By Robert Maginnis

On January 20, 2026, historian Yuval Noah Harari stood before the World Economic Forum at Davos and issued a direct challenge to Christians worldwide. “If religion is built from words, then AI will take over religion,” he said, then named Christianity by name: “This is particularly true of religions based on books, like Islam, Christianity, or Judaism.” And he left this question in the air: “What happens to the religion of a book when the greatest expert on the holy book is an AI?”

The clip accumulated 1.2 million views within days. The room at Davos did not object.

A Documented Shift, not a Conspiracy

Harari’s 2026 remarks are the current edge of a worldview shift building for years — visible in the public statements of the most powerful technologists of our time, spanning five distinct domains of the human person.

It was Harari himself who told the same World Economic Forum in 2020 that we are “no longer mysterious souls — we are now hackable animals.” Six years later, he has moved from contesting human identity to contesting the authority of Scripture. The trajectory is not random.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in 2017 that “the merge has already started” — that phones and algorithms already “control us” and “decide what we think.” By 2025, he had enlarged that frame: an essay titled “The Gentle Singularity” described AI as “building a brain for the world,” projected brain-computer interfaces, and suggested “some people will probably decide to ‘plug in.’” Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has called AI development a “moral obligation” and envisions every person equipped with an AI “assistant, coach, mentor, tutor… therapist” — roles Scripture reserves for God, parents, pastors, and community.

Billionaire, AI investor, and co-founder of Palantir Technologies Peter Thiel has said, “I’ve always had this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing… I prefer to fight it,” investing millions to turn mortality into an engineering problem. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, writing in more restrained terms, envisions AI-enabled biology offering “control and freedom over our own biological processes” addressing conditions “we currently think of as immutable parts of the human condition” — potentially including a doubling of the human lifespan.

These statements come from different people with different assumptions. What they share is a common direction: the human being as improvable hardware, death as a bug to be patched, and — in Harari’s own words before world leaders — the Bible as a database awaiting a more capable administrator.

The Contest That Matters More than the One We’re Watching

In “The New AI Cold War,” I document how China, Russia, and Iran are weaponizing artificial intelligence to surveil populations and export digital tyranny worldwide. That geopolitical contest is real and urgent. But the deeper one is being fought inside Western civilization itself — on the terrain of human identity and, as Harari’s Davos appearance confirmed, on the terrain of Christian faith. The architects of AI understand this better than most Christians do.

What Scripture Actually Says

No technological development alters what Scripture says about human beings. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Genesis 1:26). That declaration is the load-bearing wall of Christian anthropology — the reason human dignity is inherent and not a function of what AI can do with our genome or our sacred texts.

In “AI for Mankind’s Future,” I examine what it means to bear the imago Dei when machines imitate human intelligence. Harari’s question has a Christian answer no algorithm can produce: the Holy Spirit, not processing power, illuminates Scripture. The soul is real and not reducible to data. The body is not hardware — it will be raised imperishable. Death is an enemy, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ has already answered that claim. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) is not a devotional sentiment — it is the posture Scripture commands for this moment.

The Jurisdiction That Is Quietly Changing Hands

The most consequential shift in AI is not technological. It is jurisdictional. AI is migrating from tool to authority — not by coercion, but through the frictionless convenience of daily use. Algorithms already shape what millions of people read and believe, mediate education, and form moral character. Andreessen’s vision of AI as universal tutor, therapist, and life guide is not a distant scenario. It is the operational goal of every major platform already in your household.

When a digital system begins answering the questions of identity, purpose, and meaning that once belonged to God, to parents, and to community, it does not remain a tool. Romans 1:25 describes the exchange in which Paul warns against trading the truth of God for the created thing. Harari is more candid than most about where that exchange leads — and at Davos, he named your Bible specifically.

The Response Christians Cannot Afford to Delay

AI produces genuine benefits — in medicine, national security, and communication — and “AI for Mankind’s Future” acknowledges them. The argument here is against surrender: surrendering judgment to the algorithm, and the formation of the next generation to systems whose designers have already decided the human being is improvable hardware and the Bible is a word-processing problem.

Christians must engage AI with discernment — using the technology without adopting its embedded anthropology. That means defending what the technologists are actively contesting: that human dignity is a gift of the Creator, not a product of code, and that the authority of Scripture cannot be transferred to any machine. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12).

Harari posed the right question at Davos, and the answer has not changed since Moses received it at Mount Sinai. What remains is whether the church will say it loudly enough, and soon enough, for the world to hear.

Robert Maginnis is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, senior fellow for National Security at Family Research Council, and the author of 14 books. His latest, “The New AI Cold War,” releases in April 2026.

This article originally appeared here.