Tag: Christian post

I fed 5 major religions into an AI engine. Here is the ‘winner.’

By Jay Atkins, Op-ed Contributor Monday, April 20, 2026

I recently did something that will likely make both my Christian and atheist friends a little uncomfortable: I asked a popular AI engine to evaluate the world’s major belief systems and tell me which one makes the most rational sense. 

To be clear, I didn’t prompt it to favor Christianity. I didn’t ask leading questions or try to stack the deck.  I asked it to analyze the heavyweights — Atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity — using a simple two-step framework: First, which worldview best explains reality, and second, which one does so while requiring the fewest unsupported assumptions? In other words, tell me which one has the highest explanatory power with the lowest evidentiary burden.

As a professing Christian for more than 40 years, what I got back should not have surprised me, yet it did. AI, in seconds, reached the same conclusion I’ve been working towards for decades: Christianity offers the most reasonable overall explanation of reality with the fewest leaps of faith. 

Pause and let that settle in. AI ranked Christianity as the most reasonable view of the world.

The analysis I asked AI to do was not complicated, but it was comprehensive. I asked it to evaluate each worldview against the same basic questions:

1. Why does anything exist at all?
2. Why is the universe ordered and intelligible?
3. Why do humans possess consciousness and reason?
4. Are moral truths real or are they just social constructs?
5. Does human life have meaning or purpose?
6. Do the historical and fact claims of each belief system hold up?

I framed the analysis this way, not to pick a winner for rhetorical effect but to see which belief system actually holds together under the pure, rational scrutiny of a machine. When the analysis was done, here’s what happened.

Atheism scored well on simplicity. It doesn’t require belief in miracles or divine revelation. But that simplicity comes at a cost. It struggles to explain the biggest questions: why does the universe exist at all, why is it governed by rational laws, how does consciousness arise from mere matter, and why do we experience moral obligations as something real and binding? In many cases, it simply labels these things as either illusory or as “brute facts” and moves on, but it does not answer them.

Buddhism performed better as a practical system. It offers profound insight into human suffering and provides a quasi-workable path toward inner peace, but it largely sidesteps the deeper metaphysical questions.  It gives advice on how to cope with reality, but not what reality ultimately is.

Hinduism fared about as well as Buddhism. It offers a sweeping explanation of reality with concepts like ultimate unity, karma, and reincarnation that attempt to account for both the material and spiritual world. That gives it significant explanatory depth, but with a big tradeoff. The system relies on a complex web of metaphysical claims that can’t be verified or falsified, creating a very high evidentiary burden relative to other worldviews.

Islam held together fairly well. It offers a strong account of God, morality, and purpose, which is understandable given its Abrahamic roots. But it runs into serious historical tension when it comes to the historicity of its claims about divine revelation to Muhammad, Jesus’ crucifixion, and correction of earlier traditions. Islam’s brand of retrospective revision carries a very heavy evidentiary burden that it simply can’t carry.

Christianity, by contrast, occupies a unique position. It offers a comprehensive explanation of reality, why the universe exists, why it is ordered, why we are rational and moral beings, and why we long for meaning.  At the same time, it concentrates its evidentiary burden into a relatively small number of claims, most notably the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That matters because a worldview that explains everything but requires you to believe a thousand fragile claims is not rational. The most reasonable worldview is the one that explains the most while assuming the least. On that metric, Christianity wins.

Of course, I can hear my critics screaming right now, what about science? Isn’t Christianity fundamentally at odds with modern scientific understanding?

Not even close. In fact, one of the more interesting aspects of this exercise was how well Christianity aligns with what science has discovered. Take the Big Bang, for example. Modern cosmology tells us the universe had a beginning, a finite starting point for space, time, and matter. That is not what most ancient worldviews predicted. It is, however, exactly what the ancient Hebrews said God told them happened, and it is exactly what we would expect from a universe created by an omnipotent and transcendent God. “In the beginning God created …” is not bad for a book written thousands of years before modern physics.

Or consider the deeper assumptions that make science possible in the first place: the universe is orderly, the laws of nature are consistent and universal, and human reason is capable of understanding them. Those are not scientific conclusions. They are philosophical starting points. And historically, they emerged from the distinctly Christian view that creation reflects the rational mind of its Creator. Science and faith are not in conflict. If they appear to be, it’s a good sign you’re reading one of them incorrectly. The idea that Christianity is anti-science is not just wrong, it’s backwards.

Again, none of this “proves” Christianity is true. Faith is not the product of an algorithm, and salvation does not come through data analysis. These questions ultimately require personal engagement through study, reflection, and prayer. But this exercise does show something very important: Christianity is not a leap in the dark. It is not the abandonment of reason. It is not blind faith in ancient superstition. If anything, it’s the opposite.

