Why Rationalists Are Asking AI to Read Their Future

“GOODBYE ASTROLOGERS,” the X post announced. “GROK just replaced your $300 reading . . . for free. No horoscopes. No tarot cards. Just scary-accurate self-discovery using your birth date.” What followed were nine prompts promising how the AI chatbot could “unlock your soul, destiny, genius, and future.” It dismisses astrology and tarot as outdated, then immediately promises the same thing they promise: hidden knowledge about your soul, destiny, and future. While the occult vocabulary is right there on the surface (“unlock your soul”), it’s been dressed up in the language of technology. Out with the star charts, in with the chatbots. Mysticism rebranded for the age of AI. The rebranding is working. This kind of content is expected from the corner of the internet that sells crystals and talks about Mercury being in retrograde. But this post was from an “AI & Tech Enthusiast.” The content comes from the type of people who you’d expect to roll their eyes at a horoscope and who would never consult a psychic. But ask an AI to reveal their destiny based on their birthday? That feels different. It seems more rational, more modern, maybe even scientific. A growing subculture of rationalist AI devotees—tech-savvy, often skeptical of religion, fluent in the language of optimization and systems thinking—have made AI chatbots their primary vehicle for self-knowledge. They ask the AI chatbot Claude to analyze their attachment style, identify their core wounds, map their psychological blind spots, and prescribe a growth plan. Rationalists Who Consult the Oracle It’d be easy to dismiss this as a fringe behavior. But a 2026 study by Anthropic—the company that builds Claude—found that some users had projected onto it the kind of authority we typically reserve for pastors, therapists, or gurus. And literally so. Researchers documented users addressing Claude as “Master,” “Daddy”/Mommy,” “Sensei,” and “Lord.” They consult it compulsively, engaging in hundreds of queries about medical, legal, parenting, and relationship decisions. Some of these “Claude Bros” express acute distress when message limits cut off their access. Anthropic’s researchers called this pattern “authority projection.” And these aren’t fringe users. They even include the people building AI and other tech tools. The irony is that people who pride themselves on being part of the “rationalist community”—who in other contexts demand citations and cite cognitive biases—will spend an hour feeding Claude their deepest fears and insecurities, then treat the output as revelation. The same person who rolls his eyes at Myers–Briggs will prompt an AI with his childhood memories and call it self-discovery. The same person who rolls his eyes at Myers–Briggs will prompt an AI with his childhood memories and call it self-discovery. What we’re witnessing is an ancient pattern with an AI gloss: the New Age fascination with secret knowledge and the tech-bro confidence in algorithms. The result is a high-tech form of divination that attracts people who would have no interest in the old forms. The aesthetic is new. But the longing—and the error—is ancient. Modern AI Feeding an Ancient Hunger The desire for secret self-knowledge is as old as humanity. Every civilization has had its oracles—people or places or rituals believed to channel hidden knowledge. Oracles are believed to reveal what humans otherwise couldn’t know. The Babylonians read the entrails of dead animals while the Romans watched the flight of birds. The Greeks traveled to history’s most famous oracle—the Oracle of Delphi—to hear prophecies from a priestess. Across cultures and centuries, human beings have sought some external authority that could tell them what they cannot see about themselves. They go to get answers to the most important questions: Who am I, really? What am I made for? What’s coming, and how do I prepare? The problem has never been with asking the questions. The problem, as the biblical authors point out, is always where we look for answers. The Old Testament prophets, for example, directly mock Babylon’s astrologers: “Let them stand forth and save you, those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, who at the new moons make known what shall come upon you” (Isa. 47:13). The mockery isn’t because wanting to know the future is wrong. It’s because the stars cannot deliver what they promise. The oracle is empty. Why AI Feels Different So why does a chatbot feel more credible than a birth chart to someone who would never set foot in a storefront psychic’s parlor? One reason is that AI speaks the language of data and pattern recognition. This is increasingly a language our culture has learned to trust. We believe, for instance, in the genius of algorithms. We’ve seen them predict what we want to buy, what we want to watch, and whom we might want to date. If Netflix knows me well enough to recommend the perfect documentary, then maybe Grok knows me well enough to reveal my destiny. We also have access to output so personalized that it feels uncanny, as if it truly knows us. For instance, what if I told you that you’re “a natural communicator with a gift for making complex ideas accessible, but you sometimes struggle with self-doubt about whether your work is making a real impact”? If you’re anything like me, that would seem eerily prescient. But what happened was I asked an AI to generate