Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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What happens when a machine offers to give you back someone you love?

That question opens this episode with Autumn Ridenour. We begin with the idea of a “granny bot”: a chatbot built from a dead relative’s messages, voice notes, and emails. It sounds comforting at first, but Autumn helps us see why such technologies do not really preserve communion. They risk replacing grief, memory, and creaturely acceptance with a digital imitation of presence.

Dr. Autumn Ridenour is a Christian ethicist at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the author of books on Sabbath, aging, and the moral challenges of the digital world. She brings biblical depth and Augustinian insight to some of the hardest questions raised by AI. In our conversation, she argues that the digital age tempts us to resist human limits rather than receive them. But dependence, embodiment, and finitude are not defects to be engineered away. They are part of what it means to be creatures before God.

We also talk about Babel, transhumanism, aging, and the difference between simulation and real relationship. Again and again, Autumn points beyond Silicon Valley’s promises to the richer Christian hope of face-to-face communion with God and one another. She joined me on Silicon Spiritualities to explore what AI reveals about our deepest longings, and why no machine can finally satisfy them.

*Resources Mentioned:*
_Sabbath Rest_ as Vocation by Autumn Ridenour - amazon.com/Sabbath-Rest-Vocation-Enquiries-Theological/dp/0567692884?tag=thegospcoal-20
_Restlessness and Belonging_ by Autumn Ridenour - amazon.com/dp/1481319744?tag=thegospcoal-20
_A Grief Observed_ by C.S. Lewis - amazon.com/dp/0060652381?tag=thegospcoal-20

00:00 Welcome to Silicon Spiritualities
01:04 The “granny bot” scenario
02:10 Grief, hope, and the reality of death
03:15 Why recreating loved ones with AI is dangerous
05:33 Memory, communion, and faith
07:54 Remembering someone vs. projecting them through AI
11:21 AI as a new Babel
12:00 Babel, power, confusion, and fragmentation
17:41 AI and the concentration of power
20:54 Restless curiosity vs. restful wisdom
23:10 How algorithms train us to keep browsing
25:56 AI is shaping our habits
26:42 Bible passages for thinking about AI
27:16 Sabbath, Genesis, Hebrews, and human limits
27:44 Psalm 115 and the danger of idols
30:29 Romans 12 and the renewing of the mind
32:53 Are we becoming like the machines we made?
34:04 Human limits and the middle voice
35:34 The good of creaturely limits
38:51 AI, chaos, and the loss of boundedness
41:21 Are limits always bad?
42:50 Transhumanism and the desire to exceed the body
43:58 We live on borrowed breath
46:41 The danger of total independence
47:19 AI, parenting, and the “super caregiver” question
50:39 Why caregiving should not be outsourced
53:36 The middle voice: receiving and responding
59:01 Why the real matters in the age of AI
1:00:41 Can AI participate in the middle voice?
1:02:13 AI relationships and narcissism
1:03:52 Aging as vocation
1:05:00 Aging, loss, and growth
1:07:29 Care, cure, and the limits of medicine
1:09:05 The hope of seeing God face to face
1:13:20 AI as an opportunity for the church
1:15:58 Two closing questions
1:16:21 The inefficient habit Autumn is keeping
1:17:37 What AI reveals about Autumn’s heart

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PREORDER The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, featuring Ridenour, Watkin, Brett McCracken, and many others, such as Ben Sasse and Alan Noble - store.thegospelcoalition.org/product/9781956593211/the-ai-apocalypse-paperback

JOIN the conversation on Discord, along with other Silicon Spiritualities listeners.

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