We Should Use Our God Given Gifts Above All Else

For quite some time, I’ve observed a growing proselytization of “what ‘AI’ will do to the world” from a number of arenas of human activity. Let me preface this article by first stating that there are many positive use cases for this type of technology. Automation has significant utility.

For example, recently a group of medical researchers tasked an AI model to find vaccine candidates from over 50,000 possible chemical combinations. It efficiently derived a shortlist of five candidates—one of which worked exactly how it needed to. Very impressive, fast and possibly life-saving work.

Likewise, engineers in agriculture invented a device that roves up and down fields, identifying pests utilizing AI and eliminating them with precision lasers. Not only is this innovation impressive, it also avoids the need to possibly use carcinogenic pesticides on crops, while maintaining excellent fruit and vegetable yields. Wonderful stuff!

These breakthroughs in automation—if used appropriately and for the betterment of humanity—may emancipate us from many laborious, dangerous, or repetitive tasks that curtail our precious time here. They would free people to improve their conceptual understandings, personal creative efforts, faith, friendships, parenting, and partnerships. And vitally allow them more time to work inwardly on their nascent eternal souls.

Sounds good!

We must remember who we are

However, we must remember that we live on a world that continues to be universally deranged. Many on this planet are so confused they deify that which is not divine while desperately choosing to celebrate transient material things, falling short of understanding who they truly are and whose spirit resides within them.

“A display of specialized skill does not signify possession of spiritual capacity. Cleverness is not a substitute for true character.” (48:7.3)

Ignoring, forgetting or not knowing of our God given gifts, combined with the materialistic enthusiasm for the “shiny new toy” of AI, presents significant risks for many who are already struggling to see reality in balance and with clarity. Check out this startling review of a MIT study about critical thinking erosion with people leaning upon ChatGPT.

As a revelation student, I cannot emphasize enough how important our critical thinking, philosophical reasoning, and spiritual insights are—especially in these very problematic and materialistic times. What parts of us can we carry forward after this life? We can be certain it is not the material tools we used to escape work or lessen effort. It is our sincere personal endeavors that remain a part of our spiritual foundation into the eternal future.

Forget not what this world still struggles with

There is a troubling propensity on our planet of using anything and everything for “ease of living,” “fast learning,” or even worse, "shortcutting our way to unearned results.” These problems fall dangerously into the issues of this world, taking origin in the Lucifer manifesto (Papers 53, 54, and 67).

The allure of circumventing patience has been inculcated here for over 200,000 years, corrosively pushing a narrative to “get ahead” by “knowing something now” or “getting rich quick.” These shortcuts are then compounded by the inevitable cognitive dissonance which comes from protecting ideas, prejudices or biases we learned little or nothing about.

Here is an interesting passage taken from Paper 72, “Government on a Neighboring Planet”: 

“These people are also beginning to foster a new form of social disgust—disgust for both idleness and unearned wealth. Slowly but certainly they are conquering their machines.” (72:5.12) 

The correlation between “idleness and unearned wealth” and “conquering their machines” is a stark—and I feel deliberate—message to us from the Melchizedek author.

For clarity: these people on a neighboring planet were never “fighting their machines.” That narrative is nothing more than a dystopian secular fable. However, it is not a creative stretch to speculate that these mortals were working to overcome and conquer the pitfalls of relying on easily generated answers that are full of errors, or stimulating, but shallow, information—which is exactly what is happening on our world right now!

And let's not forget to mention the manifold problems that pervade a society stripped of most real personal interactions, spirit led efforts, and genuine human problem solving. How do we work together if we allow machines to intervene between us?

There are no shortcuts to genuine progress

Back to our world, allow me for a moment to use my God given ability to analogize: “AI in a creative act is like salt in a recipe. It can add savor, but should be used sparingly and wisely, and must never become the main ingredient.”

As mentioned, there are many excellent use cases for AI. However, in the creative efforts and inspirations of beings of will dignity, the joy is in the personal acts of creating, thinking, reflecting, struggling, toiling, and eventually overcoming and succeeding. These “apparent difficulties” are what we will desire and celebrate as we ascend through the universe.

