A friend of mine asked ChatGPT whether belief in God is reasonable. Here is its response:

The belief in God is a matter of personal faith and philosophical or religious belief, which can vary significantly among individuals and cultures. From a philosophical perspective, arguments for or against the existence of God are complex and have been debated for centuries, involving different disciplines such as theology, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.

It is reasonable to hold a belief in God if it is grounded in personal conviction, religious or spiritual experience, cultural tradition, or philosophical reasoning, among other factors. However, it is also reasonable for individuals to hold different beliefs or no belief at all, and it is important to respect and tolerate diverse perspectives and worldviews. Ultimately, the question of the existence of God may not have a definitive answer that can be proven or disproven by empirical evidence or logical arguments, but rather it may depend on personal faith, intuition, and interpretation of reality.

Critiquing ChatGPT

For the most part, ChatGPT is pretty accurate. However, I think it subtly fails to give a meaningful answer to the prompt.

It seems not to understand the difference between reasonable justification and normal justification. Of course it is normal to hold belief (or not) in God if it is grounded in those listed factors. However, it is not necessarily reasonable. For example, “personal conviction” is not a reasonable justification if it is coupled with willful ignorance of other relevant ideas. Furthermore, ChatGPT appears to assume that the pragmatic encroachment of “cultural tradition” is reasonable, but that is a controversial position in epistemology.

ChatGPT claims (without qualification) that different or no beliefs are also reasonable, but this is clearly not always true. Suppose someone honestly confesses that, based on their current knowledge, belief in God is much more reasonable than unbelief. Then for such a person, it is obviously not reasonable for them to disbelieve in God.

It is just silly to say that the existence of God may not have a definitive answer that can be proven or disproven. This is a conversation shutdown. We should not expect some undeniable, mathematical proof for the existence of God (or for any belief outside of math), nevertheless, empirical evidence and logical arguments are in the highest tier of epistemic justification. We really can (and do) offer objective reasons for God, beyond personal faith and subjective intuition.

So what?

ChatGPT is an incredible invention from countless work-hours and brilliant human engineers. However, it is a “large language model” that doesn’t (yet) understand the meaning of its own text. While being a powerful AI tool for many fields, it is not an oracle. Its answer to the prompt can be summarized as “kinda, sorta, or maybe not”, which doesn’t actually contribute anything meaningful to the discussion.