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It's Friday, August 7th, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction. And the reason it's often said is because it's true. Truth is very often stranger than fiction. So let me just tell you a story that is true. Just a matter of days ago, one of the young wunderkind, one of the young wunder children of Silicon Valley, got married to another of the young wunderkind, the wunder children of Silicon Valley and the entire digital revolutionary world. And in this case, a young man and a young woman got married. But just before the wedding, and I mean just before the wedding, the groom was, in terms of his business, his investment fund lost something like $30 billion in a matter of hours, let's just say, I would think for a wedding, that would be a downer. The young man, in this case the groom in the wedding was Leopold Aschenbrenner. And he is one of those persons who's just incredibly impressive, evidently in terms of intelligence. He was born in Germany, and by the way, his age is either 24 or 25, depending upon which media source you look at. And even on online digital sources do not have a birth date with a year. So it is interesting, but at least we are told this. He graduated from Columbia University as a 19 year old and he graduated as valedictorian. He entered as a 15 year old coming from Germany, graduated four years later, he was 19 years old. While at Columbia, he became very much identified with EA Effective Altruism, which is a worldview we're going to discuss. And he became involved with the Future Humanity Institute and the Global Priority Center. He established the Effective Altruism chapter there at Columbia University. Remember, that's not only Ivy League, it's one of the oldest educational institutions in the United States. And so let's just look at this and understand that this was a very strategic week in this young man's life. Now, there's a huge story here, as you might expect. First of all, when we're talking about this young man, Leopold Aschenbrenner, he is still a billionaire, at least on paper, even though he is, as I say, either 24 or 25 somewhere in there. The young woman he married is actually the chief of staff at Anthropic. He himself had been at OpenAI, but he was fired from his position at OpenAI after the accusation from the company that he'd been sharing some company information with Outsiders. He went on to establish his own fund and, and basically it was identified as situational awareness. Now of course that's an interesting term. Situational awareness is a term that refers to your ability to perceive, understand and capitalize upon a situation. So even by naming his entire movement, he wrote a manifesto entitled Situational Awareness the decade ahead. And he is promising big big things out of artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence. He in his book wrote about AGI, which is artificial G general intelligence and he thinks it's just going to explode. Here's the first paragraph in his manifesto. AGI by 2027 is strikingly plausible. GPT2 to GPT4 took us from preschooler to smart high schooler abilities in four years. Tracing headlines in compute. He says this means in orders of magnitude a year. Algorithmic efficiencies also measured in orders of magnitude a year and unhobbling gains from chatbot to agent. We should expect another preschooler to high schooler size quantitative jump by 2027. I really wasn't expecting you to follow that. That's the point. I don't know how many people actually read this manifesto and followed it at all. By the time you get to the end of it, he's saying things like this. The intelligence explosion will be more like running a war than launching a product. We're not on track for super defense for an air gapped cluster on any of that. I'm not sure we would even realize if a model self exfiltrated. We're not on track for a sane chain of command to make any of these insanely high stakes decisions. To insist on the very high confidence appropriate for superintelligence to make decisions to take extra time before launching the next training run to get safety right or dedicate a large majority of compute to alignment research. I'm not going to read further. The point is this is Silicon Valley language and it is intended to communicate something. But mostly it was intended, we now understand, as marketing for the fund that he put together. And he attracted a good many billions of dollars to this fund. And then everything began to fall apart in the very week he was married. Headline in the Wall Street Journal. And let's just say, of course the Wall Street Journal is very interested in the story. Here's the headline. As the wedding guests were arriving, his 45 billion dollar fund was falling apart. Here's how the story begins. When the week began, Leopold Aschenbrenner was preparing for his wedding. The plan was for a multi day celebration in Carmel, a seaside town in northern California with a ceremony at a Tuscan style villa and the send off at a spa in the forest. There would also be a pre wedding colloquium to discuss ideas and panels and break the couple's only requests. No gifts. Listen to this quote. The 24 year old investor had amassed a fortune by promising he could see into the Future, building a $45 billion investing powerhouse that primarily bought stocks in the AI trade. For months, the holdings of his hedge fund Situational Awareness shot up in value, as did Aschenbrenner's standing in the upper echelons of San Francisco's elite. But by the time guests began to arrive, that means at his wedding, his