The stories that the Pope used in the introduction to his address made me read the biblical text for the first time since I was a kid in church, and it feels more applicable than I thought it would be. The Tower of Babel has always been a tale that I felt could be dismissed as a fairy tale, and not impact any of the ideas after. However, reading it, I think there may be some real reasons to think this may be a historical account of a real, miracleless happening and not a tale of supernatural myth.
Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, entitled “Magnifica Humanitas,” and it is getting significant airtime because it is aimed at the AI Industry and the existential dread many of us feel. Before getting into the depths of his address to the world, in the introduction, he talks about the Tower of Babel. My mind immediately understood roughly what he was getting at before I read further, but I still stopped. “Did I actually know this story?”
I feel that almost everyone can tell you a summation of this story, even if it has a different name. After all, it is not just a Christian story. Variations of this story are found in many modern and ancient religions from all over the world. I, myself, remember it more from Sunday school at a young age, so it has been frozen in my memory as a child’s story. It kind of goes like this:
Some people wanted to build a tower to heaven. God didn’t like that, so he mixed up all their languages, and they were no longer able to build the tower. End of story.
When you think of it like this, you come away with the moral being something to the tune of “Don’t try to show up at God’s house uninvited, mortal. There is distance for a reason.” That has some utility for sermons baked into it. There are lessons about ego and pride, but when I read the Pope’s words, I could make the connection, but felt like there was something else there, so I opened a Bible and read the story.
The first thing that struck me was how short this passage is. It is only 9 verses, and the chapter trickles off into genealogy after that, rather abruptly. There is not a lot of pomp or even cohesion to this particular chapter. It is short enough that I will include it here. I don’t think the Church is going to come at me for copyright violations.
The Tower of Babel
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there.3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c] — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
The Obvious Details
I can read the text and continue to minimize it to a children’s story version. If you want theology on easy mode, that could suffice. The Pope and nearly every person delivering a sermon will want something to double-click on. The easiest and most common target is the motivation behind this project in the first place.
The text says why they did this in the first place: “so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” It sounds vain to make a name for yourself. It sounds self-serving. Pair it with that second part, though. There is fear in that motive. Fear of being scattered. We likely aren’t talking about a huge population; we are talking about a tribe that has been wandering about and just stumbled on a place that they want to make a permanent home. When you are a group of people wandering in the wilderness, being scattered is dangerous and opens you up to being picked off. There is safety in numbers, and what better way to stay together than to build a city and an imposing tower?
The next, commonly referenced detail is that everyone spoke the same language. Everyone in the world. This is a world where everyone can communicate, share ideas, and collaborate with minimal effort. Up until the last few decades, this sounds like an unrelatable, utopian detail. No translators to talk through or inside linguistic knowledge. No misunderstandings from different ways of speaking.
We can glaze over the idea that this story makes it seem like these were the only people on earth, but it could easily imply that there were other groups about, but if they encountered each other, they could communicate. These people were trying to make a name for themselves either through dominance or admiration; it almost doesn’t matter which. Settling down was a big deal, and this was a big project. It would bring everyone together in a stable fashion. People would remember them for this great feat.
The last detail that stood out, which I don’t think gets enough airtime, is the interaction with God. We can’t just skip past“The Lord came down to the city” part, can we? The timeline of this story is shortly after the flood (100–500 years). The Bible doesn’t talk about God walking amongst people since Adam and Eve. That seems like a pretty big deal. Moreover, there is fear in God’s (I debate if it is God talking, but more later) voice. He is worried about what humans can accomplish when they all get together.
I think branding this story as a project of Huberis is off the mark. I also think the idea that God was punishing humanity for this project is much to simple.
The Less Obvious Details
This was a big project and a feat of human ingenuity and accomplishment. That kind of imagination doesn’t come into reality without innovation, collaboration, and resources. The idea that people just looked at a clearing and decided to build this mecca with only a few thousand people is lofty without a lot of collaboration and technology. I think that is the piece that even the pope doesn’t go into here.
The text talks about baking bricks instead of using rocks and using tar for mortar. If a couple of people that early in history were setting out to build a structure, I would think that more basic materials would be the go-to choice. Wood, rocks, and mud are theoretically all over this valley and would be faster than creating an entire building materials industry to do this. Baking bricks is like a factory floor, and ancient mortar was generally made from destructive distillation, which is a cool discovery if you check that out, but it is much more intensive than a mortar of sand, water, and binder.
Furthermore, there had to be hierarchy and division of labor to pull this off. Architects to lead the design, engineers to facilitate the means, and a PR team to sell this idea to the entire group that would be expected to sacrifice time, labor, and resources to make this project happen. To my knowledge, this is how humans have always built the big things. The person with the plans isn’t the one who lays the bricks or even brings the resources.
The specific technological aspects in this story are what, I believe, make this story one that should be explored as we embark on contributing huge amounts of resources to what is branded as the biggest technological advancement in human history. AI has already made huge strides in practically eliminating language barriers in real time and offers threats and benefits that affect all of humanity, not just a single nation’s population. Seeing the parallels yet?
