Manmade: St. Anthony's Guide to Surviving the A.I. Apocalypse

by C.R. Wiley

Genres: Technology, Theology, Cultural, Artificial Intelligence

Hardcover

Published July 21, 2026

About the author

C. R. Wiley is a Presbyterian minister living in the Pacific Northwest. He has written for Touchstone Magazine, Modern Reformation, Sacred Architecture, The Imaginative Conservative, Front Porch Republic, National Review Online, and First Things, among others. His short fiction has appeared in The Mythic Circle (published by the Mythopoeic Society) and elsewhere, and he has published young adult fiction. He is one of the hosts of The Theology Pugcast (a podcast available on iTunes and elsewhere), and he has been a commercial real estate investor and a building contractor. He also taught philosophy to undergraduates for a time. He is the Vice President of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters, and a board member of New Saint Andrews College.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Rick Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book C. R. Wiley has written so far. It's also an important book to read right now. Go get a copy as quickly as you can.

[Andrew Mulnix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Drop whatever book you are reading (unless it is the Bible), buy this book, and read it immediately!

[Gabel Duke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would maybe give it a 4.75 or something close to it. The majority of this book is so effective. The small portion I balked at was Wiley's views on postmillenialism.

Take that away and I believe he offers invaluable insight into how we ought to be engaging with AI and technology as a whole. We must be the masters of what we create rather than the other way around. We must set limitations on ourselves and our families if we except survive the "apocalypse."

[Nik Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth your time. Wiley takes a balanced and thoughtful approach in an era of radical imbalance.

[Andrew Wilcox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book everyone should read. It is a great introduction into the religion of technophiles and AI. Wiley is precise in identifying what their religion is. This book is unique in that it reaches back to the past in using St. Antony as a guide for living in the age of AI. The one thing I would critique is that he doesn't hate AI enough. There are so many warnings, yet the conclusion is some sort of integration with AI because it is inevitable.

[Mason McCray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would be a 9 out of 10

I enjoyed this read. Gave it a 4 because it feels more like a collection of essays on the topic

[Jim Becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

So so good.
Wisdom given.

[essie · Rating 4 out of 5]

C. R. Wiley is like Micheal Mann’s Nicholas Hathaway for our time.

[Stephen Lay · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the balance, this is a decent book. It's quite short (4 hour audio), and that's appropriate. This book properly takes a step back to consider what makes us human, and what the temptation to make ourselves 'gods' can look like - with respect to transhumanism and AI.

He does a great job connecting the virtues and habits of a 3rd-4th century monk to the needs of our day. I'm personally persuaded that I ought to enact some form of fasting -- both digital and foodwise -- into my ordinary rhythms.

Personally, I'm no fan of A.I. (LLMs), and that's putting it mildly. So, even though he was probably quite balanced objectively speaking, I found him to be a bit too starry-eyed about the likely future applications and normalised integrations of AI that he conceived of. I personally look forward to the day that AI subscription costs get so high in order to make up for the ludicrous investments that ordinary people can't afford it, and it once again leaves the ambit of ordinary people's lives. Let it crash and burn, I say.

The book introduces a fair few 'maxims', which were all great little self-reminders we can be confident in internalising to stay sane in an AI-proliferated world, such as (something like) 'machines are not persons' and things like that.

Not bad, but nothing ground-breaking.

[Isaiah Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely book with timeless wisdom. One way to articulate my goal in life is simply to be human. My ambition is to lead a quiet life — to live an ordinary, faithful life and die an ordinary, faithful death.

But stupid mathematicians and scientists seem intent on obfuscating what it means to be human and blurring the lines of humanity — on fashioning what C.S. Lewis termed "men without chests." I feel like an innocent bystander watching a bunch of dimwits who think they're super clever try to pierce heaven with a newfangled Tower of Babel. I'm sure it will end well.

In the meantime, the challenge for those with the slightest vestiges of sanity left is to figure out how to remain human in a transhumanist age. Wiley's vision of "apple pie humanism" offers a compelling picture, though I'm not sure how practical it really is.

C.S. Lewis's Perelandra and especially That Hideous Strength have never felt more prophetic.

[Stephen Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much here to chew on. Wiley gives a framework for thinking about technology that goes much deeper than simply asking whether a particular tool is good or bad. The more important questions are what our tools are doing to us, what kind of life they encourage, and what limits we ought to place on them.

I am certain this will become a book I return to again and again in the coming years. As technology continues to change, I need more than a fixed list of rules. I need principles that will help me think clearly about what to welcome into my household, what to limit, and what may need to be rejected altogether.

[Malachi Liberda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wiley isn’t talking about something yet to come. It is here (most of it), and it impacts everyone. I think his proposed path forward is realistic and attainable.

In my opinion, his comparison to Saint Anthony is a bit of a stretch for the sake of analogy, but it somewhat applies.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed the book. It's a great encouragement to set proper boundaries with technology and focus on the analog life in front of me
Some specific takeaways I thought about while reading it are make sure my phone is out of the bedroom at night and to stop filling all silence with podcasts and music.

[Thomas Kidd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book on first principles when considering how to wisely use today's technology. Its manageable size will commend itself to additional readings.