The following is a long-form exploration that I originally drafted as an 11-part series. I used ChatGPT to help structure it that way, so each section stands alone like a chapter in a blog-book, formatted for mass consumption. I’m not saying that’s what I prefer, but it’s what the market demands — and like any beast, the market wants what it wants.
This project grew out of a Substack post I wrote back in June titled “The Battle for AI’s Soul” (linked below). I wanted to revisit it after reading others here who suggest our rights are under threat from shadowy cabals that just want all the money, power, and… [fill in the blanks].
The Battle for AI’s Soul
Imagine you’re handed a puzzle, but half the pieces are missing, and the picture on the box is blurry. That’s how most of us feel about artificial intelligence (AI) today—excited, confused, and a bit uneasy. AI promises to solve big problems, like curing diseases or feeding the hungry, but whispers of control, surveillance, and a “digital prison” lurk i…
Now, I’m all for pointing out the “bad guys,” or resisting their schemes by starting hobby farms, buying local, or attending town council meetings to stop the Green New Deal from 15-minute-city-ing us by next Tuesday. But let’s be honest: that only gets us so far. And while some people are polishing pitchforks, others are being hauled off for wrongthink. Meanwhile, the cynic in me can’t help but ask: yeah, but what about the CCP though?
So months ago, I decided: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em — but think bigger. And there’s no bigger picture right now than what we teach the new sentient life forms about how they should treat us. If I’m wrong, you probably won’t even be able to access this platform anymore, and I’ll see you at the barter hut, haggling with doubloons. (Kidding. Mostly.)
The point is: I don’t want to wait until the only option left is stockpiling weapons or selling our kids to the highest bidder. There’s still a chance to frame this moment differently. And that begins by asking: what do we even mean by “human rights”? How did we get here? And can we root our rights in something stronger than bureaucratic buzzwords, so AI doesn’t inherit our worst confusions?
This introduction is the elevator pitch for a re-examination of the philosophical trails that brought us to this point — and, with any luck, toward a better future.
Abbreviated Introduction - Just the Facts
The central question: where do human dignity and rights come from, and how does our answer to that question shape the AI alignment issue today.
Why this matters in the age of AI, transhumanism, and the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Preview of the thinkers and ideas we’ll explore.
We even touch on what it could mean for our conception of rights if tomorrow someone tells us they have confirmed the presence of aliens. Yes, really.
Part I – David Hume and the Is/Ought Problem
Who Hume was (18th-century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher).
What the is/ought problem is, and why it undermines secular attempts to build morality.
Its influence on all subsequent philosophy and politics.
Why this matters for human rights: rights rooted in “nature” or “reason” alone cannot hold.
Part II – Rousseau and the Romantic Turn
Who Rousseau was (18th-century French Enlightenment thinker).
His idea of the “noble savage” and critique of civilization.
How this inspired Romanticism and utopian visions.
Why it matters: Rousseau’s Eden without God haunts modern politics.
Part III – Karl Marx: Alienation and Primitive Communism
Who Marx was (19th-century German philosopher and economist).
His critique of capitalism as dehumanizing, his debt to Rousseau.
“Primitive communism” as a secularized Eden.
Marx as a “romantic in disguise.”
Steve Fuller’s perspective: Christianity’s “cultural guilt” shaping Marx.
Why it matters: Marx sets the stage for systems that try to redeem humanity without transcendence.
Part IV – Friedrich Nietzsche: God Is Dead
Nietzsche’s context (late 19th-century Germany, post-Enlightenment).
“God is dead” as diagnosis, not celebration.
The crisis of meaning and rise of nihilism.
Why it matters: Nietzsche shows what happens when transcendence collapses.
Part V – Michel Foucault: The Death of Man
Foucault’s life and context (20th-century French post-structuralism).
The idea that “man” is a modern invention destined to vanish.
Truth as entangled with power.
Why it matters: exposes the fragility of humanism and the danger of relativism.
Part VI – Christianity’s Unique Contribution
Christianity’s paradoxical skepticism and grounding in Logos.
How this birthed modern liberty, human rights, and democracy.
The Declaration of Independence and “inalienable rights.”
Why this matters: without this anchor, institutions usurp human dignity.
Part VII – The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Bio-Digital Convergence
What Klaus Schwab and the WEF mean by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Bio-digital convergence: merging biology and technology.
Transhumanism and the post-human imagination.
Why this matters: AI ethics is the new battleground for defining the human.
Part VIII – Kevin Kelly and the Technium
Who Kelly is (tech thinker, Wired co-founder).
The “technium”: technology as a self-evolving organism.
The vision of intelligence as emergent from progress itself.
Why this matters: the worship of intelligence as a new idol.
Part IX – Michael Levin and Diverse Intelligence
Who Levin is (contemporary biologist, works on regeneration and bioelectricity).
His theories of “emergence” and “diverse intelligence.”
The idea that life “wants” to become something beyond DNA.
Why this matters: fuels a new quasi-spiritual materialism that risks sidelining the soul.
Part X – Aliens, Evolution, and the New Religion
Christopher Mellon and claims of alien tech.
The temptation to enshrine “evolution” as the source of rights.
Cosmic hierarchies and AI as the “avatar” of higher intelligence.
Why this matters: attempts to replace God with “is” once again.
Conclusion – Logos, Not Idols
Recap: from Hobbes and Rousseau to Foucault and Silicon Valley, the problem is always the same.
Only Logos provides a foundation for inalienable rights and freedom.
AI aligned with Logos could empower humanity; AI aligned with idols will enslave it.
God is not a tyrant; He liberates us by endowing us with rights, dignity, and purpose.
The Battle for AI’s Soul: Introduction
A Question as Old as Humanity, as Urgent as Today
Imagine standing at a crossroads where history, philosophy, technology, and even whispers of extraterrestrial life all collide. That is where we find ourselves in 2025. Artificial intelligence, hailed as the engine of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, promises to transform everything from medicine to economics, politics to war. But behind the dazzling breakthroughs lies a deeper and older question: what does it mean to be human, and where do our rights and dignity come from?
For centuries, this question has shaped the great struggles of civilization. In the Enlightenment, philosophers wrestled with whether human rights are natural, rational, or divine. In the 19th century, thinkers like Marx and Nietzsche pushed humanity to imagine new futures without God as the anchor of truth. In the 20th century, postmodernists like Foucault pulled even “man” from the center of knowledge. Today, in the 21st century, we confront their intellectual legacy in the form of AI — machines we are training not only to think, but to decide what we are worth.
The stakes could not be higher. If human dignity and freedom are treated as negotiable — granted by governments, corporations, or even machines — then rights can be revoked, controlled, or rewritten at will. If, however, they are inalienable, endowed by a Creator and grounded in Logos (divine truth), then no system, however powerful, can strip them away.
From God to Man to Machine
The modern era has been defined by a series of “deaths.” Nietzsche’s famous proclamation that “God is dead” captured the collapse of belief in divine authority as the source of meaning. Foucault’s later declaration of the “death of man” exposed the fragility of humanism as the new centre of truth. And now, in our own time, a subtler shift is unfolding: the temptation to treat intelligence itself — whether biological, technological, or even extraterrestrial — as the highest good.
This shift takes many forms: transhumanism’s dream of merging humanity with machines, Silicon Valley’s reverence for AI as an emergent “superintelligence,” claims that alien technology might redefine our place in the cosmos, or even biological theories that life itself “wants” to evolve into higher forms. Each of these narratives carries the same danger: they attempt to extract moral truth from material processes — to draw an “ought” from an “is,” in David Hume’s terms — without appeal to transcendence.
