The Unchanging Gospel In A Changing World

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.