Dan Harper | Sermons

  • Who Knows What’s True?

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading was the first half of one of the more troubling stories from the Bible, from Genesis chapter 22.

    Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

    “Here I am,” Abraham replied.

    God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love — Isaac — and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

    Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

    “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

    “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”…

    The second reading was by Rev. Dr. William R. Jones, a humanist Unitarian Universalist minister, from his essay “Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows”:

    Abraham’s situation, when he is commanded to slay Isaac, represents the human situation. Forced to decide whether he is addressed by God or Moloch and given the impossibility of demonstrating whose voice he hears, Abraham … must decide the source of the command, and in the final analysis his judgment of the source determines the value of the command. If he concludes that the decree is from God, it is morally imperative. If, however, he decides that it is Moloch’s voice that he hears, the order must be rejected. But clearly, only Abraham can make this crucial decision.

    Sermon

    In the first reading, we heard the first half of the story of Abraham and Isaac, which is one of the more troubling stories in the Hebrew Bible. While this story has been interpreted and reinterpreted in many different ways, I’d like to draw on it as a way for us to think about truth. How do we know what is true, and what is false? Who is it that knows what is true? And along the way, I’ll also make a connection between truth and justice.

    I’ll begin by retelling the whole story, interspersed with some of my own interpretation and commentary. As usual, my interpretation and commentary are provisional, so after the sermon please tell me where I went wrong.

    Before I begin, I have to say a little bit about the names for the God of the Israelites. In this story, two names for God appear: Elohim, and the name that is spelled Y-H-W-H, which we English speakers often pronounce as “Jehovah.” Explaining why these two different names are used to refer to the same deity would get us into fairly deep waters, so I’m going to skip over that for now; but as I retell the story of Abraham and Isaac, I’ll use the names “Jehovah” and “Elohim” to show where the original text had two different Hebrew names.

    The story begins with Elohim deciding to test Abraham. Elohim says to him, “Abraham!”

    And Abraham replies to Elohim, “Here I am.”

    Elohim says to Abraham, “I want you to take your only son, Isaac, whom you love. I want you to go to the place called Moriah. When you get there, I’m going to show you a mountain where you will sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering.”

    At this point, I’ll pause to interject some commentary. The Biblical story remains silent at what goes through Abraham’s head when Elohim speaks to him. I can imagine many different thoughts he might have had. For one thing, Abraham might not be entirely sure that this is actually Elohim speaking. One of the Canaanite gods, a deity named Moloch who is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as existing at this time, was kind of notorious in those days for requiring child sacrifices, so Abraham might be concerned that this is actually Moloch speaking, not Elohim. For another thing, I imagine that Abraham would wonder what Sarah, Isaac’s mother, would think about all this, and I imagine that Abraham is going to want to talk this over with Sarah. That’s enough of my commentary; let’s get back to the story.

    So the next morning, Abraham gets up real early, loads up his donkey, wakes up Isaac and two of the family servants, and cuts a bunch of wood so he can do a burnt offering. Then they all set out for Moriah. It takes them most of three days to get where they can see the place about which Elohim told Abraham. Abraham turns to the two servants, and says, “You two stay here with the donkey. I’m going over there with the boy. We’ll worship by offering up a burnt offering, and then we will come back to you.”

    Another pause for commentary: I like how Abraham says, “WE will come back to you.” To my way of thinking, this means that he fully expects that he is not going to have to kill Isaac, that both he and Isaac will be returning to the servants. To put it another way, Abraham is pretty sure that he is not being deceived by the evil deity Moloch, that something else is going on here; he is feeling his way towards the truth. Now back to the story.

    Abraham takes the bundle of wood that they had carried for the past three days, and gives it to Isaac to carry. Abraham carries the fire (remember, they didn’t have matches or lighters, so he’s carrying some kind of live embers) and the sacrificial knife. They walk along together, and Isaac says, “Father, I see we’ve got the wood and the fire, but where’s the lamb we’re going to sacrifice?”

    Abraham says, “Don’t worry, Elohim is going to provide the lamb for the burnt offering.” And then they get to the place that Elohim told Abraham about, and Abraham builds an altar, and sets up the wood for a fire. Then he ties up Isaac and puts him on top of the wood. Then Abraham picks up the knife….

    Another pause for commentary: At this point Abraham must be wondering if he has correctly discerned the truth. Who was it that spoke to him? Was it Moloch, the evil god who demands child sacrifices, or was it Elohim, the good god? If it was Elohim, then Elohim is waiting until the last possible moment to keep him from killing his son. Determining the truth has become a life and death matter! Now back to the story.

    Just at this moment, the angel of Jehovah calls out, “Abraham!” And Abraham replies to the angel from Jehovah, “Here I am.” And the angel says, “Don’t do anything to the boy. Now I know you fear Jehovah, because you didn’t hold back when you were asked to sacrifice your only son.”

    A quick pause for commentary: You will notice that in this short passage, Genesis 22:11 and 12, the deity is referred to as Jehovah, not as Elohim. Some Biblical scholars believe that this short passage was added into the original story. We’ll come back to this in a moment, but now back to the story.

    So Abraham looks up from the sacrificial altar, and sees a ram caught by its horns in a nearby thicket. He goes over to the ram, grabs it, and sacrifices it as a burnt offering instead of Isaac. Abraham names the place “Elohim Will Provide.” Which gives rise to a proverbial saying, “On the mountain of Elohim it will be provided.”