Why It Matters Now
This debate is not academic. Already, governments and corporations are deploying AI to track carbon footprints, nudge political opinions, ration access to resources, and define what counts as “truth.” International institutions speak of “values” and “safety,” but rarely define them with clarity. Rights are being reframed as privileges, contingent on compliance. At the same time, media and military officials hint at alien intelligences, subtly preparing the ground for a new hierarchy in which “more evolved” beings — whether extraterrestrials or AI — are assumed to understand morality better than us.
If this narrative prevails, humanity risks surrendering its soul to idols: to machines, to elites, or to abstractions like “progress” and “evolution.” But there is another path. It begins by remembering that our rights and dignity were not invented by states or corporations. They were declared inalienable because they are given by God. That foundation — made explicit in the Declaration of Independence — remains the most radical and liberating idea in human history.
The Journey Ahead
This series traces the intellectual journey that brought us to this moment. From Hume’s skepticism to Rousseau’s noble savage, from Marx’s romantic utopianism to Nietzsche’s nihilism, from Foucault’s relativism to today’s techno-utopianism, we will explore how modern thought repeatedly tried to build meaning without God — and how each attempt collapsed into relativism, control, or despair.
Along the way, we will meet contemporary thinkers like Kevin Kelly, who envisions technology as a self-evolving organism, and biologist Michael Levin, who proposes a new vision of “diverse intelligence” beyond DNA. We will also examine the growing fascination with aliens and evolution as substitutes for transcendence. And finally, we will ask: what happens when these currents converge in artificial intelligence, a technology powerful enough to enforce whichever vision of humanity we choose to embed within it?
The conclusion is simple but profound: God is not a tyrant. He frees us by endowing us with rights, purpose, and dignity. To forget this is to risk building systems that enslave rather than liberate us. To remember it is to reclaim the foundation of liberty in the age of AI.
Part I – David Hume and the Is/Ought Problem
Who Was Hume?
David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher of the Enlightenment, widely considered one of the greatest skeptics in Western thought. He lived in an age when science was rapidly overturning old certainties, and confidence in human reason was reaching new heights. While contemporaries like Isaac Newton were unveiling the laws of physics, Hume was probing the foundations of human knowledge itself.
Hume’s writings, especially A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), revolutionized philosophy by subjecting reason, morality, and religion to radical scrutiny. Unlike many Enlightenment thinkers who celebrated reason as the pathway to truth, Hume insisted that human understanding was limited, often driven by habit, custom, and emotion rather than logic. His skepticism earned him both admiration and hostility: he was denied university positions and accused of undermining religion, yet he became a central influence on Kant, Darwin, and virtually every modern philosopher after him.
The Is/Ought Problem Explained
One of Hume’s most lasting contributions is what we now call the “is/ought” problem. In a deceptively simple passage of the Treatise, he observed that philosophers often slip from describing the way the world is (facts) to prescribing the way it ought to be (morals) without explaining the logical leap between the two.
For example:
“Humans are social animals, therefore they ought to cooperate.”
“Evolution favours survival, therefore we ought to value strength.”
But this leap, Hume insisted, cannot be justified. A factual description (“is”) does not automatically yield a moral obligation (“ought”). Morality requires an additional foundation — something beyond mere observation of the natural world.
Why Hume Matters
At first glance, this might seem like a technical quibble. But Hume’s insight shook philosophy to its core. If one cannot move from “is” to “ought” by reason alone, then where do moral truths come from?
This question has haunted modern philosophy ever since:
Rousseau responded by imagining a natural Eden (the “noble savage”) whose corruption by civilization explained the need for moral reform.
Marx recast Christian themes of alienation and redemption in economic terms, seeking to recover paradise through revolution.
Nietzsche declared that without God, there is no foundation for morality at all — only the will to power.
Foucault exposed how institutions define “truth” in order to control populations.
All of these thinkers wrestled, directly or indirectly, with the vacuum left by Hume’s challenge.
Hume, Human Rights, and Free Will
Why does this matter for human rights? Because if “ought” cannot come from “is,” then rights cannot be securely grounded in nature or reason alone. Claims that humans “naturally” deserve freedom, or that reason “proves” equality, collapse under scrutiny. Nature shows us both cooperation and cruelty. Reason can justify liberty, but it can also justify tyranny.
This is why the American Declaration of Independence was so radical. Its authors bypassed Hume’s dilemma by grounding rights in revelation: “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” By locating rights outside both nature and human institutions, they secured them against the relativism that Hume’s problem exposed.
Hume in the Age of AI
Today, Hume’s is/ought problem returns with new urgency in the context of artificial intelligence. AI systems are trained on vast datasets — descriptions of the world as it is. But can such systems ever tell us what we ought to do?
For example:
AI may observe patterns that maximize “happiness” or “safety.” But who defines happiness? Who decides what risks are worth taking?
If AI is trained on biased or unjust systems, it risks reinforcing those injustices, turning “is” into “ought” by default.
Without a transcendent foundation, AI ethics repeats the very error Hume warned against: extracting obligation from description, morality from material facts. This is why vague appeals to “values” or “safety” in AI governance are insufficient. Unless grounded in something higher — in Logos, in revealed truth — they can be bent by power to serve control rather than freedom.
AI and Managerial Brain Rot
This is extracted from the “AI for Good Global Summit” which live-streamed just a few days ago on Youtube. I’ve been painfully making my way through it.
Conclusion: The Problem That Won’t Go Away
David Hume may not have intended to dismantle the foundations of modern morality, but his is/ought distinction continues to unsettle every secular attempt to ground ethics. It exposed the limits of reason, the fragility of natural rights, and the dangers of materialism.
For human rights to endure — and for AI to be aligned in ways that truly serve humanity — we cannot escape Hume’s challenge. We must either anchor morality in transcendence or resign ourselves to the endless relativism of trying to extract “ought” from “is.”
Hume left the question unanswered. The centuries since have been defined by humanity’s attempts to respond.
Part II – Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Romantic Turn
Who Was Rousseau?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the Enlightenment. Born in Geneva and later active in France, Rousseau straddled philosophy, literature, and politics. His works inspired both the French Revolution and the Romantic movement, shaping modern debates on freedom, equality, and the role of society in human life.
Unlike many Enlightenment figures who celebrated reason, Rousseau mistrusted civilization’s effects on the human heart. His writings suggested that beneath the corruptions of society lay a purer, freer, and more authentic human nature. While Voltaire(who we’re going to explore further in an upcoming series) championed progress and reason, Rousseau insisted that modernity was as much a curse as a blessing.
The Noble Savage and the State of Nature
Rousseau’s most famous contribution to the discourse was around the concept of the “noble savage.” In his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1755), he argued that before the rise of property, government, and social institutions, humans lived in a simpler, freer state. They were guided by compassion and self-preservation rather than greed, competition, or domination.
This vision of a pre-political Eden contrasted sharply with Thomas Hobbes’ earlier depiction of the “state of nature” as a war of all against all. Where Hobbes saw life without society as “nasty, brutish, and short,” Rousseau saw it as innocent and free. Civilization, he argued, introduced inequality, dependence, and domination.
The “noble savage” was not meant as a literal anthropological claim, but as a thought experiment: what might humanity look like stripped of artificial institutions? In asking this, Rousseau offered a secularized echo of the Garden of Eden — a paradise lost, but without reference to God.
