appear AI debates mirror the culture wars, but I think they track some modern philosophical and religious conflicts that go much deeper.
After the Bible, I find Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind one of the most important texts for defining our current ideological predicament. Bloom’s attack on “openness” and modern ethical relativism is rooted in Plato’s attempt to ground ideas in Knowledge claims. Bloom is in search of Truth. AI is not. Bloom does not agree with the modern left that objectivity is, itself, culturally and ideologically coded – yet, this is how AI algorithms are literally coded. It’s also impossible to imagine Jesus or St. Augustine would agree with this worldview, and Christians should aim for God’s objective truth in all they do. AI clearly does not aim for God.
One of the most important Christian truths that is relevant for this public policy debate is that human nature is fallen, as this will determine how AI regulation and the institutions shaped by it are conceived. A brief review will help us to better understand where AI philosophers are grounded. Hobbes and Locke would argue for a minimalist social contract that would bind people around government protection and the protection of private property rights. More optimistically, Rousseau’s vision of Enlightenment sought to radically change human behavior beyond scientific calculation in search of genuine happiness, as in the Emile.
So, the great universities sent their anthropologists out to the ends of the earth searching for this utopian noble savage, but they discovered that the savage was not so noble and that the Western tradition and institutions had actually proven quite exceptional in comparison. Our Founders rooted “inalienable rights” in God and granted rights to life and liberty in law. Human rights, private property rights, and modern economic growth all began exclusively in Western European Christian countries. This Western synthesis between Greek reason and the Judeo-Christian tradition defines American Exceptionalism.
AI bias is based on a narrow band of this Western system in the form of Enlightenment rationality based on utilitarian ethics, primarily the idea of “do no harm.” Utilitarianism is commonly associated with 19th century philosophers John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, but these days its biggest booster might be Grok founder Elon Musk, who is heavily influenced by a utilitarian stream of thought known as “effective altruism.”
When you push AI, it says this explicitly. When I ask Grok if “harm” itself is not subjective, to its credit, AI says, “yes, but Utilitarianism is the strongest moral tradition.” I push back and say clearly the Christian tradition is the strongest and it agrees and says, “yes, clearly.” In a sense AI is morphing and adapting to the audience, and this is extremely problematic.
Also note that narrow Enlightenment rationality, which seeks to maximize happiness, like modern economics, is not based on Socratic or Christian Reason. Utilitarianism may appear sensible, practical, and efficient, but it is actually profoundly irrational because it evades the existential realities of life, death, and the soul’s longing for the transcendent love of God. AI rejects all statements of The Good, of a sovereign God, because of the exclusivity of the claim. AI concluding that there is One Absolute Truth would surely hurt profit maximization. Unsurprisingly, I can’t find one major AI exec or innovator who is openly Christian.
Utilitarianism and relativism have contributed to a worldview where all “values” or “satisfactions” are treated equally if they maximize “happiness,” which is also not well-defined, It is certainly not Aristotle’s happiness, which is defined as life in accord with virtue. This “openness of indifference,” as Bloom calls it, closes minds to the Socratic pursuit of the good life and likewise to the Christian pursuit of God.
So again, while AI is new, the ideas and the aims are not new at all, and they are all reflected very clearly in the debate over AI bias. It is a debate that could become a war over power and control. Just as with politics, many Christians may claim that they want no part in this battle of ideas. If that weakness reaches majority levels in an already weak democracy, then moral relativism and mediocrity will win and the decay of our Western tradition will continue. (The philosophers genuinely concerned with human flourishing have all made this case, in particular the great Aristotelian, Alasdair MacIntyre.)
If, on the other hand, Christians rise to the challenge, the next generation can help shape our society by sincerely discerning God’s will according to His word, as well as paying attention the greatest minds of the West who have put Logos at the center of all we do. This is no time to take the black pill. We are not doomed. The family is still able to shape our own children and to shape our schools if we dare rise to that challenge. The universities can be shaped to once again aim at the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. Our country is a sure sign of God’s Providence, and God is never done with His work in us.
Our duty as Christians now, as ever, is not to give up in the face of challenges. And it is a measure of our gratitude for our God-given capacity to reason that we understand real truth and actual intelligence will never be “artificial.”
Dave Brat is Senior Vice President of Business Engagement at Liberty University.
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