For 2,000 years, serious Christian thinkers have argued that faith is grounded in reality, that it makes sense of the world as it actually is. Critics have long dismissed that claim as wishful thinking. Now, in AI, we have a new kind of tool, one that is relentlessly logical, culturally neutral (or so they say), and unimpressed by rhetoric, running the same analysis and arriving at a remarkably similar conclusion. That should at least give us pause.

There is a tendency among some Christians to view artificial intelligence with suspicion, as though it represents a threat to our faith. I don’t see it that way. AI is not a worldview. It doesn’t have beliefs. It doesn’t have a soul. It doesn’t even have opinions in the way we think of them. What it does have is the ability to process information and follow logic wherever it leads. If, as we believers profess, Christianity is true, if it really is grounded in the nature of reality itself, then that kind of analysis should not scare us. It should confirm what we’ve been saying all along. And in this case, it does.

AI is not going to answer the big questions for us, but it might help us see which answers make the most sense. For some skeptics, that might be a lifeline. And for that, we should be thankful. 

By day Jay Atkins works as a Government Affairs attorney for a California-based technology company. By night he is a lay author and Christian apologist. He thinks and writes about proofs for faith and how they intersect, or should intersect, with public policy.

Source: Christian Post

Are Mormons Christians?

By John Stonestreet, Timothy Padget

The hours and days following the horrifying murder and arson at a Latter-day Saints church service in Michigan was not the time to parse theological identities. However, many used the tragedy as an opportunity to offer their answer to a question that has grown in importance and controversy in recent years: “Are Mormons truly Christian?”  

Pew Research lists Latter-day Saints among “All Christians,” along with Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mormons not only call themselves Christian, it’s in their name, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” 

However, to borrow from Shakespeare, naming a flower a rose doesn’t make it smell just as sweet. Though Mormonism uses similar concepts and terms as Christianity, what is meant is often very different from what Christianity teaches. As Lukus Counterman put it at The Gospel Coalition,“While both Mormons and historic Christians believe in ‘Jesus Christ,’ they’re referring to different people.” 

Mormonism began in the early 19th century on what was then the American frontier. So many new religious groups were sparked in that part of New York state, the region became known as the “burned-over district.” Many of these new movements claimed to know what everyone else in Church history had missed. 

While many of these groups added or subtracted from biblical teaching, Joseph Smith claimed to have received a series of expansive visions that completely rewrote the script on Christianity. While Marcion in the second century and Thomas Jefferson in the 19th subtracted what they didn’t like from the Bible, Smith crafted Mormon doctrines by adding three books, each with concepts unlike anything in the Bible. This led to a reimagined understanding of God from anything that Christians have preached since the Apostles. In fact, the Mormon view of God is even more extraordinary than the more notorious aspects of Mormon doctrine and practice, including special undergarments, polygamy, and that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.  

Mormon theology is simply incompatible with the Christian understanding of God. Christians see God as eternally existing from before all time and creation. Mormons claim God has not always been as He is. As Joseph Smith put it in a sermon in 1844,  

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret … I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form … I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. 

Further, in Mormonism, the Godhead is made of three distinct beings, or three gods. Their unity is “one of purpose,” but not, as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity clarifies, of one nature.  

Another key difference is who and what Jesus is. Christianity has always taught that Jesus is the eternal Son of God, a full member of the Trinity, “begotten not made.” He has always existed, but at the Incarnation He took on flesh and came to Earth, remaining then and now as fully God and fully man. In Mormonism, Jesus is God’s natural son, the offspring of the Father and a “Heavenly Mother.” All human beings are also God’s children in this way, according to Mormon doctrine, having lived in Heaven before our conception and birth.   

In other words, Mormons and Christians hold different and incompatible views about God, Jesus, humans, sin, salvation and the Church. 

As many people can attest, Mormons are often wonderful people. Despite some oddities, like not being able to drink coffee, they are often moral allies in an increasingly immoral society. However, Mormonism is not Christian, because Mormons and Christians do not worship the same God.

As a friend often says, this is a case in which sharing vocabulary does not mean sharing a dictionary. Sharing certain convictions of morality does not imply sharing a theology, Christology, anthropology, soteriology, ecclesiology, or eschatology. Watering down the truth is not only unhelpful, it is an insult to both groups.

Originally published at BreakPoint. 

Source: Christian Post

So the answer is no! Mormons are not Christian though they like to present themselves that way. In Mormon theology, this other Jesus they believe in is the brother of Satan.

The Lord Jesus’ half-brother Jude makes an appeal in his letter that “you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.” (Jude 3). Those that try to add to the biblical gospel, like Joseph Smith did or the popes have done over the centuries, show that they are not of God but an “ungodly person” as Jude describes them.