    Another pause for commentary. If you leave out the short passage about the angel from Jehovah, the story still works. But without the passage with the angel from Jehovah, we wind up with a different story. The philosopher Omri Boehm puts it this way: “In the original narrative, Abraham ultimately disobeys God’s command, sacrificing the ram ‘instead of his son’ by his own decision. [But] the interpolated figure of an angel takes out of Abraham’s hand not just the knife but the responsibility for stopping the trial: It takes a story that culminates in Abraham’s ethical disobedience as the symbol of faith, and makes it into one that celebrates obedience….” Boehm goes on to cite the great medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides, who found two levels of meaning in this story — the familiar meaning of obedience to the deity, and another meaning of disobedience. Or maybe it’s not disobedience, but something else instead? The story is almost over, so let’s finish it, then think about this some more. (1)

    The angel of Jehovah calls to Abraham a second time and says, “I swear by myself, declares Jehovah, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” So speaks Jehovah. Abraham and his son and his servants head back home. So ends the story. (2)

    Now that the story is over, I’d like to think with you about a question: Is there a difference between the parts of the story with Elohim, and the parts of the story with Jehovah? Biblical scholars continue to debate this question, and I’m not qualified to give a definitive answer. But I would like to consider what Rev. Dr. William R. Jones said in the second reading this morning:

    “Abraham … must decide the source of the command, and in the final analysis his judgment of the source determines the value of the command. If he concludes that the decree is from God, it is morally imperative. If, however, he decides that it is Moloch’s voice that he hears, the order must be rejected. But clearly, only Abraham can make this crucial decision.”

    Jones would have agreed with Omri Boehm that the story of Abraham could be interpreted to mean, not that Abraham is to be celebrated for his obedience to God, but rather that Abraham is to be celebrated for using his free will to figure out the truth of the matter. Jones was a humanist who did not believe in the literal truth of God, but he believed in the deeper truth of this story — that we human beings are sometimes confronted with impossible ethical decisions, and when that happens it is up to us to make “the crucial decision.”

    William R. Jones implies that Abraham makes this crucial decision alone, without talking to other people. To me, this is a crucial point — must we make ethical decisions like this entirely on our own? Ralph Waldo Emerson, who started out as a Unitarian minister and who remains one of our greatest Unitarian theologians, also seems to think that we make big ethical decisions on our own, solely in consultation with some kind of divine power. In his essay titled “Greatness,” Emerson quoted one of his intellectual mentors, Mary Rotch, as saying:

    “I do not pretend to any commandment or large revelation, but if at any time I form some plan, propose a journey or a course of conduct, I perhaps find a silent obstacle in my mind that I cannot account for. Very well, — I let it lie, thinking it may pass away, but if it do not pass away I yield to it, obey it. You ask me to describe it. I cannot describe it. It is not an oracle, nor an angel, nor a dream, nor a law; it is too simple to be described, it is but a grain of mustard-seed, but such as it is, it is something which the contradiction of all mankind could not shake, and which the consent of all mankind could not confirm.”(3)

    Thus Emerson believes that some kind of divine voice or divine guidance can require our obedience, to the point where we cannot be shaken in our decision even though the rest of humankind says we are wrong. We can see how this might apply to the story of Abraham and Isaac. Under the urging of a voice claiming to be Elohim, Abraham forms the plan of sacrificing his son Isaac. But it’s not clear to me whether Abraham is obedient to the voice of Elohim, or to the messenger from Jehovah, or whether instead he finds a silent obstacle in his mind that prevents him from killing Isaac, an obstacle for which he cannot account. From whence does that obstacle come? Does it come from Elohim, or Jehovah? Or does that silent obstacle come from a sense of truth and justice to which even Elohim is obedient? Abraham lets that obstacle lie there, thinking it might pass away, but it does not. And when the time comes to actually sacrifice Isaac, that silent obstacle stops him — or perhaps it stops Elohim from letting him proceed.

    Here is where I part ways with Ralph Waldo Emerson, and with Dr. William Jones. I do not believe that this kind of ethical decision-making is a solitary occupation. Yes, it is critically important that we learn to make these kinds of ethical decisions on our own, but we must also check in with other people to confirm whether or intuitive insight into truth is correct. Emerson himself had occasion to insist that we check in with other people to make sure our insights are correct. Jones Very, one of Emerson’s younger proteges, was a talented poet who also suffered from periodic bouts of mental illness. Emerson was impressed by Jones Very’s poetic talent, but Emerson was also aware of his mental illness. One time, so the story goes, Jones Very brought some poems to Emerson to read. When Emerson ventured to make some small criticism of the poems, Jones Very said that the poems had been dictated to him by God, and therefore no valid criticism could be offered. To this Emerson responded dryly that surely God knew enough to use correct spelling and grammar. In other words, Emerson knew that no matter how it might seem that our insights are divinely inspired, we have to check in with other people.

    Because of this, when I hear the story of Abraham and Isaac, I tend to believe that some important bits got left out of the story. When Elohim first tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, I have to imagine that Abraham goes immediately to his wife Sarah to talk it over. I can imagine Abraham saying, This is what Elohim said to me; but can this be Elohim, or is it really Moloch who is trying to deceive me? I also imagine Abraham must have talked this over with other leaders in his clan. The decision to kill his only son is not a decision that he can make alone. Abraham and Sarah, along with other leaders and their close associates in the clan — they must all talk this over together, to determine if what Abraham has heard is the truth. Yes, the burden of final decision and of action ultimately rests on Abraham’s shoulders alone; but he is not alone in making his decision. Like all humans, Abraham is a limited and fallible being; at the same time, he is always a part of humankind; and so he must rely on other humans to help him determine truth.