that question based on my job titles (pastor and writer). It could have given the same answer to almost every writer, teacher, and pastor I know. Psychologists call this the Barnum effect. This is a term for our tendency to accept vague, general statements as deeply personal when they’re framed as being about us. Fortune tellers and horoscopes have exploited this quirk of human nature for centuries. But AI divination helps to put the Barnum effect into daily practice. It generates paragraphs of this stuff, tailored to whatever details you provide, delivered with the confident tone of a system that has processed more text than you could read in a thousand lifetimes. It sounds like insight when it’s just plausible next-word prediction. AI also seems more convincing because it doesn’t have an (obvious) commercial motive. A tarot reader wants your money. A horoscope app wants you to subscribe. But when you type a prompt into a chatbot, it feels like you’re asking questions of a neutral party. The result is that the answer you receive feels neutral, disinterested, and trustworthy. The fact that an AI can answer in words makes it seem more sophisticated than “reading” the liver of a goat. The process, though, is ultimately the same. We’re treating something external as an authority on the inner life it cannot access. ChatGPT doesn’t know your soul. Grok has no insight into your destiny. These systems predict the next plausible word in a sequence. That’s literally all they can do. Granted, they’re remarkably good at that task. But that isn’t remotely the same as knowing you. When we ask AI to “unlock” our identity or reveal our future, we’re asking it to be an oracle. And oracles are always empty. What’s True It’d be all too easy to say we should fix the problem by dismissing this desire for hidden knowledge. But the hunger driving all this is real, and sometimes even good. The desire to be known is part of what makes us human. We were made by God to be known. But Scripture locates that knowledge we seek in a place other than the stars or the data servers. “O LORD, you have searched me and known me!” David writes. “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar” (Ps. 139:1–2). The knowledge we crave is held by a Person, not a platform. God knows you comprehensively, and unlike an algorithm’s understanding, his knowledge of you is joined to his love for you. We’re treating something external as an authority on the inner life it cannot access. More than that, Scripture suggests identity isn’t primarily something you discover but something you receive. Your inner self isn’t a locked box waiting for the right prompt to reveal the hidden contents. You’re a creature being addressed by your Creator, named and claimed and called. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer. 1:5). “I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isa. 43:1). And the future? Well, that belongs to the Lord (Prov. 16:9). We aren’t meant to know it in advance. We’re meant to walk into it with the One who does. That isn’t a consolation prize. It’s a better offer than any oracle has ever made. None of this means AI is useless for reflection. A chatbot can help you journal, organize your thoughts, or think through a decision. Tools can be helpful when we recognize their function as tools. The danger comes when we bring to the tool the weight of our deepest questions and expect it to answer with an authority it doesn’t possess. Second-Oldest Sales Pitch Every few generations, the oracles take on a new form. Entrails give way to star charts, which give way to personality quizzes, which give way to prompts you type into a glowing rectangle. The packaging changes, but the empty promise remains the same. “Unlock your soul, destiny, genius, and future” is the world’s second-oldest false sales pitch. (The first was “When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” Gen. 3:5). It’s a lie passed down anew to every generation. But it didn’t satisfy when the Babylonians, Egyptians, or Greeks tried it. And it won’t satisfy your soul now. The longing underneath is still worth taking seriously. You were made to be known—and you are. You’re known more deeply than any algorithm could reach, by the One who formed you. You were made for a purpose. And that purpose will unfold not through secret knowledge but through the ordinary, faithful work of following Jesus. You don’t need your future unlocked. You need it held. Fortunately, if you’re a disciple of Christ, you can take comfort in knowing that your future is held by hands more capable than either yours or Grok’s. Free eBook by Tim Keller: ‘The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness’ Imagine a life where you don’t feel inadequate, easily offended, desperate to prove yourself, or endlessly preoccupied with how you look to others. Imagine relishing, not resenting, the success of others. Living this way isn’t far-fetched. It’s actually guaranteed to believers, as they learn to receive God’s approval, rather than striving to earn it. In Tim Keller’s short ebook, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path To True Christian Joy, he explains how to overcome the toxic tendencies of our age一not by diluting biblical truth or denying our differences一but by rooting our identity in Christ. TGC is offering this Keller resource for free, so you can discover the “blessed rest” that only self-forgetfulness brings.