I encourage you to contend for the faith with gentleness and fear. (I Peter 3:15)

God bless

Carl

‘Grounding’ exposed: Former psychic calls trend spiritually dangerous, scientifically baseless

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor Tuesday, July 08, 2025

In a recent episode of her podcast “Ex-Psychic Saved,” former medium Jenn Nizza sounded the alarm on grounding, or “earthing,” calling it a deceptive New Age practice built on pseudoscience and spiritually dangerous ideas. 

Joined by researcher Marcia Montenegro, a former astrologer and the founder of Christian Answers for the New Age, the pair offered an extensive breakdown of the spiritual, scientific and financial dangers behind the popular wellness trend.

“Is it an innocent healing modality or a New Age deception?” Nizza asked at the top of the episode. “We’re going to dive into this topic of grounding today.”

Montenegro began by debunking the notion that grounding is simply walking barefoot outside or enjoying nature.

“Grounding is not liking to walk barefoot outside. It’s not finding the outdoors relaxing. It’s not appreciating God’s creation,” she said. “Those things are fine. They’re not grounding. Grounding is based on the belief that energy in the Earth is healing, and that’s not biblical, it’s pagan.”

She explained that the practice is tied to New Age energy beliefs, similar to those found in crystal healing and other alternative therapies. “There is some kind of energy theory going on,” Montenegro said. “It’s wrapped up in scientific jargon to sound credible, but it has zero factual support.”

Clickhere to listen to the Ex-Psychic Saved podcast

Montenegro traced the grounding trend to Clint Ober, a former cable TV executive, not a scientist. Ober’s ideas were then promoted by others, including the late Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a cardiologist who specialized in integrative medicine and called himself a “certified bioenergetic psychotherapist.”

“Integrative medicine is just a rebrand of alternative healing,” Montenegro warned. “They integrate superstition with science. And ‘bioenergetic’ is one of those New Age buzzwords that signals energy healing. That’s a red flag.”

Montenegro noted that one of Ober’s associates is a known advocate of energy medicine. “These are not people I would take my dog to,” she said. “These are not credible sources of truth or healing.”

According to Montenegro, grounding is not just ineffective, it’s spiritually dangerous. “When you fall for a deception or give it worth, you are helping to make your mind more open to other deceptions,” she said.

Nizza agreed. “You buy grounding sheets today, and maybe next week you’re going to a sound bath or a New Age yoga class. These things are gateways deeper into deception.”

Montenegro described how these practices rely heavily on anecdotal testimonials rather than data: “Testimonials are not evidence. That’s a logical fallacy called the anecdotal fallacy.”

She warned Christians in particular not to divide their spiritual loyalty. “If you’re a Christian participating in grounding, you are honoring a false belief system. You’re giving spiritual weight to something rooted in paganism.”

Both women condemned attempts to justify grounding with biblical references. “There was a post claiming Moses taking off his sandals at the burning bush was an example of grounding,” Montenegro said. “But the ground was holy because of God’s presence, not because it had some energy in it.”

Nizza added, “That’s what the enemy does — he’ll try to make you think that God is connected to these things so you feel good about them. It’s not biblical. It’s deception.”

Montenegro warned that grounding is just one example of a growing trend: the infiltration of New Age beliefs into the Church, often through concepts like energy healing, vibrations and frequencies.

“This is the heart of all pagan belief systems,” she said. “In Taoism, it’s ‘chi;’ in Hinduism, it’s ‘prana;’ in the South Pacific, it’s ‘mana.’ In the West, we’ve called it ‘life force’ or ‘vitalism.’ Satan is trying to bring that into the Church.”

The podcast also touched on prominent figures Montenegro sees as responsible for spreading these ideas, including Dr. Laura Sanger, who has spoken on Christian platforms about topics like frequencies and Nephilim-related theories. Montenegro criticized her use of Scripture and called her ideas “completely unbiblical.”

“She says things like the walls of Jericho fell because Joshua used ‘the sounds of Heaven,’” Montenegro said. “This is the kind of nonsense Christians are now being taught as theology.”

Nizza emphasized the importance of discernment. “We want to pray for the deceived,” she said. “But we also have to expose these things as they come. Ephesians 5:11 says, ‘Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.’”

Montenegro addressed accusations that she’s overly critical. “My ministry is about warning against New Age and occult deception,” she said. “I’m not trying to be negative. I’m trying to protect people and help the Church remain pure. That’s what we’re called to.”

The episode concluded with a sober reminder. “There are real dangers in the world,” Montenegro said. “But these exaggerated dangers, these false ideas, keep people from thinking clearly. Christians need to be sober-minded and discerning.”

Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com