    I am not saying, however, that truth is relative, or that truth is made up by humans, or that truth is nothing more than a human construct. Not only is that not something I believe, it is also not something that appears in the story of Abraham and Isaac. In the story of Abraham and Isaac, there exists an ultimate truth to which both Abraham and Elohim are answerable. Abraham must answer to Elohim, who is his god; but both Abraham and Elohim must answer to absolute truth and justice. Elohim, being answerable to that absolute justice, would never have let Abraham sacrifice Isaac. Abraham is also answerable to that absolute sense of justice, but being a mere human being, his vision is cloudy; he can’t always be certain that he perceives absolute truth and justice with absolute clarity. The drama of the story arises from his lack of certainty; Abraham knows that Elohim is answerable to absolute justice, and Abraham must judge whether Elohim would actually tell him to kill his son, or whether he is being deceived by a false deity like Moloch.

    Like Abraham, all of us human beings cannot see absolute truth and justice with absolute clarity. Because we cannot see clearly, it is possible for us to believe that there is no ultimate justice in the universe. Yet just because we can’t see it clearly doesn’t mean truth and justice don’t exist. And so we are forced to ask, “Who knows what is true?” Our own time, the mid-twenty-first century, is filled with things that prevent us from perceiving with clarity: social media algorithms, fake news, AI-generated falsehoods, and so on. We thus may be tempted to believe that all we have to do is to listen to an inner voice to know what is true, even if what I hear my inner self saying contradicts what you believe is true. If we rely only on ourselves, we may not realize that we have been deceived by Moloch.

    The great philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who died two weeks ago, believed in the power of communication between human beings as a way to arrive at ultimate truth and justice. In this belief, Habermas differed with many people today who are convinced that there is no one single truth; that there are many truths and many kinds of justice, no one of which pertains to all humankind. We see this in our current political debates here in the United States. Many political liberals and many political conservatives no longer believe that we can arrive at a single sense of truth that applies to us all. Both liberals and conservatives accuse the other of creating fake news. Some political conservatives have decided that there is only one way to interpret the history of America, and they want to ban any competing interpretations. Some political liberals have decided that different identity groups have different truths, and that those not included in a given identity group cannot question truths claimed by that identity group. Thus in our time it seems few people believe that truth is universal; and few people believe we must work with other people, including people we disagree with, to establish what is true, and to establish a truly just society.

    I find myself agreeing with Jurgen Habermas: there is an ultimate sense of truth and justice in the universe. Limited being that I am, I can sense it only dimly by myself. As a limited being, I may have some small insight into this ultimate truth and justice; perhaps there is that of the divine in me that gives me that insight, or perhaps there is a divinity that sends messengers to me with notice of what is true and just. The story of Abraham and Isaac tells me that even if I have some small insight into ultimate truth and justice, I may still be forced to make decisions that wrack my soul.

    But I believe we should not interpret the story of Abraham and Isaac as telling us that we must make these decisions alone, by ourselves, as rugged individualists. The story of Abraham and Isaac is but one episode in the larger story told in the book of Genesis; and the book of Genesis tells but one part of the much larger story that is told in the entirety of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible is not merely a collection of stories about individuals, but it is rather a larger story of a group of people. Thus, when the Hebrew Bible tells a story of an individual, that individual’s story must be understood as being a part of the larger story of a people. While the story in the Hebrew Bible tells of one people, it implies a still larger story that includes all peoples, all of humankind. In that larger story, the story that includes all humankind, we discover that there is an ultimate truth, there is ultimate justice; that ultimate truth and justice apply to all humankind equally. This is, in fact, one of the origins of our modern conception of justice and human rights for all human beings.

    Each individual and each group of people perceives a small part of this larger truth. When we Unitarian Universalists perceive a small part of this larger truth, we like to proclaim the inherent dignity and worthiness of all human beings. We like to say that although we can perceive it but dimly, we know the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. We also know that we human beings are easily deceived. And so we pay great attention to the story of Abraham and Isaac. When we commit ourselves to a course of action, we might discover that if we look up from the task in front of us, and turn around, we might see a ram caught in the thicket behind us. We listen for the promptings of ultimate truth and justice, knowing that we can never perceive them with absolute clarity, but also knowing that by relying on other people we can overcome some of our human fallibility.

    Notes

    (1) Omri Boehm, Radical Universalism: Beyond Identity (New York Review Books, 2025), pp. 143-144. I do not agree with everything Boehm says in this book, but his interpretation of the story of Abraham and Isaac is similar to that of William R. Jones, while offering more detail than Jones’s brief discussion.
    (2) Story of Abraham adapted from NRSV and NIV, Genesis 22:1-19.
    (3) Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Greatness,” The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1904), v.8, pp. 309-310. In an endnote, the editors state, “These were the words of Miss Mary Rotch of New Bedford, and they made deep impression on Mr. Emerson, when in 1834 he was invited to preach for a time in that city.”

  • The Ethics of AI and Education

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading was by John Dewey, from his book Democracy and Education:

    “The first approach to any subject in school, if thought is to be aroused and not words acquired, should be as un-scholastic as possible. To realize what an experience … means, we have to call to mind the sort of situation that presents itself outside of school; the sort of occupations that interest and engage activity in ordinary life. And careful inspection of methods which are permanently successful in formal education, whether in arithmetic or learning to read, or studying geography, or learning physics or a foreign language, will reveal that they depend for their efficiency upon the fact that they go back to the type of the situation which causes reflection out of school in ordinary life. They give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results.”

    The second reading was from a June 4, 2023, article in the Financial Times titled “Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang: ‘The machines we have now are not conscious’”:

    “‘The machines we have now, they’re not conscious,’ Chiang says. ‘When one person teaches another person, that is an interaction between consciousnesses.’ Meanwhile, AI models are trained by toggling so-called ‘weights’ or the strength of connections between different variables in the model, in order to get a desired output. He says, ‘It would be a real mistake to think that when you’re teaching a child, all you are doing is adjusting the weights in a network.’

