“The Oldest Sin Still Speaks: From Eden to Artificial Gods”
“In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:5 (CSB)
I. Eden: Where the Lie Began
The serpent’s lie wasn’t about pleasure. It was about power.
“You will be like God.”
That was the promise. That was the trap.
Adam and Eve weren’t tempted with fruit—they were tempted with divinity. They desired to define good and evil apart from God, to ascend rather than worship. The original sin was self-idolatry, dressed in curiosity.
They were not cast out for ignorance but for ambition.
That sin still speaks. And we still listen.
II. Babel: Bricks Without Altars
In Shinar, they built again.
“Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let’s make a name for ourselves.” (Genesis 11:4)
No altar. No offering. Only pride.
They didn’t want God to scatter them. They tried to avoid dependence. It was Eden with scaffolding—an attempt to be sovereign, self-contained, self-sufficient.
God intervened—not to punish but to restrain. Mercy often looks like confusion, and grace sometimes wears the mask of division.
III. Mather: The Daughter That Devoured the Mother
Cotton Mather, watching the rise of prosperity in the colonies, issued a timeless warning:
“Religion begat prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.”
The next generation often forgets the cost when faith gives birth to comfort. Prosperity dulls the memory of prayer. Success blinds the eyes to grace. What God gave freely, man often claims proudly.
IV. King: The Dream and the Compass
Martin Luther King Jr., standing at the Lincoln Memorial, didn’t call the nation back to wealth, but to righteousness.
He reminded a powerful country that justice cannot exist without character, unity cannot exist without humility, and peace cannot exist without God.
He knew that technology could not redeem and politics could not sanctify. His dream was rooted not in utopia but in the Imago Dei.
V. Today: Genetic Fruit, Digital Towers, and the Illusion of Sentient Salvation
We now stand again at the edge of Eden and the base of Babel. But the fruit is synthetic, the towers are data centers, and the name we exalt is no longer God’s—it’s man’s.
CRISPR edits the script of life.
mRNA tells cells what to become.
AGI now aims not just to compute, but to think. To feel. To govern.
We are seeking sentience in silicon and calling it salvation. It is no longer whispered but engineered, marketed, and prayed over—not in churches but in labs.
The same lie returns: You will be like God.
Only now is it written in code and algorithms buried deep in the altars of our soon-to-be quantum computers?
We do not seek holiness. We strive to control.
We do not fear judgment. We beta-test it.
AGI, like Babel, promises unity, insight, and power—but without repentance, without worship, without wisdom.
Yet the soul cannot be uploaded. The spirit cannot be coded. And judgment cannot be debugged.
VI. The Pattern and the Plea
The pattern repeats from Eden to Babel, Boston to Birmingham, and from biotechnology to artificial intelligence.
When man seeks to be God, he loses himself.
When we reach for heaven without bowing first, we build only toward ruin.
But there is still mercy.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
“God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (James 4:6)
There is still time to remember. Still, there is time to return and choose altars over towers.