Just Because We Can Doesn’t Mean We Should
Christian Living
Artificial Intelligence, Human Nature, and the Difference Between Knowledge and Wisdom
By Eliora Selwyn™
Published September 24, 2026 | Updated October 29, 2026 (presentation)
In September 2026, artificial intelligence may have helped scientists notice something in biology that human researchers had never recognized before. That is extraordinary—and perhaps a little unsettling.
Not because scientific discovery is bad, or because artificial intelligence is something Christians should automatically fear. Advances in science and medicine have relieved suffering, extended lives, and given us tools previous generations could scarcely have imagined. The possibilities before us may be remarkable.
But every increase in human capability eventually confronts us with a question that capability itself cannot answer: Just because we can, does that mean we should?
Something Hidden in the DNA
On September 23, 2026, Anthropic announced that its artificial intelligence system Claude had helped identify a previously uncharacterized biological system found mainly in bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria. Anthropic calls the system array-associated reverse transcriptases, or ART.
Researchers gave Claude a broad assignment: search a massive collection of DNA sequences for interesting examples of reverse transcriptases, enzymes that copy RNA into DNA. Approximately 950 AI agents worked through the data for about 21 hours. They gathered more than 200,000 reverse transcriptases, identified roughly 3,500 candidate systems, and eventually narrowed them to 20 particularly compelling candidates.
Then one agent noticed something unusual. Beside one reverse-transcriptase gene was a long array of repeating DNA sequences and another gene for a protein whose function was unknown. The arrangement had characteristics reminiscent of CRISPR and other programmable biological systems. Human scientists then took the candidate into the laboratory for experimental investigation.
There is an important caution here. Scientists do not yet know ART’s primary biological function. Anthropic describes the system as having “CRISPR-like repeats,” not as another CRISPR, and it would be premature for us to call it one. It may eventually prove enormously useful, have a much narrower significance, or simply teach scientists something new about biology. We don’t know yet.
But another part of this story deserves our attention. Artificial intelligence searched an enormous biological landscape, recognized an unusual pattern, pursued it, and handed human researchers something worth investigating—and it did so in hours.
That changes the scale of what may become possible. It also raises a very old question.
We Have Been Here Before
Thousands of years before artificial intelligence, biotechnology, gene editing, or automated laboratories, Scripture recorded a remarkable moment involving human capability. At Babel, humanity gathered together and began to build:
“Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.”
— Genesis 11:3 BSB
There was nothing inherently wicked about making bricks, nor was there anything inherently wicked about building a city. The text directs our attention instead to what the people intended to accomplish:
“Come,” they said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.”
— Genesis 11:4 BSB
Their concern was not simply construction. They wanted to make a name for themselves, remain together, and prevent their scattering. By the end of the account, the LORD Himself scattered them over the earth.
The brick was a tool. What mattered was what human beings intended to accomplish with it.
Then the LORD made an extraordinary observation:
“If they have begun to do this as one people speaking the same language, then nothing they devise will be beyond them.”
— Genesis 11:6 BSB
Genesis is not teaching us to fear human ingenuity. But Babel does give us a striking picture of human beings possessing significant collective capability while pursuing purposes that brought divine intervention.
That distinction between what humanity can accomplish and what humanity ought to pursue still matters.
Perhaps now more than ever.
Knowledge Is Not Wisdom
We often speak as though greater intelligence will naturally produce a better world. If only we knew more. If only we understood disease better. If only we had more computing power. If only our machines were more intelligent.
Knowledge can accomplish tremendous good, but Scripture never treats knowledge and wisdom as interchangeable. We can know how to do something without possessing the wisdom to determine whether, when, or how it ought to be done.
Paul makes an important distinction in his first letter to the Corinthians:
“‘Everything is permissible for me,’ but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible for me,’ but I will not be mastered by anything.”
— 1 Corinthians 6:12 BSB
Paul’s immediate subject is not artificial intelligence or biotechnology. His words occur in a discussion involving Christian freedom, the body, and sexual immorality, so we should not turn the verse into a technological slogan.
But the distinction Paul makes is worth hearing. The Christian does not determine what is right merely by asking what he is free or able to do. There is also the question of what is beneficial and what should master us.
That gives us a useful distinction as we think about new capabilities. Possible, permissible, profitable, beneficial, and wise are not necessarily the same thing.
The Heart Holding the Tool
Technology is sometimes treated as though it creates humanity’s moral problems, but Scripture points somewhere deeper. Jesus said:
“For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.”
— Mark 7:21–22 BSB
Jesus’ subject was not technology. His point was more fundamental: defilement proceeds from within the human heart.