    “Chiang’s main objection, a writerly one, is with the words we choose to describe all this. Anthropomorphic language such as ‘learn,’ ‘understand,’ ‘know,’ and personal pronouns such as ‘I’ that AI engineers and journalists project on to chatbots such as ChatGPT create an illusion. This hasty shorthand pushes all of us, he says … towards seeing sparks of sentience in AI tools, where there are none….

    “So if he had to invent a term, what would it be? His answer is instant: applied statistics….”

    Sermon

    Let’s talk about artificial intelligence and education. First of all, let’s think about what AI actually is. One problem here is the phrase “artificial intelligence” is so imprecise. I’m a science fiction fan, and to my ears it sounds like a phrase left over from 1950s science fiction. I agree with science fiction author Ted Chiang, that the phrase “artificial intelligence” is inaccurate; I’d even go so far as to say it represents sloppy thinking. I much prefer Chiang’s term “applied statistics.”

    Nevertheless, we’re stuck with the phrase “artificial intelligence.” But if by remembering that so-called AI is actually applied statistics, it becomes obvious that AI is a set of tools — just as hammers and saws belong to a set of tools, or armed drones and nuclear weapons belong to another set of tools. As with any set of tools, we as a society can choose which tools we use and how we use them.

    With all that in mind, I’d like to present three case, as a way to consider the ethics of AI in education. As you listen to these case studies, try not to go directly to your gut feelings. If you’re an AI booster, don’t immediately say AI is good; if you’re an AI gloom-and-doomer, don’t immediately say AI is bad. Instead of immediately rushing to judgement, let’s see if we can think through both the positive and the negative implications.

    Here’s the first case study:

    A young man named Russell is extremely bright and creative, and he has undiagnosed dyslexia. As a boy, Russell dabbled in the creative arts and experimented with various technological innovations; he also struggled with school, having great difficulty reading and writing. Now, at age 19, he has been admitted to a prestigious college, with plans to major in social sciences. However, he has to drop out after a semester because he is unable to complete his written work in time, and as a result fails a couple of his classes.

    Now here’s the question: Should Russell’s prestigious college allow him to use generative AI to assist him in completing his written assignments?

    On the one hand, here is someone who is obviously bright and creative, and potentially has a lot to offer to the world. By allowing him to use generative AI to help him edit his written assignments, the college could offer support for his learning disability, which would help him to become a productive member of society. On the face of it, this seems like a no-brainer — let Russell use AI to complete his writing assignments, as long as he makes it clear to his professors that he is doing so.

    On the other hand, remember that Russell has not been diagnosed with dyslexia; we know that he has dyslexia because we have the benefit of hindsight. His college does not know that he has dyslexia; for all they know, he could be lazy, or not bright enough for their prestigious college, or have some other fault. Plus, if they let him use generative AI, they have no way of determining if he’s only using it to help him edit, as opposed to letting AI completely write his papers.

    In addition, both Russell and his college should consider the privacy policy of whoever is providing the AI. Will that company store information about Russell, and what will they do with that information?(1) Both Russell and the college should also consider the inevitable biases that are present in generative AI, and consider that when generative AI injects third party biases into Russell’s work, it is likely that he will unthinkingly adopt those biases as his own.(2) How will Russell and his college address these biases? And of course we have to consider the environmental impact of the data centers used by AI companies due to their large power consumption.(3) As a society, how do we balance support for Russell’s dyslexia and the environmental impact of generative AI?

    Some of these ethical concerns might be addressed by having the college host an open-source AI model on its own servers; the college would then have some awareness of the biases in that AI model; they would have to possibility of finding renewable energy sources for that AI model; and so on. We might also suggest to that college that when a student seems to have difficulty completing assignments, they might want to have that student assessed for learning differences or learning disabilities. The point of fictional case studies like this one is to help us begin to consider what questions we will want to ask in the real world.

    This case study raises the larger issue of how we educate persons who have learning disabilities. Generative AI has obvious potential for helping students with certain learning disabilities, and given the tight budgets of most school districts, AI might be a crucial tool for special education programs. Which are the AI tools which might best help students with dyslexia? What are the downsides to those tools — might AI exploit them, or inject hidden biases into their thinking? These are the questions we be addressing here.

    One final comment: the young man in this case study is based on a real person — Russell Varian, who was extremely bright and seriously dyslexic; who struggled to graduate from Stanford University (in fact, Stanford refused to admit him to their doctorate program); and who went on to found Varian Associates, one of the very first Silicon Valley hi-tech companies.

    Let’s try another case study.

    A high school sophomore named Dolores has to write a four page paper for her English composition class. Dolores wants to go to college, and like most college-bound high school sophomores, she is already building her college resume. She is active in several extracurricular activities including Model United Nations, her school’s gay straight alliance, and the school newspaper. She’s active in sports, and having researched in which of her preferred sports she is most likely to receive a sports scholarship — her family cannot pay for her college education without some kind of scholarship — she has chosen rowing. In addition, she is active in her local congregation, where she volunteers regularly.

    As you can imagine, she has almost no free time, and she often has to cut short her sleep time in order to have enough time to complete her school work to the level of excellence for which she strives. She finishes a complete draft of her four page paper, and only needs to do some final editing, when her mother has a relapse of a recurring mental health problem, leaving Dolores to take on some household duties, including supervising her sixth-grade brother. She no longer has the time to do the final editing she had planned. The paper is due tomorrow. Is it ethical for her to use generative AI to help her complete the final edit of her four-page paper?

