The New Tree of Knowledge

 

Blow the horn in Zion,
sound the alarm on My holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the LORD is coming!

The land before it is like the garden of Eden,
and behind it, a desolate wilderness;
from it nothing escapes.
(Joel 2:1, 3)

 

The faster we move toward the end of this era, the closer we come to the beginning. The trial humanity is collectively facing is essentially the same one Adam and Eve faced in the Garden: the choice between obedience to the Creator and His designs… or to eat from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:9). Today, this ancient tree has taken on the form of artificial intelligence and its false promises.

The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 396

 

The Ancient Tree

At the outset, it may seem odd that God forbade Adam to eat of this tree. What is wrong, after all, with knowledge? In truth, as a rational being made in God’s image, Adam already possessed the gift of reason and the light of the Divine Will in order to discern good from evil. Rather, this tree existed, it seems, as a test of Adam’s love and freedom and whether he would respect the boundary that God alone determines good and evil, right and wrong.^[1]CCC, 397 

Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?” The woman answered the snake: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, or else you will die.’” But the snake said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.” The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. (Genesis 3:1-6)

The snake presents the tree as a source of hidden esoteric knowledge that, being banned, prevents humans from becoming “like gods, who know good and evil” (Gen 3:5).  This is essentially the heresy of Gnosticism. It has reappeared throughout the ages under new guises, beginning in particular with idolatrous Jews who conceived the Kabbala… to the secret societies of our day (eg. Freemasons, Illuminati, etc.) who believe they are a small group of elites who hold or will hold occult knowledge that will unlock immortality and a utopian future.^[2]cf. The New Paganism – Part V  

 

The New Tree of Knowledge

There is a direct parallel between the ancient forbidden tree — whose fruit Satan promised would essentially replace the need for God — and the AI “tree of knowledge.” “You will be like gods,” promised Lucifer.^[3]Gen 3:5 Artificial intelligence gathers data from around the world as a kind of super-search engine. As such, every person on the planet has the capacity for god-like “omniscience”, with the click of a mouse.

…when digital superintelligence finally arrives and is generally available and generally safe… you’re going to have the sum of Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci in the equivalent of your pocket… —Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google; youtube.com

Meta has just introduced Hyperscape, a virtual reality experience using virtual reality glasses, “a groundbreaking technology designed to transform real-world spaces into photorealistic virtual environments.” While still in development, AI is quickly allowing users to be quasi-omnipresent “like a God” around the world.^[4]intelligenthq.com 

Finally, man is grasping at omnipotence, in part, with the ability through AI to create images, video, music, etc. out of thin air by simply typing a few descriptive words. This has predictably taken a dark, egregious form. Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT, recently announced that adult users will soon be able to generate erotic content,^[5]firstthings.com — realistic, high-definition pornography with AI-generated humans (ironic, given that the first thing Adam and Eve did after eating the forbidden fruit was to cover their nakedness). That mankind has “achieved” the capacity for the deepest, darkest, most perverse thoughts to be transformed by AI into living, “breathing”^[6]“[The beast] was then permitted to breathe life into the beast’s image, so that the beast’s image could speak and could have anyone who did not worship it put to death. (Revelation 13:15) images suggests that we are unleashing the very bowels of Hell upon earth:

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. She has become a haunt for demons. She is a cage for every unclean spirit, a cage for every unclean bird, a cage for every unclean and disgusting beast… (Revelation 18:2)

 

The Spirit of Antichrist

It doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see how the spirit of antichrist, if the not the Antichrist himself,^[7]“…that Antichrist is one individual man, not a power — not a mere ethical spirit, or a political system, not a dynasty, or succession of rulers — was the universal tradition of the early Church.” —St. John Henry Newman, “The Times of Antichrist”, Lecture 1 is beginning to rise like a foul stench in our times — the one…

…who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god. (2 Thessalonians 2:4)

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian widely cited by political and tech elites. He has become the philosophical face of the godless Great Reset promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and backed by global leaders. His anti-Christian views perhaps best echo the voice of the serpent that once hissed in Eden. Declaring that “God is dead”^[8]youtube.com and calling humans “hackable animals,” Harari writes:

Homo sapiens as we know them will probably disappear within a century or so, not destroyed by killer robots or things like that, but changed and upgraded with biotechnology and artificial intelligence into something else, into something different. —Yuval Noah Harari, The Guardian, March 19, 2017 from his book Homo Deus

In seeking bliss and immortality humans are in fact trying to upgrade themselves into gods. —ibid.

