So...

Right.

Well, if you think about, you know, Western civilization has been significantly informed by the Christian faith at every level.

Economically, with regard to the sciences, our way of thinking about the physical world and its order and linear time, all these different things.

So but at the heart of it is this understanding.

hope, the Christian hope for a new heaven and a new earth and the resurrection of the body.

And with regard to the resurrection of the body, the Christian faith holds that our bodies will be like the Lord's body, that we'll be like the Lord.

Am I hearing that right?

Is that where we start?

Well, I think there's a lot of truth in that for sure.

At the same time, technology comes with an orientation or it's got an intended use.

So I think that if we think about it, it's just sort of like vanilla ice cream that we can add any flavor to we want.

We might miss that we're dealing with something that's sugary.

So there is an intelligent design behind a tool.

So when we think about, say, a hammer, you know, the example that you gave, we can use it to hit a nail or hit a head or hit a head of a nail or hit a human head.

Tell me about St. Anthony.

Amen.

Okay.

So, uh, here's how it goes.

"But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.

And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, 'I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before you unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.

Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech you, or beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.' Then said the Lord, 'Dost thou well to be angry?' So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.

And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief.

... we're in an evil country," and others are saying we should stay and fight because there's good things worth it.

Why don't we pray? We'll get into the scripture.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to share from your word.

Pray, Lord, that the words of my mouth and meditations of my heart will be acceptable to you, for you are our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

So we're in Jonah chapter 3.

Let me do a little kind of background kind of painting here for you to give you a sense of what the world is like at this time.

Who is this guy? How is he relevant to the conversation of AI?

Okay.

Well, yeah.

Let me begin with who he is.

So I learned about him through Augustine and Athanasius.

So a couple of really important church fathers, even Protestants would say those church fathers are authoritative.

Anyway, they both loved Anthony.

Is AI ever permissible in developing a sermon?

Explain that title, or as Desi Arnaz used to say, you got some explaining to do.

Well, the first thing to note is that St. Anthony lived a long time ago before those nuns developed that chant.

And he was a... person that Athanasius of Alexandria and Augustine both had a great deal of respect for.

And Presbyterians, Reformed people, have a great deal of respect for Athanasius and Augustine.

So that's one thing in his favor.

But the thing that brought him to mind didn't have to do with that necessarily.

It had to do more with transhumanism and what's going on in Silicon Valley, believe it or not.

So tell us about where you stand and why.

Look at the border,

folks.

Great to see you.

And we are continuing the Jonah Code today.

We're in Chapter 2.

But before I get to Chapter 2, I want to read something I noted or referenced last night.

That's the story of the Lord walking on the sea.

All along

No.

It never comes up.

And so I thought, that's such a good question.

I should start thinking about that.

And one thing led to another.

I ended up reading the Institutes and so forth.

But kind of a fun serendipity.

And I think it had a lot of good, good thoughts that just made me reflect on how I ran my own house and even use just my own, like here I spend all this money to purchase a home and and how am i how am i making that home lucrative uh or or whatever right um maybe you can give us a rundown on what the the main thesis of that book is and uh then we can yeah talk about practical things

Give us your take on that.

Well, in my mind, that's a betrayal of your calling.

And I think that denominations ought to take a hard look at this trend and address it in a disciplinary way.

I think that there are ways that AI can be used that are helpful.

I mean, just basic research and so forth.

But even then, you need to double-check your work.

You're not necessarily getting something that you can rely on even when you do that.

And it's like, what do you make of that? You know, when I look at it, even with Genesis 6 and Nephilim, it's like, you know, is this kind of like using a Ouija board? Is there something kind of literally demonic about it in some regards?

And it's like, what do you make of that? When I look at it, even with Genesis 6 and Nephilim, it's like, you know, is this kind of like using a Ouija board? Is there something kind of literally demonic about it in some regards?

Yeah, well, there are a lot of folks who have reflected on that, people like Joe Allen and Rod Dreher.

And I think I'm open to the prospect of a literal demonic danger lurking in this stuff.

At the same time, I think that we can also understand this as dangerous stuff just on the basis of what I was just talking about before, how it affects us.

Yes.

and manipulates us.

So just thinking a little bit about, say, the dependencies that young people are now developing with regard to their chatbot buddies, imaginary friends and so forth, that the whole process of becoming dependent itself is something that we should worry about.

I'm kind of wondering, you know, how much are you allowed to talk about? I mean, he did invite you to come in and critique it, but what can you tell us about the series? Well, it's probably

Okay, well, let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and meditations of my heart will be acceptable to you, for you are our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

Okay, I want to set the stage for this series of messages by pointing out something you may never have noticed, but it's important because it more or less frames what I'm about to say.

So when we see the Bible opening passages in the Bible in Genesis, there's something noteworthy that I think that often escapes us.

So let me just read this passage.

so that was one thing that

interested me.

I knew there was a really significant connection between artificial intelligence and the Transhumanist Project.

But then also, because of my interest in households and the economy, I knew, I had an intuition that this was going to just completely revolutionize the global economy, and it was going to have a host of unanticipated consequences.

And some of those are going to be good, but some of those are going to be really scary and bad.

So I wanted to understand what was going on.

So I did a deep dive for about a year, read everything, listened to as many interviews as I could listen to until I got to a point where I felt like I was pretty comfortable with the technology and where it was going.

But why is consciousness an important part of the conversation when we're talking about AI?

Can you speak to that?

Yeah, sure.

So i- within Western civilization, we saw the rise of something that can s- can be referred to as Baconian science, and Baconian science is experimental science, and it's got a number of, I think, uh, fine applications.

But essentially what it tries to do is reduce things to the sum of their parts.

So they, it, you know, you break things down into the c- into component parts, and then you kind of reassemble them in your mind, and you think you understand it or whatever you're studying.