fund was unraveling and Wall street was closing in. Okay, so here's something we need to understand. He was selling a product, but the product was basically himself. He was inviting people to invest vast sums of money. Again, we're talking here $45 billion. $45 billion was invested in this very, very young man, in the confidence that he actually had what his manifesto declared, situational awareness that others lacked. It turns out, by the way that he leveraged this about 1 to 4. So in other words, if you had $5,000, $1,000 was actually invested as cash in his fund. The other $4,000 were borrowed and invested in order to capitalize on his situational awareness. But guess what his situation turned out to be. The very week that he got married, the stocks began to lose value. He found himself in a situation in which the banks and others began to call in IOUs for all that bor and before you knew it, he had to talk with someone like Ken Griffin of Citadel and arrange for a buyout. The buyout still leaves him with something like $10 billion. But $10 billion, that represents an enormous haircut, as they say in the investment world, from $45 billion at the beginning of the week. Furthermore, confidence on the part of investors, let's just say, has got to be decreasing as well. Just a matter of months ago, Leopold Aschenbrenner was very much the toast of the town. He was also sometimes called the Nostradamus of artificial intelligence. He was able to see into the future. He was a prophet. This book or this manuscript known as Situational Awareness the Decade Ahead. It includes a lot of very interesting analysis, but most of it is couched in that kind of Silicon Valley language in which he appears to be saying a lot, but might actually be saying very little. He was selling something. And just in terms of the Christian worldview, this is something we need to see he was selling something. And that is increasingly what many investors fear is a good deal of the digital revolution. A lot of it is selling confidence in the people who are running these things. And in terms of some of them, clearly that's been a bona fide, well established investment. On the part of others, not so much. Perhaps it would interest you to know that at an earlier point in his career, this young man, Leopold Aschenbrode, had been identified with Sam Bankman Fried, who you recall, was a part of the biggest blow up of these things and is now himself in federal prison. But there's another aspect of this in worldview significance that I think is even more important in terms of the economic investment, the confidence game, so to speak, that was going on here. And by that I don't mean that it was in any way necessarily illegal, but it was built on confidence. And, you know, it's just a good reminder to all of us that when it comes to character and confidence, they are very hard to build and they're very easy to lose. As a matter of fact, you can lose a lot of that confidence in competence and even in character. Just a matter of days, weeks, hours. Okay, but the bigger worldview issue behind all of this is the worldview justification, the moral justification for so many of these young people involved in Silicon Valley, so many of the billionaires that exist, at least on paper, and so much of the energy. This comes down to the worldview of what is known as effective altruism. I've mentioned it on the briefing before, but we need to come back to it because it's at the center of the story. Ea effective altruism. That's an entire worldview. It is a worldview that was basically developed, most famously by Peter Singer at Princeton University, an Australian philosopher who is of course infamous among Christians for the fact that he has made arguments such as the fact he's an animal rights advocate. But he's made arguments that a highly intelligent mammal, and many animals may have more claim upon the dignity of life than a less intelligent human being, or even when it comes to infanticide. He's made the argument that we ought to understand that until human beings, human babies, gain a necessary amount of self consciousness, they should not be considered to be human beings when it comes to even defining the dignity and sanctity of human life. So again, you're talking about a very radical thinker, someone who has been watched by a lot of Christians for a matter of decades because he is so absolutely scandalous, but he is so absolutely Influential. And it's a reminder to us in worldview terms, that if you do not accept, and if you indeed reject the biblical Christian worldview, it's a reminder to us that if you do not operate out of a consistent biblical worldview, and as a matter of fact, you set yourself as the enemy of the biblical Christian worldview, then you're not going to have no worldview. You're going to have some different worldview. And at least in terms of honesty, effective altruism is a very different worldview. Effective altruism says this, and this is the effective part. And so you take the two words. The altruism part means that you mean good. Altruism basically goes down to the fact you will good, you intend good. Effective altruism says you're effective at doing good. Now, the interesting thing about this argument is that Peter Singer was arguing that traditional moral evaluations are ineffective. And thus he would make the argument that you would let someone right in front of you starve to death if you could plant seeds that would feed more people over a period of time in the future. And so it really is a very cold calculation, and it sometimes is symbolized in what's called the