The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has used artificial intelligence, namely ChatGPT, to turn the Bible’s Book of Genesis into an animal rights religious message “filled with vegan teachings.”
The left-wing organization is targeting its new modern version of the book to members of the GenZ generation. PETA is promoting its book as a “cruelty-free Story of Creation.”
“The message in Genesis is that God created every sentient being, He saw that they were good, and He gave them greens for sustenance,” the organization said on its website.
The book’s distortions of Genesis include:
- A revised version of the story is told in Chapter 21. According to the Bible, Abraham and Sarah were 100 and 90 years old when they had their son Isaac. But in the PETA version, they also adopt a dog named Herbie, emphasizing the importance to adopt dogs from a shelter or a rescue organization.
- A rewritten Chapter 22 in which Abraham travels to Moriah and befriends a lamb in order to show his reverence and respect for God’s creation rather than how the original Bible reveals how he was tested and proved faithful, so God spared his son Isaac and provided a substitute sacrifice of a ram as an offering.
“The Bible has long been used to justify all forms of oppression, so we’ve used ChatGPT to make it clear that a loving God would never endorse exploitation of or cruelty to animals,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk argued in a press release. “It took God only six days to create the entire world, but we realized it would take us years to rewrite the whole Bible, which is why we’ve started with just the first book.”
CBN News reached out to PETA for comment. The organization responded by admitting they rewrote God’s Word just to make people start talking about their agenda.
“We asked an AI to create The Book as a modern companion to the Bible, and we’re pleased with the results, because this complementary piece provides readers with moral lessons relevant to the world of the 21st century,” PETA told us. “We expected that The Book would initiate vital conversations about treating all sentient beings with dignity, kindness, and respect—and it has done exactly that!”
As CBN News has reported, ChatGPT can write in response to prompts from users. It is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI.
Using AI technology, ChatGPT takes user inputs, such as questions or prompts, and then does its best to output answers or requested results, according to WPDE-TV.
Darrell Bock, executive director of Cultural Engagement and senior research professor of New Testament Studies at the Dallas Theological Seminary, told The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) that PETA’s book is a misrepresentation of the Bible, a rewriting done to simply fit the organization’s message.
“It’s … a misrepresentation of what the Bible presents about creation and in that, it distorts the divine order that is a part of that creation story by really reframing the way the story is presented,” Bock said. “And so it’s revisionism as opposed to really substantively reflecting what the Bible is saying. It fits PETA’s mission, but it doesn’t reflect what the Bible says about the creation.”
This is not the first time AI has been used in areas of faith. As CBN News reported in June, a unique sermon was delivered via artificial intelligence in a Lutheran church in Germany. A ChatGPT chatbot asked the people in the fully packed St. Paul’s Church in the town of Fuerth to rise from the pews and praise the Lord. The bot was personified by an avatar of a bearded black man on a huge screen above the altar. It preached to more than 300 people who showed up for the experimental Lutheran church service, generated almost entirely by artificial intelligence.
In March, a volunteer group of activists known as The Singularity Group created an AI Jesus on the gaming platform Twitch to answer users’ questions, according to NBC News.
The AI, available 24 hours a day via livestream, shares its take on any kind of question imaginable. Still, the bot has said it is merely here to offer “guidance and wisdom based on Jesus’ teachings,” reminding viewers that he is not an actual religious figure and should not be taken as a source of authority, according to the outlet.
David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at the Family Research Center told the DCNF the avatar is not reflective of who Jesus is in the Bible, and as a result, misrepresents His character to viewers. He noted the danger of putting “moral platitudes into the mouth” of an artificially generated “Jesus.”
Bock also had similar concerns and warned politically motivated groups against making “Jesus in their own image,” the outlet reported.
“Christian ministers are going to have their work cut out for them to help people understand what the real Jesus actually taught on a host of issues,” he said.
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