#STRask - What Discernment Skills Should We Develop to Make Sure We’re Getting Wise Answers from AI?

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Questions about what discernment skills we should develop to make sure we’re getting wise answers from AI, and how to overcome confirmation bias when evaluating claims related to theism and Christianity.   What discernment skills should we develop to make sure we’re getting wise answers from AI when asking the question “What would Jesus have me do in this situation”? How do you overcome confirmation bias when evaluating claims related to theism and Christianity, and is it possible to have strong beliefs and still be objective?

I'm Amy Hall and I'm here with Greg Kockel and you're listening to Stan Terezin's hashtag, STRask Podcast. Now Greg, today we have kind of more practical, tactical kind of advice. All right. And this first question comes from Rick. Rick. With AI being able to search the scriptures instantly, we can ask the question, what would Jesus have me do in this situation like never before? What discernment skills should

we develop to make sure we are getting wise answers to our questions and not being led astray? I would not use AI for this purpose at all. AI is programmed by people. And AI is going to give answers that are consistent with their programming. Now, what AI can do is give you every instance of a certain kind of thing, presumably,

that you're looking for in scripture. I don't know if you were, I don't think you were in the group many years ago that was at my home where we did this study on prayer in the New Testament. Were you in the group? No, I wasn't in that one. Okay. And what we did is we looked up all these references to prayer. Now of course,

not all the references to prayer have the word prayer in them. So you can't use a concordance looking for the word prayer or prayer. You have to look at the text because when it says, well, this is, I bend my knees before the Father to this end, you know? And so what we did then is we broke up the passages and each person took a couple of books and we each read through carefully and skinned through and found all of the verses. Now, I don't know that AI is capable of doing that because it requires making certain judgments

that I don't think that artificial intelligence is capable of doing. I don't know, maybe I'm giving it the short-rift, but nevertheless, I wouldn't trust it to do that. How about that? Because what you're doing is you're asking it to do an analysis, and then in light of its analysis, make recommendations on behavior consistent with the character of Christ. That's one problem. Secondly is, we are not—what would Jesus do is not the appropriate question for us to ask in every circumstance, because Jesus wasn't just the perfect human being. He was also the Messiah and the incarnate Son of God. And so, therefore, we're going to have Jesus manifesting different behaviors in different circumstances in virtue of those other offices,

not in virtue of humanity. You're chuckling now. Yeah, because to be fair, he said, what would Jesus have me do in this situation? Oh, I see. Okay, well, thanks for that clarification. All right, forget everything I just said. Oh, I see. Okay, well, thanks for that clarification. All right, forget everything I just said. So, but it is, but that's actually, that even complicates the matter more because that requires an assessment. That requires a kind of a judgment of weighing all of these other things that have to do with Jesus' behavior and making application to our life in light of a very specific issue. So it's not just, what would Jesus have me do? And it's a general thing.

It's like, I'm facing this circumstance right now. I'm being asked to do thus and so, or I have to make this decision. So AI, in light of all the things we know about Jesus, what would Jesus tell me that I should do? Now that also presumes that there is a precise solution to these decision-making problems that only Jesus knows, or at least we could come to a conclusion based on an inappropriate exegesis of Jesus' teaching. But that's not the case in so many different things. Look, your choice to get married, okay? Whether you should get married or not, Jesus isn't going to tell you that.

How do I know? Because in 1 Corinthians 7 we have a whole chapter, Paul talks about marriage and the decision to be married or not to be married, and the moral obligations of both, the advantages and the disadvantages, and he says, do what you want in light of these constraints. But he said I'll think you'd be happier if you stay single like me, that's what he said, but so happiness is a factor. But that's an analysis, that's a judgment, that's a discernment you have to make from the information and there is no right answer to that issue that Jesus would give any individual. By the way, that's just the question of getting married versus being single.