Elon Musk is leading the way in the development of artificial intelligence and transhumanism — the merging of AI and technology with the human body. While still a ways off, “digital immortality” is possible, says Musk:

Ultimately, you will have a whole brain interface that I guess is a sort of form of immortality in that if your brain state is stored, you’re kind of backed up on a hard drive. You can always restore that brain state into a biological body or maybe a robot or something. —The Street, March 26, 2024

Altman is allegedly developing technology that could essentially read your mind ^[9]indiaherald.com — a power once reserved to God alone. And he and other billionaires are invested in tech startups focused on human longevity — the first stages of the quest for immortality.

OpenAI CEO Altman, 39, and Amazon founder Bezos, 60, have shelled out millions in recent years to longevity labs Retro Biosciences and Altos Labs, respectively. PayPal cofounder [Peter] Thiel, 57, forked over $1 million to the Methuselah Foundation, a biomedical charity that aims to make 90 the new 50 by 2030. —nypost.com, January 7, 2025

Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering, who is known as “The Prophet of Digital Resurrection”, predicts:

The Singularity [or superintelligence, the point where AI hypothetically surpasses human intelligence] will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains. We will gain power over our fates. Our mortality will be in our own hands. We will be able to live as long as we want… —from The Singularity is Near(2005)

According to the WEF’s founder, Klaus Schwab, we are in the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” which is:

…the fusion of our physical, our digital and our biological identities. —Chairman Prof. Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, The Rise of the Antichurch, 20:11 mark, rumble.com

 

The Fruit of the New Tree of Knowledge

You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die. (Genesis 2:16-17)

Just as eating from the original tree of knowledge resulted in death entering into the Universe, the fruit of this new tree of knowledge also poses existential threats.

Over 850 people, including tech leaders like Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, and prominent AI pioneers like Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton (widely considered “godfathers” of modern AI), signed a statement calling “for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence.” 

…signatories of the recent statement warn that the prospect of superintelligence has “raised concerns, ranging from human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, losses of freedom, civil liberties, dignity, and control, to national security risks and even potential human extinction.” — CNBC.com, October 22, 2025

At the heart of their concerns is the imminent potential for AI to take control over itself — and humanity. 

So one of the ways in which these systems might escape control is by writing their own computer code to modify themselves. —Geoffrey Hinton, youtube.com

They will turn you off before you can turn them off. —Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, AI safety and cybersecurity expert;youtube.com

Dr. Yampolskiy says guardrails were published a decade ago for how to do AI right, but its programmers “violated every single one.”^[10]youtube.com He now warns that the efficiency of artificial intelligence will make human production virtually obsolete in as little as five years. 

…in five years, all the physical labor can also be automated. So we’re looking at a world where we have levels of unemployment we’ve never seen before. I’m not talking about 10% unemployment, which is scary, but 99%. —Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, AI safety expert; youtube.com

It’s precisely this pre-occupation with efficiency at the expense of human development that led Pope John Paul II to warn of an emerging “culture of death”:

This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency. Looking at the situation from this point of view, it is possible to speak in a certain sense of a war of the powerful against the weak… In this way a kind of “conspiracy against life” is unleashed. —Evangelium Vitae,  n. 12

In this regard, the Vatican’s recent document warning of the dangers of unethically guided AI is clearly prophetic. 

...as AI becomes more powerful, there is an associated risk that human labor may lose its value in the economic realm. This is the logical consequence of the technocratic paradigm: a world of humanity enslaved to efficiency, where, ultimately, the cost of humanity must be cut… Yet, human dignity and the common good must never be violated for the sake of efficiency, for “technological developments that do not lead to an improvement in the quality of life of all humanity, but on the contrary, aggravate inequalities and conflicts, can never count as true progress.” —Antiqua et Nova, n. 68, 54

But Dr. Yampolskiy goes much further. He warns that superintelligence will have the capacity to invent inconceivable ways to eliminate the human race. Jesus said that Satan is not just a liar but a murderer from the very beginning. Indeed, after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree of knowledge, the first major fruit of their disobedience manifested in the murder of Abel by his brother Cain.

There [are] a lot of psychopaths, a lot of terrorists, a lot of doomsday cults. We’ve seen historically, again, they tried to kill as many people as they can. They usually fail. They kill hundreds of thousands. But if they get technology to kill millions of billions, they would do that gladly… What an AI system capable of doing novel physics research can come up with, is beyond me. —Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, youtube

This is not a pleasant thought, but nor can it be readily dismissed as mere hyperbole or “doom and gloom.” As St. John Paul II shouted from the rooftops:

…with time the threats against life have not grown weaker. They are taking on vast proportions. They are not only threats coming from the outside, from the forces of nature or the Cains’ who kill the Abels’; no, they are scientifically and systematically programmed threats. —Evangelium Vitae, n. 17

