The Unchanging Gospel in a Changing World (notes & ppt available if you'd like-just send me a note-kh)
Kim Jong Un & the current POTUS
Kim Jong Un is threatening to nuke Guam and the POTUS is threatening to nuke N. Korea. Jesus said there would be wars & rumours of wars, but the end is not yet. Arguments like the current saber rattling between N. Korea & the POTUS are common throughout history. Of course the fact that the sabers are now nuclear bombs is a bit different. But there is no indication in Scripture that’s how human history will come to its culmination. So, that’s not the topic this morning.
In
Matthew 24:6 Jesus says
Wars, rumors of wars, pestilences, natural disasters-
These are all the beginnings of the birth pangs-but the end is not yet. . .
So
That’s not what we’re here to talk about.
Those issues have always been a part of the human condition.
But . . .
The world has changed
Changes
Cyborg Human/AI Integration
Artificial Intelligence Threat
Birth Rates plummeting
Betrothal (Marriage) Rates falling
Ageing Populations
Genetic Modification of Humans
Electronic Revolution (Robotics)
(Yes. These changes spell Cabbage. The message this morning will not be about Cabbage, just in case you were worried.)
I’ll confess, this is a set of things I’m interested in & disturbed by, but you might make a different list (I could have listed Climate Change, or the current 6th Great extinction, or transgenderism or a collection of other issues)-whatever items we choose we see all around us the world is changing.
Ray Kurtzweil- says “we’re all cyborgs”
Ray K is a fanatic for technology-the head of Google’s Director of Engineering-working on how to create a computer that functions like the human brain. He argues we are all cyborgs-using technology, like cell phones, to expand our brain and knowledge and processing power.
He takes about 200 pills a day to enhance his memory &, hopefully, slow his aging, so he can be here when the world reaches what he calls the Singularity-the time when technology will be building itself through AI & growth rates of knowledge through machine learning will double on the order of days or seconds rather than years. In that time he hopes to upload his consciousness into a computer & live forever.
What implications might this have concerning our humanity? The Bible teaches we are made in the image of God.
Genesis 1:26-27
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
So, I’d like to ask a few questions I don’t have the answers to.
Are we changing what it means to be human?
Are we playing God,
Or
Has God made us to be creative & to eventually promote our own development?
Is this part of the stamp of His image-to create new ways to be human?
Or
Will we carry our own falleness into cyberspace?
Elon Musk at least implies the latter option is more likely.
Elon Musk
Founded Tesla, Space X, Solar City
He argues Artificial Intelligence (AI) is more likely to destroy us than save us.
I think it’s notable that the most eloquent and influential advocate for restricting & regulating AI for fear of malevolent action on the part of super intelligent machines is at the helm of a company that is making cars that drive themselves with AI, and rockets that fly themselves with AI. This is not a chat-bot like Facebook has acquired, or a neural simulation like Google, it’s functioning AI making decisions for robotic machines and humans.
What’s interesting & prophetically ironic to me, is Elon Musk this year founded a non-profit organization, Neuralink, to come up with engineering solutions to the problem of integrating human thought with computer links-making it possible for us to expand our memory & processing of information by becoming linked with computers. His thinking is that democracy is the greatest check & balance on power-therefore, applying that political philosophy to the domain of AI, if everyone has access to the net, everyone can be part of the processing that makes up the super-intelligence that might otherwise destroy us.
For me, the problem is that such technology of necessity must work both ways. The communication links that make it possible for us to control computers could also potentially be used by computers to control us.
This is not science fiction. Follow this link and you can see how scientists have already created such controls in laboratory mice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7uRFVR9BPU
Scientists adjusted the motor cortex of a mouse’s brain so they could stimulate it electrically with light pulses. When the light turns on the mouse involuntarily runs in a circle to the left. When the light is off, the mouse behaves as, I suppose, mice normally do.
Elon Musk may be creating the system of connection with computers that may eventually create the AI apocalypse he is attempting to prevent.
How should people of faith respond to such developments?
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, (or in neural links to Artificial Super-Intelligence)
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
Psalm 20:7
Cyborgs are we all. – but we are made in God’s image.