And maybe that's fine when you're talking about maybe chemical reactions or maybe the, you know, movements of the planets, uh, s- you know, so forth.

But when it comes to human beings or even other creatures, we're more than the sum of our parts.

But that's why I'm very grateful that you wrote this book, "In the House of Tom Bombadil." Could you also, because I know this is a topic that you have spent some time on, how important is the household for waging spiritual warfare? How, how important is the family in that, this big spiritual drama we're a part of?

What comes to mind when you hear those words, biblical imagination?

Well, I think our imaginations are, are informed by the Bible.

I think that, um, you know, the Lord told parables.

Um, and then there are lots of things going on, you mentioned typology and so forth, that, uh, directly connect, uh, our imaginations to something much bigger than our imaginations, a, a reality that, uh, is ultimately real, you know, not just historically the case.

So we're thinking about, you know, great truths that are eternal in character.

And, you know, you, you know, an obvious example for, for most, uh, uh, pastors and Christians would be The Chronicles of Narnia, you know, or Lewis's Ransom trilogy.

But that's just, I think, probably the most familiar.

Yeah.

How does mankind deal with, with the, with, with the promises of Jesus Christ in a, in a world that no longer suffers human death? I mean, from one perspective, and it's a diabolical proposition, but from one p- perspective, does man- actually have any need of Christ anymore, uh, as, as the antidote to death if we're no longer confronted with the prospect of dying?

Well, certainly people like, uh, you, you all know Harari or, uh, Ray Kurzweil or Bryan Johnson would say we don't.

[laughs] Basically, uh, they've tried to, um, reconceive of what, you know, we've been promised as Christians in technological terms, uh, basically engineering terms.

So, uh, historically as Christians, we've understood, uh, the promise of eternal life and the resurrection of the body and so forth as, uh, being accomplished by, uh, the, the work of God.

Uh, what they've done is, uh, uh, taken essentially the eschatological vision that Christians have had, uh, from the start, uh, and, uh, made it something that, uh, really is, is reduced to an engineering project.

And in, and in order to do that, they've had to reduce human beings to machines.

So they often will kind of in a flippant way refer to human beings as meat machines, and that, uh, consciousness is just simply something that is, uh, uh, generated, uh, biochemically, uh, but doesn't have any relationship to, say, older ideas or older convictions about the soul or the spirit.

the secularists.

And it's like, what do you make of that? You know, when I look at it, even with Genesis 6 and Nephilim, it's like, you know, is this kind of like using a Ouija board? Is there something kind of literally demonic about it in some regards?

Yeah, well, there are a lot of folks who have reflected on that, people like Joe Allen and Rod Dreher.

And I think I'm open to the prospect of a literal demonic danger lurking in this stuff.

At the same time, I think that we can also understand this as dangerous stuff just on the basis of what I was just talking about before, how it affects us.

Yes.

and manipulates us.

So just thinking a little bit about, say, the dependencies that young people are now developing with regard to their chatbot buddies, imaginary friends and so forth, that the whole process of becoming dependent itself is something that we should worry about.

I'm kind of wondering, you know, how much are you allowed to talk about? I mean, he did invite you to come in and critique it, but what can you tell us about the series?

So, yeah.

Right.

Now the thing about him, of course, is he's pro-free market and pro, um, tech.

So he's not on board with, uh, the liberal project of, um, trying to reducing Christianity to, um, just b- you know, bromides and, and empty statements about love and stuff.

But I think that he does take the Bible seriously.

I think he is a, a very, uh, serious student of it.

Uh, w- whether or not he allows it to address, uh, or, you know, the Spirit to address features of his own life is, I think, in question.

Mm-hmm.

And it's like, what do you make of that? You know, when I look at it, even with Genesis 6 and Nephilim, it's like, you know, is this kind of like using a Ouija board? Is there something kind of literally demonic about it in some regards?

Yeah, well, there are a lot of folks who have reflected on that, people like Joe Allen and Rod Dreher.

And I think I'm open to the prospect of a literal demonic danger lurking in this stuff.

At the same time, I think that we can also understand this as dangerous stuff just on the basis of what I was just talking about before, how it affects us.

Yes.

and manipulates us.

So just thinking a little bit about, say, the dependencies that young people are now developing with regard to their chatbot buddies, you know, imaginary friends and so forth, that the whole process of becoming dependent itself is something that we should worry about.

have ended did their alternative version and at the very beginning of it the eagles just pick them up and fly them over to mountain doom and it's not

So, yeah.

Right.

Now, the thing about him, of course, is he's pro-free market and pro-um, tech.

And so he's not on board with, uh, the liberal project of, um, trying to reducing Christianity to, um, just b- you know, bromides and, and empty statements about love and stuff.

But I think that he does take the Bible seriously.

I think he is a, a very, uh, serious student of it.

Uh, w- w- whether or not he allows it to address, uh, or, you know, the Spirit to address features of his own life is, I think, in question.

Mm-hmm.

Can you give us a no-holds-bar, grim picture of literally what could? Just give us a one, two, three combo of how insane this really could be.

Yeah, well, probably the best person to refer to when it comes to like how things could go bad is Yuval Noah Harari.

I don't know if you've come across his stuff online, but he wrote a few books that have sold millions and millions of copies.

So he's not like a guy that's just kind of on the fringe.

He's a guy that's pretty well known.

He was one of the participants in the World Economic Forum and was a Klaus Schwab kind of right-hand man.

Anyway, he outlines ways that things could go awry in terms of the technology sort of breaking the leashes and running amok and doing things that we can't control anymore.

What they where they specifically are landing where where humanity ends and, you know, machinery and wires begin or what what is that line? What is that boundary and what what's up with this blurring of it?