A Weighted Average of Good

Sunday, October 25, 2026 · Science & Technology

The story

The companies building the most powerful artificial intelligence have run into a question they cannot code their way out of: how do you teach a chatbot right from wrong? More and more, they are asking clergy, philosophers and scholars of religion. At the Vatican’s presentation of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah said, “These are not questions a lab can answer. They are questions traditions like yours have carried for millennia.” Anthropic says it has met with people from more than fifteen religious and cross-cultural groups, and that it wants its model to draw “from a full range of viewpoints — religious, secular, political — with equal depth and rigor.” OpenAI’s Sam Altman put the goal more bluntly: ChatGPT should reflect “that weighted average, or whatever, of humanity’s moral view.”

The AP report gathers the objections, and they come from scholars, not preachers. The anthropologist Webb Keane warns against treating religion as “a rule book” of extractable principles, cut off from the doctrine, worship and relationships in which people actually live it. Paolo Carozza, who studies Catholic social thought, worries that AI does not let traditions meet in an organic way but “just throws it all together, mixes it all up, and therefore makes sense of none of it.”

A Christian can be glad these questions are being asked, and should be honest that the critics have put their finger on something real. But Scripture goes further than either side. It does not merely say that averaging religions is untidy. It says that goodness is not an average at all. Goodness has a name.

1. The right question, asked in Athens

The scene in the article is an old one. Intelligent, curious people gather the world’s religious ideas, listen to all of them with respect, and hope to distil something wise. One participant described the meetings as “pretty nerdy … in a good way,” like a good college campus. Paul stood in a room like that:

Notice what Paul does. He does not mock the Athenians for asking. He credits them with seeking, and then he does something no panel of fifteen traditions can do: he names the God they were reaching for and calls them to Him. The church’s place in this conversation is the same. We are not one more input to be weighted. We are witnesses to a Person.

Olah is right that these are not questions a lab can answer. Scripture says where the answer begins:

2. Can goodness be averaged?

Altman’s phrase deserves to be taken seriously, because it is an honest statement of a whole worldview: if there is no God who has spoken, then the best available guide to right and wrong is what most people, weighted somehow, think. The Law of Moses addressed that idea directly:

A weighted average also raises a question it cannot answer: who sets the weights? Whoever decides that one moral view counts for more than another is already using a standard of good that did not come from the average. Israel knew what moral life looked like without that standard:

Scripture has already shown us the one time all humanity spoke with one voice and pooled its wisdom into one project:

Babel was not a failure of cooperation. It was the most unified moment in human history, and God did not bless it, because a united humanity reaching for heaven on its own terms is still humanity on its own terms. Paul gathers the verdict of the Psalms on the human average:

Be fair to the average, though. Scripture does not say that the moral views of the nations are worthless. There is a reason almost every culture condemns murder, theft and betrayal:

That is why the average contains real light. But Paul says in the same breath that conscience both accuses and excuses, and in the chapter before that people “suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18). Averaging the light together with the suppression does not give you the light. It gives you something grey.

3. Not a rulebook: the scholars are right, and so is Jesus

Webb Keane objects that religion is treated as “a rule book” you can lift out of the life that holds it. On that point Scripture stands with him. A young man once came to Jesus wanting the right rule for eternal life. Jesus answered with a Person:

In the Bible, goodness is not first a list. It is the character of God, and a human being becomes good by knowing Him and walking with Him:

God’s answer to rule-keeping that does not reach the heart was never a better rulebook. It was a new heart:

“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” A machine can be given the letter. It can be given a great many letters. What it is being given is moral text, and the letter alone has never made anyone good.

4. “Mixes it all up”: Samaria did this first

Carozza’s worry is that AI will throw every tradition together until each loses what makes it itself. Scripture has a precise record of a people who did exactly that after the northern kingdom fell:

“They feared the LORD but also served their own gods” is a weighted average. It was not tolerance. It was the end of knowing who God is. Elijah put the choice to Israel in the plainest words in the Old Testament:

A model trained to give every tradition “equal depth and rigor” on the question of what is good will always limp between opinions, because it has been told not to choose. Christians are free to be courteous about other faiths and must be honest about them, but we cannot pretend the question is open:

5. How good character actually forms

Anthropic’s blog post says what it is really after is “careful, accumulated thinking on how good character actually forms.” That is a good question, and the New Testament answers it directly. Character is not accumulated from opinions. It is formed in a person through suffering, the Spirit, and beholding Christ:

Fruit grows from a root. Paul calls these things the fruit “of the Spirit,” not the fruit of good data. And Romans 12:2 names the very danger a weighted average poses: to be conformed to the age. An average of the age is the age. The Christian is told not to take its shape, but to be changed by beholding the Lord until we bear His image.

6. Where Scripture agrees and where it corrects

1. Agree: this is not a question a lab can answer. Right and wrong are not discovered by engineering. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10).
2. Agree: religion is not a rulebook. Keane is right. In Scripture goodness is the character of God, known in a relationship and written on the heart (Jer 31:33).
3. Agree: throwing everything together destroys it. Carozza is right. Samaria feared the LORD and served its own gods, and lost both (2 Kgs 17:33).
4. Correct: goodness is not an average. “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). A majority is not a moral authority (Exod 23:2), and a perfectly united humanity built Babel (Gen 11:6).
5. Correct: “equal depth” is not neutral. To treat every answer to “What is good?” as equally weighted is itself an answer: that no one has the truth. Scripture says Someone is the truth (John 14:6).
6. Be honest about what Scripture does not say. The Bible does not tell us how a computer program should be written or what an AI company ought to put in its training. It does tell us that a tool cannot be a moral authority over people, and that character is formed by the Spirit of God in a living person.

A word for daily life

• Do not outsource your conscience. When a chatbot answers a moral question, it is giving you a blend. Test it: “but test everything; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thess 5:21).
• Be a Berean, not an Athenian. Athens collected every idea. Berea checked what it heard against the Scriptures: “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” (Acts 17:11).
• Do not limp. Where in your own life are you trying to keep everyone’s view at once? Elijah’s question is for you too: “If the LORD is God, follow him.”
• Pray for the people building these tools. They are asking real questions, and some of them are honestly seeking. Paul spoke to Athens with courtesy and with the gospel. So can we.

For reflection and discussion

1. Paul credited the Athenians for seeking (Acts 17:22–23) and then named the God they did not know. How can we speak to people who ask moral questions in a way that does both?
2. Exodus 23:2 says not to follow the majority into evil. Where does “what most people think” shape your sense of right and wrong more than Scripture does?
3. Jesus answered a question about the right rule by pointing to God Himself (Mark 10:18). Why is goodness a Person and not only a list?
4. “They feared the LORD but also served their own gods” (2 Kgs 17:33). What are the “own gods” that people in our church are tempted to keep alongside the Lord?
5. Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 say we are changed by what we behold. What are you beholding most hours of the week, and what shape is it pressing you into?