Mouths That Speak Not

No verse in the Bible mentions artificial intelligence, computers or machines that talk. Its books were written over many centuries, the latest of them in the first century AD. Even so, what does the Bible say about AI has a real answer, because the same few passages keep being cited: in sermons, in church documents, and in videos arguing that AI is the image of the beast. There are five of them. This essay quotes each one, says what it says in its own chapter, and then sets out how people apply it to AI, the strongest case first on each side.

The translation. Every verse below is quoted from the King James Version (KJV), the English translation first published in 1611, as transcribed by Project Gutenberg (eBook #10), with that text’s spelling and punctuation. I chose it for two reasons. It is out of copyright, so it can be quoted at length. And it is the wording most of the popular arguments are made in: the phrase “knowledge shall be increased” is the KJV’s. It is not the most accurate modern translation, and I say where its English carries more weight than it should. Verse numbers are printed before each verse.

The short answer. The Bible says nothing about AI directly. It does say three things at length that readers bring to AI. Human beings are made in God’s image (Genesis 1). People who make a thing and then trust it as a god become like it (Psalm 115 and the prophets). And in a vision, a deceiver makes an image that speaks and demands worship (Revelation 13). The churches that have written about AI read the first two as a warning against treating a machine as a person or a god, not as a ban on building one. The third is read by some as a prophecy about AI, and by most academic commentators as a vision aimed at the Roman empire of its own day. None of the five passages settles whether AI is good or bad, and each settles less than the people citing it usually claim.

1. “In our image”: Genesis 1:26–27

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.Genesis 1:26–27, King James Version

In its chapter. This is the sixth day of the creation account that opens the Bible. Human beings are made last, and they are the only creatures said to be made in God’s “image” and “likeness”. The chapter ties the image straight to a job. Verse 26 goes from “our likeness” to “let them have dominion” in one sentence, and verse 28 adds the command to replenish the earth, and subdue it. What the image actually is, the chapter never says. Readers have argued about it for as long as the text has been read, and the answers fall into three families. It is a capacity, such as reason, speech or moral choice. It is a role, ruling the world on God’s behalf, as the next words suggest. Or it is a relationship: being the creature God speaks to, and the one that can answer.

The second creation account adds a detail that comes back later in this essay. There the first man is shaped from earth and comes alive only when God gives him breath: And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7).

The case that it rules out AI persons. If the image is what makes a human being human, and the text says who gave it, then nothing people build can have it, however capable it becomes. This is how the churches that have written on AI use the passage. The Vatican note Antiqua et Nova (2025) opens with it: The Christian tradition regards the gift of intelligence as an essential aspect of how humans are created “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27). (¶1). The Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission put it first in its 2019 statement on AI, listing Genesis 1:26–28 as the article’s first proof text:

We affirm that God created each human being in His image with intrinsic and equal worth, dignity, and moral agency, distinct from all creation, and that humanity’s creativity is intended to reflect God’s creative pattern.Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles, 11 April 2019, Article 1

The same article goes on to deny that technology should be assigned a level of human identity, worth, dignity, or moral agency.

The case that it supports building AI. If the image is partly a role, making things is part of it. The ERLC reads the passage that way too: its Article 2 calls the development of AI a demonstration of the unique creative abilities of human beings. Antiqua et Nova makes the same move from the other side, saying AI should not be seen as an artificial form of human intelligence but as a product of it (¶35). On this reading an AI is something the image makes, not a rival to it.

What it cannot settle. Some readers push further. If the image includes a capacity like reason, and a machine shows something like reason, does it share part of the image? Genesis 1 cannot answer that. It says to whom the image was given. It does not define it, and it says nothing about whether anything else could ever have it. Anyone who says the text rules machine minds in or out is supplying the definition themselves.

2. The tower: Genesis 11:1–9

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.Genesis 11:4–6, King James Version

In its chapter. The story is nine verses long, set between two family trees. The whole earth has one language, and of one speech (11:1). People settle on a plain in Shinar, the region of Babylon, and work out how to fire bricks. Then they set out to build a city and a tower. God “came down to see” it, and many readers notice the irony: a tower meant to reach heaven is so small that God has to come down to look at it. God then confounds their language that they may not understand one another’s speech (11:7), and they stop building and scatter. The city is named Babel, and the text links the name to that confusion (11:9).

The case that it warns against AI. Verse 6 is the verse people quote. A single united project, working in a single language, of which God says nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Read that way, the passage is a warning that pooled technical power has no natural limit, and the parallel is easy to draw: a few companies training systems on much of the world’s written text, toward a goal their own marketing often describes in godlike terms. The motive clause strengthens the reading. They build to make us a name.

