Will AI dominate and begin to think for itself? Apple’s recent research may have unintentionally revealed the truth many of us have long suspected: AI is artificial, but it is not intelligence.
In a pre-WWDC 2025 paper, Apple exposed a fundamental flaw in the latest AI systems known as large reasoning models (LRMs). These systems — including OpenAI’s o1 and o3, DeepSeek R1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet Thinking, and Google’s Gemini Flash Thinking — demonstrate stunning failure when tasked with logic puzzles that increase in complexity. As Mashable reports, these so-called “thinking” models often collapse entirely, unable to handle the very challenges that define human intelligence.
This should give us pause — and perhaps, a moment of reflection.
“The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.” C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
The Difference Between Simulated Intelligence and Human Personhood
AI can simulate patterns, mimic language, and even pass a form of the Turing test. But it does not create, contemplate, or commune with God. It does not possess imagination, morality, or a soul. It does not weep for the broken, dream of eternity, or stand in awe of beauty. These are human things. And they matter now more than ever.
We live in a moment that demands we reexamine what it truly means to be human.
Genesis 1:26–27 declares that man and woman are made in the image — of God. No other creature, and certainly no machine, shares this divine status. We are uniquely created with moral reasoning, spiritual hunger, relational depth, and creative power. We reflect the very character and calling of our Creator.
AI is not made in the image of God — it is made in the image of the image of God. And that difference is cosmic.
The Apple Revelation: Why Logic Isn’t Enough
Apple’s findings strike at the core of what technologists have claimed for years — that we are on the cusp of true “artificial general intelligence.” Yet when faced with complex logic chains — the kind humans navigate in daily life — the models collapse. Why?
Because intelligence is not merely logic, it is not calculation. It is not memory retrieval or language processing.
Real intelligence includes meaning, motive, and mystery.
It includes the ability to grasp love, justice, suffering, and transcendence — things no algorithm can comprehend.
What we are witnessing is not the birth of artificial intelligence but the ceiling of its reach.
The Call to Be Fully Human
In The Call, Os Guinness poses life’s ultimate questions:
Why am I here? What is God’s call in my life? How do I fit God’s call with my own individuality? How should God’s calling affect my career, my plans for the future, my concepts of success?
No AI will ever ask such questions. No LRM will wrestle with guilt or long for grace. Yet these are the very tensions that shape and sanctify human life.
According to Guinness, “No idea short of God’s call can ground and fulfill the truest human desire for purpose and fulfillment.” This is the center of a biblical worldview — not a machine’s efficiency, but a man’s encounter with the divine.
We are not cogs in a system. We are sons and daughters of God, called to rule, create, and worship.
AI: A Tool, Not a Truth
AI has its place. It can process vast data, assist in decision-making, and serve as a tool in human hands. But it is not the hand. And it is certainly not the mind or the soul.
The danger lies not in the tool itself but in the deification of the tool.
When man seeks to offload responsibility — moral, spiritual, intellectual — to machines, he forgets who he is. He forgets that humanity is the apex of creation, not an evolutionary fluke, and not a program waiting to be updated.
Psalm 8:5–6 reminds us:
“You have made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands.”
To surrender that role to machines is not progress. It is abdication.
A New Tower of Babel
The development of AI is not unlike the Tower of Babel — man building upward in search of his own godhood. With every new update and every new claim of consciousness, we inch closer to confusing the image with the idol.
And as in Babel, confusion will come.
But the gospel offers a different way.
While AI may mirror our syntax, it cannot mirror our salvation. Only through Christ can we be restored to the full image of God — conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29.
Conclusion: Rediscovering a Biblical Anthropology
Rather than fear AI or blindly embrace it, Christians must use this moment to rediscover and proclaim a Biblical anthropology. We are not machines. We are not programs. We are not random.
We are image-bearers of a holy God. And that image, though marred by sin, is being restored by grace.
Let us not look to machines for meaning. Let us look to the One who made us. And let us heed His call — to live fully human, fully alive, fully aware in the presence of our Creator.
AI will never kneel.
It will never pray.
It will never love.
But you can.
And that changes everything.