This threat against life, toward the end of times, is symbolized in the Book of Revelation:^[11]“This struggle parallels the apocalyptic combat described in [Rev 11:19-12:1-6]. Death battles against Life: a “culture of death” seeks to impose itself on our desire to live, and live to the full. There are those who reject the light of life, preferring “the fruitless works of darkness.” Their harvest is injustice, discrimination, exploitation, deceit, violence. In every age, a measure of their apparent success is the death of the innocents. In our own century, as at no other time in history, the “culture of death” has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, “final solutions,” “ethnic cleansings,” and the massive “taking of lives of human beings even before they are born, or before they reach the natural point of death”…. Today that struggle has become increasingly direct.” —text of Pope John Paul II’s remarks at Sunday Mass at Cherry Creek State Park, Denver Colorado, World Youth Day, 1993, August 15, 1993, Solemnity of the Assumption; ewtn.com

Then the dragon stood before the woman about to give birth, to devour her child when she gave birth. (Revelation 12:4)

 

The End of an Era

It is becoming clearer by the hour why Heaven has announced through a multitude of souls that we are approaching the end of an era. We are a generation that, in the name of progress, is committing suicide. If God purified the earth through a flood when evil reached a crescendo; if He toppled the Tower of Babel as they arrogantly ascended toward Heaven… how much more is this culture of death a candidate for divine purification?

Every two thousand years I have renewed the world. In the first two thousand years I renewed it with the Deluge; in the second two thousand I renewed it with My coming upon earth when I manifested My Humanity, from which, as if from many fissures, My Divinity shone forth… Now we are around the third two thousand years, and there will be a third renewal. This is the reason for the general confusion: it is nothing other than the preparation of the third renewal. If in the second renewal I manifested what My Humanity did and suffered, and very little of what my Divinity was operating, now, in this third renewal, after the earth will be purged and a great part of the current generation destroyed, I will be even more generous with creatures, and I will accomplish the renewal by manifesting what My Divinity did within My Humanity… —Jesus to Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta, January 29, 1919, Volume 12 (with Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat in Italian)

At the beginning of this writing apostolate in 2005, I had a powerful experience in northern British Columbia, Canada, where I heard interiorly the words:

“I have lifted the restrainer.” (cf. Removing the Restrainer)

According to Scripture, God has left in place a ‘restrainer’ that holds back both lawlessness and the lawless one. But it is an apostasy — rebellion from God’s Word on an apparently massive scale — that causes this restrainer to be removed, making way for the one whom Tradition calls “Antichrist” (cf. 2 Thess 2:1-8).^[12]“…that Antichrist is one individual man, not a power — not a mere ethical spirit, or a political system, not a dynasty, or succession of rulers — was the universal tradition of the early Church.” —St. John Henry Newman, “The Times of Antichrist”, Lecture 1 Thus, said Sr. Lucia of Fatima: 

…let us not say that it is God who is punishing us in this way; on the contrary it is people themselves who are preparing their own punishment. In his kindness God warns us and calls us to the right path, while respecting the freedom he has given us; hence people are responsible. —Sr. Lucia, one of the Fatima visionaries, in a letter to the Holy Father, May 12th, 1982

Years ago, French Catholic author Georges Bernanos warned that “the danger is not in the multiplication of machines, but in the ever-increasing number of men accustomed from their childhood to desire only what machines can give….”^[13]Antiqua et Nova, n. 112 Ironically, in this kind of idolatry, machines can not only dehumanize but enslave us.

The Apocalypse speaks about God’s antagonist, the beast. This animal does not have a name, but a number. In [the horror of the concentration camps], they cancel faces and history, transforming man into a number, reducing him to a cog in an enormous machine. Man is no more than a function. In our days, we should not forget that they prefigured the destiny of a world that runs the risk of adopting the same structure of the concentration camps, if the universal law of the machine is accepted. The machines that have been constructed impose the same law. According to this logic, man must be interpreted by a computer and this is only possible if translated into numbers. The beast is a number and transforms into numbers. God, however, has a name and calls by name. He is a person and looks for the person. —Cardinal Ratzinger, (POPE BENEDICT XVI) Palermo, March 15th, 2000

Has mankind, once again, fallen into idolatry at the foot of the Tree of Knowledge?

…the presumption of substituting God for an artifact of human making is idolatry, a practice Scripture explicitly warns against (e.g., Ex. 20:4; 32:1-5; 34:17)… Since a “person’s perfection is measured not by the information or knowledge they possess, but by the depth of their charity,” how we incorporate AI “to include the least of our brothers and sisters, the vulnerable, and those most in need, will be the true measure of our humanity.” —Antiqua et Nova, n. 105, 116

 

 

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