    On the one hand, we might say absolutely not. Her task as a high school sophomore in an English composition class is to learn the complete process of writing, from start to finish, including the final editing. So for her own sake, to maximize her personal learning, she should forgo using generative AI to edit her paper, even though it might result in a lower grade.

    On the other hand, we might say she should be allowed to use generative AI for this purpose, as long as she discloses the fact to her teacher. For one thing, more and more workplaces are integrating AI into employee workflows, and by learning how to use generative AI responsibly, under the guidance of a teacher, she will be better equipped to handle the challenges of using AI when she gets into the workplace. It’s also important to remember that Dolores is typical of many college-bound high school students, who feel compelled to fill their schedules with activities that will build her college resume; she does not have the luxury of earlier generations who could take all the time they needed to learn how to write and edit their own work. And finally, given her mother’s sudden health crisis, we could ask whether she should have to receive a lower grade because she prioritizes her family responsibilities over school work.

    This case study is based on a composite of teens I have known. As a composite, the details are going to be vague. Nevertheless, there should be enough here for us to explore some of the questions we have about using generative AI in school.

    First of all, the reality is that college-bound students face lots of external pressures, and many of them are already using generative AI to complete assignments. Instead of trying to close the barn door after the horse has escaped, perhaps we should shift our expectations of our educational system so that we teach teens how to use AI responsibly.(4) If we start thinking along these lines, that raises the question of how generative AI might be used responsibly in the classroom. In one obvious example, AI could be used for doing research in much the same way that Wikipedia is already being used by students; in both cases, we can teach students that the results they get may not be correct; that they have to look for hidden biases; that they need to track down original sources of information; and so on.

    We can also consider irresponsible uses of AI in education. Cheating is one obvious irresponsible use of AI. But remember, students are already using technology to cheat. For example, there are online services that will write your paper or complete your homework for a modest fee — and since generative AI is basically free, perhaps AI is good insofar as it helps make cheating accessible to poor students as well as to more wealthy students.

    Beyond cheating, what are other irresponsible uses of AI in education? And we might ask: Why do we need AI to assist students? AI is often promoted as a way to increase efficiency, so we might ask why is it important for education to become more efficient. Is it because greater efficiency improves learning, or is it because greater efficiency makes it more likely to be accepted by an elite college, or is there some other reason? Or perhaps greater efficiency means a cost savings to the school district, allowing costly human employees to be replaced with machine tutors — and this may sound harsh in the relatively wealthy school districts of our area, but there are some school districts where AI tutors might be hugely helpful.

    The reality is that we rely on a factory model of education. Educational historians have shown that in the mid-twentieth century our schools were quite literally designed to be factories. We haven’t ever broken away from that model. The factory model of education is designed to deal with masses of children with ever greater efficiency, so we can lower costs and increase productivity. By the inherent logic of our educational system, of course we should be using AI to help teach kids. Yet this might prompt us to ask: In our educational system, are children always considered to be ends in themselves rather than means? And if we deploy AI in our educational system, will that help us to treat children as ends in themselves rather than means? Educational philosopher John Dewey, the author of our first reading, was asking similar questions a hundred years ago as the factory model of schooling was emerging; we have to constantly ask these kinds of ethical questions.

    Having said that, we might then ask whether AI tools are being developed that are designed specifically for supporting teaching and learning. We’ve already seen how other technological innovations can be adapted to work specifically for education — for example, course management software has helped make teachers more efficient by relieving them of some of the administrative drudgery of teaching. Both students and teachers are already using AI tools. How might things be different if the people designing generative AI worked with teachers and students so that AI tools would actually meet the needs of students and teachers? Who would pay for developing these hypothetical education-specific AI tools (the nonprofit education company Khan Academy offers one such model)?

    Let’s do one more quick case study.

    I recently learned about a company that’s developing an AI-based tool to create curriculum supplement with location-specific content for middle school and high school biology teachers to teach about local ecosystems. This company plans to draw on open source biodiversity data to generate lesson plans about specific organisms that have been found in the immediate area of any given school. This would help the teacher customize a generic curriculum and allow them to carry out a biology project rooted in local biodiversity.

    On the one hand, we could say this is a good use of AI because it allows a teacher who ordinarily wouldn’t the time to customize a biology curriculum to their local ecosystem. Furthermore, it allows teachers to remain in charge of their teaching; it makes the teacher more efficient, while leaving the final use of the curriculum supplement up to their professional judgement.

    On the other hand, in this specific case, it is not clear to me that biology teachers need or want this kind of curriculum supplement. In other words, do we start with the needs of the teachers and students and educational systems, or do we instead simply create AI-based tools without asking if they provide any real educational value? Many discussions of AI in education do not discuss what teachers and local schools actually need, let alone what students actually need.

    Additionally, many discussions of AI in education show little awareness of curriculum design principles, educational philosophies, the psychology of learners, pedagogical methods, and so on. Yet there are really good models of how an independent company can develop technological resources based on sound educational principles. One example is Khan Academy, an educational technology nonprofit currently developing AI tools. The staff of Khan Academy includes both technology experts and professional educators to guide the development of educational technology, and they are already developing AI tools for students based on sound educational principles. This might prompt us to ask whether the nonprofit sector is the best place to develop educational technology; for-profit companies do not have the same luxury of hiring a large staff of educators.

    That’s the end of the case studies. Let me see if I can wrap this up.

