‘The enticement to become God’: Christian convert warns of spiritual danger of AI

'We aren't being deified. We are being diminished'

By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, October 08, 2026

A former Muslim who converted to Christianity after nearly a decade of investigating the faith warns that artificial intelligence is echoing one of Scripture’s oldest warnings about human nature.

Abdu Murray, president of Embrace the Truth and author ofFake ID: How AI and Identity Ideology Are Collapsing Reality—and What to Do About It, argues that, far from being a concern of mere technological advancement, the deeper issue surrounding AI is spiritual. Christians, he says, should ask whether humans are surrendering their ability to think, create, discern and exercise wisdom.

In Fake ID, Murray examines how AI and gender ideology can undermine views of reality. Technology promises freedom and identity as something people choose, yet those promises often leave them restless and confused. Scripture, he contends, anchors people to transcendent truth.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Murray pointed to the Bible’s depiction of the human heart as one of its strongest credentials.

“One of the compelling arguments for the Bible's credibility is how accurately it depicts the human heart and how Scripture’s depiction has remained accurate over the millennia,” he told CP. “Scripture says we were made to commune with God and that we perpetually try to become Him instead. Every generation supplies fresh evidence of that claim.”

In Genesis 3, Murray said, Adam and Eve understood the risks of eating the forbidden fruit, yet the serpent’s offer — “you will be like God” — proved decisive. The consequence God had plainly warned about still failed to deter them.

Murray hears similar language in today's AI industry: Sam Altman has described OpenAI's product as "magic intelligence in the sky," in a 2023 Financial Times interview, and said in 2024 that working on the models feels "like being on the side of the angels," according to an attendee who posted the remark. And Elon Musk recalled Larry Page wanting "a sort of digital super-intelligence," "basically a digital god."

Altman himself warned on Oct. 3 that he is "very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models," calling it "a real safety issue."

This pattern, Murray argues, attempts to cure what he calls “cultural schizophrenia,” a condition he described as a sort of mass-scale paradox.

“We are told two incompatible things about ourselves: we are machines, and we are gods,” he said. “Creating and merging with the digital deity resolves the contradiction: we are clever machines who can engineer our way to godhood. The seeming coherence of that solution is exactly what makes it so seductive.”

But it's what potentially awaits humanity in the future, said Murray, that disturbs him most.

“We aren't being deified. We are being diminished,” he added. “Research increasingly shows that the more we outsource our thinking to AI systems, the less creative and discerning we become.”

He cited a June 2025 study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab researchers, a preprint not yet peer-reviewed that tracked 54 participants and found AI chatbot users showed weaker brain connectivity and struggled to quote essays they had written minutes earlier. In the first session, 83% of ChatGPT users could not, and the authors describe the findings as preliminary. Murray also cited a larger 2025 peer-reviewed study of 666 participants, published in Societies, that found a negative correlation between frequent AI use and critical-thinking scores, strongest among those aged 17 to 25.

“My worry isn't that machines are becoming more human,” said Murray. “It's that humans are becoming more machine-like.”

Murray notes recent alarms from within the industry itself: an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, resigned Sept. 8, warning that labs are "gambling with our lives." One of the company's own alignment leads, Evan Hubinger, meanwhile publicly agreed and said he "personally" puts the odds of AI killing every human being within the decade above 10%, while adding that he thinks the risk from present models is low. 

While critics warn some of the rhetoric might be hype or a bid for regulation that favors corporate interests, Murray said he takes a number of the fears as sincere.

“They believe there is a one in 10 chance of extinction, and yet they are still building AI,” he said. “Why would anyone do that? Because the enticement to become God is simply too good to pass up.”