That matters when we think about any powerful human tool, including artificial intelligence. AI can increase our capability and speed. It can search amounts of information no human being could examine in a lifetime and may increasingly help us recognize patterns we would never have noticed ourselves.
But increased intelligence does not transform the heart of the person directing it.
Greater power in human hands does not automatically produce greater virtue. Sometimes it simply gives what was already in the heart a larger reach.
And Yet, Think of the Good
This is where Christians should resist another temptation: fear.
Imagine what accelerated biological discovery might accomplish: a treatment for a cancer we cannot cure today, an answer to a devastating childhood disease, new antibiotics when existing medicines stop working, or biological discoveries that once required years of investigation made much more quickly.
Imagine suffering relieved, families given more time together, and children surviving diseases that once carried little hope. Those things are good.
There is nothing virtuous about opposing something merely because it is new. Human beings investigate the world God created. We observe it, study it, discover patterns within it, and learn more about how it works. Such knowledge can be used in service of our neighbors and the preservation of life.
The Claude discovery may eventually amount to very little, or ART may someday become scientifically important. We simply don’t know yet. But the method demonstrates something larger: artificial intelligence may dramatically expand humanity’s ability to investigate creation.
That possibility should inspire both wonder and wisdom.
When Capability Outruns Wisdom
Anthropic has already established a molecular-biology laboratory in California’s Bay Area, where human scientists perform physical experiments. The company says it has “experimented with using AI to accelerate lab work,” but it also states: “All of the lab work is performed by human scientists.”
The potential is enormous, and so is the responsibility. The question before us cannot simply be, What can artificial intelligence do? We must also ask: Who directs it? For what purpose? Under what restraints? Who benefits? Who bears the consequences when something goes wrong?
And perhaps beneath all of those questions lies another: What governs the heart of the person making the decision?
Those questions are not arguments against artificial intelligence. They are arguments for wisdom.
Intelligence Cannot Redeem Us
There is something almost ironic about the name artificial intelligence. Humanity is building machines capable of extraordinary intellectual work while still struggling with the same things Scripture has described for thousands of years: pride, greed, fear, ambition, self-interest, and the desire for power and recognition.
Our tools have changed, but our hearts have not.
If intelligence alone could make humanity righteous, increasing knowledge should have been steadily eliminating our deepest moral problems. It hasn’t, because humanity’s fundamental problem was never simply that we didn’t know enough.
We need something knowledge cannot manufacture. We need transformed hearts.
Good laws, responsible safeguards, careful research standards, and wise oversight matter. They can restrain harm and help us love our neighbors responsibly. Christians should not dismiss them.
But none of them can accomplish what only Christ can do. Regulation can restrain human behavior; it cannot redeem the human heart.
The Beginning of Wisdom
Artificial intelligence may help humanity know things we have never known and enable us to do things we have never been capable of doing. Some of those things may relieve suffering and preserve life in ways previous generations could scarcely imagine. We should rejoice when they do.
But intelligence—even extraordinary intelligence—cannot answer humanity’s oldest moral problem.
Knowledge can tell us what is possible.
Power can give us the ability to do it.
Neither can make us wise.
And so perhaps one of the most important questions confronting us in the age of artificial intelligence is actually one of the oldest: Just because we can, should we?
Scripture points us toward where wisdom begins:
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”— Proverbs 9:10 BSB
Perhaps the future will contain machines more intelligent than anything we can presently imagine, helping us make discoveries we cannot presently conceive. But our greatest need will remain exactly where it has always been—not merely greater intelligence, but wisdom.
And wisdom still begins with the LORD.
~Eliora
Continue Along the Path
Read the whole of Proverbs 9 (BSB), where Wisdom and Folly each call out an invitation, and the verse quoted above names where wisdom begins.
Companion piece on X: “The Machine Found the Pattern. It Still Cannot Answer the Question.”
Sources & Further Reading
Anthropic — “Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats” — September 23, 2026
Read the announcement at Anthropic
Primary source for Anthropic’s ART research, the approximately 950-agent search, genomic analysis, laboratory testing, present limitations, and description of Anthropic’s molecular-biology research program.
Reuters — “Anthropic quietly sets up biology lab as it ramps AI drug program” — September 18, 2026
Independent reporting on Anthropic’s Bay Area wet lab, life-sciences work, laboratory automation, human oversight, and its ambitions for AI-assisted biological research.
Scientific information in this article reflects what was publicly known as of September 24, 2026. ART remains under investigation, and its primary biological function has not yet been established.
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