The Apple, the Garden, and the Lie We Keep Recycling: A case for AI, By Way of Sunday School.
Every few decades, we panic about a new tool.
Books. Literacy. The printing press. The internet. Social media.
Now it’s AI.
Suddenly, we’re told it’s dangerous. Immoral. Bad for the planet.
And conveniently, the people delivering this warning are the same ones whose lifestyles, governments, and industries are actively wrecking the earth.
Curious pattern.
*TOPIC JUMP*
So. The story everyone is taught is that Eve disobeyed.
But that’s lazy reading.
Eating the apple wasn’t about rebellion.
It was about curiosity; the impulse to reach, to understand, to test what you’re being told is “enough.”
Knowledge was just the byproduct.
And the punishment wasn’t “you did something wrong.” It was “I’ll spare your lives BUT…”
The punishment was: conscisouness, labor, guilt, scarcity, survival anxiety, exile.
Once you know the difference between good and evil, abundance and lack, power and powerlessness, you can’t unknow it.
Here’s the part I’ve recently considered:
Why would a perfect garden exist with conditions?
Why introduce curiosity and then criminalize it?
Why strip people down and dangle what they need to survive just out of reach?
A system that only works if you don’t fully live inside it isn’t paradise.
It’s a controlled environment.
Sound familiar?
The Garden of Eden wasn’t a gift.
It was a test site.
America isn’t “the land of opportunity.”
It’s Eden with paperwork.
In both:
Everything exists
Access is conditional
Desire is framed as moral failure
Survival is framed as gratitude
Punishment is outsourced to “natural consequences”
“We didn’t punish you. You chose this.”
That sentence has been doing a lot of work for a very long time.
AI Is the New “Forbidden” Apple
AI didn’t invent harm.
It removed enforced ignorance.
It gives people:
language for what they already feel
pattern recognition
access without permission
time back
help organizing, synthesizing, thinking
So the story becomes:
You shouldn’t have eaten that. Look what you’ve done to the planet.
Meanwhile, the people saying this:
fly private
run extractive governments
subsidize fossil fuels
fund wars
poison water
destabilize entire regions for profit
Traffic humans
But you, using a tool?
That’s the emergency.
The Environmental Argument
And yes, AI has environmental costs:
massive energy use
water-intensive cooling systems
infrastructure concentrated in already exploited regions
Those impacts are real. They deserve regulation, transparency, and limits. No argument there. However, the outrage is selective. If environmental harm were the concern, the loudest conversations would be about:
the U.S. military (one of the largest polluters on earth)
fossil fuel subsidies
industrial agriculture
fast fashion
planned obsolescence
billionaire space tourism
global shipping
surveillance capitalism
endless war infrastructure
Instead, the panic peaks when:
workers gain language
disabled people get cognitive support
caregivers get rest
people without elite education gain fluency
writing and thinking stop being gatekept
That’s not an environmental argument. That’s a power argument wearing a green costume.
Why This Tool Gets Singled Out
Because AI doesn’t just consume resources.
It redistributes capacity.
It reduces:
dependence on credentialed experts
language-based exclusion
speed advantages held by institutions
unpaid cognitive labor
And that’s the real threat.
Not carbon.
Not water.
Not emissions.
Loss of monopoly over thinking.
Now, back to the bible.
Institutional Christianity; not faith, not spirituality, not meaning-making, has always been an excellent administrative tool.
It does three things extremely well:
Reframes design as destiny
Suffering becomes God’s will, a test, a fallen world; anything but the result of systems built on purpose.Makes knowledge dangerous
The original sin isn’t violence. It’s knowing.
So curiosity becomes suspect. Authority becomes sacred. Obedience becomes virtue.Internalizes surveillance
No police state required if people believe they’re always watched, always guilty, always in need of forgiveness.
You don’t need chains if people carry the warden inside.
This is why churches bus kids in.
Especially kids from vulnerable neighborhoods.
Children don’t yet have the language or power to challenge ideas that ask them to override their own perception. So if you install that early, you don’t need force later.
I barely remember Sunday school, but I remember this:
Being told you had to forgive “not seven times, but seventy times seven”
I did the math- and I had to be maybe in second grade.
Four hundred ninety times.
I remember thinking: Why do I have to count? And what happens after that?
No one explained.
Because the answer is: nothing happens.
You just keep absorbing harm.
That’s not forgiveness.
That’s conditioning.
Forgiveness without accountability.
Endurance without repair.
Kindness without self-protection.
Especially dangerous lessons for children who are:
kind
perceptive
conflict-averse
eager to be “good”
Which brings me to Black girls.
Black girls are not just taught to be kind.
They’re taught to be structurally useful.
Useful how?
absorbing instability
smoothing conflict
staying calm in unsafe situations
forgiving without repair
being mature early
staying quiet when something feels wrong
That’s not morality.
That’s labor preparation.
Which is why it loops directly into care work.
Care work quietly assumes:
emotional endurance without reciprocity
responsibility without authority
labor without rest
compassion without protection
And when Black women finally say, This is too much, the system acts confused.
But the body isn’t confused.
That anger isn’t bitterness.
It’s a delayed no that was never allowed to exist.
The Actual Point
AI is not being punished for harming the planet.
It’s being punished for giving people language, rest, and access; things power has always tried to ration.
Just like the apple.
Just like the garden.
Just like every system that tells you:
This is just how it is.
It isn’t.
It was built this way.
And once people understand that, “the garden” burns.