trolley story, in which case, without going into detail, it's intended to be morally confusing. He wants to bring out moral clarity. You just define what you think altruism aims for, and you seek whatever is most effective. And so here's the thing that allows you to say, at some point, this is going to benefit a lot of people. So I can break the rules. Now, that's exactly how this has worked out in Silicon Valley. You have all kinds of people who are playing around with moral rules because they intend good. That's Samuel Bankman Fried. That's the argument that he made even in federal court. Basically, he intended to do good one day. Eventually, yeah, I may have broken a lot of rules. I may have colored outside the lines in terms of investment policies. I may even have openly misrepresented what was being said. But you know what? I would have used all the money I would have made in order to help people at some point in the indefinite future. Effective altruism. I'll go back to where I began. Sometimes parables just happen right before our eyes. In this case, you can think of some biblical echoes here. Sometimes a parable comes in the context of a wedding and a wedding week and the loss of, let's just say, tens of billions of dollars of value in a poof. All right, now let's turn to questions and as always, I appreciate questions sent in by listeners. One listener wrote in and he asked me to talk about the term creation order, because I use it so often. It's absolutely essential, I think, to biblical worldview reasoning. And he says, let's just play that out a bit. Where does that term come from? It comes from Christian theology. And so it's a very good question. I appreciate this listener asking, because it's one of those things I think about. You know, we should explain this every once in a while. The basic understanding here is that there is an order revealed in the biblical account of creation. So as God created the world, he established an order, and that's the order he declared to be very good. And so we as Christians are obligated to respect that order and to seek to perpetuate that order and to honor that order and to defend it. And so let's just talk about what that means. Well, I guess in order to make this a clearer picture, let me go back to the Reformation. In medieval theology and in patristic theology, early church, you did have this concept of creation order. But it really became very, very evident in Martin Luther in the Reformation, also in an even more developed form in John Calvin in the Reformation. And it really plays out very much in Calvin's great book, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. But it's very much a part of Luther's thought as well. There's a Lutheran form and there's a Reformed, a more Calvinist form, but there's an essential biblical kernel or heart at the center of all of it. And it is the fact that we as Christians are to honor creation order, the order that God established in creation. And that means we have to study it, we have to think about it. We need to go to the Scriptures over and over again to remind ourselves of what that order is. And you know what the most amazing thing is? Once the category is in your mind, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 make so much sense. There's so much clarity, because what you have even in the succession of days of creation is increased order. You have a revelation of order. I mean, the separation of light from darkness, the separation of the land from the seas. And then you have the establishment of time. And then, of course, you have the creatures who are created. Creatures in the seas, creatures in the skies, creatures on the land. And by the way, that's all a part of creation order. That's what God intended. This is a part of the glory of God demonstrated in creation. But when it comes to the creation of human beings, well, creation order takes on a very extensive meaning, and it's all revealed in scripture. Not only are we created like the other creatures, but as conscious creatures, we are also able to know God because we are the only creatures made in God's image. And so even as there's a forward progression in terms of the detail and specificity of creation, day one, day two, day three, day four, by the time you get to the sixth day and by the time you have the creation of human beings, not only do you have creation order in the fact that male and female created he them, you see how essential this is. That's not a biological accident. That's not the product of evolution. No, that is God's creational design. Male and female created he them in his image, created he them. And then immediately you have the man and the woman coming together. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So marriage, and here's where you have to put Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 together. Marriage is so central to creation order. The relationship between parents and children is so clear in creation order. And of course, you look at this, and then you could even make the argument that the rest of scripture, in one sense, is an unfolding testimony and commentary to creation order. And then, as Christians, we understand that creation order is absolutely essential but can't save us. Only Christ can save us. And that's why it is not only about creation order. It's about the new covenant. It's about the new creation and a new creation order, even a new heaven and a new earth in the kingdom of Christ. So it really is a wonderfully consistent and comprehensive aspect of Christian thinking and Christian reasoning. But creation order