Yuval Harari: Getting to Know the Enemy (of Humanity) – Review

Encore: Yuval Harari: Getting to Know the Enemy (of Humanity)

If you don’t know who Yuval Harari is, or the theological underpinnings of the transhumanist “Tech Bros” pushing us ever further into the technological unknown, this is a good place to start. Greg Scott’s 2025 article walks through how Harari thinks, and helpfully distinguishes that from the Christian perspective.

Here are a few highlights and some of my own comments:

The following quotes concisely explain where Harari’s has gone wrong. His theological suppositions and foundations matter.

Harari’s view of God is defined and determined by his view evolutionary view of man.

Human agency [according to Harari] “isn’t a scientific reality. It is a myth inherited from Christian theology” and that our choices are a “result of biochemistry and neurology.”

These foundations lay bare the whole of his thought system, as the following explains…

Again, to cite his 2015 book,

So here is that line from the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.^[1]

Denying the image-bearing nature of mankind requires an abandonment of inherent rights, endowed by our Creator. As transparent and audacious as Harari’s rewrite above is, he leaves no doubt below about where this leads.

To further quote Harari as cited in the article,

Liberalism has developed an impressive arsenal of arguments and institutions to defend individual freedoms against external attacks from oppressive governments and bigoted religions, but it is unprepared for a situation when individual freedom is subverted from within, and when the very concepts of “individual” and “freedom” no longer make much sense. In order to survive and prosper in the 21st century, we need to leave behind the naive view of humans as free individuals – a view inherited from Christian theology as much as from the modern Enlightenment – and come to terms with what humans really are: hackable animals.

Why does this perspective matter when it comes to AI specifically? Because,

Like the “Swifties” who flock to Taylor Swift concerts, so the Tech Bros chase after Harari.

Furthermore,

Humans, according to Harari, possess no independent agency, but are instead directed by biological algorithms. He warns that unregulated development of AI will lead to that organic algorithm being replaced by synthetic algorithms controlled by malicious actors which will lead to the destruction of democracy.

AI is the first technology in history that can make decisions by itself, create ideas by itself, and take power away from humans. Silicon chips can create spies that never sleep, financiers that never forget, and despots that never die.

Humans considered apart from God are little more than chattel of whatever algorithm. Whether that algorithm is biological or cyberlogical makes little difference. Maintaining a hold of human beings as the images of God is central to the ongoing fight against the transhumanism of our day.

For more on this theme, click here.

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[1] Yuval N. Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, First U.S. edition (New York: Harper, 2015), 110. Kindle.