To all our friends in Southern Ontario! If you would like to come and see us and hear about what’s been happening in Mexico, come this Sunday to Garside Bible Church in Hamilton. 🙂
The service is at 10:30am, and Lord willing I’ll be preaching and sharing a few pics. Shari and Nathanael will be with me, to answer all your burning questions after the service. 😀
See you there!
You’ll notice that in our Biblical Anthropology series, I haven’t given detailed answers on each topic – this would be a much, much longer series if I attempted that. Instead, I’ve touched on a lot of topics to start us thinking – hopefully applying God’s Word to our situation.
And we need to keep going back to the basics. As we discuss technology, including that device you may have in your pocket, we start at the beginning.
We recognize that truth comes from God. We recognize that we depend on Him. We know that our purpose comes from Him.
We also know that we live in a fallen world, and that Satan is active here. We know that there is salvation in Jesus Christ alone, and that He is our true hope. We also know that we must share this truth with those around us. As we have said, we have a purpose in this life.
As we get down to practical application, I have appreciated what Tim Challies has written on this topic in his book The Next Story. Although a few years old now, it has some great principles that apply to all our modern times.
One of the useful tips in the book is that we “talk to” our devices and ask questions. These are questions designed to help us accept (or not) new technology with open eyes, and guard our hearts while we use it.
I encourage you to get the book for yourself, but here’s a brief summary of some questions to meditate on in the mean time. (These are paraphrases, since I’m translating my notes from Spanish.)
There’s a lot more that we could talk about, and Lord willing we will talk about more related to technology in future posts. But these questions leave us with a lot to ponder before we go on.
As you think about technology over the next few days, I would encourage you to read (or re-read) the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. And meditate on your personal purpose, as a human being, and as a Christian. How do you focus your life? Why do you spend time and money on that which you spend time and money on? Think about what you actually did each hour for the last few days, and take a look at what’s going out of your bank account.
And may we learn to glorify the Lord, fulfilling our true purpose, with all of the devices and apps and everything else that we use – instead of trying to build our own towers to “make a name for ourselves”.
We’ve been so thankful to enjoy some time with our immediate family in Canada. And now, we’re looking forward to seeing more family, and many friends, as we tour in Ontario!
If you’re in Ontario and don’t have our schedule, please contact us. We have a regularly updated schedule online. We will be sharing at least on three Sundays, and if it works out to see you personally and/or do a Bible study with your small group (I’ve been working on a study just for you! 😉 ), we would love to make it happen.
We’ll be starting out in Southern Ontario, and later in the month, we’ll be working our way north.
Thanks for your prayers as we travel! I hope you’re having a great summer. 🙂
Continuing our Biblical Anthropology series, we’ve been talking about some of the conflicting views on the future of humanity. Should we faze out the human race (antihumanism)? Create a new species (posthumanism)? Significantly augment the human race, using technology (transhumanism)? As we’ve seen, all of these have significant problems.
Today we’re going to take much of what we have already learned from God’s Word, and continue to apply it.
We ended last time with antihumanism. But on the other side of the question are those who want to find a way to live forever.
In 2013, Google started a new company with 1.5 million dollars, called Calico. Calico’s purpose is to resolve or eliminate death itself.
Each year, people spend a small fortune fighting against aging and death. And part of this quest can be a good and valuable use of creation. But we as Christians know that humans will never reach the goal of conquering death. It’s not Calico, but Christ who conquers death.
As I was originally preparing for this study at our church, I listened to a conversation between Professor Rosalind Picard of MIT, who is a Christian, and Professor Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford, who is not a Christian. As I remember, Picard asked Bostrom if he would like to live together, and why. He stumbled and mumbled and really had no good response. How sad that people like Professor Bostrom is trying to learn about eternal life from technology, but he has no idea why he would really want eternal life!
And so the world asks, will humans learn to live forever? Or, perhaps, we face a more dystopian future, when artificial intelligence conquers the world.
There are two types of artificial intelligence (AI). There’s general, or strong AI, and there’s narrow or weak AI. For now, we’ll use the terms strong and weak.
Weak AI is what you have on your phone. That’s how Facebook knows what to try to sell you. That’s how your computer can recognize your face in a photo. It’s a type of learning that is automatic, focused and specific, in a certain context.
As with any technology, we should carefully decide if we should use it and how we should use it. And remember, AI is only doing what its programmer told it to do.
For example, autonomous cars are being developed with AI. And unless the trajectory changes, that’s coming in a big way to the car dealership near you. But these cars are only as good as their programming. And that brings us to a question. If the AI in your car needs to make a decision, should it prioritize the person in the car, or the person in the other car? Or should it try to save the maximum number of lives? Should it sacrifice 10 lives to save one? Or sacrifice 1 life to save 10?
And maybe you could add your own questions. But here’s a more basic one: Is the programmer following the wisdom of God’s Word, or inventing his or her own morality?
All that is weak AI. Strong AI actually doesn’t exist, but it’s the AI that we often see in futuristic movies. Vision in Avengers. He’s an intelligent being created by creatures. Or, of course, Data of Star Trek.