    Earlier this week, I was talking with Kate Sullivan, our director of education, about AI and education; as you may know, Kate has a doctorate in developmental psychology, so I wanted to hear her opinions. She said, “It all goes to the question, ‘What is humanity?’” As she so often does, Kate got right to the heart of the issue. What is it to be human? This question lies at the root of all education. Many of our school systems have to focus on education as a way to learn how to earn a living: education is a means to an end, and the end is getting a good job; children are a means to an end, and the end is contributing to the economy. Obviously we have to eat to live, and so we have to earn a living. But as a wise rabbi once said, human beings do not live on bread alone; we also need that which is sacred or divine, in order to be fully human. The best teachers bring out that sacred spark in their students. And so we ask ourselves: Can AI be used for something more than helping children become productive economic units? The current hype around AI emphasizes cost savings, better test scores, and so on. What if the hype emphasized the sacredness of every child, of every human being? How would that change the conversation?

    So while I don’t have any final answers about the ethics of AI in education, I can give you some questions to ask. When we are trying to decide together about how we will use AI in education, we are going to want to ask: Is AI being used merely to help children become means to someone else’s economic ends? Or is it being used in service of the sacredness of every human being?

  • Three Buddhist Stories

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Moment for All Ages

    The Quails and the Net

    Gautama Buddha was a great holy man who lived long, long ago in India. He was so wise that people came from far and wide to learn from him. Many of these people stayed with him, and became his bhikkus, or his followers.

    Once upon a time, Buddha noticed that several of his followers spent a great deal of time arguing among themselves. These bhikkus began to disturb the other people who had come to learn from Buddha. Buddha felt that because of their arguing, they were not making progress toward becoming truly enlightened beings. That evening, Buddha sat all his followers down together, and told them this story:

    “Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a large flock of quails in a forest. Now in near this very same forest there lived a hunter who made his living from capturing quails and selling them to people who wanted to eat them. Every day this hunter would slip quietly into the forest and sit hidden behind a big bush. Then he would imitate the call of a quail so perfectly that the quail thought the hunter was one of them.

    “Upon hearing the hunter’s call, the quail would come out of the safe places where they had been gathering food. When they came into the open, the hunter would leap out from his hiding place and throw a big net over as many quails as he could reach. He would bundle up the net and take all the quail away to the marketplace to be sold to people who would eat them for dinner.

    “The quails did not like this. And they grew frightened because the hunter captured so many of them. The quail decided to hold a meeting to discuss the problem. A wise quail said to the others:

    “‘The net the hunter throws over us isn’t heavy. As soon as he throws the net over us, if we all fly up together at the same time, we can lift the net up with us and get away.’

    “The other quails thought this was a good plan. They all agreed to fly up together and escape the next time the hunter threw the net over them.

    “The next day, the hunter came back to the forest. He imitated the call of a quail and all the quail were fooled again. Then he threw the net over as many quail as he could reach, expecting to bundle them up as always.

    “This time, however, was different. Before the hunter could bundle them up, all the quail flew up in the air together. They lifted the net up with them, and settled down together into a nearby rose bush. The net got tangled up in the thorns of the rose bush, and the quail scurried away to safety.

    “The hunter was left to pick his net out of the sharp thorns. After hours of work, he finally untangled his net. He walked home, tired and discouraged.

    “The next day, the hunter came back to try his luck again. He imitated the quail’s call. All the quail came running. When they felt the net settle over them, they flew into a nearby rose bush, leaving the net caught on the sharp thorns. Once again, the hunter was left to untangle his net, with no quails to sell at the market.

    “This went on for some days. The hunter was growing more and more discouraged. Finally, one day the hunter came back into the forest, gave his imitation of the quail’s call, and threw his net over the quail when they came out into the open.

    “But when it came time for all the quail to fly up together, one quail happened to step on the foot of another.

    “‘Hey,’ said the second quail, ‘who kicked me?’

    “‘No one kicked you,’ said a third quail.

    “A fourth quail said, ‘Oh, he’s just complaining because he’s lazy; he never lifts his share of the net.’

    “Another quail said, ‘Who are you to talk? You do very little flying, leaving the hard work to the rest of us.’

    “As the quail fought and bickered among themselves, the hunter bundled them up in his net and carried them off to market. They were all fat, plump quails, and the hunter got a good price for them.”

    The followers of Buddha all believed they had lived many lives in the past, sometimes as animals, sometimes as humans, sometimes as gods. Buddha told them that the story of the quails was really a story of them in one of their past lives.

    “When you were on this earth as quails,” said the Buddha, “you argued among yourselves, and got caught by the hunter, and were eaten for dinner that very night. You are no longer quails. Is it not time for you to stop arguing among yourselves?”

    The bhikkus who had been arguing so much grew embarrassed and ashamed, and from that day on, so it is told, they no longer engaged in silly arguments.(1)

    Reading

    The first reading was the poem “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” by Derek Walcott (not included here due to copyright).

    The second reading was a very short poem by Rabindranath Tagore:

    We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us. [Stray Birds #75]

    Sermon

    This morning, I’m going to retell three Buddhist stories from the Jataka Tales, one of the earliest collections of Buddhist writings. Each of these stories tells a tale from one of Gotama Buddha’s previous lives. For, you see, when Siddhartha Gotama achieved enlightenment, he was able to remember every single one of his previous lives.

    I find it fascinating that Buddha had over five hundred previous lives. In Western culture, we are much more likely to think that we each get one life, and after that life is over we either go to heaven, or to oblivion. Time is linear for most Westerners, but circular for Buddhists. We are encountering a very different mindset in these stories.

    The Jataka Tales mostly begin with a framing story: something happened in the community that gathered around Gotama Buddha, and Buddha tells a story from one of his previous lives in order to help the people in the community get along better.

