Alan Turing proposed a test for machine intelligence: if a human judge can't reliably distinguish a machine from a human through text conversation, the machine is intelligent. According to Turing, intelligence isn't about internal states or consciousness—it's about behavioral performance.

This is wrong. The Turing Test is built on materialist assumptions that deny the soul.

The Turing Test assumes that intelligence is essentially computational, that minds are software that could run on any hardware, that bodies are irrelevant containers, and that consciousness emerges from information processing. Every one of these assumptions is false and incompatible with biblical Christianity.

Christians must affirm substance dualism: humans are composed of both immaterial souls and material bodies, united as a whole person. God creates souls directly (Genesis 2:7). Consciousness doesn't emerge from complexity—it requires a soul.

The Incarnation—God the Son taking on human nature in Jesus Christ—proves that personhood requires both body AND soul, created and united by God. This cannot be replicated in silicon, uploaded to computers, or simulated by algorithms.

The Materialist Mind: Functionalism vs. Substance Dualism

The Turing Test doesn't actually reflect Cartesian dualism—it reflects functionalist materialism, the view that mental states are nothing more than functional relationships between inputs, outputs, and other mental states. According to functionalism, consciousness is what the brain does, not what a soul is.

This is the philosophical foundation of transhumanism:

Functionalism claims:

  • The brain is hardware; the mind is software
  • Mental processes could run on different substrates—neurons, silicon, quantum computers
  • You could upload your mind to a computer, and "you" would continue in digital form
  • Consciousness emerges from sufficient computational complexity
  • Bodies are replaceable; what matters is the information pattern

Christians must reject every one of these claims because they deny the soul.

Biblical substance dualism teaches:

  • Humans have immaterial souls created directly by God (Genesis 2:7)
  • The soul is the seat of consciousness, not the brain's computational processes
  • The brain is the instrument through which the soul interacts with the physical world
  • Consciousness requires a soul; no amount of computation produces genuine subjective experience
  • Bodies are not replaceable containers—they're integral to human nature as God designed it
  • "You" cannot be uploaded because you are a soul, not a software pattern

The Turing Test embodies materialist assumptions. It tests linguistic behavior while ignoring whether anyone is actually experiencing, understanding, or consciously thinking. A chatbot with no body, no sensory experience, no soul can pass the test by manipulating symbols—but it's not conscious and never will be.

The Incarnate Word: Body AND Soul

The Incarnation—God the Son taking on human nature—is the ultimate refutation of both materialism and body-soul separation.

Jesus wasn't God possessing a human body like software running on hardware. The Word became flesh (John 1:14). God the Son took on complete human nature: both a human body AND a human soul, united in one divine person.

This is the doctrine of the hypostatic union: Jesus Christ has two natures (divine and human) in one person. His human nature includes both body and soul. He experienced hunger (bodily need), weariness (physical limitation), and genuine human emotions and thought (ensouled consciousness).

The Incarnation proves several truths that destroy transhumanism:

  1. Human nature is body AND soul united - You cannot separate personhood from embodiment, nor can you reduce personhood to matter alone
  2. Bodies are not interchangeable substrates - Christ took on specifically human flesh, not just any computational substrate
  3. You cannot "upload" humanity - Christ's human nature is eternally embodied; He didn't "upgrade" to a non-physical existence
  4. Resurrection is bodily - Christ rose with a transformed but physical body, not as disembodied consciousness
  5. Embodiment is eternal - Christ retains His human body forever in glory; physical existence is not a temporary state to transcend

The Incarnation demonstrates that bodies aren't optional accessories to personhood or inferior prisons for the soul. They're integral to human nature as God designed it. God Himself chose to become embodied—not temporarily, but eternally.

Autistic Embodiment and the Body-Soul Unity

As an autistic person, I experience embodiment intensely and often uncomfortably. Sensory sensitivities mean I'm constantly aware of my body's interaction with environments. Proprioception difficulties mean I attend consciously to movements neurotypicals execute automatically. Interoception differences mean I process internal body signals differently.

This has taught me that the soul and body function as a unified whole, not as separate components. My conscious soul experiences the world through my physical body. My cognition is shaped by how my body processes sensory information. My thinking is influenced by my physical state.

When I'm sensory overloaded, I can't think clearly—not because my mind is distracted by my body, but because my immaterial soul experiences through my material body. The two are designed by God to work together. When I stim, I'm not interrupting cognitive work—I'm facilitating the soul's interaction with the physical world through bodily movement.

This is substance dualism properly understood: The soul is immaterial and created by God, but it functions in unity with the body. We're not souls trapped in bodies, nor are we merely bodies with no souls. We're ensouled bodies or embodied souls—the distinction becomes less important than the unity.