Strong AI is a general intelligence that can learn and function in many completely different contexts, and learn about new contexts, as human beings can.
Although we already have machines/programs/apps that can appear like and act like humans in a limited way, we are actually very far from strong AI.
And let’s say that we’re closer than we think, and that we actually create strong AI – an intelligent “being”. What won’t it have? It won’t have the imago dei. It was not created in God’s image. Strong AI will never replace humans.
But weak AI? We already use it all the time. In fact, it affects you whether you think you use it or not. In China, there are face recognition cameras everywhere. The government can always see what you’re doing and the government can decide if you’re behaving according to their standards. Do you have any cameras up in the country where you live? Just asking.
The fact is that today’s technology has the potential to give people with money and power more money and power than they have ever had in history. How do you think they will use that money and power? We need to think about these things in biblical categories.
And many of these topics do actually relate to that device that many of us may have in our pockets right now. A smartphone.
Next time we’ll look at some principles to help us apply some of what we’ve learned to that phone in our pocket – and other devices that we may come across.
We’re continuing the Biblical Anthropology series (full index here) on the topic of technology. And it’s just so important to think about all of this together in context, instead of just thinking superficially about each topic.
Last time we started talking about transhumanism – basically, the desire to build new humans with new abilities using technology – beyond humanity. But let’s back up a little bit before we go on, and check the foundations. If the foundations are biblical, we can go on to think about how these things may apply to things like transhumanism and posthumanism (which we’ll get to shortly).
Genetics is another thing that we can play with in this modern world. And today, we can sometimes even correct genetic errors. Thank God! But – we can also begin to redesign humanity. Today, with CRISPR technology, we can edit someone’s genetic makeup, edit in a way that these changes will be passed on to future generations.
Yes, we can correct errors, but also fundamentally redesign humanity for future generations! But – should this really be our great hope, that we can “save” humanity by changing the genetic makeup of future generations? Is it CRISPR or Christ?
Lord willing we’ll go on to talk more about environmentalism in future posts. But we need to understand that many people actually believe that it is humanity itself that is the problem (clarification – not sinful humanity, but the human race itself). And so our ultimate hope is that we can redesign our own species.
Experts from the University of Oxford and New York University published an article in 2012 entitled “Human Engineering and Climate Change”. In the article, they suggest that we make certain genetic changes to the human race. For example, introducing a “meat intolderance”, so that we wouldn’t want to eat meat. Why? Because some believe that fewer cows will mean less harmful climate change.
This could be accomplished by activating the immune system against certain bovine proteins.
Now, whether you agree or disagree that humans should be eating so much beef, here’s another important reality. What this would mean is a few powerful people changing the human race genetically to adjust them to their beliefs. (By the way, this was published in the Ethics, Policy and Environment journal).
Now of course, it’s very unlikely that anything of that kind would ever happen. Why? Because you would have to find a way to convince a huge amount of the world population to take a medical injection. And you would have to have a massive system to get these injections to people all around the world. Impossible.
Sorry – did a little sarcasm creep in there? 😉 Listen carefully, I’m not saying anything for or against any particular injection at the moment! And I’m not commenting on any particular vaccine that may be in the news as you read this. So what’s the point?
We need to understand that many academic and political leaders have their own plans and their own ideologies (doesn’t everyone?). In fact, they write about them, in online articles and in professional journals. And we could cite many more similar examples! And generally speaking – and it’s no surprise – the ideologies of the world don’t tend to be biblical.
And so we need to learn to connect our biblical worldview to what is actually happening in the world. If there is so much sin mixed in even with our own actions, do we really believe that there is no sin involved in the apparently “good” things that governments, scientists and academics do?
Remember, “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). “…we are not ignorant of his designs” (2 Corinthians 2:11). But we share Paul’s calling. What was it that Jesus said to him? “I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness … delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:16-18).
We need to connect the Bible to the real world. This is not a game, or something to only ponder on Sundays.
Transhumanism leads to posthumanism. Many people believe that we need to evolve into something completly new. That is, into a new species.
As Christians, I believe that we are far from our potential, yes. I believe that we should grow and improve.
But as we learned earlier, something happened in history that confirmed the incredible value of humanity. God became man in Jesus Christ.
And remember the imago dei. We are made in God’s image. I don’t believe that we should become something beyond humanity. We should instead grow in Christ, and enjoy all of the eternal potential and incredible value of every human life.
Under Satan’s control, posthumanism sometimes even leads to antihumanism. There are scholars who actually argue that we should gradually eliminate the human race completely. Yes, seriously.
And abortion is a good thing to them in part because it can help reduce the human population. And if an abortion is hard on the woman’s body, and if she has issues with fertility down the road, perfect. Because some people truly hate the human race.
But there are many more sides to this issue. Next time we’ll look at the extension of human life, and even the goal to create new life with artificial intelligence.
Last time we introduced the question – is technology completely neutral? Many would argue that it’s all about how you use it, not the tech (device) itself.