I personally have deep concerns especially with attempting to “explain revelation quickly” using AI. And I have seen abundant evidence that this generated content distorts the complex cosmological and revealed truths we have been given. This is a potentially huge problem with epochal revelation that creates obstructions and causes damage. Revelation is intended to achieve:

“The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error.” (101:4.6)

Why not first teach people that true progress only comes from genuine human effort? That no progress is real unless it is personally achieved? That every step we make—mistakes and all—count towards our eternal careers? And that critical thinking, spiritual insight, and philosophical reasoning are appropriate to approaching all of reality?

The dangers of distorted truth

Anecdotally, I recently dealt with the repercussions of an AI generated explanation of “The Absolutes.” My friend Derek Grimm, a seasoned Urantia Book student who lives in Australia, asked me to review a generated summary of the Absolutes as it conflicted with his understanding, and he wished for another opinion. As I read through it, I was conceptually gaslit so deeply that I had to re-study Papers 104, 105, and 106 to bring myself back to a truthful and balanced understanding of the Absolutes.

Neither Derek or myself are new readers. Even so, these distortions and blurring of complex concepts caused us consternation—and forced legitimate efforts to recover from reading generated, but twisted, results.

But what would happen to a new student, or a non-reader? What are the chances someone new to The Urantia Book will simply take these distorted results as “truth” and carry the errors onward in their lives? I feel you all know the answer to this, and I find it hard to see any enduring positives in these experiences.

Not only does relying on AI lessen critical thinking, but when it comes to revelation it could leave the user with false information and muddled “truths.” The revelation is here to lift us out of secular materialism, beyond the dogmas, ideologies, and reliance on “earthly things.”

The Urantia Book speaks about a world for people beyond the desires to “save face with a shortcut.” The Urantia Book—as the fifth epochal revelation—was intended to be relevant for approximately 1,000 years, and there are some parts of it that we don’t know, and therefore our machines cannot viably generate from our current understandings. We must continue to learn these concepts by evolutionary techniques and not try to over-simplify them so we “get it” now. It is upon us to approach The Urantia Book—and the wise use of automation can represent the earned understandings of humanity, but should not be allowed to derail those efforts by saturating the internet with distorted versions of the primary work.

Can the careful and thoughtful use of AI help a truth seeking student study The Urantia Book? Yes. Can AI take the place of personal effort and earned growth? Absolutely not.

“The religion of the spirit means effort, struggle, conflict, faith, determination, love, loyalty, and progress.” (155:5.11)

The true path is rarely an easy one

To put less than a fine point on this, if we believe that AI is a solution to our spiritual problems, we are wrong. God is the sustainer and inspiration of our spiritual progress. A hammer is a useful tool that may help build us a ladder, but we must then be the one to climb it.

Have you ever contemplated the significance as to why the text of The Urantia Book needed to remain inviolate? Even slight adjustments from precision can be catastrophic—and we are witnessing this now.

“The shadow of a hair’s turning, premeditated for an untrue purpose, the slightest twisting or perversion of that which is principle—these constitute falseness.” (48:6.33)

I believe we must stand our ground and lean upon the eternal rocks of Reality and the love of God who resides within us. God The Father—and all those who work for him—will not let us down. However, machines will never be able to know you, or ever desire to be like you, never mind desire to be like God.

“A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness.” (195:6.11)

All machines, no matter the apparent complexity, should be manufactured to be of service to humanity. Mechanisms are not personal and never will be.

As creators of secondary content for the revelation, foremost in our minds has to be the question “how much error in generated content is acceptable?” The answer has to be as close to zero as humanly possible. Failure to adhere to this will bring only damage upon those who might stumble upon such distortions.

As a revelation student, the idea of promoting the erosion of critical thinking on this world at this time is extraordinarily bad. And I do not believe we should encourage behavior that curtails the actual growth in those whose hearts are searching for truth.

We should use our God given gifts to help others find and use theirs.

August 21, 2025

Happy Birthday Jesus, the world needs you, and God, more than ever.

A number of readers responded to Gary Tonge's article. You can read their letters here.