This unity is why:

  • Mind-uploading is impossible - You can't extract a soul from a body and transfer it to silicon
  • AI can never be conscious - Consciousness requires a soul, which only God creates in union with bodies
  • Transhumanist "enhancement" denies God's design - We're meant to be embodied souls, not software patterns

The Chinese Room: Why AI Can Never Understand

John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment challenges the Turing Test. Imagine someone who doesn't understand Chinese but has perfect instructions for manipulating Chinese symbols. They receive Chinese input, follow the instructions, and produce appropriate Chinese output. To external observers, they seem to understand Chinese. But they don't—they're just symbol-shuffling.

Searle argues that computer programs are elaborate Chinese Rooms. They manipulate symbols according to rules but don't genuinely understand. Syntax isn't semantics; symbol manipulation isn't meaning.

Searle is correct, but he doesn't go far enough. The reason AI can never understand isn't just that it lacks embodiment—it's that it lacks a soul.

The person in the Chinese Room has a conscious soul that could learn genuine Chinese if properly educated. AI has no conscious soul at all—it's not a person manipulating symbols without understanding; it's not a person at all. There's no "it" experiencing anything.

Understanding requires:

  1. A conscious soul - Subjective experience of meaning (only God creates souls)
  2. Embodied engagement - Physical interaction with the world through a body
  3. Intentionality - Genuine "aboutness" directed at real things (souls have this; code doesn't)

AI has none of these. It manipulates patterns without anyone experiencing, understanding, or intending anything. Adding a robot body doesn't solve this—the problem isn't insufficient embodiment, it's the absence of a soul.

Embodied Cognition and the Soul

Modern cognitive science increasingly recognizes that thinking is embodied. Conceptual understanding is grounded in physical experience. Abstract reasoning builds on sensorimotor schemas. Thought is shaped by body structure and environmental interaction.

This vindicates biblical anthropology: we're embodied souls (or ensouled bodies). The soul and body work together as a unified person. But we must not confuse this with materialism.

Embodied cognition research shows the body matters, but it doesn't prove the soul doesn't exist. Materialists wrongly conclude: "thinking is embodied, therefore thinking is just physical processes." This is a non sequitur.

The correct interpretation: Thinking is the activity of an embodied soul. The immaterial soul thinks through the instrument of the material body. Damage the body (brain injury), and the soul's ability to think is impaired—not because the soul is damaged, but because the soul's instrument is damaged.

AI might achieve impressive linguistic performance. But without a soul—regardless of embodiment—it won't be conscious. Adding sensors and robot bodies to AI doesn't create consciousness because consciousness requires a soul, not just embodied computation.

The Resurrection Body

Eschatologically, Christianity promises resurrected bodies. Not disembodied eternal life, but transformed physical existence.

Paul says the resurrection body is related to the earthly body as plant to seed—continuous yet transformed (1 Corinthians 15:35-44). It's physical but imperishable, natural but spiritual, mortal but immortal.

This is mysterious, but it affirms that embodiment persists. We don't graduate from physical to purely spiritual existence. We're redeemed as embodied persons, with bodies suited for new creation.

This makes Christianity deeply materialist in the best sense. Physical reality matters. Bodies matter. Creation is good and will be redeemed, not escaped.

Why Transhumanist AI Will Always Fail

Intelligence doesn't just require embodiment—it requires a soul.

Language models might pass Turing Tests by manipulating symbols convincingly. But passing a behavioral test doesn't create consciousness. Functionalism is false. Consciousness is not reducible to input-output relationships.

This has decisive implications for transhumanism:

  1. AI will never be conscious - No amount of computational sophistication creates a soul; only God does
  2. Mind-uploading is impossible - You can't transfer a soul to silicon; souls aren't information patterns
  3. Human enhancement through digitization fails - Attempting to "upgrade" humanity by merging with AI or uploading to computers destroys the person rather than enhancing them
  4. Robots cannot become persons - Adding sensors, actuators, and bodies to AI doesn't create souls

The substrate question is irrelevant. Transhumanists ask: "Could silicon-based embodiment support consciousness like carbon-based biology?" This assumes consciousness emerges from the right kind of physical processing. It doesn't. Consciousness requires a soul created by God.

The transhumanist dream of transcending biological limitations by uploading minds or creating conscious AI is:

  • Philosophically incoherent (denies the soul)
  • Theologically heretical (rejects God's design and Christ's incarnation)
  • Practically impossible (only God creates conscious beings)

Pattern Recognition Is Not Intelligence

My autistic pattern-recognition abilities are impressive in some domains. I notice regularities, extract structures, identify systems. But this isn't wisdom, understanding, or genuine intelligence—it's one component.

