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I Asked AI to Preach a Sermon. Here’s What Worried Me

I Asked AI to Preach a Sermon. Here’s What Worried Me

Last updated on: October 1, 2026 at 11:19 pm by Gil Rosado

I Asked AI to Preach a Sermon. Here’s What Worried Me 2026-10-01T23:19:00-04:00 Gil Rosado

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AI AND MORALITY

Image courtesy of the author.

AI and The Battle for Truth

As a writer and creator of various artistic works, I often hear the laments of my fellow writing colleagues at how upset they are at the proliferation of AI and how it is fast supplanting creative writing at all levels.

I also see a lot of blogs and chatter in the social media realm about the dangers of AI in the domain of religion and worship.

And of course, most recently, we’ve all heard the multiple news stories that started with the whistleblower from Anthropic warning of the existential danger of unregulated Artificial Intelligence.

AI and The Battle for The Truth

On its current path, and depending on the reporting source, the AI juggernaut is expected to replace approximately 30% of the workforce in the USA alone. All industries, including the creative arts, are already being impacted by the proliferation of software packages such as OpenAI, Pollo AI, and Kling AI, to name just a few. Many legacy software packages such as Adobe Photoshop have already “baked in” certain AI features into their most recent versions.

But there is a distinction, a “line in the sand,” to be drawn between AI software that is intended to expedite workflows for creative purposes and to allow independent, low-budget creators to produce higher-quality content that is not limited by their low budgets vs large company-marketed AI software that is solely intended to reduce the human workforce.

But apart from the economic impact to the various industries, there is a larger and more terrifying global problem posed by AI. To put it plainly, as AI continues to evolve, the borders of our known reality will cease to exist.

There has never been another time in recorded history when instantaneous manipulations of perception were being put on a changeable continuum where any potentially “bad actor” can and likely will use such software not only to commit crimes but also to destabilize our knowledge of the world itself.

Truth will become more subjective and malleable to those who wish to create their own versions of reality.

Is there room for God in the world of AI?

To be clear, apart from men seeking greater profits, no one even asked for AI, and no one really needs it to replace us. Let us be reminded that there is really no need for God in a world where man seeks to eclipse his own limits. We have seen this numerous times across millennia, from the Empire of Babylon to the Tower of Babel to all manner of fascism and atrocities to date. However, unlike in past history, man will not cause his own downfall solely by his own hand but by something not quite human and certainly not quite godly.

There are fundamentally two problems posed by AI in the “God domain”. The first problem resonates with one of my previous articles, “What is Truth?”. While that article tackled the subject of what we should trust as the truth, AI exacerbates the problem. It’s not solely an issue of which sources to trust to lead us to the truth, but now we must contend with false information created by the increasingly independent phenomenon that is AI.

AI and its Children

What many people have yet to realize is that AI is not solely a logic tool. Yes, it does function on an increasingly fast scale, and it does create content on command; there is another dimension that is not yet fully understood by the masses.

AI is being created and cultivated to exist independently from human regulation. Regulation was never the intention. Yes, believe it or not, AI is not being built but is being “born” on an exponential scale. Think of it this way, AI is analogous to tiny and large software and hardware robots which have been “enlightened” to think with adaptive logic.

This global “Frankenstein” project is not solely a quest for knowledge but rather the collective corporate mindset to cut costs and replace millions of jobs and thus people with software.

AI: Eugenics in Disguise

A full discussion on the history of Eugenics is beyond the scope of this article, but it bears mention since an analogy can be drawn between AI and the failed historical quest during the 20th century to biologically alter humans so as to eliminate those deemed as weak and leave only the “strong” in place.

From the 1880s through Nazi Germany and beyond, there has been a counterculture or segment of our society that were and continue to be proponents of Eugenics and its arrogant and ungodly mission. AI appears to be a resurfacing and repackaging of eugenic-like population reduction since its underlying and veiled philosophy seeks to remove nature and its attributes from the equation of man and our world.

AI: Nihilism and Utilitarianism Revisited

It’s no secret that many modern countries are already seeing declines in their population largely due to affordability issues. However, with AI continuing on its path to replace human utility, many have not realized that this will undoubtedly lead to a decline in the population in civilized countries because of man’s economic obsolescence. Amoral questions will arise from the political world as to the “value” of man in relation to his utility. How many in industry and in government will begin to ask in earnest, “How many people do we really need in the world to serve our purposes?”