is so important to us right now because in a way that's unique to this cultural moment, you have an absolute defiance of creation order in so many sectors of society. Just this week on the briefing, we've talked about the wnba, seemingly absolutely confused about what W stands for, who a woman is. And then we talked about the fact you have some of these coaches who are saying, I just think we need to be inclusive and all, you know, so whatever anyone declares himself or herself to be. And you look at that and you go, okay, that just won't work in creation order. You can't actually have a WNBA if you don't know what W means. And by the way, there is an incredible amount of knowledge about creation order that the average person, even without scripture and even without Christian testimony, actually knows. And as a matter of fact, in Romans 1, you basically have the apostle Paul saying, there are things you cannot not know. And so the fact that there are two different genders, two different sexes, male and female, and that they're biologically revealed, that is something that you actually, you find deeply rooted in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. But most of the people by the untold multiple millions who lived in human history, even if they didn't have Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, they got the point. So when we're talking about moral reasoning, you would simply say the most basic issues are the creation order. Issues like male and female, human dignity, the sanctity of human life, the reality of marriage, the institution of marriage, the definition of marriage, the biblical teaching about sexuality, the biblical understanding of parenthood, mothers and fathers and children, all of this is a part of creation order. And as I say, you even look at the giving of the law, let's look at the Ten Commandments, honor your father and your mother. And you look at that, and you recognize even in the law, you have the fundamental assertion, affirmation, and understanding of creation order. All right, so I appreciate so much this listener writing in saying, how do you define this term? Okay, that term means it is the order revealed in creation, which is the order we are to the glory of God and in obedience to God to follow, to emulate, to defend. And if the world is confused about male and female, as Christians, we cannot be confused without being absolutely disobedient to creation order. Okay, next, another question, and this comes from another man who listens to the briefing and was listening to a recent episode in which I talked about the surrogate parent issue and homosexuality. This with reference to the resignation of the German health minister. But then he says, you know, what you didn't really discuss is contraception and birth control. He asked the question, how does contraception fit into this consideration? As far as I can tell, the SPC warns against a widespread culture of contraception. But is there an absolute condemnation of non abortifacient contraception? By the way, that's a very intelligent way to ask the question. Now, how does this all fit into the wholeness of the Christian worldview? Well, okay, you asked a question, so let's go into it. And I've written a lot about this. I participated in book projects and in public arguments over these things. The bottom line is that I think the goodness of children and the biblical context, the creation order, here we are. Context of the giving of marriage means that every single marriage should be open to the gift of children. Every single marriage should be open to the gift of children. Now, that means, and by the way, I read the question what he said here, what about non abortive fashion contraception? That means that he's acknowledging, and he's absolutely right, that any form of birth control which basically runs either the reality or the risk of an abortion is wrong. And Christians should understand that before you understand just about anything else. So he's saying, well, okay, let's talk about birth control. Let's just say like a barrier method, if it's such a thing, which runs no risk of an abortion, but it is preventing a pregnancy, or at least that's the intention. The question is, is that morally legitimate in ethical terms? Is it morally licit or not? And the answer is, I think that the Scripture is not absolutely clear about each and every time the issue might arise. It is, I think, fundamentally clear that openness to the gift of children is central to the definition of marriage in Scripture. And so my argument is every couple must be genuinely open to the gift of children. Now, I understand there are all kinds of other issues. It could be health issues, timing issues, et cetera. I'm going to say I don't think those are of ultimate ethical significance. And that's one of the reasons why evangelical Christians often just don't have a great deal to say about this other than what I think we should say fundamentally, which is that life is God's gift and that the order found even in the declaration of marriage in Genesis 1, the man and the woman coming together is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And thus if we're faithful, then that marriage should be open to the gift of children. But I will simply say that I think that means, and I guess this is a very important aspect of the argument, I think that means that the use of birth control has to be morally justified, not the non use. And in Christian ethical reasoning that's a huge issue. That's a huge distinction. It's the use of something that has to be justified. And there may