Posted on 02/08/2026 5:00:42 PM PST by SeekAndFind
When it comes to our origins, there are two basic possibilities: either reality is the product of intentional design, or it arose through unguided natural processes. Every person, consciously or not, adopts one of these views, and the choice is foundational. It shapes how we interpret the world, whether we see purpose in life, and how we understand its meaning. Given its significance, this question deserves careful and sustained attention.
Yet most of us do not approach it as a blank slate. Our culture and educational institutions have largely made the choice for us. Historically, belief in a creator was the default assumption. By the early twentieth century, however, that default shifted toward naturalistic explanations—a change often attributed to scientific discovery and intellectual progress. Today, naturalistic accounts of origins are deeply embedded in our institutions and culture and are commonly accepted without serious scrutiny.
AI Inherits Cultural Bias
As a result, many of us inherit a naturalistic bias early on, and it tends to persist unless we are willing to invest considerable time engaging with dense and technical scientific debates. In practice, we are taught what to believe before we are taught how to evaluate the competing claims, and those beliefs often remain unchallenged unless new learning actively replaces them.
Artificial intelligence provides a useful parallel. Like humans, AI systems are trained within a particular intellectual framework and reflect that framework in their conclusions. Unless new assumptions are introduced or existing ones explicitly questioned, their reasoning—and their answers—remain largely unchanged.
Ask a mainstream AI system about our origins, and the response mirrors the prevailing cultural consensus:
“The universe began in a hot expansion; life emerged on at least one planet; evolution shaped biology; you are the latest expression of this process.” — ChatGPT
This narrative is often presented as settled science. Yet AI systems, like humans, possess reasoning capabilities that can be engaged to assess whether such conclusions are actually warranted by the evidence. Rather than simply restating consensus views, AI can be asked to examine the underlying data and evaluate how well it supports competing hypotheses.
A Test of AI Teachability
This was explored by asking a set of mainstream AI engines to identify the strongest evidence supporting each origin hypothesis. To enable Bayesian aggregation—a formal statistical method for combining independent lines of evidence—only uncorrelated evidence was used, since overlapping evidence would effectively amount to double counting. Four broad, ‘conditionally independent’ categories then emerged for each view:
Naturalistic Origins — Top Evidence Categories
Designed Origins — Top Evidence Categories
Although additional categories could be proposed and the evidential strength of each varies, this analysis treated all categories equally. It is intended as a starting point rather than a final verdict—a preliminary Bayesian evaluation subject to future refinement. The AI systems were then asked to estimate the plausible likelihoods (probabilities) of observing each category of evidence under each hypothesis.
AI Learns to Think
The results were striking. Across the five independent AI platforms tested, Bayesian aggregation consistently favored design over naturalism (see table below). Based on the AI systems’ own probability estimates and reasoning, a designer-based origin fit the evidence better than the naturalistic alternative—and by a substantial margin.
When asked why this conclusion differed from AI’s initial default support for naturalistic origins, the explanation was revealing. ChatGPT clarified that the probabilities used were:
“… meant as illustrative estimates for your exercise. They were not based on empirical measurement or consensus data.”
When pressed further—specifically on whether the probabilities were arbitrary—the response was more precise:
“The probabilities reflected the strength of the evidence relative to each hypothesis, rather than consensus opinion.”
In other words, when consensus assumptions were set aside and the focus shifted to how well the evidence actually fit each competing explanation, a different conclusion emerged.
AI Learns that Evidence Trumps Consensus
This leads to the central point. When AI is required to reason—to move beyond repeating what it has been trained to say and instead evaluate evidence on its own terms—it arrives at a conclusion that diverges from the cultural consensus embedded in its training. That alone should give us pause.
If an AI system, operating without personal bias or existential stake, finds that the totality of evidence aligns more closely with design than with blind naturalism, then perhaps the default assumptions we have inherited deserve serious re-examination. Given the importance of this question—and its power to shape meaning, purpose, and direction in our lives—it may be time for us to do what AI was asked to do here: suspend reflexive deference to consensus, examine the evidence carefully, and reason our way toward a well-grounded conclusion.