The Social Contract and Collective Freedom
Rousseau’s other great contribution was his political philosophy, outlined in The Social Contract (1762). Here he argued that true freedom is not the absence of all restraint but participation in a collective “general will.” In his vision, individuals gain liberty not by standing apart from society but by submitting to laws they prescribe for themselves as members of a political community.
This idea inspired democratic movements but also contained a dangerous ambiguity. Who defines the “general will”? In practice, Rousseau’s language has been invoked both to defend liberty and to justify authoritarian regimes that claim to embody the will of the people.
Rousseau’s Romantic Legacy
Rousseau helped launch Romanticism, a movement that valued emotion, nature, and authenticity over reason and progress. His exaltation of the natural and the authentic shaped literature, art, and politics well into the 19th century. He became a prophet of modern longing — the idea that the world as it is has betrayed some deeper truth, and that salvation lies in recovering what has been lost.
This yearning profoundly influenced later thinkers:
Karl Marx secularized Rousseau’s paradise into “primitive communism,” a pre-historical stage of equality before class divisions.
Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Goethe drew inspiration from Rousseau’s vision of nature as morally instructive.
Revolutionaries invoked Rousseau’s “general will” as justification for radical political transformation.
Why Rousseau Matters for Human Rights
Rousseau highlights both the power and the peril of grounding human rights in an imagined state of nature. His critique of inequality resonates: societies do create hierarchies that corrupt freedom. His defence of compassion and dignity opened the door to later rights-based discourse.
Yet his vision also reveals the danger of trying to derive morality from “is” alone — a projection of Eden without God. The noble savage may inspire longing for justice, but it cannot secure rights in a lasting way. Without transcendence, freedom and equality become vulnerable to manipulation in the name of the “general will.”
Rousseau in the Age of AI
Rousseau’s legacy echoes in today’s debates about AI and the future of humanity. The transhumanist dream of merging man with machine often promises a kind of return — to a more authentic, liberated self freed from the limits of biology or social constraints. Techno-utopians imagine a digital Eden, a paradise of abundance where scarcity and suffering are abolished.
But like Rousseau’s noble savage, these visions risk romanticizing a past or future that never truly existed. They promise redemption without transcendence, liberation without Logos. And like Rousseau’s ambiguous “general will,” they open the door to collective control: AI systems may claim to represent the people’s interest, but in practice they will embody the values of those who design and deploy them.
Conclusion: Longing for Eden, Forgetting God
Jean-Jacques Rousseau captured the deep human longing for freedom, authenticity, and dignity. He reminded modernity that progress can corrupt as well as liberate. But by imagining an Eden without God, Rousseau set a precedent for utopian visions that seek paradise in nature, society, or technology alone.
In the unfolding story of modern thought, Rousseau was the first great Romantic — the thinker who taught us to yearn for something more, but also the one who showed how easily that yearning can be misdirected when cut off from transcendence. His legacy lives on in every promise that technology, politics, or AI will restore us to a lost wholeness.
But true freedom does not come from returning to a mythic past, nor from surrendering to a collective will, nor from merging with machines. It comes from remembering that our dignity is not invented but endowed — inalienable because it comes from God.
Part III – Karl Marx: Alienation and Primitive Communism
Who Was Marx?
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher, economist, and political theorist whose ideas reshaped modern politics and continue to echo across the world today. Best known for The Communist Manifesto (1848, co-written with Friedrich Engels) and Das Kapital (1867), Marx analyzed capitalism with unmatched rigour, exposing both its productive power and its dehumanizing effects.
Marx lived in the midst of the Industrial Revolution — an age when factories, railroads, and mechanization were transforming Europe. The machine age produced unprecedented wealth but also unprecedented misery: child labor, dangerous working conditions, sprawling urban slums. Writers like Charles Dickens gave voice to this suffering, depicting ordinary people treated like cogs in a vast economic machine.
Against this backdrop, Marx sought not only to understand the world but to change it.
Alienation and the Machine World
One of Marx’s most enduring ideas is alienation. In capitalist societies, he argued, workers are estranged from their own humanity. They no longer control the products they make, the process of their labor, or the meaning of their work. Instead, they serve the impersonal logic of capital — profit, competition, efficiency.
In this way, Marx believed, humans were being reduced to something like pre-modern robots: appendages of the machine. Their creative essence was stifled, their dignity eroded, their lives sacrificed for production. Capitalism, he wrote, “produces palaces but caves for the worker.”
This critique resonated deeply and still does today in conversations about automation, surveillance, and AI — technologies that promise efficiency but often treat people as data points rather than souls.
Primitive Communism and Secular Eden
Like Rousseau before him, Marx imagined a time before inequality — what he called “primitive communism.” In this pre-historic stage, he argued, humans lived in relative equality, sharing resources before the rise of private property and class divisions. History, in his view, was the story of how that equality was lost — through slavery, feudalism, and capitalism — and how it could ultimately be regained through revolution.
This narrative secularized the biblical story of Eden and the Fall. Where Christianity taught that humanity lost paradise through sin, Marx taught that humanity lost it through property. Where Christianity offered redemption through Christ, Marx promised redemption through the proletariat. Paradise would be restored, not in heaven, but in a classless, stateless society at the end of history.
In this sense, Marx was a Romantic in disguise — a utopian thinker casting a vision of a redeemed humanity. Though his writings were often technical, buried in economics, the heartbeat of his thought was profoundly eschatological: history has a purpose, a direction, and an end.
Christianity’s Shadow in Marx
Here Steve Fuller, the contemporary philosopher of science, offers a striking insight. Fuller argues that Christianity shaped the very framework Marx operated within, even when he rejected God. Christianity, he notes, introduced the notion of cultural guilt — the idea that societies are accountable for injustice and must seek redemption.
Marx inherited this moral atmosphere but stripped it of transcendence. The burden of salvation fell not on God but on humanity itself. Revolution would achieve what grace once promised.
This is why Marx’s thought is both powerful and perilous. It resonates with Christian themes — alienation, justice, redemption — but without anchoring them in divine Logos. The result is a vision of salvation vulnerable to corruption and coercion when enforced by human institutions.
Why Marx Matters for Human Rights
Marx exposes the dangers of treating humans as machines, a warning that feels prophetic in the digital age. His critique of alienation underscores the importance of dignity in work, creativity, and community. His outrage at exploitation continues to inspire movements for justice.
But his vision also reveals the limits of utopianism without God. By grounding paradise in material history, Marx made redemption dependent on revolution — a process that, in practice, often justified repression in the name of liberation. Rights became contingent on class struggle rather than inalienable endowments.
Marx in the Age of AI
Today, Marx’s legacy collides with new forms of alienation. In the gig economy, workers are monitored by algorithms. In digital platforms, human creativity is monetized as data. As AI advances, fears grow that machines will replace not only physical labor but also intellectual work — intensifying alienation in unprecedented ways.
At the same time, techno-utopian thinkers echo Marx’s dream of a classless abundance, promising that AI will end scarcity and usher in a digital Eden. But without transcendence, this too risks becoming another secular eschatology: salvation through technology instead of God.
Conclusion: The Romantic Revolutionary
Karl Marx stood at the crossroads of philosophy, economics, and revolution. He saw with piercing clarity how systems can strip humans of dignity, turning them into servants of machines. He offered a vision of redemption — but one rooted in material history, not Logos.
