I fed 5 major religions into an AI engine. Here is the 'winner.'

By Jay Atkins, Op-ed Contributor Monday, April 20, 2026

iStock/Chor muang

I recently did something that will likely make both my Christian and atheist friends a little uncomfortable: I asked a popular AI engine to evaluate the world’s major belief systems and tell me which one makes the most rational sense.

To be clear, I didn’t prompt it to favor Christianity. I didn’t ask leading questions or try to stack the deck. I asked it to analyze the heavyweights — Atheism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity — using a simple two-step framework: First, which worldview best explains reality, and second, which one does so while requiring the fewest unsupported assumptions? In other words, tell me which one has the highest explanatory power with the lowest evidentiary burden.

As a professing Christian for more than 40 years, what I got back should not have surprised me, yet it did. AI, in seconds, reached the same conclusion I’ve been working towards for decades: Christianity offers the most reasonable overall explanation of reality with the fewest leaps of faith.

Pause and let that settle in. AI ranked Christianity as the most reasonable view of the world.

The analysis I asked AI to do was not complicated, but it was comprehensive. I asked it to evaluate each worldview against the same basic questions:

1. Why does anything exist at all?
2. Why is the universe ordered and intelligible?
3. Why do humans possess consciousness and reason?
4. Are moral truths real or are they just social constructs?
5. Does human life have meaning or purpose?
6. Do the historical and fact claims of each belief system hold up?

I framed the analysis this way, not to pick a winner for rhetorical effect but to see which belief system actually holds together under the pure, rational scrutiny of a machine. When the analysis was done, here’s what happened.

Atheism scored well on simplicity. It doesn’t require belief in miracles or divine revelation. But that simplicity comes at a cost. It struggles to explain the biggest questions: why does the universe exist at all, why is it governed by rational laws, how does consciousness arise from mere matter, and why do we experience moral obligations as something real and binding? In many cases, it simply labels these things as either illusory or as “brute facts” and moves on, but it does not answer them.

Buddhism performed better as a practical system. It offers profound insight into human suffering and provides a quasi-workable path toward inner peace, but it largely sidesteps the deeper metaphysical questions. It gives advice on how to cope with reality, but not what reality ultimately is.

Hinduism fared about as well as Buddhism. It offers a sweeping explanation of reality with concepts like ultimate unity, karma, and reincarnation that attempt to account for both the material and spiritual world. That gives it significant explanatory depth, but with a big tradeoff. The system relies on a complex web of metaphysical claims that can’t be verified or falsified, creating a very high evidentiary burden relative to other worldviews.

Islam held together fairly well. It offers a strong account of God, morality, and purpose, which is understandable given its Abrahamic roots. But it runs into serious historical tension when it comes to the historicity of its claims about divine revelation to Muhammad, Jesus’ crucifixion, and correction of earlier traditions. Islam’s brand of retrospective revision carries a very heavy evidentiary burden that it simply can’t carry.

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The Bible and the French Revolution

 
The Great Controversy
by Ellen G. White

Chapter 15: The Bible and the French Revolution

Worship of the God of heaven was exchanged for worship of the 'Goddess of Reason.'

Illustration © Pacific Press Publ. Assoc.


In the sixteenth century the Reformation, presenting an open Bible to the people, had sought admission to all the countries of Europe. Some nations welcomed it with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In other lands the papacy succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance; and the light of Bible knowledge, with its elevating influences, was almost wholly excluded. In one country, though the light found entrance, it was not comprehended by the darkness. For centuries, truth and error struggled for the mastery. At last the evil triumphed, and the truth of Heaven was thrust out. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light." John 3:19. The nation was left to reap the results of the course which she had chosen. The restraint of God's Spirit was removed from a people that had despised the gift of His grace. Evil was permitted to come to maturity. And all the world saw the fruit of willful rejection of the light.

