Paul Kingsnorth on the Dark Powers Behind AI

The Russell Moore Show

Christianity Today, Russell Moore

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 914 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What if the world’s brightest engineers aren’t just building smarter tools—but opening a door to something older, darker, and more sinister? In this episode of The Russell Moore Show, RDM sits down with Paul Kingsnorth—novelist, essayist, and former pagan turned Orthodox Christian—to talk about his searing new book Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. Kingsnorth argues that the technologies we treat as neutral conveniences may, in fact, be spiritual weapons. The internet as a giant Ouija board. AI not as invention, but as invocation. It sounds insane—until you realize the people creating these systems admit they don’t fully understand them either. In this conversation, Kingsnorth tells the unlikely story of his journey from Wiccan witchcraft to baptism in the Orthodox Church, why he believes our cultural obsession with screens, sex, and selfhood is a trap, and why Christians in particular must stop treating technology as just another tool. What if it’s more than that? What if, in chasing progress, we’ve been summoning something we cannot control? This isn’t your average hand-wringing about iPhones or social media. It’s a bracing, unsettling, and oddly hopeful dialogue about how to remain human in an age increasingly hostile to humanity itself. Listen in if you’ve ever wondered: Why AI feels less like a tool and more like a presence How paganism and environmentalism can point toward, but never satisfy, the longing for God What the “four pillars of the machine” are—and how they’re shaping us without our consent Whether resistance to the machine is possible, and how communities of faith might embody it Resources mentioned in this episode: Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth Savage Gods by Paul Kingsnorth Buccmaster Trilogy by Paul Kingsnorth Paul’s Essay, “The Cross and the Machine” Keep up with Russell: Sign up for the weekly newsletter where Russell shares thoughtful takes on big questions, offers a Christian perspective on life, and recommends books and music he's enjoying. Submit a question for the show at [email protected] Subscribe to the Christianity Today Magazine: Special offer for listeners of The Russell Moore Show: Click here for 25% off a subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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0:59.4	If you actually do the hard work of trying to live in a community or live in a place,
1:03.9	you'll find out why roots matter. Routlessness and homelessness in a broad sense are the
1:08.5	symptoms of the world that we've created.
1:13.5	Hello, this is Russell Moore, and this is the Russell Moore Show, brought to you by Christianity
1:18.2	today. Here, we look for signposts in a strange time by standing fast to what really
1:24.9	matters, kingdom over culture wars, truth over tribalism, pilgrimage
1:29.3	over partisanship, sanity over cynicism, witness over winning, and Christ over everything.
1:35.9	Today we have a conversation to do just that.
1:43.6	I have said for years we need to keep Christianity strange, and today we're going to do our part,
1:49.4	because we're going to end up talking about something that will freak some of you out,
1:56.9	and some of you will wonder if both I and my guest have lost our minds by even talking about this.
2:04.9	But I want to ask you to consider where I'm going to end up going here, which is asking our guest today, who I have read for years and years and years about his claim,
2:18.3	that AI is not a human invention,
2:23.6	but that AI intelligences are real, preexisting,
	...

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