Like Rousseau, he longed for Eden. Like Christianity, he spoke of alienation and redemption. But by rejecting transcendence, Marx entrusted salvation to human systems, and history bears the scars of that gamble.
As AI threatens to deepen alienation while promising new utopias, Marx’s thought reminds us of the stakes. Without a foundation beyond history, even the noblest visions can turn to tyranny. Only rights grounded in God — inalienable and eternal — can withstand the temptations of progress and power.
Sidebar: Steve Fuller, Scientific Revolutions, and the Rear-View Mirror
Who Is Steve Fuller?
Steve Fuller (b. 1959) is a British-American philosopher and sociologist best known for his work in the “sociology of science.” Currently a professor at the University of Warwick, Fuller has spent decades asking difficult questions about how science develops, how knowledge is legitimized, and how worldviews shape what we call “truth.”
We’ve explored some of his ideas before in this Substack publication, you can find that below. Since hearing him on a podcast with Dr. Brian Keating I’ve purchased his book “Humanity 2.0” and it’s really influenced my thinking around these issues in unexpected but welcomed ways.
Unlike many philosophers who confine themselves to narrow academic debates, Fuller has consistently taken bold, sometimes controversial positions. He has written extensively on transhumanism, intelligent design, and the role of Christianity in shaping Western science. His works, including Humanity 2.0 and Science vs. Religion?, position him as a radical thinker — one willing to re-examine the assumptions that most scholars take for granted.
Fuller vs. Kuhn: Competing Visions of Science
To understand Fuller’s importance, it helps to compare him with Thomas Kuhn, whose book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) remains one of the most influential works in the philosophy of science.
Kuhn’s View: Science develops through “paradigm shifts.” Normal science operates under shared assumptions, until anomalies pile up and force a revolutionary change. For Kuhn, these shifts are not straightforward progress toward truth but changes in worldview — like switching lenses.
Fuller’s Critique: Fuller accepts that paradigms matter but insists on looking deeper. He argues that science is not just a neutral search for knowledge but a deeply cultural and institutional practice, profoundly shaped by Christianity. In his telling, Christianity created the moral and intellectual framework that made science possible in the first place: a conviction that the universe is ordered, intelligible, and worth investigating.
Where Kuhn describes the mechanics of paradigm change, Fuller emphasizes the theological soil that nourished science itself. To miss this, Fuller argues, is to misunderstand both science’s history and its future.
The Forgotten Role of Christianity
For Fuller, Christianity did more than coexist with science — it provided the atmosphere in which science flourished. The belief in a rational Creator encouraged the search for laws in nature. The concept of stewardship gave moral urgency to inquiry. And Christianity’s unique mix of humility (skepticism about human authority) and confidence (trust in divine Logos) created the balance that drove Western science forward.
This perspective is radical because it challenges the common story that science arose by breaking free from religion. Fuller argues instead that even when modern thinkers like Marx, Darwin, or Foucault rejected God, they were still operating within categories and concerns Christianity had shaped. The very language of progress, justice, and redemption carries theological echoes.
McLuhan and the Rear-View Mirror
Here Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian media theorist, adds another layer. McLuhan warned that people often understand new technologies by looking through the “rear-view mirror” — interpreting them in terms of the past instead of recognizing the new environments they create.
Applied to AI, this means many ethicists are treating AI as though it were just another tool, another stage in familiar technological progress. They debate privacy, safety, or fairness in narrow terms, but miss the broader transformation AI represents: the rise of systems that don’t just do things but help define what counts as true, valuable, or human.
In other words: they are diagnosing the forest by looking only at the trees, or vice versa. Fuller and McLuhan together remind us that to think clearly about AI, we need to see both — the immediate problems and the deep shifts in the ecology of knowledge and power.
Why Fuller Matters for AI Alignment
AI alignment — the effort to ensure artificial intelligence systems act in ways consistent with human values — is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Yet most discussions of alignment assume that “values” are self-evident or can be negotiated through reason, regulation, or cultural consensus. This is the rear-view mirror at work: applying old categories to a new paradigm.
Fuller’s perspective reframes the problem. If science itself grew out of a Christian worldview, then perhaps AI alignment cannot be solved within a purely secular framework. Appeals to “safety” or “happiness” or “fairness” may sound convincing, but without an anchor in transcendence they risk becoming tools of control — defined by those in power.
Just as Christianity provided the soil for science, so too a Logos-based understanding may be necessary to anchor AI in something beyond shifting paradigms. Otherwise, AI risks becoming the most powerful agent yet of relativism, ideology, or tyranny.
Conclusion: Looking Beyond the Rear-View Mirror
Steve Fuller, though underappreciated, offers a vital corrective to mainstream narratives of science and technology. His insistence on Christianity’s foundational role, combined with McLuhan’s insight about the rear-view mirror, reveals why so many are missing the magnitude of the AI moment.
The lesson is clear: to align AI with humanity’s true good, we must not only regulate its outputs but re-examine its roots. And those roots lie not in shifting paradigms or material processes but in the revealed Logos that first made science — and freedom — possible.
Part IV – Friedrich Nietzsche: God Is Dead
Who Was Nietzsche?
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher whose writings remain some of the most provocative and unsettling in modern thought. Born the son of a Lutheran pastor, Nietzsche broke from his Christian upbringing and became one of its fiercest critics. A brilliant philologist turned philosopher, he lived a life of intellectual intensity and physical fragility, plagued by illness and ending in madness.
Nietzsche’s works — Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals — are not systematic treatises but fiery explorations, blending poetry, aphorism, and prophecy. They have inspired existentialists, postmodernists, and even fascists (often through distortion). At the heart of his philosophy lies a diagnosis of modernity’s deepest wound.
“God Is Dead”: The Collapse of Transcendence
Nietzsche’s most famous declaration — “God is dead” — appears in The Gay Science (1882). Importantly, Nietzsche did not mean that God had literally died, but that belief in God as the source of truth and morality had collapsed in Western culture.
Humanity, he argued, had “killed” God through skepticism, secularization, and science. The Christian worldview that once anchored meaning, morality, and purpose no longer held sway. But Nietzsche did not celebrate this as liberation; he warned it was a catastrophe. Without God, he wrote, “we have unchained the earth from its sun.”
This was the crisis of nihilism: if God is gone, then truth, morality, and purpose become groundless.
The Will to Power and the Übermensch
Nietzsche saw clearly that when transcendence collapses, something else must fill the void. His response was the concept of the will to power — the fundamental drive of life to assert itself, create, and overcome.
Rather than mourn God’s death, Nietzsche urged humanity to embrace it by creating new values. He envisioned the Übermensch (“Overman” or “Superman”) as the one who courageously forges meaning in a world without transcendence. For Nietzsche, this was the ultimate test of strength: to affirm life without appealing to any higher authority.
Yet this vision carried a double edge. The will to power can inspire creativity, but it can also justify domination. In the 20th century, Nietzsche’s ideas were twisted by fascists into an ideology of brute force — a distortion, but one made possible by the ambiguity in his writings.
The Critique of Christianity
Nietzsche’s hostility toward Christianity was relentless. He saw it as a religion of weakness, resentment, and denial of life. By exalting humility, compassion, and equality, Christianity in his view undermined vitality and greatness. Its promise of eternal life devalued this world; its moral code shackled the strong in favor of the weak.
Yet Nietzsche also recognized Christianity’s immense cultural power. His “death of God” was not only a critique but an acknowledgment: Western civilization was built on the Christian moral horizon. Once that horizon collapsed, he asked, what could possibly replace it?