That's not the question of whether you decide to get married, who is it that you choose as a spouse. So I don't think there's too much judgment and assessment that's required here. And it also presumes that I don't think AI is capable of making up properly. And this also presumes that the questions related to what should we do are going to be determined, and I mean determined in a more weighty sense, by what Scripture says. Some things, yes, don't sin. If this thing you're thinking about doing is sin, you don't do it. Okay, that kind of thing. But a lot of times we have a variety of

different principles that we have to weigh in making the critical decisions that we face in our life. And I just want to say, I have discovered there's something you have to keep in mind. And I just want to say, I have discovered there's something you have to keep in mind. AI has to give you an answer, whether it really has an answer or not. So what I found is that sometimes it makes things up. I have seen this happen, and then when you challenge it and say, no, that's not true, it will say, oh, you're right, and then it'll give you a different answer. You cannot count on AI. I'm sorry. And I don't

like the idea of outsourcing our discernment to anything that's inhuman. It's just, it's not a good idea and we cannot trust, especially now. Well, might things change in the future? I don't know. But it doesn't, it doesn't always know the answer, but it's so very confident when it gives you the whole answer. Sure. By the way, you said anything is inhuman. In a way, that's not quite the case because what it's responding to is programming by

humans. And so it's going to reflect, maybe in a very clever way, all of this information. It's like Google. Google knows everything, it seems. But Google doesn't always get everything right, okay? Because it's all this input by other individuals. And so this reminds me of Psalm 1, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the witness, stand in the seat of—stand in the path of sinners, or sit in the seat

of scoffers. Okay, is that where we want to get our counsel? From AI that is programmed by people who have no commitment to spiritual truth or to truth at all? Well, that sounds like a violation of what Psalm 1 says. So I share your same suspicion of the source, but because it's not just mechanical, it's a mechanistic response as a result of the information that has been input into it by non-believing people. Now it could be that an AI is created by people who only input the Bible into that system, or only input theology you would agree with into that system. I mean, that could happen and that could be possible. But again, it makes things up. I've seen it.

This happened to me just a couple of days ago. I asked, just out of curiosity, I said, can you tell me a church near me, a conservative evangelical church near me that has a service in the evening on Sundays. And it gave me, it was very confident, oh, this is your best shot right here, and they have their service at this time. So I go to their website, there's no service. I come back and I say, there's no service at that time. And it says, oh, you're right. Why don't you try this one? Why did you tell me that one? So you just, you can't count on it. So then the question becomes, well actually his question originally is what

discernment skills should we develop? And here is my advice for that. Discernment comes, it comes from training and shaping your mind into the form of God's Word. That's where it comes from. Having your senses trained to discern good and evil as in Hebrews 5, right? And that comes from spending time in God's Word, thinking about Him, thinking about theology, but mainly in reading the Bible. And what you'll find is you don't always even know exactly what it is you've learned as you're reading, but what it's doing is it's shaping the way you view reality. And as you do that, when you hear something that doesn't fit into that, it feels jarring. So the more that you're reading, the more that you're meditating on God's Word, the

more you're thinking about it and it's shaping you, the more these foreign ideas will bounce off of you and they'll just feel out of place. Even if you can't necessarily explain why, you'll recognize that something doesn't feel right in terms of the morality of it or whatever, even if you can't necessarily put your finger on what the problem is. Sure, sure. Yeah, that's great. Your mind is being renewed. And that's what Paul talks about in a number of places.

By the way, there's a book that just I just received. I don't even I don't think I asked for it, but I got it sitting in my room by John Lennox, the Oxford mathematician on AI. And it's there's a lot of people who have endorsed it. And some have said if this is the only book you read on AI, if you only read one book, this is the book. So I'm going to, I know almost nothing about it, you know, and I pontificated a little bit based on the limited knowledge I have, but I want to learn more. But I think it's a problem.