    With that in mind, let’s consider the first story, which I told as the “Moment for All Ages”: the story of the quails and the net. This is a well-known story, and doubtless many of you have heard it before. In Western culture, the story is often told as a parable showing the importance of cooperation. Derek Walcott’s poem “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” offers a variation of that interpretation. The poem opens with an image taken directly from this Jataka Tale:

    Then all the nations of birds lifted together
    the huge net of the shadows of this earth
    in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,
    stitching and crossing it….

    If only human beings could learn how to cooperate, as do the birds, then we could have a world filled with peace!

    Indeed, today’s world feels much like what happens in the story when the quails start to argue with each other. One quail accuses another of stepping on their foot; another quail says that someone is not lifting their share of the net; while another quail says that someone else didn’t do their share of flying. This sound very much like what we hear from our world leaders these days. And what is the result of all this bickering? Here’s how the Buddha told of the outcome:

    “As the quail fought and bickered among themselves, the hunter bundled them up in his net and carried them off to market. They were all fat, plump quails, and the hunter got a very good price for them.”

    Buddha doesn’t say we should never argue — he’s telling us that we should have enough humility so we don’t let our arguments get in the way of accomplishing our common goals.

    This is true both in a small community like that gathered around Buddha, and the world community of nations. It’s always easy to blame our world leaders for acting like the quails in the net, yet we too must take responsibility for our actions in our families, in the workplace, in all the community groups we may belong to. Having the humility to admit when we are wrong turns out to be necessary ingredient for peaceful communities.

    The next Jataka Tale is one you may have heard in a different form, but try to let go of your expectations….

    The Tale of the Dhak Tree

    One day, four of Buddha’s followers came up to him and asked how they might learn to meditate and rise above earthly things. Buddha explained to the four bhikkus how they might do so, and each went off to learn a different kind of meditation. The first learned the Six Spheres of Touch. The second learned the Five Elements of Being. The third learned the Four Principal Elements. The fourth learned the Eighteen Constituents of Being. Each one learned how to meditate so well, they each achieved Enlightenment and became a holy person.

    One day all four of these bhikkus came back to tell the Buddha what they had done. Each of them claimed that their way was the best form of mediation. At last one of them said, “Buddha, each of us has achieved Enlightenment, but we each used a different type of meditation. How could this be?”

    And Buddha said, “It is like the four brothers who saw the dhak tree….”

    Once upon a time Bramadatta, the King of Benares, had four sons. One day, the four sons sent for a charioteer and said to him, “We want to see a dhak tree [Butea monosperma]. Show us one!”

    “Very well,” said the charioteer . “Let me begin by showing the eldest.”

    The charioteer took the eldest to the forest. It was late winter, so the eldest brother saw the dhak tree at the time when the buds had not yet begun to swell, and the tree looked dead.

    The charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Two months went by until at last the charioteer could bring the second brother to see the dhak tree. It was spring, and the tree was entirely covered with reddish-orange flowers.

    The charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Two more months went by until at last the charioteer could bring the third brother to see the dhak tree. It was summer now, the flowers were gone, and the tree was covered with leaves.

    he charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Months went by until the fourth brother declared he could wait no longer. The charioteer brought him to see the dhak tree. Now it was autumn, and the tree was covered with long seed-pods.

    When all four brothers had seen the dhak tree, they sat down together, and talked about what the dhak tree was like.

    “It is like a bunch of dead twigs,” said the first.

    “No, it is reddish like a piece of meat,” said the second.

    “No, it has leaves like a banyan tree,” said the third.

    “No, it looks like an acacia tree with its long seed pods,” said the fourth.

    None of them liked the answers the other gave. They ran to find their father. “Father,” they asked, “tell us, what is the dhak tree like?”

    “You have all seen the tree,” the king said. “You tell me what it’s like.”

    The four brothers gave the king their four different answers: it is like dead twigs, it is like meat, it has leaves like a banyan, it has seed pods like the acacia.

    “You have all seen the tree,” said the king. “But when the charioteer showed you the tree, you didn’t ask him what the tree looked like at other times of the year. This is where your mistake lies.” And the king recited a poem:

    Each one of you has gone to view the tree,
    Yet you remain in great perplexity
    Because you did not ask the charioteer
    Just how it looked at other times of year.

    Buddha then spoke to the four bhikkus. “These four brothers did not ask themselves what the tree looked like in different times of the year, and so they fell into doubt. In just the same way, the four of you have fallen into doubt about what is true and right.” Then the Buddha gave another stanza for the king’s poem:

    If you know truth, and yet the whole you cannot see,
    You’ll be unsure, like those four brothers and the tree.(2)

    I love the framing story of this Jataka Tale. The four bhikkus have each achieved enlightenment, yet they still feel the need to argue about which method for attaining enlightenment is best. You would think they would realize that they learned of the four different types of meditation from the same person, from Buddha, which would imply that he felt each meditation system was of equal value. Yet although they have achieved enlightenment, perhaps they have not yet achieved humility. The framing story is telling us that there is no end to spiritual growth; even when you think you have attained some major spiritual accomplishment, you are not yet finished.

    This wisdom of Buddhas reminds me a bit of the wisdom of Jesus. Jesus chose several of his followers to be especially close to him, yet they constantly misinterpret Jesus’s teachings; at which point, Jesus assists them in proceeding farther along their spiritual journey. I also get the sense that both Jesus and Buddha realize they have fallen short as spiritual teachers — their spiritual guidance is not wholly adequate for the needs of limited, fallible human beings — and they both have the humility to understand that they, too, have human failings.