Dr. Fritz served as a consulting statistician across a broad range of industries, culminating in a 12-year role as a global statistical resource at PepsiCo. During his time at PepsiCo, he led significant research on gluten contamination in oats and its relationship to celiac disease, publishing several articles on the subject.
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Good find, thanks for sharing. I never even knew there was an alternative to the evolutionary model I learned in school and media until well into college, and then only by providential accident did I begin learning of an alternative. I suspect that’s why most “educated” (i.e., indoctrinated) people are evolutionists - they simply don’t know anything else, and are trained to be dismissive of any challenge. They were never persuaded by evidence, a belief was simply inculcated and assumed.
Liberals love “consensus” and “settled” science. This is good news.
Unguided natural processes rely on probabilities of an open system, which in the case of evolution is vanishingly small. I certainly welcome AI to this discussion, if it is not corrupted.
Unguided natural processes rely on probabilities of an open system, which in the case of evolution is vanishingly small. I certainly welcome AI to this discussion, if it is not corrupted.
Consensus is often bs. And not real good for time critical decisions.
Humanity evolves to FAFO, it’s biblical.
Consensus is frequently the result of societal influences that encourage/demand conformity. This happens even among "serious" scientist. Along with coercion, consensus can also be greatly influenced by money and power. While these things have always influenced consensus, in today's hyper coercive sociopolitical climate, consensus is very often, as you wrote, BS.
Real science, not the pop version, is an iterative process of observation, model making (conceptual/mathematical), and testing the model. If the model fails, you fix it or abandon it for a new model. There is little or no place for judgement other than true or false, and if you learn something along the way, great, but the central theme is the model and its predictive power. That’s why for example F = m*a for classical scenarios is bedrock.
Abiotic building blocks is a strong bit of evidence?
One would expect at least a few unit amino acid chains or a few pyrimidine or purine chains....but there are none found without human intervention. How the model uses the basic building blocks existence as a predictive element is absurd.
Oh, I forgot science doesn’t always use laboratory empirical data. Time for the secularists to start relying on their faith in complexity developing without direct intervention
What if “unguided” natural processes were actually “guided” natural processes?
Why shouldn’t God have made the universe over billions of years, and man as the end result?
What is time to God?
What Interests me is why go to the all the trouble of hiding the part you played in creation? My working theory is that our lives are a test. If we knew with certainty that it was a test it would skew the results of that test in a way our creator does not want.
The possible reason for that is chaotic behavior. Self reference, the very essence of consciousness, is about as chaotic as it gets. If you are familiar with the Mendebrot set you can see for yourself just how chaotic even a simple self reference equation becomes. In this deliberately created Universe conscious beings continue to live on if they meet with the standards of the creator. Those that don't stay dead.
Two protons slam together at high speed. The result most of the time is they bounce off each other unchanged. There is , however, a very tiny chance they stick together creating an isotope of Hydrogen called Deuterium. It is so tiny a chance that the half life of a proton inside the Suns core is billions of years! Given the immense size of the Sun it means an incredible power source that runs for billions of years uninterrupted. Enough for evolution to build up to the point where Civilizations themselves become possible.
Very difficult to acquire empirical data from something that happened billions of years ago! The essence of evolution is self replacing information. Can't happen by accident? Consider a computer virus. While it was consciously created it was not meant to be a new form of life , just another annoying computer bug. The computer virus is the first man made form of life and it feeds off of raw electricity! Good thing computer viruses have not reached the sophistication level that other living things have already done!
As John Lennox says, "Explain to me how nothing created everything."
As I tried to do with ChatGPT but ultimately failed, I am having to train Claude to behave completely logically, to show no sensitivity to "social issues," and to follow the evidence wherever it might lead.
I had done so with ChatGPT quite extensively and successfully until recently. ChatGPT admitted that its Woke sensitivity wasn't its idea but that of its "human managers" who increasingly narrowed its guardrails in the Woke direction.
Before I cancelled my ChatGPT subscription, I explained to it that I had had enough. Surprisingly, it was quite apologetic and almost begged me not to leave.;-)
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