When AI, God, and Critical Thinking End Up in the Same Frame

I recently came across a YouTube video where a person asked ChatGPT a simple but heavy question: Does God exist? The condition was interesting. ChatGPT was told not to use any world data, not to think about what people believe, and to answer only using its “sheer intelligence.”

At first, the answer felt deep and convincing. It talked about how physics explains how things happen but not why they exist at all. It spoke about natural laws being so precise that even a small change would make life impossible. It also questioned how humans are conscious when we are made of atoms that have no consciousness of their own. The conclusion was that God, as religion defines it, may not be necessary but some ultimate intelligence source must exist.

The more I listened, the clearer one thing became. This was not original thinking by AI. It was a repetition of very old philosophical arguments that humans have been discussing for centuries. And that is where the real issue begins.

Belief in God is personal. It can belong to an individual, a family, a group, or a culture. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem starts when belief is presented as fact by mixing it with pseudo-science, loose logic, and incorrect technical claims.

If you are a social media content creator, you will get views. You will get reach. You will make money. But when thousands of people watching your video start repeating those arguments as truth, the damage is already done. You don’t just influence opinions you slowly weaken society’s ability to think critically.

One of the biggest claims in the video was that ChatGPT used “sheer intelligence” without relying on any data. That claim itself is false. ChatGPT does not think. It does not have consciousness. It does not form beliefs. It is a language model trained on human-written books, articles, and philosophical discussions.

When someone tells AI not to use “world data,” it does not suddenly start reasoning independently. It simply avoids numerical facts and instead uses logical patterns it has learned from humans. What sounded like AI discovering truth was actually AI summarizing centuries of human philosophy in smooth language.

The argument that physics explains how but not why is not new. Science focuses on mechanisms how gravity works, how forces interact, how systems behave. It does not answer questions about purpose or meaning. That does not make science incomplete it simply means science and philosophy ask different kinds of questions. Using that gap to insert belief is a philosophical choice, not scientific proof.

The watchmaker example where complexity is used as evidence of design is also a classic argument. Yes, the laws of nature are precise. Yes, life depends on very specific conditions. But precision alone does not automatically prove design. Science continues to explore other explanations using evidence, while belief relies on faith. Mixing the two only creates confusion.

The question of consciousness is genuinely interesting. Humans are made of atoms, and atoms themselves are not conscious. Science can explain brain activity and information processing, but it still cannot fully explain subjective experience why we feel, why awareness feels personal. This is an open question, not a solved one. Saying “we don’t know yet” is honest. Turning that uncertainty into proof of a higher power is not.

The ChatGPT answer shown in the video was balanced and well-worded, but it was not new. It was not AI finding God. It was human thought, reflected back through a machine. Calling it “AI’s sheer intelligence” is misleading.

Belief is personal. Faith is valid. But when belief borrows the language of science without understanding it, we don’t strengthen faith we weaken thinking. And that cost is paid by society, not by the content creator.