And I, at this point, I refuse to use it. And, or at least, of course, who knows how much AI is operating in the background, a thing you already use, but I refuse to let that do any of the kind of work for me that I can do for myself, like analyzing Bible verses. Look, if I can put a verse in the Bible, I remember kind of a verse, I go into Google and I type what I remember, and it shows me where it's at. Oh, thank you very much. Now I got the reference. I can go back to the text and get it exactly. That helps me. Got it. It's like a digital concordance. But I'm not going to go to some machine that's been programmed by who knows who,

and let that do the heavy lifting for me to put together whatever it is I need. I want to do that myself. I want to form it. I want it to be my words, my ideas, my thoughts. And I want to be, I do not want to be shortchanged on the learning process that I go through in gathering that information myself. And this is what you're referring to a few moments ago about scripture. And I think that's a great point. If we're not going to be conformed to this world, and

AI is by nature the wisdom of the world, I'm not sure we want to ask it. It's taking in all that information from other people, from other sources, and it's conformed to the world. You know, I saw a conversation between AI and Christian, Bill Dembski, the artificial and the artificial, the intelligent design movement. And he posted the whole conversation because he started by asking questions of AI, whatever that feature is, about intelligent design and the evidence for intelligent design. And it kept pumping back to him all of the conventional

materialistic metaphysical point of view. All right, oh, that's just religion disguised as science. All, you know, all of this kind of stuff. And he kept hammering away, hammering, going back and having this conversation, so to speak, with it until he finally got it to admit it, didn't know what he was talking about, and it couldn't solve the problems that somebody like Bill Dembski, who was one of the fathers of the Intelligent Design Movement, knew were there in the Darwinian project and the Origin

of Life and all of that other stuff. So when you see the whole dialogue in this posting that he did, that's by somebody who knows how to test it properly, that's when you see the liabilities and how biased AI can be, at least on certain issues. Let's go to a question from Mitch. Hello, Greg and Amy. Speaking from the perspective of a young Christian, how do you overcome confirmation bias when evaluating claims related to theism in Christianity? Is it possible to have strong beliefs and still be objective?

Well the simple answer is yes. And the best protection against confirmation bias is an awareness that it exists. Now, the word objective can be used in different ways. Here it's talking about the frame of mind of the person who's doing the assessment. Can they be objective? And some people think that means that you can't have a point of view, because if you have a point of view, you have a bias. All right?

Now there are different types of biases. I think I talk about this in the tactics book, but there are some biases that reflect a point of view, and then there are other biases that distort. So let's say, I don't know, Kobe Bryant's mom, I think she probably thinks he was a great basketball player. Oh, she's biased. That's his son. Well, she might be biased, but she's also right. He was a great basketball player. All right. So there is a bias that a person has that doesn't necessarily distort because it's consistent with the facts, demonstrably so. And then there's the bias to

distort. And this is something that J.P. Moreland pointed out for me first, and it was raised regarding, I guess a gal came to him and she said she's studying science or something in college, and the professor said, you can't be a scientist. Why not? Well, because you're Christian and Christians are biased. And this is where J.P. made the distinction. When it comes to explanations of the material world, which is what science engages in, pursues, the Christian actually has an advantage because what they can do is follow the materialistic evidence to a materialistic conclusion when it's warranted.

But their point of view is also open to an additional possibility if the materialistic explanation is not adequate to the task. And by the way, that's what forensic pathology is about. This is where scientists try to figure out whether an agent was involved in the death of a person, foul play, or whether the death was natural causes. It's a standard thing. But when it comes to other areas in the scientific enterprise, those are disqualified. And so the materialist then has a bias to his view and the Christian has a bias to theirs. But the bias for the Christian opens up the possibilities so that they can follow the

evidence where it leads. And the bias of the materialist scientist does not allow him to follow the evidence where it leads. It only allows him to follow the evidence to certain types of conclusions that are philosophically and metaphysically acceptable to him. So that's an important factor here. I'm trying to remember now what the original question was. How do you overcome confirmation bias?

