Nuts About Leadership 2024, 1, 18–20. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10611770 www.zenodo.org
Book Review
Divine Futures: Exploring AI and Humanity’s Destiny
from a Christian Perspective
Alireza Hejazi
1
1
alirhej@mail.regent.edu
Abstract: The book “2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity” attempts to address
the question of where humanity is going. Doing this, technological enhancement, bioengineering,
and especially, artificial intelligence (AI) is used as foundations to envision humanity’s future through
the Christian perspective. The Christian philosopher, John Lennox offers a discussion in which the
advantages and disadvantages of AI for humanity as well as its potential implications are addressed.
The core message of the book is that the Christian perspective can provide answers to philosophical
questions and bring people hope for the future of humanity. Readers curious about the interaction
of science and religion may find the book interesting.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, faith, foresight, future, humanity
The book’s author, John Lennox is a professor of mathematics at Oxford University.
He is mainly known for his works and speeches on the interface of science, philosophy,
and religion. He teaches at many academic institutions. He has written several books ex-
ploring the relationship between science and faith, including Can Science Explain Every-
thing?
1
, Determined to Believe?
2
, and Where Is God in a Coronavirus World?
3
His new
work is a book based on Christian ethical values.
Contrary to George Orwell’s famous novel, 1984
4
which depicts a dystopian future;
Lennox’s 2084
5
presents a hopeful vision of the future. The content of the book indicates
that Lennox has kept an eye on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
6
His curiosity for what
might be ahead enabled him to apply his philosophical expertise to the analysis of chal-
lenges that would likely affect the future of humanity in the coming decades.
It seems that the contents of three books motivated him to write this book: Yuval
Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind,
7
and Homo Deus: A Brief History of
Tomorrow;
8
and Dan Brown’s Origin.
9
These books make assumptions about the future
direction of humanity. Lennox examines Harari’s and Brown’s thoughts about AI through
a Christian outlook. He claims that science and the Christian perspective make rational
companions.
He has organized the book into 13 chapters. Through a critique of the books men-
tioned above and based on his mathematical mindset, he reasons that the universe is
mathematically intelligible to a considerable degree. He applies pieces of evidence from
biology and highlights the purposiveness of DNA and life structures. In his view, they con-
firm the purposefulness of creation and life as mentioned in the biblical records. The con-
formity of science and the Bible is evident in Lennox’s view.
Supporting his claims with a detailed explanation of the distinction and wholeness of
“intelligence” and “consciousness” in humans, he extends his discussion to a biblical belief
that maintains God created humans in his image and linked intelligence and conscious-
ness together in one being. Thinking of God as a conscious intelligent being, he argues
that intelligence and consciousness may not be brought together in machines and robots
as it is done by God in humans.
Citation
Hejazi, A. (2024). Divine futures: Ex-
ploring AI and humanity’s destiny
from a Christian perspective. Nuts
About Leadership, 1(1), 18-20.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10611770
Published: 2024-02-19
Copyright
© 2024 by Alireza Hejazi. Submitted
for possible open-access publication
under the terms and conditions of
the Creative Commons Attribution
(CC BY) license
(https://creativecommons.org/license
s/by/4.0/).