Well, in a certain sense, this is true. But we may be forgetting something important. Any use of technology actually has consequences or results.
Author Neil Postman wrote: “A new medium does not add something” – in other words, it does not simply add something, like 2+2:
A new medium does not add something; it changes everything. … That is why we must be cautious about technological innovation. The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible.
Neil Postman
A little more than 20 years ago, we discovered that we could carry a computer connected to the internet combined with a phone all the time. The iPhone hit the market about 15 years ago. And the world changed completely – even for people that don’t use a smartphone.
If “everyone” is using a new technological device, or it seems to solve a problem, or if it’s fun, we often adopt it without thinking anymore. We may think about how we use it, but sometimes we simply never ask the important questions about if we should be using it at all. In fact, it’s possible that we think it would be bad – a crime – a sin – not to have the same type of device that everyone else has!
Not only should we carefully evaluate how we use these devices, we should evaluate the devices themselves. How are they changing us, and the world around us? Which changes are good, and which are bad?
One of the biggest innovations from the past 100 years is digital technology in general. We can share images, movies, and other information around the world, simply using numbers transmitted through cables or even through the air.
We have machines that can collect massive amounts of information. Systems that can categorize and search for information, such as Google, Machines that can learn: artificial intelligence.
And now people are asking – where is this all going to lead? May we someday see completely artificial people? Computers that think as well as we do, or better? Of course, computers are faster than we are in certain areas, but the human brain has yet to be duplicated.
We should remember that, as Christians, we see technology from an entirely different perspective than the world, because we know that we have a God-given purpose.
We know that God is Creator, the source of all truth. We depend on Him. We know that our purpose comes from Him – to glorify Him, to enjoy Him. We know that humans are fallen creatures, sinners, but that there is salvation in Jesus Christ. We know that those who do not belong to Christ are headed for hell, and those who are in Christ have eternal life.
The world imagines a world that somehow came into existence from nothing, or from itself. Not very scientific, but that’s what many believe. They have to imagine a universe without God. Everything “just is”, there is no purpose, and so we can try to create our own. Scientism says that there is nothing real or important beyond what we can see or detect with our senses or our machines.
And so, salvation must come from within the world itself. And that’s a problem. Because we cannot use a fallen, cursed universe to save a fallen, cursed universe. It’s like trying to fight a fire with a flamethrower.
Without a transcendent God, there really is no good or evil. And so this worldly point of view leads to all kinds of selfishness and abuse.
But people create a poor copy of the true religion, because we were created to know God.
And so, they reason, perhaps technology is god. Maybe we will arrive at salvation and eternal life through technology. But what salvation is, what morality is, well, that depends on the person.
So how are we going to use all this technology?
That leads us to transhumanism. “Trans” is Latin, meaning across, beyond, on the other side. As in transport – trans-portare – to carry. The idea of transhumanism is that we go beyond humanity as we know it. Augmenting humanity.
The Olymic motto is “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together” (yes, that last part was added in 2021). That’s the idea of transhumanism – but specifically using various types of technology.
There are some amazing examples of bionic technology today. Someone who has lost a leg can have an amazing prosthetic leg, that looks almost real. In fact, that artificial leg could be stronger in some ways than the original!
And we thank God for modern technology! That is the Creation Mandate – “have dominion”.
Now, let’s imagine that two artificial legs are stronger and faster than the originals. An athlete could actually cut off his original legs and put on these bionic legs, and win the race (setting aside the rules of the competition for the moment). Transhumanism.
So stop for a moment – what would you think if an athlete did something like this? Augmented or changed his body in this way, to become “better”. What advantages and problems might be involved? What if future technology could solve some of those problems?
Maybe a student could connect her brain to a computer, and have instant access to new information.
And now we’ve gone “beyond” humanity. Transhumanism.
But let’s look at some of the problems with this, thinking of the above examples.
The human body is incredibly complex. No matter how sophistcated those prosthetics or augmented brains may be, they still may lose something that was originally there, in the body designed by God. In other words, this is not the same as moving faster because you’re in a car. The intent is to change what humans actually are.
Another problem. How did the bionic man get his legs? Did he have more money than I did? Does his cousin work in the factory? Does he come from another country, where this is legal? Is he a member of the “acceptable” political party?
From a biblical perspective, we agree that humans actually have “defects” because we live in a fallen world. It’s good, and wise, to help those who suffer (as we talked about earlier). And that’s why we give the soldier who lost a leg a prosthetic. But we always remember that technology will never provide complete salvation.
It’s not wrong to have compassion, and to try to minimize the effects of the Fall – sin and the curse. But only when we remember where perfect and complete salvation comes from. Because without Christ, anything we offer to anyone is only temporary.
But transhumanism says what the serpent said to the woman in the garden – “you will be like God”. It says the same as what they said at the Tower of Babel – “let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves”.
We deny God’s purpose. We deny that we depend on Him. And we create our own “truth” (start at the beginning to learn about these and other important foundations). See how important those three things are?
Transhumanism is a big topic – let’s continue with it next time.
