By Abigail Kengor · Contributing Writer
When defining human flourishing, Christians must consider the body and soul within a human. God created man in His Image, for a purpose both spiritual and physical. Our purpose is to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” We are commanded to love Him with our souls by knowing and honoring Him, and with our strength by serving and glorifying Him.
We were created and entrusted with intelligence unique from all other earthly creatures, as part of being made in God’s Image and Likeness; our duty is to use this intelligence to God’s Glory.
Consequently, a key part of human flourishing is spiritual flourishing. With man as body and soul, human flourishing can be succinctly defined as abundant health of body and soul. Human flourishing thus involves growth in virtue and holiness, as well as strength and health; after the Fall, this growth is more intentional, wrought through sanctifying work.
Art is the use of human creativity to highlight something transcendent — God’s beauty, truth and goodness.
Part of loving something is seeing its beauty; that is, apprehending its true lovability, residing in its goodness. Creating art, then, necessarily has a relational aspect: One has a will to portray beauty. This goodwill is love; without a soul, art cannot be produced.
Art, coming from the Latin word “ars” or “technical skill,” is a particular way in which we can love the LORD with our strength, heart and soul. We invest our time and our minds in a careful and contemplative process, producing something honoring God’s transcendence.
We honor His creativity by using our own, since He shared with us this creative power. The making itself enhances and gives worth to the final project.
Artificial Intelligence is antithetical to human flourishing, as it eases the work that is for our sanctification. This ease is not conducive to human flourishing, but to weakness and laziness. AI art is harmful to human flourishing also because it is devoid of soul and consequently not true art.
Reliance on Artificial Intelligence, essentially a brain technology, makes us less reliant on our own intelligence. In the creative field, this is especially nonsensical.
Creativity is a delight. Joy is a divine gift that accompanies acts of sub-creation. The joy we have in completing the callings of God, like love, or any virtue, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit and a good pursuit.
The process of creativity delights the mind in a way that receiving prompts from a computer does not.
An analogy is exercising for healthy weight loss. Instead of running, you could have a pound of flesh removed. Is that as fulfilling? Perhaps you’ll be content, but you won’t have the confidence or satisfaction from the growth in strength and discipline that led to that achievement. And you will not truly have health, but only its façade.
With no exercise or lifestyle change, that quick fix isn’t likely to remain. It will ultimately be depressing as you come to believe that you are incapable of losing weight on your own. This artificial option achieves the result and misses the point; it is devoid of soul and destructive to health. It involves no joy and it sacrifices valuable means to attain a pointless end.
Manmade art is inherently better than AI art. It can only be true art if it is crafted by man, not AI.
This doesn’t mean that every piece of manmade art is technically superior to an artificial one; AI may provide superb imitations. But it doesn’t matter how technically good it is. If it is produced in the manner of AI, the very meaning of “art” is lost.
AI doesn’t meaningfully employ human strength to produce art. Though AI was designed by human strength, its strength has been rented from a human’s heart and soul. He has given his strength to the machine and gone away to put his heart into something else.
Creation of art in such a way is not the labor of love that it ought to be, involving heart, soul and strength, but a mere technical exercise. It cheapens the process, devaluing the product.
While they are a creation of man, AI art-generators remove the heart from the act of glory to God. It is analogical to sending one’s mother a generic birthday card with $20 and no original writing and equating it to showing up at her door with a bouquet of flowers and chocolate that together cost $20.
There is no intelligence in Artificial Intelligence, nor is there art — only their semblance. It has no soul, no love and nothing of the finest qualities with which God designed His intelligent creatures.
It would be far better to return to human artistic endeavors and take the marvelously joyful opportunities for creativity which arise daily.
