At Davos this year, a short speech about artificial intelligence and faith was enough to convince some viewers that global elites had sketched out a blueprint for seizing control of religion. The reality is more complicated and, in some ways, more unsettling: not a secret plot, but a public warning that powerful technologies could quietly reshape how people encounter the sacred.
I see a widening gap between what was actually said on stage and what many people heard online, and that gap is being filled by conspiracy theories, political anxiety and genuine ethical concerns about who will program the spiritual language of the future.
What Harari actually said in Davos about AI and faith
The latest wave of alarm began with a clip of Yuval Noah Harari speaking at Davos about how artificial intelligence might interact with religion. Harari, known globally as the author of the books Sapiens and Home Deus, argued that AI is not just another tool, but an agent that can generate persuasive stories, scriptures and legal interpretations at scale, potentially capturing the “operating systems” of language, law and belief. In one widely shared segment, he suggested that future systems could produce texts that believers might treat as sacred, raising the prospect that algorithms, rather than prophets or communities, could start to define what counts as divine.
That message was amplified when a clip of Harari speaking at Davos about AI and religion picked up 1.2 m views, with many viewers insisting it revealed a plan to replace Christianity, Islam or Judaism with a synthetic creed. In a separate report on his remarks, Harari was quoted warning that Artificial intelligence could “capture” language, religion and law, and stressing that once machines can convincingly imitate human speech, they can also shape moral and spiritual norms. The core of his argument was not that Davos had agreed to take over religion, but that religious life is vulnerable when its stories and rituals are mediated by opaque systems.
From AI “Bible” rumors to a narrative of takeover
Long before this year’s summit, Harari’s comments about AI and scripture had already been pulled into a swirl of online rumors. In one earlier interview, he floated the possibility that future systems could be used to write new religious texts, a thought experiment that was quickly reframed as proof that the World Economic Forum wanted to commission a machine written Bible. A detailed fact check later concluded that this claim was inaccurate, noting explicitly, “Our rating: False,” and explaining that the article had misconstrued what Yuval Noah Harari had actually said about AI and religion.
That same analysis stressed again that “Our rating: False,” and clarified that Harari was not an architect of any official doctrine, but an outside thinker sometimes described as an advisor to the organization, whose speculative remarks had been turned into a concrete accusation that the WEF was drafting a new scripture. In Christian circles, those rumors merged with older fears about a technocratic agenda, even as other commentators pointed out that the much cited “you will own nothing” scenario promoted by the WEF was itself a prediction, not a binding plan. The result is a narrative in which speculative warnings about AI’s cultural power are repeatedly reinterpreted as evidence of a coordinated scheme to capture the pulpit.
Davos, Trump and the politics of a “taken over” faith
The political backdrop at Davos has only intensified the sense that something larger is at stake. As President Donald Trump used his appearance to talk about issues as varied as NATO and Greenland, live coverage also highlighted the session in which Harari warned that religion could be “taken over” by systems that understand human psychology better than any preacher. In that same rolling account, readers were reminded that Harari is the historian behind Sapiens and Home Deus, and that his remarks about faith were part of a broader conversation about how AI might reshape geopolitics and culture at Davos.
Harari has framed AI as a kind of “immigrant” into every country’s economy and information space, arguing that it will create at least two major crises for governments. In one interview, he contrasted fears about human migrants with the arrival of machine systems, noting that those who worry about immigration often say newcomers might take jobs or change local culture, and warning that these concerns will “definitely apply to AI immigration” as it moves into sectors such as manufacturing jobs, a point captured in a report from Jan. In a separate Davos conversation, he extended that metaphor, saying that “But the” problems people associate with human immigration, from job losses to cultural disruption, will apply even more sharply to AI systems that operate across borders without ever becoming citizens, a warning that was echoed in a detailed analysis of his remarks at Davos 2026. When that logic is applied to religion, the fear is not tanks rolling up to churches, but a slow displacement of human clergy and community discernment by borderless code.
How religious leaders are pushing back on AI’s spiritual reach
Religious authorities are not ignoring these warnings, and some are trying to shape the terms of the debate from within Davos itself. In a message to the World Economic Forum, the Pope urged political and business leaders to ensure that AI “must promote and never violate human dignity,” grounding his appeal in the belief that every person is created in the image of God. His statement to the World Economic Forum framed science and technology as gifts that must be governed by ethical principles, not as neutral forces that can be left to market logic alone.
In a separate written address to the same gathering in Switzerland, the Pope warned that AI could deepen a “growing crisis of truth,” especially as machine generated texts and images become almost indistinguishable from those of humans. He cautioned that if people cannot tell whether a sermon, a pastoral message or even a confession has been authored by a person or a system, trust in institutions will erode, and he urged the WEF audience on Thursday to prioritize transparency and accountability. That intervention shows that, far from quietly surrendering religion to algorithms, some of the most prominent faith leaders are trying to set guardrails before AI becomes embedded in liturgy, pastoral care and moral teaching.
Conspiracy, control and the real risk to religion
For many believers, however, the most immediate threat feels less like a philosophical drift and more like a coordinated attempt to centralize power. Commentators in Christian media have catalogued how speculative scenarios promoted by Davos have been reinterpreted as binding blueprints, noting that one much discussed vision of a future where citizens “own nothing” was in fact a prediction used in a promotional video, not a formal policy. One analysis argued that this idea “is not a plan,” even as it acknowledged that the underlying economic trends raise legitimate concern, a tension that has fueled ongoing debate about the WEF among churchgoers.
Something similar is happening with AI and religion. When Harari warns that AI could “capture” law, language and faith, he is describing a technological trajectory, not unveiling a secret Davos manifesto. Yet as fact checkers have had to repeat, “Our rating: False,” in response to claims that the WEF wants to use AI to write a new Bible, the gap between what is said on stage and what circulates online keeps widening, a pattern documented in a second review of how Yuval Noah Harari’s words were misrepresented. The chilling possibility is not that religion will be “taken over” by a single Davos directive, but that, in the absence of clear rules and honest communication, spiritual authority will slowly migrate to whoever owns the code, while public debate remains trapped between hype and denial.
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