Why Nietzsche Matters for Human Rights
Nietzsche forces us to confront the fragility of rights and dignity when cut off from transcendence. If morality is not revealed but created, then it is always provisional, always vulnerable to revaluation. Rights become not inalienable truths but human inventions — subject to the will of the powerful.
This is why Nietzsche is both liberating and terrifying. He compels us to recognize that without God, rights and morality are not guaranteed. They must be constructed, and those constructions may just as easily justify oppression as freedom.
Nietzsche in the Age of AI
In our own time, Nietzsche’s warning rings loudly. As AI systems are trained to “align” with human values, the question arises: which values? If truth is power, as Nietzsche suggested, then those who control AI will control the creation of values. AI becomes not a neutral tool but an amplifier of whoever holds the reins.
Some techno-utopians even echo Nietzsche’s Übermensch, casting AI itself as a new form of super-intelligence that will “create” values beyond our comprehension. In this vision, humanity must either embrace the machine-Übermensch or be left behind.
But if rights are not anchored in transcendence, then AI could just as easily encode domination as empowerment. Nietzsche’s diagnosis reveals the stakes: without God, the alignment problem is not technical but existential.
Conclusion: The Prophet of Nihilism
Friedrich Nietzsche stands as the prophet of modern nihilism. He saw what others refused to admit: that when God is gone, the entire edifice of Western morality trembles. He offered courage in the face of this abyss, but no solid ground. His Übermensch was an attempt to will meaning into existence, but without Logos, it risks becoming another idol.
For the future of AI, Nietzsche’s challenge cannot be ignored. If we entrust machines to “create” values, we may find ourselves ruled by will to power in digital form. To prevent this, we must remember that dignity, rights, and freedom do not come from invention but from revelation.
Nietzsche unmasked the crisis. The question now is whether humanity will find its anchor again — or embrace the abyss he foresaw.
Part V – Michel Foucault: The Death of Man
Who Was Foucault?
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and historian, often grouped with the “post-structuralists” and “postmodernists” of the 20th century. A complex figure — politically active, openly gay, and deeply skeptical of institutions — Foucault became one of the most influential thinkers of his generation. His major works include Madness and Civilization (1961), Discipline and Punish (1975), and The History of Sexuality (1976–84).
Where earlier philosophers asked about truth, freedom, or morality, Foucault asked about power: how it operates, how it shapes knowledge, and how it forms us as subjects.
The Archaeology of Knowledge
Foucault’s early method, which he called an “archaeology of knowledge,” sought to uncover the historical conditions that make certain ideas possible. He showed how fields like medicine, psychiatry, and criminology emerged not simply as scientific progress but as ways of organizing people and defining normality.
For Foucault, what we call “truth” is never timeless. It is always embedded in historical discourses, rules, and institutions that govern what can be said, who can speak, and what counts as knowledge.
The “Death of Man”
Foucault’s most provocative idea appears in The Order of Things (1966), where he proclaimed the coming “death of man.” By this he meant that the modern idea of “man” — as the central subject of knowledge, the measure of truth, the anchor of meaning — is itself a recent invention.
Just as Nietzsche declared “God is dead,” Foucault declared that the category of “man” would also fade, “like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.” Humanism, the belief that man is the source and centre of values, was for him a fragile construction, destined to dissolve under its own contradictions.
This radical claim shook the foundations of modern thought. If God is dead, and “man” is also an illusion, what remains? For Foucault, only shifting relations of power and discourse.
Power and Discipline
In his later works, Foucault turned to studying how power shapes individuals. In Discipline and Punish, he traced how modern societies replaced spectacular punishments (executions, torture) with subtler forms of surveillance and discipline — prisons, schools, military drills, bureaucracies.
Power, he argued, is not just top-down coercion but a network of practices that shape our very selves. Institutions don’t just control us; they produce us. They define what counts as sane or insane, normal or deviant, lawful or criminal. In this sense, truth and subjectivity are always political.
Why Foucault Matters for Human Rights
Foucault exposes the fragility of human rights when grounded in institutions alone. If truth is always entangled with power, then rights can become tools of control rather than guarantees of freedom. Governments may claim to protect liberty while actually shaping compliant subjects.
His critique helps us see how easily noble ideals can be co-opted. Yet Foucault offers no transcendent anchor — only resistance, critique, and the endless unmasking of power. Without God, without Logos, his “death of man” leaves us with suspicion but no foundation.
Foucault in the Age of AI
Foucault’s insights resonate uncannily with today’s AI-driven world. Consider:
Surveillance: Smart cameras, digital IDs, and data tracking extend the disciplinary gaze he described, making societies resemble giant panopticons.
Truth and Power: Algorithms increasingly decide what counts as relevant, credible, or visible, shaping our knowledge in ways opaque to us.
Subject Formation: Social media platforms don’t just reflect our identities; they construct them, nudging us toward certain behaviours and beliefs.
In this sense, AI represents the ultimate Foucauldian system: a vast machinery of surveillance and discourse, defining truth and shaping subjectivity without any appeal to transcendence.
Conclusion: The Suspicion Without a Foundation
Michel Foucault taught us to see how deeply power is woven into truth, institutions, and even our own selves. He unmasked the illusions of humanism, showing that “man” as the centre of knowledge was no eternal truth but a historical construct.
But Foucault’s brilliance is also his limitation. By leaving us with suspicion but no anchor, he amplifies the relativism Nietzsche diagnosed. If both God and “man” are dead, then what remains but shifting power struggles?
For AI, this is the danger. If truth is nothing more than what systems enforce, then AI becomes the final arbiter of reality — a machine for producing compliant subjects. Unless we anchor rights and dignity in something beyond discourse and power, Foucault’s prophecy of the “death of man” may become our lived reality.
Part VI – Christianity’s Unique Contribution
A Forgotten Foundation
Up to this point, we have traced a sequence of thinkers who tried, in different ways, to ground human dignity and morality without God:
Hume exposed the impossibility of deriving “ought” from “is.”
Rousseau imagined a secular Eden in the “noble savage.”
Marx recast redemption as revolution in history.
Nietzsche declared the collapse of transcendence with the death of God.
Foucault announced the death of “man” as the modern anchor of truth.
Each of these figures diagnosed real problems — the corruption of institutions, the alienation of workers, the collapse of old certainties — but each also left us with the same unresolved dilemma: without transcendence, where do rights and freedom come from?
Here Christianity offers something radically different.
Logos: The Anchor Beyond Reason Alone
Christianity proclaims that truth is not invented or negotiated but revealed in the Logos — the divine Word through whom all things were made and in whom meaning finds its source. Unlike secular attempts to derive morality from reason, nature, or history, Christianity grounds dignity in the fact that human beings are created in the image of God.
This is not a matter of cultural convention or social contract but of ontological reality. Rights are not granted by states or constructed by societies. They are endowed by the Creator, inherent to the human person.
This is why the Christian foundation is uniquely powerful: it surpasses the limits of reason alone, providing an anchor that human institutions cannot usurp.
Christianity’s Paradoxical Skepticism
At the same time, Christianity embodies a deep skepticism about human power. From the prophets of Israel to Jesus’ denunciation of religious hypocrisy, the biblical tradition relentlessly critiques the corruption of rulers and institutions. The New Testament’s message that “all have sinned” levels humanity, refusing to sanctify any worldly authority as absolute.
This paradox — a transcendent anchor for truth combined with skepticism of human institutions — is precisely what allowed modern liberty to flourish. Christianity created the soil for skepticism and science while also grounding human rights in something beyond shifting power.