So being aware of fit and being in a position where you can say to yourself, all right, you don't have to get rid of your points of view. You just want to ask the question whether the evidence at hand significantly justifies your point of view or significantly undermines it. Now, sometimes, you know, that's going to be tricky, but if you're deliberate about it, intentional about it, it's going to be much easier. Everybody has a tendency to conformational bias. Everybody does. And if we look at whatever it is that we want to be true, the bias in that direction, and

then be open to challenges against it, that will significantly overcome conformational bias. And you'll know that you've overcome it when you can give concrete, specific, substantial evidence in favor of the view that you have or rebuttals of the evidence against, the alleged evidence against your view. If you go through that process, then you know, chances are really good, you're going to figure it out. People are able to overcome their biases. They are able to find out true things about the world. Okay, it happens all the time. Our lives depend upon that. Okay. And lots of people have changed their

mind, whether it's on religion or politics or whatever, when confronted with new information. And incidentally, this is very important. It's also a philosophical concept that may be esoteric for some, but it's called doxastic volunteerism. Okay, doxastic has to do with belief forming, and volunteerism means you choose it. The fact is you don't choose your beliefs. Your beliefs happen in light of the evidence that's placed before you. So I'm not choosing to believe that I'm sitting in a studio talking with you. It's an automatic thing based on the evidence that's presented to me right now. All right? And so this is true in lots of people's lives.

Now it's possible to resist good evidence because of conformational bias. But characteristically, people change their minds because they've been given good reasons to change their minds. And that leads to, I think, one of the biggest ways you can prevent this is by interacting with those who disagree with you. So you read their arguments and you interact with somebody who has those arguments and you see if your arguments stand up to that. Confirmation bias happens when you only accept what is appealing to what you already believe. So the way to get outside of that is to interact

with people who disagree with you. Also, yeah. And also you need to be alert, especially to informal fallacies, like name calling and genetic fallacy and circular reasoning and self-refuting points of view and things like that. Some of that stuff is in the tactics book, but you need to be aware when people's arguments go south. And if you're familiar with some of those informal fallacies, You need to be aware when people's arguments go south.

And if you're familiar with some of those informal fallacies, you're gonna see these things right away. And so you know what doesn't count as good evidence for another person's view, or for your own for that matter. And the other thing I think is really important is you have to care about truth. It's a huge problem in our culture today that I don't think people really care about truth. They care a huge problem in our culture today that I don't think people really care about truth. They care about promoting their view. And so what they do is they try and

make what, say whatever they need to say, even if it doesn't reflect the truth, in order to convince people to come over to their view. You have got to love truth more than your own view even. And you have to be willing to go wherever the truth leads. Now ironically, I think this love of truth can only come from somebody who believes God exists, because otherwise it's all about whatever you want to convince people to do. Truth doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter.

It's not a virtue, right. But when we believe in a God of truth and we believe in a God that loves truth, then we have nothing to fear, number one. And number two, we love truth because it shows us what God has created, who He is, what is true about the world. So you have to love truth. You have to interact with others. And also, the question about can you have strong beliefs and still be objective?

I think that depends on why your beliefs are strong. Is it simply that you're just holding on to it for all worth and you don't really have good reasons? Or you're socialized by social forces to hold onto that view because of pressure from others. That's another factor. In that case, you might isolate yourself from other views because you don't want to have that tested. However, if you have strong views because you have a wide foundation of facts that you've

already considered, that you've incorporated into your view of the world, then those strong views are based on the conversations you've already had about truth. They're based on thinking. They're based on ideas that have been tested. That actually helps you to evaluate new ideas. Because if you've already thought about all these other areas and you're solid on all of these other ideas, then as new ideas come in, you can see, all right, this sounds

interesting, but it completely contradicts this other very well-attested idea. And so the greater your foundation is, the wider your foundation is in all sorts of areas of truth, the better that is for evaluating new ideas about truth. And the better you can see if there's a problem with another area of life that it just doesn't fit with. So again, it just depends on why you have strong beliefs and how well they're grounded in what is already true. We're out of time, Greg.

Went fast. Thank you, Rick and Mitch. We appreciate hearing from you. Send us your question on X with the hashtag STRask or go to our website at str.org and send us your question. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kogel for Stand to Reason.