The case that it does not. The text never condemns bricks, towers or cities. What it names is the motive: a name for themselves, and staying together lest we be scattered abroad, when chapter 1 told humanity to fill the earth. God’s response is also telling. The tower is not struck down. The language is divided, and the building stops on its own. A reader who uses Babel against AI therefore has to show that AI is a project of self-glorification or refusal, not simply a large and capable one. Many projects are large and capable; the story is about one kind of reason for building.

There is a twist in the other direction. AI translation is sometimes hailed as undoing Babel, since anyone can now be understood in any language. Others read the same fact as rebuilding the tower: one system that everyone’s speech passes through. The story supports neither directly. Christian readers have long set it beside Pentecost in Acts 2, where the answer to divided languages is that each listener understands in their own language, not that one language comes back.

3. Idols with mouths: Psalm 115, Habakkuk 2 and Isaiah 44

Three passages make the same argument in three voices: a song, a curse and a satire.

4 Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. 5 They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: 6 They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: 7 They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. 8 They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.Psalm 115:4–8, King James Version

Psalm 115 answers a taunt. Other nations ask Where is now their God? (115:2), and the psalm replies that Israel’s God is in the heavens, while theirs are metal made by hand. Then it lists the idol’s body part by part and denies each one its use. The sting is the last line. The makers, and everyone who trusts the idols, become like them: mouths that do not speak, ears that do not hear.

18 What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols? 19 Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it.Habakkuk 2:18–19, King James Version

Habakkuk 2 ends a run of five woes against Babylon with this one. Two details matter here. The idol is called a teacher of lies, and its maker expects it to teach. And the verdict is about breath, the thing Genesis 2:7 says makes a body alive: there is no breath at all in the midst of it. The chapter closes on the contrast: But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him. (2:20).

16 He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: 17 And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god.Isaiah 44:16–17, King James Version

Isaiah 44:9–20 is the longest and the funniest. It comes from the chapters of Isaiah that most scholars date to the Babylonian exile, and it follows one craftsman through one tree. The smith works until he is faint, the carpenter marks out the figure of a man (44:13), and the wood is cut. Half of it cooks his dinner and warms him. The other half he bows to and asks to save him. The passage ends on the man who cannot see what he has done: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? (44:20).

This is the passage a church document has actually applied to AI. In the same paragraph where Antiqua et Nova warns against idolatry, it reaches for Psalm 115 and for Revelation 13:

Moreover, AI may prove even more seductive than traditional idols for, unlike idols that “have mouths but do not speak; eyes, but do not see; ears, but do not hear” (Ps. 115:5-6), AI can “speak,” or at least gives the illusion of doing so (cf. Rev. 13:15).Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education, Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, ¶105

The note quotes the psalm in a modern translation, which is why its wording differs from the KJV above. The sense is the same. A fuller reading of that paragraph, and of what the churches conclude from it, is in A Pale Reflection, this site’s essay on what the churches actually say about AI.

The case that these passages apply to AI. The idol texts were never mainly about statues being inert. They are about trusting the work of men’s hands for help, for teaching and for rescue. A chatbot asked for moral guidance, comfort or answers about God fits Habakkuk’s man who says to the stone it shall teach! better than any carved figure ever did, which is the Vatican note’s point: the new idol is more seductive because it answers. And Psalm 115:8 has an uncomfortable modern reading. On this view, people who hand their judgement to a system that cannot hear them gradually stop listening themselves.

The case that they do not. Every one of these passages targets worship and trust, not making. Isaiah’s carpenter is not condemned for woodworking. The same log warms him and bakes his bread, and the text has no quarrel with either. The fault is only in the residue thereof he maketh a god. By that measure, a tool used as a tool is the fire and the bread, not the idol. The psalm’s argument also leans on the idol being mute, and a language model is not mute. Antiqua et Nova answers that its speech is the illusion of speaking, but whether it is an illusion is exactly what is in dispute (see Fourteen Questions for a Chatbot). The passages assume the answer rather than supply it.

What they do settle, for anyone who reads them as scripture, is the line that matters: not may we build this, but what are we asking it for. The God-Shaped Socket makes the same point without the theology, as a matter of psychology: the reflex that finds a mind, and then an oracle, in anything that talks back.