Lastly, God talks to someone, “Come, let us go down.” Who is this “us” and is this a raiding party or group entertainment? Some scholars say that it was a court of angels, some say it is a dialogue between the Trinity, but regardless, the God in this story had company in this matter. The decision is presented as decisive and effective. That alone makes the children’s storybook version of this tale seem so tempting to stick with, shrouding the outcome in mystery and miracle.
How This Story Could Be True
Now I would classify myself as a Christian if you pinned me down to an answer, but I am not a very good one. I believe that God gave me a brain that processes things logically, so why not at least try to use that power? So if you were waiting for an ecclesiastical reference here, I will spoil that notion and say I will disappoint.
However, as widespread as this story is, my logic tells me that there must be some truth in it. So here is what I think could have happened all these years ago, and why it is absolutely important for us to consider in these times of rapid development at the potential cost of the human race.
For me, it comes down to the miraculous punishment and the words used. What if God didn’t do this? What if no one’s language was magically altered? What if humans just did what they always do in large groups? What if they simply disagreed?
I can often be quoted as saying “we are speaking the same language” when assuring people are on the same page as me. Not that we are both speaking English or even the same dialect of it, but simply in agreement on an idea. We understand each other. Just maybe that is what happened here, but the cause was embellished.
I can easily believe the same story, with the same outcome, but it went like this:
“In a time when everyone in the world spoke the same language, a group of people wandered east and came across a suitable place to settle down. They decided to build a great city. As part of this great city, there was to be a tower so tall that they could see for miles around. The leaders told their people that if they achieved this, they would be safe and could build a life of prosperity for generations to come. They would make a name for themselves.
Plans were drawn, and technologies were developed with the great project in mind. Vast amounts of resources began to be collected as the building began. To support this project, food gathering suffered some, and building homes was secondary to the great tower. The people’s lives, building the city, were harder than they ever were while they were wandering. So, the builders petitioned for better conditions, ones more aligned with the leadership, which seemed much less strenuous and dangerous. Requests were ultimately denied, and that result was accepted, not because it was right, but their mission was going to usher in prosperity for their descendants, potentially forever after.
The building went on for decades, new leadership came in and used the grand project as the catalyst for all manner of things that increased benefits for some, but not for everyone. In that time, some voices became louder. They still asked for better conditions and more resources, but they also began questioning the outcome and the motive. Lower-level thought leaders emerged, hoping to include their ideas in the plans. No longer was it a matter of how this great feat would be accomplished, but how it would work and what it would look like on completion, down to the specifics: Colors, symbols, ideas, responsibilities, rewards, and governing styles.
The original concept of a great city that provided lasting safety and security was no longer enough. The people no longer agreed on what safety and security looked like. They lost sight of the shared vision and fragmented.
Soon, the faction leaders looked around at the progress that had been made, physically, socially, and technologically, and were so impressed, despite the project not being completed. They turned to their followers and said, “Look at all you can accomplish by working together. If you can do this, you can do anything. You could bring our vision of utopia to life.” The people agreed. Except not all the groups shared a common belief in what that utopia was. Many of the ideas conflicted greatly. They could no longer agree on a vision of a life together.
Still, the numbers were few, and they did not want conflict or bloodshed, so they decided to separate. They split into groups, left the valley, and went out to build their own communities of people who agreed on what kind of life they wanted to pursue. The people were no longer in agreement. They no longer spoke the same language.
The numbers of the smaller groups were not large enough to build new, large cities. Some were not even large enough to defend themselves, and their people and ideas were lost or dissolved into other groups. Eventually, languages evolved, ideas shaped new and expanding cultures, until people truly spoke different languages. All this stemmed from this one great schism.”
Does This Story Need Magic To Have Meaning?
Whether you subscribe to the biblical text exactly as it is written, or you believe the one I proposed, I think the same lesson can be extrapolated from both. It is not that we shouldn’t reach for heaven. It is true that to achieve great things, we must maintain a sense of togetherness. You must strive to keep control of the language and the narratives. You need people of all types and in all roles to be working together, for each other, in harmony, to change the world. You need to speak the same language to do big things.
If you use your imagination to expand how you think about that proposal, you can see how you need people at the bottom to build things. Without workers, things will not get done. This should not minimize their value, but reinforce their efforts as necessary and noble. The people laying the bricks deserve respect for their critical efforts. If you scatter your population, who then will build the towers?
This is what the Pope, and so many others, are trying to convey as they push against our current course with AI. While some of the aspects of economics, meaning, and religion may not resonate with everyone, there is a shared narrative that speaks louder than tradition. It is that if we are not building a future that is better for everyone, then it is better for no one.
Things as big as AI need to be worked on collaboratively, not oppositionally. If we fragment our goals, seek to dominate others, or create a more unequal world, we will be left scattered. We don’t need a god, a religious leader, a government appointee, or a rogue tech founder to tell us these things. We have seen it, time and again. We know how it ends, and we shouldn’t be so naive to think this time would be any different.
So let’s not speak of the hows, but the whys. Let’s not talk about just who can benefit, but who can lose. Most of all, let’s agree that we need safety and security through the period of change, so our populations are not living in fear and desperation, ready to sabotage the development of the good that can come from the advancements of technology. Build a strong foundation, keep a coherent vision, and raise everyone up. Leave no one behind, lest we be scattered and picked off in the wilderness.
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