The war against the Bible, carried forward for so many centuries in France, culminated in the scenes of the Revolution. That terrible outbreaking was but the legitimate result of Rome's suppression of the Scriptures. (See Appendix.) It presented the most striking illustration which the world has ever witnessed of the working out of the papal policy— an illustration of the results to which for more than a thousand [266] years the teaching of the Roman Church had been tending.

The suppression of the Scriptures during the period of papal supremacy was foretold by the prophets; and the Revelator points also to the terrible results that were to accrue especially to France from the domination of the "man of sin."

Said the angel of the Lord: "The holy city shall they tread underfoot forty and two months. And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. . . . And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. . . . And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them." Revelation 11:2-11.

The periods here mentioned—"forty and two months," and "a thousand two hundred and threescore days"—are the same, alike representing the time in which the church of Christ was to suffer oppression from Rome. The 1260 years of papal supremacy began in A.D. 538, and would therefore terminate in 1798. (See Appendix note for page 54.) At that time a French army entered Rome and made the pope a prisoner, and he died in exile. Though a new pope was soon afterward elected, the papal hierarchy has never since been able to wield the power which it before possessed.

The Left belittles prayer. Are they right?

By Jerry Newcombe, CP Op-Ed Contributor Sunday, September 07, 2025

People visit a growing memorial outside of Annunciation Catholic Church on Aug. 29, 2025, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. On Aug. 27 a gunman fired through the stained-glass windows of the church while students were sitting in pews during a Catholic school Mass, killing two children and injuring at least 17 others. The gunman reportedly died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to police. | Scott Olson/Getty Images

Last week, the shooter in Minneapolis of little children in a Catholic church-school during mass was discovered to have written on one of his weapons, “Where is your god [sic].” He used a picture of Jesus on his target in practice before the big day of shooting last Wednesday.

And now the left says to us in effect: “Don’t pray, just prey.” The last part refers to allowing unfettered evil to flourish — to continue to prey on the weak and vulnerable.

As Gary Bauer noted last Thursday: “Satan wrote the script for the atrocities that transpired yesterday at a Minneapolis Catholic church and school. The transgender shooter’s message, ‘Where’s your God now,’ wasn’t referring to Allah. It was referring to the God of the Bible, the God Catholics, Jews, and Protestants worship. The only God, by the way. ‘Where’s your God now’ was Satan mocking God.”

It’s amazing to see how swift the condemnation from the Left was against even the idea of prayers — as if prayers alone were the solution offered to try and stop these things. They do hint at the solution: to get back to the knowledge of God, the one who is there and who will hold us all accountable one day.

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The Teenage Spiritual Crisis

Children often begin to question their faith and spirituality when they reach the teen years. Jon Krause


Life
Turning Points 
 

As adolescents form values and ideals based on personal experiences, many question their religious beliefs more intensely




By
Clare Ansberry
Updated June 13, 2017 11:07 a.m. ET
 

Thomas Ramey quit praying a few years ago when he was 16 years old because it didn’t seem to matter.

The 18-year-old, who was baptized and confirmed as a Methodist, doesn’t believe in an afterlife, but still believes in a God. He goes to church regularly because he likes playing in the youth band, volunteering and listening to people who have different opinions. “I doubt everything,” says Thomas, who plans to study engineering.

That is true of many teens, who grew up praying, going to houses of worship, and studying religious texts. As 6-year-olds, they were convinced there was a God and heaven and that everything in the Bible was true, for example. Now they aren’t so sure.

The teen brain grows rapidly, and with it the ability to think more abstractly and critically. In early adolescence, teens begin to establish their own ideals and recognize hypocrisy in people and institutions around them. They deal with heartbreak and social cliques, see suffering in the world and wonder if there is a God who cares. They are trying to figure out their place and how and if something like religion belongs.