AI Revolution is inevitable– but our strength and protection is in the LORD.
We also see
Birth Rates Plummeting.
Throughout the industrialized world birth rates are stabilizing below restoration level (˜2.2 children per generation/couple are require to perpetuate the species) (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN)
Birth Rates Decline
3 Reasons:
Education
Urbanization
Abortion
Of these three reasons the first is, obviously, a good thing. The more educated people are the fewer children they tend to have. Education is probably a good thing if it’s not merely a means to make people submit to a repressive government. And there are many well educated people who choose to have lots of kids. But as education rates go up, birth rates go down.
Urbanization also changes the birth rates. In a village more children mean more hands to help in agriculture and work round the house. In a city more children mean more expenses, more tuition costs, more food costs. Children are thought of by many today as an inconvenience. Urbanization may have many advantages, efficiency of scale, proximity to work, centers for arts and commerce; but it also results in reduced birth rates.
Margaret Sanger (Founder of Planned Parenthood) said
“The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
Abortion
There’ve been about 50,000,000 abortions a year since it was legalized in the US in 1973. This is probably a low estimate because abortion rates are not recorded properly in many countries. But it doesn’t take a maths genious to figure out the numbers. 40 years times 50 million
2,000,000,000 abortions since Roe v Wade in 1973
That’s 2 billion human beings killed before they are allowed to exit the womb.
Roughly 25% of all pregnancies worldwide end in abortion, with around 40-50,000 women dying each year as a result of complications due to abortion.
The most dangerous place in the world for a human being is in the womb of a mother, and the human beings in the womb are the most innocent and helpless among us. This state of the world is so different from what the Bible teaches about children:
Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
Psalm 127
Changes
Cyborgs we may be, but we are made in God’s image
Artificial Intelligence Threatens, but our trust is in the LORD
Birth Rates are plummeting but Children are God’s blessing and
Betrothal (Marriage) Rates are falling
Fewer than ½ of marriageable people in the US are married.
When I was born the Marriage rate was about 90%
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/marriage-parenthood-and-public-policy
The devaluing of marriage and family stands in stark contrast to the clear teachings of the Bible.
Wives, submit to your husbands . . . Husbands love your wives . . . “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. Ephesians 5
Christian Marriage is the way God embodies and illustrates His love. With so few of the population worldwide honoring this ancient institution, we see fewer and fewer examples of God’s love lived out before our eyes. It seems to me we are running an experiment concerning what it means to be human and live in society. Of all the changes discussed today, the marriage and birth rates are the ones I find most disturbing, because they indicate an abandonment of God and His values.
Changes Unchanging
Cyborg Humans- God’s Image
AI Threat God’s Protection
Birth Rates plummeting God’s Heritage
Betrothal Rates falling God’s Picture of love
Ageing Populations
In
Japan
More than 30% of the population is over 65
“Population ageing is one of the most significant trends of the 21st century. One in eight people in the world are aged 60 or over. As long as fertility rates continue to decline and life expectancy continues to rise, older people will steadily increase as a proportion of the population.” -United Nations Population Fund
In Japan this is a major problem, because already one third of the population is at or above retirement age, leaving the weight of responsibility for providing for both the old and the young to the middle aged population. Japan is now at 0% economic growth. If these trends don’t change soon (particularly the economic situation), the country is in danger of a social meltdown.
Japan is the extreme example, but these trends are, again, worldwide. Partly for this reason, “euthanasia”-I put it in quotes, because the word means “good death”, there is nothing good about euthanasia-is becoming increasingly common and has been legalized in many Western countries. We already kill our children before they are born. It only makes sense that at some point we begin to kill our parents before they die naturally.
In Matthew 25 Jesus describes His return and the judgment of the nations. Those who care for the “least of these”-the sick, the poor, the prisonor, the downtrodden-will be invited into everlasting reward. Those who do not will go into everlasting punishment.
In
Exodus 20 God commands that we must not murder, and that we are to honor our father and mother. In God’s economy, ageing parents are an opportunity for service to Him.