    This comes back to one of our basic Unitarian teachings. In my Unitarian Universalist Sunday school, when I was a child, we heard stories about both Jesus and Buddha. Our teachers always made it clear that neither Jesus nor Buddha was God; they were each much wiser than the rest of us, but they were not infallible. Their greatness lay in their ability to show us we all have the capacity to choose to become better human beings.

    And with that in mind, here’s another story….

    King Usinara and the Huge Hound

    One day, the followers of Buddha were sitting in the Hall of Truth talking with one another.

    “Isn’t it amazing,” one of them said, “that the Buddha gave up a beautiful home, and now lives only for the good of the world?”

    “Yes,” said another, “isn’t it amazing that he has attained supreme wisdom, yet rather than making himself rich, he goes about teaching goodness?”

    Buddha came into the Hall and heard them talking. “Yes, it is true,” said the Buddha. “Even in my previous lives, even then when I had not attained supreme wisdom, I still always tried to live for the good of the world. Let me tell you the story of one of my previous lives.” This is the story the Buddha told:

    Once upon a time, there reigned a king named Usinara. Under the rule of this king, the people had given up doing good, and instead they followed the paths of evil-doing. Sakka, the ruler of all the gods, looked upon this, and saw that the people were suffering because they did evil.

    “What shall I do, now?” he said to himself. “Ah, I have it! I will scare and terrify humankind. And when I see they are terrified, I will comfort them, I will tell them the universal Law of life, I will restore their moral compasses!”

    Sakka turned his divine charioteer Matali into a huge black hound, with four tusks each as big as a plantain, with a hideous shape and a fat belly. Sakka fastened this horrible dog with a chain, and turned himself into a hunter. Together they walked to King Usinara’s city.

    “Everything is doomed to destruction!” the hunter cried out, so loudly that he terrified everyone within earshot. He repeated this cry as he walked up to the very gates of the city.

    The people of the city saw the huge dog and heard the hunter’s cries, and hurried into the city to tell the king what had happened. The king ordered the city gates to be closed. But the hunter and the huge dog leaped over the wall.

    When they saw that the hunter and the dog had gotten inside the city, everyone ran away to find a place to hide. Those who could not get to their houses in time ran to the king’s palace to find safety.

    The hunter and the dog came to the palace. The dog raised itself up, put its paws on the window of the room where the king was hiding, and barked. Its bark was a huge roaring that seemed to go from the depths of the earth to the highest heaven. The people were terrified by this, and no one could say a word.

    At last the king plucked up his courage, and went to the window. He called out to the hunter: “Ho, huntsman! why did your hound roar?”

    “The hound is hungry,” said the hunter.

    “Well,” said the king, “I will order some food for it.”

    The king told his servants to give all the food in the palace to the dog. The huge dog gulped all the food down in one mouthful, then roared again.

    Again the king called out the window: “Huntsman! Why does your dog still roar?”

    “My hound is still hungry,” said the hunter.

    Then the king had all the food for all his elephants and all his horses and all his other animals brought and given to the huge dog. Once again, the dog swallowed it in one gulp. So the king had all the food in the entire city brought. The huge dog swallowed all that in one gulp, and then roared again.

    Terrified with fear, the king thought to himself, “This is no ordinary dog. I must ask why he has come.” He said to the hunter: “Why does this huge hound, with sharp white fangs as big as plantains, come here with you?”

    “The dog comes to eat my enemies,” said the hunter.

    “And who are your enemies?” said the king.

    “All those people who are smart and educated, but who use their skill only to acquire money. All those who do not take care of their parents, once their parents get old. All those who betray their friends or spouses or siblings. All those who pretend to follow religious principles, but who actually do whatever they want. All those who are criminals, who kill and rob. All those who have hearts filled with evil, and who are evil and deceitful.

    “These,” said the hunter, “are all are my enemies, O king!”

    And the hunter made as though he would let the hound leap forth and devour all those who were his enemies. But as all the people froze in terror, he held the hound by the leash.

    Then Sakka shed his disguise of a hunter. By his power he rose and poised himself in the air, and said: “O great king, I am Sakka, ruler of the gods! I saw how this land had become corrupt; I saw humans were suffering because they were doing evil; and I came here with my huge hungry hound. If you wish to keep me out of your land, you must all stop doing evil.”

    King Usinara and all the people saw they must return to the ways of virtue. They must stop doing evil, or the huge dog would remain hungry, and would keep roaring!

    And when Sakka and Matali saw that the people had turned away from evil, and once again followed the paths of good — then they returned to the home of the gods.

    When Buddha finished telling this story, he said: “So you see, in my former lives I lived for the good of the world.” Buddha then added: “My follower and friend, Ananda, was Matali. And I was Sakka.”(3)

    I like to think of this story as a parable about the limits of human knowledge. King Usinara and his people had lost the knowledge of how to be good, and it took a huge frightening roaring dog to scare them into the knowledge of how foolish and wrongheaded they had been. This is a good metaphor for what it feels like when I have had to confront my own foolishness and wrongheadedness.

    Earlier this week, I was talking over these stories with Kate Sullivan, our director of spiritual exploration. The stories made her think of two questions for reflection:

    What did you think you knew, only to find that you didn’t actually know it?

    And when you realized you didn’t know, were you courageous enough to humble yourself?

    I’ll leave you with those questions.

    Sources for the stories

    (1) Source: Jataka tale no. 33, from The Jataka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, in six volumes, ed. E. B. Cowell (Cambridge Univ., 1895-1907).
    (2) Source: Kimsukopama-Jataka, Jataka tale no. 248, in the Cowell translation.
    (3) Source: Maha-Kanha Jataka, Jataka tale no. 469, in the Cowell translation.