The Atheist Delusion Movie (2016) HD

God’s not dead — but wealth, education and evolution have inflicted fatal wounds, psychologists say

SARAH K. BURRIS


09 MAY 2016 AT 20:12 ET





The United States is becoming a more secular nation, but the developed world is also taking a turn against religion. As people become more wealthy and have greater access to basic necessities they are less likely to be religious, according to the Daily Mail.

“As more and more people become affluent and adopt a slow strategy, the need to morally condemn fast strategies decreases, and with it the benefit of holding religious beliefs that justify doing so,” Evolutionary psychologist Dr. Nicolas Baumard wrote in his article for New Scientist. He explained that history shows that those living an upper-class lifestyle 2,500 years ago were slower paced where lower castes lived fast, worked hard and died younger.

“If this is true, and our environment continues to improve, then like the Greco-Roman religions before them, Christianity and other moralising religions could eventually vanish,” Baumard concluded.

A 2014 National Bureau of Economic Research paper, by Naci Mocan and Luiza Pogorelova, charted the decline of people in Europe who claimed to be very religious and those who regularly attended religious services. They found that one additional year of education was associated with a 10 percent drop in the tendency to frequent religious services once a week or more.

Secular beliefs are on a steep trajectory and will soon take over France’s majority population. The Netherlands and New Zealand are similarly projected to be majority secular nations soon, according to the Pew Research Center. Gallup also did a survey of 50,000 people in 57 countries that showed individuals claiming to be religious fell from 77 percent to 68 percent between 2005 and 2011. At the same time, those who identified as atheist grew by 3 percent.

Anthropologists suggest that religion emerged as a way of helping tribes and groups live together without killing each other. The idea of an omnipotent being seeing their crimes may have helped stopped early civilization from committing them. As a result, much of the decision making could be lifted from the shoulders of the average person because religion provided the guidance for what was right and what was wrong. Today, we may have evolved past that.

Harvard University Psychology professor Steven Pinker thinks the reduction in crime has come not from the differences that divide us into groups, such as religion, but by thinking of ourselves within a global society. The world has seen a dramatic drop in violence for long stretches of time, according to Pinker’s book “The Better Angels of Our Nature.” He even concluded that we are likely living in the most peaceful era for our species when interviewed by the Science Channel show “Through the Wormhole.”

“Three hundred years ago I might be burned at the stake for beliefs that I hold today,” Pinker says. “And a hundred years before that, I might have had my head cut off with a hatchet in the Indian wars.”

Pinker attributes most of this to the increasing role of government and the rule of law, but he also thinks that part of it has to do with intelligence. “You might wonder, are people getting nicer because they’re getting smarter and, believe it or not, the answer may be yes.”

Dr. Baumard and his colleagues attribute this shift to something very simple, a larger caloric intake. While you might not be what you eat, what you consume has a huge impact on the function and development of your brain. When people had access to more than 2,000 calories a day without the need to burn the calories chasing the next meal, people’s behavior evolved. When their behavior evolved, so did their psychological outlook. Since your brain needs food to fuel its work, the increase in food availability could have impacted the increase in intelligence and sparked an evolution in brain development that made us hardwired for empathy and morality.

“You are clearly at a disadvantage if you follow a slow strategy when others follow a faster strategy – if you are faithful when others grab sexual opportunities, if you forgive when others avenge, if you work when others have fun,” Dr. Baumard said. “This disadvantage incentivised the elite to morally condemn fast behaviours, in part by adopting and promoting the new religions that legitimised and reinforced a slow morality and promised punishment for trangressors.

“The same idea could also explain the gradual decline of moralising religion in wealthier parts of the world such as Western Europe and the northern parts of North America,” he concluded.

The millennial generation, in particular, seems to be opting for a more spiritual approach than following institutional religions, according to Pew. The largest generation in history boasts 80 million plus people in the United States. While some might turn to spirituality during times of crisis, the culture wars organized religion waged during the early 2000s don’t match the current values the generation holds. A larger generation practicing less religion and raising less religious children also means a more secular society is continued.


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