be arguments about when it's justified and when it's not justified, but the use of it has to be justified. The non use of it does not have to be justified. And so I think that's just a good world viewpoint. It's a good question to be asked and I want to be genuinely clear and genuinely helpful. And I'll simply say the larger issue in Scripture, I think, is the marriage itself that should be open to the gift of children. And in an age in which you have closure to the gift of children celebrated and marriage separated from reproduction, from parenthood, and all the Rest, and for that matter, parenthood separated from marriage. We're looking at an unraveling of creation order, which is a very undisguised form of rebellion against God. Well, next, a question from a woman who has been listening and she's been seeing some of the same things I've been seeing. And as a matter of fact, I'm thinking of one headline that comes to my mind because I want to thank this listener for raising the issue. But I want to tell her this caught my attention too. Here's what she asked. She says, I see increasingly in pop psychology the trend of people cutting off those who are perceived as toxic or hurtful, especially when it comes to family members or in laws. I believe this to be an ungodly response. But what would a biblical response be to family members who are purposefully hurtful and not interested in reconciliation? She completes the question. Is there a biblical justification for boundaries with certain relatives to protect our young family? Okay, I love the way this listener asked the question and kind of unfolds it in a succession of questions. But I want us all to notice the question changes in the course of her asking it. That's entirely legitimate. She raises the issue as to the appropriateness of this kind of pop psychology trend, which really is absolutely selfish. It's unabashedly, unashamedly selfish. This is telling people, you don't need to spend time with people who don't empower you, who don't affirm you. You just don't need to waste your time, family members and all the rest. So in the mainstream media in the course of the last several weeks, some of this has been dealt with. It's been in advice columns, it's been in ethical columns, it's been even in editorial columns in some sense in which people are saying, it's just that this person is toxic to me, so I don't need to spend time with them anymore. And in terms of some of this stuff, it's been parents writing in saying, look, I've been cut off by my own children simply because they say I drain them, rather than adding value to them or affirming them. And all this. Now, clearly there's a lot we could cover here about these relationships. But the bottom line is the problem morally with that advice, and you could see in pop psychology why it'd be so popular, the problem with it is that it is so self centered. It defines everything in terms of the individual's will either to be with people or not be with people. And it gives them an excuse to mistreat people and ignore people and basically to declare their independence, taking no responsibility. Just in the world of pop psychology, you're simply affirmed for understanding your limits and mitigating your personal risk. Now, at the end of this, the woman says, is there a biblical justification for boundaries with certain relatives to protect our young families? Okay, that's the shift in the question, as I wanted to say. So in other words, I think this young woman listener, I think she's absolutely right that the problem with that absolute assertion of personal autonomy and just personal whim, in terms of the advice coming from therapists, that's wrong. Christians can't be associated with that. But there's a legitimate issue that does arise, and that is, I think she puts it perfectly. Is there a biblical justification for boundaries with certain relatives to protect our young family? I would say that's a different issue. You raise a young family, you raise children. That raises morally and let's just go back, even in creation order, that raises the stakes, so to speak. And I think you as parents do have to make judgments at times about what's appropriate and not appropriate in terms of exposure of your children to any number of things. And that could include some relatives. In that case, it is not your assertion of personal autonomy and just a personal comfort zone that's at stake for Christians. That's not a valid determinator. It is instead concern as parents for children. And I think in that sense, parents committed to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord are just going to have to make some decisions about the kind of people they want their children to be around and understand what risks and dangers there could be. That's very different than just the assertion of personal autonomy in a comfort zone. And all of this, of course, has to be in the context of biblical fidelity and, we hope, a redemptive gospel purpose. But we do understand all this has to be put in the proper context. And I appreciate this listener. For this question, send your question. Just write to me@mailbertmuller.com I'm glad to get your questions, and we'll get to as many as we can in weeks ahead. And we'll try to think together in order that we may think more biblically and faithfully. And I want to thank you again for honoring me and trusting me with these questions. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com you can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com today I'm in Moscow, Idaho and I'll meet you again on Monday for the briefing.