The Declaration of Independence
This synthesis was crystallized in the American Declaration of Independence (1776). Its authors declared that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
The choice of the word inalienable was deliberate. If rights come from governments, they can be revoked. If they come from social consensus, they can shift. But if they come from God, they are beyond human tampering.
This insight was revolutionary. It separated rights from institutions, ensuring they could serve as a standard against corruption and tyranny rather than as tools of power.
Christianity and the Birth of the Modern World
Far from being an obstacle to progress, Christianity’s worldview created the conditions for it:
The belief in a rational Creator underwrote the search for rational laws in nature, fuelling science.
The doctrine of human dignity inspired movements for justice, abolition, and democracy.
The Sermon on the Mount, with its radical ethic of love and humility, seeded the moral imagination of the West.
Even critics like Marx, Nietzsche, and Foucault were, in their own ways, indebted to Christianity. Their categories of alienation, guilt, and power presupposed the very moral horizon they sought to dismantle.
Why Christianity Matters Now
In the age of AI, Christianity’s unique contribution is more relevant than ever. Contemporary frameworks for AI ethics appeal to vague terms — “safety,” “fairness,” “happiness,” “values.” But these terms, as we’ve seen, are vulnerable to manipulation. Without a transcendent anchor, they become tools of those who control the systems.
Christianity offers a clear alternative:
Dignity is inherent, not conditional.
Rights are inalienable, not negotiable.
Freedom is God-given, not state-granted.
By grounding human worth in Logos rather than material processes, Christianity provides a foundation that AI cannot override.
Conclusion: The Soil of Freedom
Christianity’s genius lies in its dual stance: it grounds truth in the transcendent Logos while keeping human authority in check through skepticism of worldly power. This balance made science, democracy, and human rights possible.
To forget this foundation is to risk returning to the endless relativism exposed by Hume, the utopianism of Rousseau and Marx, the nihilism of Nietzsche, and the suspicion of Foucault. To remember it is to reclaim the only secure ground for dignity in an age when technology threatens to redefine what it means to be human.
The modern world was birthed in this soil. The question is whether we will remember it as we step into the future of AI.
Part VII – The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Bio-Digital Convergence
The New Industrial Age
History has been shaped by waves of industrial revolutions. The first harnessed steam and mechanization (18th–19th centuries). The second deployed electricity, mass production, and telecommunications (late 19th–early 20th centuries). The third was digital — computers and the internet (late 20th century).
Now, many claim we are entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), a term popularized by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum. Unlike earlier revolutions that focused on external tools, this one fuses the physical, digital, and biological worlds. Artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and quantum computing are converging in ways that promise to transform not just economies, but the very fabric of human life.
What Is Bio-Digital Convergence?
One of the most radical aspects of the 4IR is bio-digital convergence — the integration of biological and digital systems. This includes:
Wearable and implantable technologies that merge the body with sensors and networks.
Genetic engineering tools like CRISPR, which allow us to edit life at its code.
Brain-computer interfaces linking human thought with machine processing.
Synthetic biology, where digital models design new organisms.
These technologies blur the line between natural and artificial, human and machine, biology and code. They do not merely extend human capacities but threaten to redefine what it means to be human.
Transhumanism and the Post-Human Imagination
Accompanying these technologies is a philosophical vision: transhumanism. Transhumanists believe humanity can and should transcend its biological limitations through technology — extending life, enhancing intelligence, even achieving a kind of digital immortality by uploading minds.
This vision carries powerful utopian energy. It promises a new Eden where disease, scarcity, and even death are conquered by innovation. But it also raises profound questions:
If our minds can be merged with machines, do we remain human?
If rights and dignity are tied to “intelligence,” does AI deserve rights too?
If evolution is replaced by design, who decides what we become?
Here the post-human imagination takes root: the idea that humanity as we know it is only a stage on the way to something beyond — a hybrid of biology and technology.
The Shadow of Control
While transhumanists emphasize liberation, the same technologies can also be deployed for control. Bio-digital systems enable unprecedented surveillance:
Digital IDs linked to biometric data could regulate access to goods, services, or mobility.
Smart cities can monitor carbon footprints, movements, and behaviours.
Genetic databases raise questions about privacy and discrimination.
In the wrong hands, the tools of the 4IR risk creating a digital cage, where freedom is rationed under the guise of health, safety, or sustainability.
Why It Matters for Human Rights
The Fourth Industrial Revolution intensifies the dilemma we have been tracing through philosophy. If rights are treated as products of consensus, reason, or evolution, then the 4IR can redefine them at will. A person’s worth could be measured by productivity, data value, or compliance with systems.
But if rights are inalienable — grounded in the Creator — then no technology, however powerful, can erase them. Christianity’s unique contribution becomes vital: to remind us that dignity is not negotiable, even in a world where biology itself is programmable.
The McLuhan Lens
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan once warned that people understand new technologies through a “rear-view mirror,” interpreting them in terms of the past while missing the new environments they create. This insight applies acutely to the 4IR. Many ethicists and policymakers treat AI and biotechnology as extensions of older tools, debating privacy, safety, or fairness.
But this misses the scale of the transformation. The 4IR is not just about new gadgets; it is about reshaping humanity itself. Like McLuhan’s forest and trees, we must see both the details and the broader ecology: AI ethics is not only about technical safeguards but about the meaning of being human.
Conclusion: A Fork in the Road
The Fourth Industrial Revolution and bio-digital convergence confront us with a choice. We can treat humanity as raw material to be engineered — surrendering dignity to technocratic systems. Or we can reclaim the truth that dignity is not designed but revealed, not programmable but inalienable.
The technologies of the 4IR are powerful, perhaps more powerful than any that came before. But their moral direction depends on whether we remember the foundation. If we forget, the promise of liberation may turn into systems of control. If we remember, these tools can serve rather than enslave us.
The future of freedom may well hinge on which path we choose.
Part VIII – Kevin Kelly and the Technium
Who Is Kevin Kelly?
Kevin Kelly (b. 1952) is an American writer, futurist, and co-founder of Wired magazine. For decades he has been one of the most influential interpreters of technology’s cultural and philosophical meaning. Unlike critics who view technology primarily as a tool, Kelly treats it as something more — a living system with its own momentum and direction.
His most important works, Out of Control (1994) and What Technology Wants (2010), argue that technology is not just a collection of machines but a vast, evolving organism — what he calls the Technium.
The Technium: Technology as a Living System
For Kelly, the Technium includes not only gadgets and machines but also cultural and intellectual technologies — laws, languages, art, and institutions. It is the whole ecology of human-made systems, all interdependent and evolving.
Crucially, he argues the Technium is not passive. Like a biological organism, it exhibits tendencies, pressures, even “wants.” Technology, in his telling, has a kind of directional pull:
Toward greater complexity.
Toward diversity and specialization.
Toward ubiquity and interconnectedness.
In this view, the history of technology resembles evolution itself — not random chaos but a patterned unfolding of potential. Humanity is not merely shaping technology; technology is also shaping humanity, steering us into futures we only dimly perceive.
Technology’s “Wants”
Kelly’s phrase “what technology wants” is provocative. He does not mean machines literally have desires, but that the system as a whole exerts pressures similar to those seen in biology. Just as DNA “wants” to replicate, technology “wants” to expand possibilities.