And, in case we’ve forgotten the verse is there:
Gray hair is a crown of splendor;
it is attained in the way of righteousness. Proverbs 16:31
as the years pass this is increasingly one of my favorite verses in the Bible.
Changes Unchanging
Cyborg Human God’s Image
AI Threat Our trust is in God
Birth Rates plummet Divine Heritage
Betrothal Rates falling Love embodied in Marriage
Ageing Population Burden Opportunity 2 serve
Genetically Mod. Humans
CRISPR
Jennifer Doudna is the co-discoverer of the CRISPER Cas9 procedure. By vastly simplifying the cutting and splicing of DNA sequences in the laboratory and in living organisms, CRISPR has revolutionized our understanding of how genes work. It also has reduced the barriers to eliminating mutations that cause disease and introducing others that can change the physique of living creatures — creating pest-resistant plants, mosquitoes that can’t carry malaria, super-muscular livestock or — within a few years — pigs whose internal organs can be transplanted into human hosts without the risk of rejection, and the promise of new cures to dread diseases like cancers . . .
The proceedure is so (comparatively) simple and inexpensive small labs are able to use it.
The book she wrote “A Crack in Creation” opens with the stark observation that the revolution in gene editing launched by CRISPR “offers both the greatest promise and, arguably, the greatest peril for the future of humanity.”
“One night in 2014, when CRISPR technology was first becoming widely distributed, she was jolted by a dream in which she was brought to see Adolf Hitler, who asked for an description of “the uses and implications of this amazing technology.” She lay awake, pondering how CRISPR’s “truly incredible power … could be devastating if it fell into the wrong hands,” she recounts in the book.”
I’ve mentally prepared myself for the day when I open my inbox or answer my phone, and I realize that somebody’s going to be announcing the first CRISPR baby.
Dr. Doudna warns against changing human embryos in an LA Times interview July 21st, and Nature magazine publishes this article describing the first successful CRISPR editing of a human embryo August 2, less than two weeks later. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7668/full/nature23533.html
When there is so much potential for good-to eradicate diseases, why would anyone have a problem with genetic modification of the Human Genome?
The danger, of course, is that the same technology that can be used to eliminate genetically inherited diseases can also enhance human intelligence, strength, endurance, longevity, resistance to disease, and create the master race, destroying those who don’t move into the brave new world of enhanced humanity.
The same technology can also be used to create super-bugs that could potentially wipe out our species.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Jesus (Matthew 11:28)
“In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”
Paul (Acts 20:35)
If we can, we should prevent suffering and disease. We also must be careful about how this technology is used.
So
Scientists are seeking to combine humans & machines,
AI might take over the world
Birth rates are falling, marriage is being abandoned.
The population of industrialized nations is aging & we are now able to edit the Human Genome & are learning how to make designer animals, designer people & designer infections that could wipe out the species.
World Problems Biblical Solutions
Cyborg People - God’s Image People
AI Threat Our Refuge-God
Births Declining Divine Heritage
Betrothal Bust Love Embodied
Age Burden Opportunity 2 care
Genetic Perils Verity, wisdom,
Electronic Revolution
(Electronic) Robot Revolution
Tesla, Google, Uber, and several car manufacturers are now making self-driving cars. Robots now make those cars. There are now shopping centers and restaurants that have no, or almost no, human employees. Estimates are that roughly 40% of US Jobs in 2030’s will be handled by robots.
With so much disruption to people’s lives, the world will need the LOVE of God more than ever.
World Problems Biblical Solutions
Cyborg People - God’s Image People
AI Threat Our Refuge-God
Births Declining Divine Heritage
Betrothal Bust Love Embodied
Age Burden Opportunity 2 care
Genetic Perils Verity, wisdom,
Electronic Revolution Everlasting Love
The Love of God
The song writer said it well
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell. . .
Could we with ink the oceans fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky
O love of God, how rich, & pure
How measureless and strong
It shall forevermore endure
The saints and angels song.
John 3:16 is more relevant and needed more today than any time in human history.
God’s Unchanging Gospel in a Changing World