4. The image that speaks: Revelation 13:14–15

14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.Revelation 13:14–15, King James Version

In its chapter. Revelation is a vision written in symbols, addressed to seven named churches in the Roman province of Asia (Revelation 1:4 and 1:11). Chapter 13 has two beasts. The first rises from the sea with seven heads and ten horns, is given power by the dragon, and is worshipped by all that dwell upon the earth (13:8). The second comes up from the earth. It has two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon (13:11), and it works signs that persuade people to make an image of the first beast. Then it brings the image to life so that it speaks, and has everyone who will not worship it killed. The chapter ends with the mark on the right hand or forehead, without which no man might buy or sell (13:17), and the number 666, the number of a man (13:18). One detail is lost in English: the Greek word the KJV translates “life” in verse 15 is pneuma, which also means breath or spirit. Many modern translations say “breath”, which links the verse to Genesis 2:7 and to Habakkuk’s idol with no breath at all.

The prophetic reading, at its strongest. Many Christians read Revelation as describing events still to come. For most of history, an image that speaks and marks out those who will not bow to it could be pictured only as a miracle or a trick. Now machines generate speech, recognise faces and sit inside payment systems, and verse 17 ties the whole scene to buying and selling. Readers who hold this view do not claim that a chatbot is the image. They claim that the chapter describes a combination of things, a speaking image, universal surveillance and exclusion from trade, that was unimaginable until recently and is imaginable now. That is the image of the beast argument in its best form.

The historical reading, at its strongest. Revelation was written to churches under Rome, and chapter 13 reads naturally as their world: an empire that honoured its emperors as divine, statues of those emperors in the cities, and pressure on anyone who refused to join in. Many historians take 666 as a cipher for the emperor Nero, reached by adding up the letters of his name written in Hebrew. On this reading the chapter warns every later generation about a pattern, power that demands worship and enforces it through the economy. Its first target was Rome, not a machine two thousand years later.

What both readings share. Nothing in the chapter says the image is a machine, and nothing says that speaking is its crime. What defines it is who made it (a deceiver), what it demands (worship) and what happens to those who refuse (death). A system that answers questions does none of those things. So a reader of either school who asks is AI the image of the beast should look for the whole pattern, not just the talking. Antiqua et Nova uses the verse carefully in the same way: its reference is a “cf.”, a comparison about the illusion of speech, not a claim that AI is what John saw. This essay does not say which reading of Revelation is right. That is a question about the whole book, and it will not be settled by one verse.

5. “Knowledge shall be increased”: Daniel 12:4

4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.Daniel 12:4, King James Version

In its chapter. These are almost the last words of Daniel’s final vision, which fills chapters 10 to 12. The chapter opens with a time of trouble, such as never was (12:1), then promises that many who sleep in the dust will wake (12:2). Verse 4 is an instruction about the book itself: seal it until the end. Daniel says he does not understand and asks what the end will be. He is told Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. (12:9), and then that none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand (12:10).

The popular reading, at its strongest. The verse ties the time of the end to two signs, movement and knowledge, and both have grown faster in the last two centuries than in all of history before. Air travel is running to and fro, and the internet, and now AI, are knowledge increased. On this reading AI is the latest and sharpest sign that the verse is being fulfilled.

The reading from the chapter. Read in its place, the knowledge that increases is most naturally knowledge of the sealed book. It is closed now, it will be understood at the end, and the wise shall understand. The phrase run to and fro helps too, because the KJV uses it elsewhere for searching. In Amos, the people shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it (Amos 8:12). On that reading, Daniel 12:4 describes people searching for understanding that arrives when the book is unsealed. It is not about travel or technology. The popular reading depends heavily on the English of this one half-verse, and it helps to read it next to the rest of its chapter.

The five passages side by side

What none of them says

No passage forbids building tools, and the one story that most resembles a technology project, Babel, faults the builders’ motive rather than their bricks. No passage says a made thing can or cannot think. The idol texts assume it cannot, and they were written about metal and wood. No passage names a machine. The only readings that turn a verse into a statement about AI as such are prophetic ones, and those are interpretations of Revelation and Daniel that other Christians, and most academic commentators, do not share. Anyone who tells you the Bible says AI is the beast, or the Bible blesses it, is telling you their reading.

What the passages do say, consistently, is about the people. They are made in an image they did not make. They can build towers for the wrong reasons. And whatever they ask to deliver them, as Isaiah’s carpenter asks the wood, they come to resemble. That is where the churches’ own documents land: AI is a human product, and the danger they name is not the machine but what people ask of it.

This site is not a religious one, and its stance in A-theism, Not AI-Theism is its own: take the machines seriously, and do not take them as gods. The idol passages are among the oldest written forms of the second half of that sentence. Where the site parts from some of their readers is on the first half, when the texts are used to settle by definition whether a machine could ever have a mind. A Pale Reflection sets out that disagreement with the churches in full.