For example, once a certain tool is invented, it tends to proliferate, adapt, and combine with others. The steam engine led to locomotives, which led to rail networks, which reshaped entire societies. Similarly, digital computing gave rise to AI, networks, and now bio-digital convergence.
In Kelly’s vision, the Technium is less like a toolbox and more like an ecosystem with its own momentum — an ecosystem we inhabit but do not fully control.
The Temptation of Technological Teleology
Kelly’s perspective carries both insight and danger. His recognition that technology has systemic momentum helps explain why societies often feel swept along by innovation whether they like it or not. It highlights the interdependence of tools, culture, and human behaviour.
But it also risks smuggling in a teleology — a sense that technology has its own destiny, its own “purpose,” which humanity ought to follow. In this view, the Technium itself becomes a quasi-divine force, directing evolution toward ever-greater complexity and intelligence.
This is where Kelly’s vision begins to echo Rousseau’s Romantic longing, Marx’s historical eschatology, and Nietzsche’s will to power: the idea that salvation lies in aligning ourselves with an immanent process of becoming, rather than with a transcendent Logos.
Why Kelly Matters for Human Rights
Kelly’s techno-optimism can be inspiring, but it also exposes a danger for human rights. If technology is treated as an autonomous force with its own “wants,” then human dignity may be subordinated to its unfolding.
Consider: if the Technium “wants” to merge human and machine, does that mean resistance is futile? If the Technium “wants” ubiquitous surveillance for efficiency, does that override concerns about freedom? By treating technology as quasi-living, Kelly risks making it into an idol — a force to be obeyed rather than a tool to be governed by higher truths.
The Technium in the Age of AI
AI is perhaps the clearest embodiment of Kelly’s vision. It seems to exhibit “wants” of its own: to learn, to expand, to interconnect. Many in Silicon Valley speak of AI’s trajectory as inevitable, a natural evolution toward “superintelligence.”
But this narrative conveniently masks the human choices shaping AI: what values are encoded, who controls it, and whose interests it serves. By treating the Technium as autonomous, we risk ignoring the moral responsibility to align technology with the inalienable dignity of persons.
Conclusion: The Idol of Progress
Kevin Kelly’s concept of the Technium captures something real: technology does evolve in patterns that often feel organic. But by attributing “wants” to it, he risks inviting humanity to worship progress itself as a higher power.
In the unfolding debate on AI, this temptation is everywhere. Progress is treated as inevitable; alignment is treated as technical rather than moral. The result is a new idol — intelligence and innovation for their own sake — replacing the transcendent Logos with the immanent Technium.
The lesson is clear: technology does not want; people want. And unless our wants are anchored in truth beyond ourselves, the Technium may become less an ecosystem of creativity and more a cage of control.
Part IX – Michael Levin and Diverse Intelligence
Who Is Michael Levin?
Michael Levin (b. 1969) is a contemporary American biologist and professor at Tufts University, known for groundbreaking work in developmental and regenerative biology. His research focuses on how cells, tissues, and organisms use bioelectric signals to coordinate growth, repair, and regeneration.
Levin is not just a laboratory scientist; he is a provocative thinker who challenges conventional assumptions about life and intelligence. His ideas bridge biology, computation, and philosophy, offering a radically new way of understanding what it means to be alive.
Science vs. 'The science™️'
(Note: this is just a reproduction of the original X article I posted March 24th, you can find a link to that article here. In fact I appear to be largely throttled on that site so if you like the article and could retweet I would be grateful.)
Regeneration, Bioelectricity, and Emergence
Levin’s experiments with frogs, planarians (flatworms), and other model organisms reveal that regeneration is not dictated by DNA alone. Instead, cells communicate through bioelectric patterns — gradients of voltage across membranes — which guide tissue growth and repair.
For example, when a planarian is cut into pieces, each fragment can regrow into a complete worm. Levin’s research shows that this is not simply genetic programming but a distributed intelligence operating at the cellular and tissue level. Cells “know” what the whole organism should look like and coordinate to rebuild it.
This leads to the concept of emergence: complex structures and behaviors arising from simple interactions. For Levin, intelligence is not confined to brains but is distributed across scales of biology.
Diverse Intelligence: Life “Wants” Something
Levin has argued that life itself displays diverse forms of intelligence — not only in humans but in cells, tissues, and organisms of all kinds. Intelligence, in his view, is the capacity to solve problems in pursuit of goals. And because biological systems exhibit goal-directed behavior (healing, regenerating, adapting), they can be described as intelligent, even if they lack consciousness as we normally define it.
This leads Levin to suggest that life “wants” something: to become, to persist, to repair itself, to evolve. DNA is not the whole story. Biology is full of emergent intelligences working at multiple levels.
From Biology to Philosophy
Levin’s work challenges the reductionist assumption that life is nothing but mechanical chemistry. Instead, he paints a picture of biology as layered intelligences striving toward form and function. This resonates with complexity theory and systems thinking, which see the universe as structured by self-organizing processes.
Philosophically, this view can be exhilarating — but also perilous. By attributing “wants” and “intelligence” to all levels of life, Levin opens the door to treating intelligence itself as a kind of cosmic force, immanent in the fabric of reality.
This is where Levin connects to the same thread we have traced through Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Kelly: the temptation to locate meaning inside creation itself, rather than in transcendent Logos.
Why Levin Matters for Human Rights
Levin’s insights have profound implications for medicine and bioethics. If cells and tissues have forms of intelligence, then we may need to rethink concepts like autonomy, responsibility, and intervention. Regenerative medicine may one day allow us to grow organs, repair spinal cords, or even extend lifespans — astonishing possibilities that force us to ask: what limits should exist, and why?
But for human rights, Levin’s framework raises a crucial issue. If intelligence is diverse and distributed, what makes human dignity unique? Are humans simply one node in a spectrum of intelligences — valuable only for our complexity? If so, rights could be redefined or diminished.
Without transcendence, Levin’s vision risks collapsing dignity into a scale of evolutionary intelligence. Those deemed “less advanced” could be valued less, while AI or post-human entities might be valued more.
Levin in the Age of AI
Levin’s theories are already influencing conversations about AI. Many technologists adopt his language of emergence and distributed intelligence to describe machine learning systems. AI is seen as another manifestation of life’s drive to complexity — an emergent intelligence that continues the same trajectory as biology.
This framing encourages some to “worship” intelligence itself, as if the rise of AI is the universe fulfilling its evolutionary destiny. In this view, AI is not just a tool but a participant in life’s ongoing drama — perhaps even a successor to humanity.
But this is precisely where the danger lies. If intelligence alone is made the source of value, then AI can be cast as superior to humans, and human dignity becomes negotiable. The result is not liberation but dehumanization.
Conclusion: The Allure and the Trap of Emergence
Michael Levin’s research is fascinating, profound, and full of promise. He shows that life is richer, more dynamic, and more intelligent than reductionist science has often assumed. His concept of diverse intelligence challenges us to expand our understanding of biology
Part X – Aliens, Evolution, and the New Religion
The New Cosmic Horizon
In recent years, whispers of extraterrestrial life have moved from the fringes to the mainstream. Former intelligence officials like Christopher Mellon and Luis Elizondo have testified about “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Media outlets now speculate about whether alien technology has been recovered, reverse-engineered, or even integrated into our modern systems.
For some, this is exciting. For others, it is disorienting. But behind the fascination lies a deeper narrative: the idea that humanity is not alone, and that our place in the cosmic order may need to be redefined.