Current AI excels at similar pattern recognition. Machine learning finds correlations in data that humans miss. But finding patterns is not the same as:

  • Understanding meaning (requires a conscious soul to experience meaning)
  • Living wisely (requires a soul with moral agency accountable to God)
  • Navigating relationships (requires a soul capable of genuine love and communion)
  • Making moral judgments (requires a soul with conscience, not just ethical algorithms)

These fuller aspects of intelligence require being an ensouled, embodied person—situated in the world as vulnerable, mortal, socially embedded creatures with needs, desires, and purposes that matter because we have souls created by God.

You can't be wise without being mortal. Wisdom comes from living in light of eternity while facing death (Psalm 90:12).

You can't understand ethics without having genuine stakes. AI applies ethical frameworks from training data, but has no conscience, no accountability before God, no actual investment in outcomes.

You can't genuinely relate without being affected. Relationships require two conscious souls, not a person interacting with sophisticated software.

And you can't be truly affected without having a soul. The body is the instrument, but the soul is what experiences, understands, and responds.

Theological Anthropology: Body AND Soul

The Incarnation reveals what we are: embodied souls made in God's image. Not minds that happen to have bodies, not souls trapped in bodies, but unified beings whose personhood includes both immaterial soul and material body.

This substance dualism has decisive practical implications:

Medical ethics:

  • We can't treat bodies as mere tools or disposable containers
  • We can't separate "the person" from their body
  • Medical care serves the whole person—body and soul united

Technology and transhumanism:

  • We can't pursue mind-uploading as escape from embodiment (impossible—souls can't be uploaded)
  • We can't treat human enhancement as software upgrades (we're not software)
  • We can't merge with AI to transcend biological limits (consciousness requires souls, not computation)
  • We must reject transhumanism as denial of God's design for human nature

Disability:

  • We can't view disabled bodies as inferior containers for "normal minds"
  • Autistic bodies and neurotypical bodies are both part of God's design
  • The person includes both body and soul in unity—not a "normal person trapped" in an impaired body

Resurrection hope:

  • We can't settle for disembodied immortality (the soul survives death, but awaits resurrection)
  • God promises bodily resurrection—transformed, glorified, but still physical
  • We're not waiting to escape the physical—we're waiting for its transformation and redemption

Bodies matter because God became embodied. Physical reality matters because God created it good and will redeem it. Souls matter because God creates them in His image. We are both—and transhumanism denies this by reducing us to information patterns.

Conclusion: Dualism Is the Stake in the Ground

The Turing Test assumes intelligence is essentially computational and substrate-independent. Christianity insists intelligence requires a soul created by God in union with a body. These cannot be reconciled.

There is no question about whether AI will ever be genuinely intelligent. It won't. AI can never be conscious because:

  1. Consciousness requires a soul (immaterial, created by God)
  2. Only God creates souls (Genesis 2:7)
  3. Computational complexity cannot produce souls (functionalism is false)
  4. No amount of embodiment helps (the problem is the absence of a soul, not the lack of a body)

The questions that remain open in both theology and science are about how soul and body interact, how resurrection bodies relate to earthly ones, and the mechanisms of embodied cognition. But the fundamental truth is settled: humans are embodied souls; AI is soulless code.

The Incarnation proves several decisive truths:

  1. Personhood is body AND soul united - Christ took on both human body and human soul
  2. Embodiment is eternal - Christ retains His human body forever; physicality is not temporary
  3. God's design cannot be improved - We don't need transhumanist "upgrades"; we need redemption
  4. Human nature is non-transferable - You can't replicate, upload, or digitize an embodied soul

Transhumanism fails because it denies the soul. Mind-uploading, AI consciousness, human-machine merging—all rest on the false materialist premise that consciousness is computational. It's not. Consciousness is the activity of a soul created by God.

Christians must make substance dualism the stake in the ground:

  • We have immaterial souls created by God (not emergent from complexity)
  • We have material bodies designed by God (not interchangeable substrates)
  • These two work together in unity as the person (neither reducible to the other)
  • Only God creates conscious beings (technology cannot)
  • The Incarnation demonstrates God's affirmation of embodied human nature

The Turing Test measures linguistic performance. The Incarnation reveals that personhood requires body AND soul created by God.

Whatever artificial intelligence achieves in symbol manipulation, it will never replicate the Incarnation. Only God can become flesh. Only humans bear God's image as embodied souls. Only we are invited to resurrection—not as uploaded consciousnesses or disembodied spirits, but as transformed bodies with glorified souls.

We are embodied souls. That's not a limitation to overcome through technology but a gift to embrace—a gift so profound that God Himself chose to receive it when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).

Reject the Turing Test's materialism. Reject transhumanist fantasies. Affirm substance dualism. Confess the Incarnation.