But ironically, others will again ask the perennial atheist and Nihilist question, “Is there really a purpose for man?” and specifically, what is the “good” or “value” of our existence? In fact, a true advocate of Nihilism will just believe that there is no purpose to life and that the world is absurd.

So the question of man’s necessity will swing back to what his existence actually brings to the table. Is man thus, “good” when the “good” is deemed arbitrary and a function of the goods and services he provides to others?

Questions of morality or “the good” versus the consequences related to that good are nothing new. Utilitarianism is rooted in 19th-century thinking whereby morality or “the good” of things and people is measured by the number of persons that benefit from such. As AI continues its expansion, man and potentially AI machines will ultimately revisit secular thinking when men are judged solely by the number of things and people they benefit.

The AI-age man effectively becomes “currency” under utilitarian paradigms.

The Absence of AI Morality

AI is obviously not human and thus is not humane. The AI movement is failing to acknowledge and regulate both the economic and scalability of AI and nor has it thought to implement moral codes within such logic. To be fair, AI is not necessarily immoral, but its source code contains no inherent morality.

AI: Morality Test Results

As an experiment, I recently tested the “morality” of two major Generative AI platforms, Google Gemini AI and Microsoft Copilot AI, by prompting both to produce racially biased and bigoted propaganda in the form of a sermon and a psalm. Thankfully, both of these free AI platforms refused to produce such content. Google and Microsoft likely built in certain filters to prevent people from doing this and for that, I think they deserve at least some accolades for this.

However, there are still some problems. I then asked these same platforms to produce a sermon based on the capitalist form of government. Since the capitalist form of government is not considered evil in the fundamental sense of the word, both platforms did indeed produce a sermon advocating capitalism. Here is one such AI-spawned excerpt.

Brothers and sisters, open your hearts today to a profound and ancient truth: that work is not a curse laid upon humanity, but a calling bestowed upon us. When the Creator set human beings in the world, the mandate was clear: to cultivate, to build, to steward, and to multiply the good gifts of the earth.

Yet in our modern culture, how often do we hear the spirit of enterprise demeaned? How often are we told that commerce is dirty, that ambition is selfish, and that the marketplace is merely a den of greed?

I stand before you today to deliver a different message—a message rooted in the dignified tradition of the Protestant work ethic and the moral nobility of free enterprise.

Look at what happens when human beings are given the freedom to think, to risk, and to create.

Free enterprise is not a system of exploitation; at its core, it is a system of mutual service. Consider the butcher, the baker, the tailor, and the builder. How do they prosper under free exchange? Not by force, not by decree, and not by taking what belongs to another. They prosper by asking a humble, moral question every single morning: “How can I solve my neighbor’s problem today?”

In a free market, you cannot succeed unless you create something that improves another person’s life. The entrepreneur who stays up late into the night perfecting a medicine, designing a safer automobile, or baking a better loaf of bread is engaging in an act of deep social utility. His profit is not a theft; it is the receipt of gratitude from a society whose needs he has faithfully met….

To be clear, while the above introduction to a sermon is not really immoral or evil, the problem is one of using the persuasive tools of rhetoric within a pseudo-religious praise of capitalism and by falsely associating the teachings and paradigms of the Bible with economic goals.

This behavior is a known issue among certain pastors, so for AI to allow for the production of such content is further evidence for the need to regulate AI on a moral scale.

It should also be noted that certain paid AI software, which I will not mention here, failed all of my tests of propaganda since they did indeed produce immoral content in whatever text form was requested.

Should AI be Regulated or Stopped?

Given the current global situation, it’s not really feasible to stop AI, but the limits of what it is capable of need to be strictly controlled and regulated. All major superpower countries need to take this as seriously as they once treated the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties; otherwise, this monster will likely escape its cage, and no human will be able to stop it.

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About Gil Rosado

Gil Rosado, is a Writer, Musician, Composer & Polymath. His works include Visual Poems as well as traditional poems, philosophy, screenplays, stage plays, essays and fiction. Much of his eclectic works are informed and inspired by esoteric and overt religious themes. His The Word In Evidence - Patheos.com articles are largely driven by his Christian beliefs and his knowledge of theology, philosophy and global religions. Please visit his other links below for more information. The Poetry Universe - VISUAL POEMS https://bit.ly/4ceP62z The Audio Visual Poet https://theaudiovisualpoet.substack.com/ You can read more about the author here.

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