Idolatry, Technology and a Better World
When artificial intelligence meets End Times eschatology
The Jewish and Christian scripture warning against idolatry insists that allowing yourself to be controlled and governed by anything less than an infinitely compassionate and loving Creator is a mistake.
The warning is given to protect us from voluntarily opting to live enslaved.
Idols aren’t limited to little figurines stashed in Rachel’s backpack while Jacob makes his getaway. They are such things as fame, fortune, titles, chauffeurs in Mercedes Benz SUVs, hearing people tell us things like, “Right this way Mr. Jones,” political ambition, and “My son goes to Harvard.” All these things are pleasant enough in their own right, but none as lovely as infinite love and compassion.
The Founders of the United States said it’s “self-evident” that America was founded by this very same Creator who urges us to avoid voluntary enslavement — a Creator who makes us free, equal, and with inalienable rights.
There is a second, vying claim about who and what we are. This is offered by people who reject the fact that humans are God-created. A recent such world philosophy that begat a violent and murderous century was Marxism. Marxism holds that humans are workers and exploiters of workers.
Today’s anti-benevolent-Creator ideologues have moved us beyond being oppressed because we are exploited workers to now being oppressed for a cornucopia of reasons that includes just about everything; being female, homosexual, Pacific Islander, short, mistaken for a male, and all manner of secondary traits worth oppressing. This expansion and glorification of ways to be oppressed is what wealthy tenured profs of color term “intersectionality.”
We are faced with two options to answer the question: What does it mean to be human?
Irrefutable Arguments
One choice is that being human means believing we are created free, equal, and with inalienable rights.
The second is believing it means to be oppressed (or to oppress others) as nondifferentiated cogs in systems of power and resistance.
If we ask someone, “How do you know you are free, equal, and have inalienable rights?” someone who leans toward the first choice will say that God (the Creator) made him that way. They may even quote the Declaration of Independence: “These truths [are] self-evident … all men are created equal, endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
“Hmm. Self-evident, you say? I guess there’s no way to argue against something that is self-evident.”
But if we ask someone who leans the other way, “How do you know that I am an oppressor and you are oppressed?” the answer will be, “My teachers and professors told me so. Plus, I know it from my own personal experience.”
“Hmm. Your own personal experience, you say? I guess there’s no way to argue with that.”
And this is what we have in America (and much of the rest of the world) today: two groups of people, both of which are dead sure about something you can’t argue against. This is truly an End Times dilemma. It leaves us with nowhere to run.
Speciesism?
This standoff is taking place at a particularly vulnerable time in history. Is now a good time to have irreconcilable disagreements over what it means to be human? I say no. It is a particularly bad time to be irreconcilably broken as a nation and globally.
The reason now is bad is because of the impact of technology, especially AI and AGI (artificial general intelligence — the kind of AI that can learn anything a human can). We need, now more than ever, some understanding of what it means to be human, because our identity as a species is strongly challenged by these things
For the first time in history we live in a world with creatures smarter, stronger, and faster than us. AI and AGI compel us to ask: On what basis do we presume that humans should retain authority over earthly affairs? By what standard of assessment? What is the argument for that?
Not everyone believes humans should remain in charge. Google Cofounder Larry Page called Elon Musk a “speciesist” during a heated discussion about artificial intelligence, accusing him of prioritizing human consciousness over machine consciousness. (As though that’s a bad thing!)
The Choices Before Us
Page is not alone in his disregard for humans. Sir David Attenborough, the renowned British broadcaster, biologist, and natural historian, described humans as a “plague on the earth” (due to population growth and environmental degradation). Pentti Linkola, a Finnish deep ecologist, calls for reducing the human population through solutions like societal collapse and drastic population-control measures.
But we do not need these powerful folk to hate us and put our species in peril. AI and AGI, by their very nature, pose a threat to our future existence. This danger is commonly called “the Singularity,” meaning superintelligent AI might pursue goals misaligned with human values. The technology could develop exponentially in ways humans cannot catch up with. Experts believe that AI will eventually reach the point where it can improve itself beyond humans’ ability to fathom or control.
With these challenges on the horizon, it is crucial to pause for a moment to dig beneath the surface of political division to see its deepest point of origin. It begins with the irreconcilable claims about who and what we are.
The answer to this question always has a “therefore” attached to it. For example, “I am Created by God, therefore …” or “I am a social construct arising from oppression and power disparity, therefore …” “Therefore I speak like this. I act like this. Society should be like this. Educators should teach this.”
We now face monumental challenges in an unsettled world under the spectre of racing technology. And we must choose between two options to envision the source from which we will draw to meet these challenges.
If humans are created beings who are equal, free, and with unalienable rights … THEREFORE, goodness requires us to remove obstacles to creativity and prosperity, and establish just and equitable societies where families and free individuals are secure and the rights of citizens are protected.
If being human is resisting oppression and eliminating oppressors, then technological advances will be used to eliminate offenders and silence dissent.
Technological advances have brought us to the brink of an inflection point. Either we flourish by enhancing our identity as free creatures made in the image of the Almighty God, or we use the powers of technology to perfect selective human elimination.
Frank Kaufmann is founder and president of the American renewal effort, The Settlement Project and author of Woke Ideology: Critique and Counter Proposal (independently published, November 2024).