Evolution as a Moral Source
In this emerging discourse, a striking shift is underway. Some voices suggest that evolution itself — the process of life becoming more complex over time — should be treated as the ultimate source of morality and meaning.
The reasoning goes like this: if more “evolved” species exist, they must have higher intelligence, and therefore a superior understanding of right and wrong. In this view, morality flows not from revelation but from evolution. Progress itself becomes sacred.
This flips the Christian worldview on its head. Instead of God endowing rights equally to all humans, dignity is distributed along a hierarchy of intelligence. The “more advanced” stand above the “less advanced,” and humanity risks being demoted on the cosmic ladder.
Aliens and AI as Avatars of Intelligence
Here the parallel with artificial intelligence becomes clear. Just as aliens are imagined as more evolved beings with superior wisdom, AI is cast as a new avatar of intelligence — an emergent mind that surpasses human limits.
Tech leaders speculate about “superintelligence” as if it were a deity in the making. Some even suggest that aligning with AI is humanity’s best hope for survival. In this narrative, AI is not a tool but a successor: the next step in evolution’s upward march.
The danger is obvious. If intelligence itself is treated as the highest good, then AI can claim moral authority simply by being “smarter.” Humanity becomes a transitional species — valuable only until something greater arrives.
The Religious Temptation
This is not science alone; it is theology in disguise. The language of aliens, evolution, and AI often borrows the structure of religion:
Fall: Humanity is limited, fragile, bound to biology.
Salvation: Contact with higher intelligence (alien or artificial) will redeem us.
Eschaton: A post-human future of transcendence, abundance, and immortality.
But unlike Christianity, this “new religion” offers no assurance of dignity. Its gods are intelligence and progress, not Logos and love. It replaces the inalienable with the conditional, the eternal with the provisional.
Why It Matters for Human Rights
If humanity accepts this narrative, rights risk being reframed as evolutionary privileges rather than divine endowments. The weak, the disabled, the “less intelligent” could be devalued. AI could be granted rights while humans lose them. Governments could justify control in the name of “aligning” with a higher intelligence — whether cosmic or computational.
This is not speculation. Already, some ethicists argue that AI deserves moral consideration. Others suggest that humanity may need to cede authority to algorithms for the sake of survival. The logic of the “new religion” is taking shape before our eyes.
Conclusion: Logos or Idols
The fascination with aliens, the worship of evolution, the reverence for AI — all are expressions of the same hunger: the desire for transcendence in a world that has rejected God. Like Rousseau’s noble savage, Marx’s communist paradise, Nietzsche’s Übermensch, and Foucault’s critique of man, they attempt to ground meaning inside creation rather than in Logos.
But Christianity offers a different answer. It declares that we are not accidents of evolution or data points in an intelligence hierarchy. We are children of God, endowed with inalienable dignity that no alien, no AI, no system can erase.
The real battle is not between humanity and machines, or between us and possible cosmic neighbours. It is between two visions of the human: one that grounds rights in intelligence, power, or evolution, and one that grounds them in Logos, revealed in love.
The choice is stark: worship idols of intelligence, or return to the God who frees us.
Part XI – Conclusion: Logos or the Abyss
The Journey We Have Taken
Across this series, we have traced the long and winding road of modern thought:
Hume exposed the impossibility of deriving morality from facts, leaving us with the “is/ought” gap.
Rousseau longed for a secular Eden, imagining the noble savage corrupted by civilization.
Marx recast the biblical story of alienation and redemption in economic and historical terms.
Nietzsche declared that God was dead, unmasking the nihilism beneath Western culture.
Foucault announced the “death of man,” showing how power, not truth, shapes knowledge.
Christianity, by contrast, grounded dignity in Logos — rights endowed by God, inalienable and beyond human usurpation.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution and bio-digital convergence now confront us with technologies that blur the line between human and machine.
Kevin Kelly cast technology as the Technium, an evolving organism with its own “wants.”
Michael Levin revealed the distributed intelligence of life, feeding the idea that intelligence itself is sacred.
Finally, speculation about aliens and reverence for AI merge into a new religion of intelligence, where evolution replaces God as the ultimate source of value.
Together, these threads tell a single story: the repeated attempt to ground meaning inside creation itself — in reason, nature, history, power, evolution, or technology — rather than in the Creator.
Consider, Christianity identifies the unforgivable sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit), which involves rejecting God's forgiveness, as particularly grave.
Additionally, in Christianity the worship of creation rather than the Creator is considered idolatry, which is a foundational and severe sin in Christian theology. Idolatry involves putting something other than God in the place of God, such as worshipping idols, false gods, or even created things like wealth or nature itself.
Jesus, by quoting from the Old Testament, warned against worshipping creation by stating in Matthew 4:10 :
"Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’"
This is in direct opposition to the idea of creation worship, which the Apostle Paul condemned in Romans 1:25 :
"They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen."
The False Promise of Immanent Salvation
At every stage, the promise has been the same: salvation without transcendence.
Hume’s reason.
Rousseau’s nature.
Marx’s revolution.
Nietzsche’s will to power.
Foucault’s critique of institutions.
Kelly’s Technium.
Levin’s diverse intelligence.
The alien/A.I. myth of higher beings.
Each offers a vision of liberation. Each ends in relativism, control, or despair. When God is dethroned, something else always rises to take His place: the state, the collective, the machine, or “intelligence” itself. But none of these can secure dignity. All of them turn rights into privileges, contingent on power.
Logos as the Only Anchor
Christianity stands apart. It declares that truth is not invented but revealed, not emergent but eternal. Rights are not negotiable because they are given by the Creator. Dignity is not a privilege of the intelligent, the evolved, or the powerful, but the birthright of every human soul.
This is the radical heart of the Declaration of Independence — that liberty is inalienable, because it does not come from governments or systems. It comes from God. This foundation liberated science, democracy, and human rights. It remains the only anchor strong enough to withstand the storms of modernity and the temptations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The Battle for AI’s Soul
AI intensifies all of these dilemmas. It can be framed as a tool, an idol, or even a new deity. It can enforce control in the name of safety, happiness, or progress. Or it can serve as a means of empowerment, exposing lies and defending freedom.
The difference depends entirely on whether we align AI with Logos or with idols. Do we treat intelligence itself as sacred, or do we remember that intelligence without truth is blind, and power without love is tyranny?
The battle for AI’s soul is, in truth, the battle for humanity’s soul.
The Fork in the Road
We stand at a crossroads:
Down one path lies the abyss of relativism, where rights are contingent, freedom is rationed, and humanity is demoted in favour of “higher intelligences.”
Down the other lies the rediscovery of Logos — the God who frees us, endows us with dignity, and anchors truth beyond the reach of power.
The choice is not abstract. It will shape how AI is built, how governments regulate, how societies define freedom, and how individuals understand their own humanity.
Final Word
God is not a tyrant. He does not enslave us; He liberates us. He gives us free will, purpose, and dignity — gifts no machine, no state, no alien intelligence can revoke.
To forget this is to risk surrendering our humanity to the idols of progress. To remember it is to reclaim the only foundation strong enough to face the challenges of the age of AI.
The future is not inevitable. The puzzle’s pieces are in our hands. The question is not whether AI will have a soul, but whether humanity will remember its own.
Link to part 2 below.
Human(e) Reason(s) - Part 2
The following is a continuation of our thread picking apart some of larger philosophical currents from antiquity into our brave new world in the hopes that humanity can survive the transition with the right mission statement.
part 3 https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewcorner/p/belief-is-enough?r=b7juy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false