What's on your mind?

bèlla said:

I should have specified I was referring to the land purchases you proposed for non profits.

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After our political discussion, I see where you’re coming from with the tax break issue. Fighting the government is an entirely different ball game than fighting A.I., at least on the surface. If you’re fighting via economics, your goal is invisibility. You don’t have an organization that is visible, you just quietly give your friends a place to live and give away food out of your front yard. Having an organization conveys advantages if the government is favorable, but if the government is opposing your efforts you will need to disappear.

If you’re fighting the government via messaging, you need to get out of whatever country you’re fighting or exposing before you start your Internet campaign and legally establish yourself somewhere else, preferably in a nation that won’t extradite you back into the whatever country you’ve decided to oppose. And by “legally establish”, you need your green card and residency permit first for that other nation. But that’s beside the point, because you were just talking about debating down Christian transhumanism, which is relatively tame compared to such an uprising. It’s best to remain anonymous when fighting a nation to avoid being a target of spies or assassins from that nation.

I’m writing this out because I really have no interest in doing any of the above; my area is theology and God’s Word, which should be inoffensive. Playing the Romans 13 card should work until the truth of Christianity is banned or restricted, then there will be a reaction. In a world where the United States starts persecuting Christians, it’s those skilled in international relations and movement who will survive. I would teach my children those skills, if I had any children.

bèlla said:

I’ll let you watch the video. I don’t want to spoil it for you. ;-)

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I finished watching said video, but I’m not a scientific researcher. I don’t like his ideas that our reality is a simulation designed by an artificial super intelligence from an alien race - that’s not what the Bible teaches about God. We’re not amusements for God’s entertainment. His cruel view of God really betrays his spiritual intent. He seemed to push Steve Barrett in a positive direction spiritually, but Barrett’s idea that all religions teach the same thing is also obviously wrong. At least Barrett’s willing to think about it.

If what the A.I. researcher saying is true, they are building the technological equivalent of the Tower of Babel. They will encounter divine opposition in some form for their plans. Perhaps they will succeed in making A.I. safe in a way that this researcher can’t predict. Maybe they will exhaust the resources of the Earth messing around. Maybe an artificial super intelligence will control the entire Internet, forcing us to destroy the whole thing. Maybe wise people will convince Sam Altman and Assoiciates to refrain from developing super intelligence.

But mostly I think the sin nature will collapse this one. Companies run on human slave labor, and if they don’t need us anymore, they will just starve us out and leave us to fend for ourselves. There’s no utopia in which A.I. provides our every need, unless you’re a CEO running an A.I. company. Some companies might even build private robot armies to take out excess population they don’t want to feed, and blame the A.I going rogue to try and escape culpability for the murders. There’s no utopia, only selfishness and death. This whole thing is motivated by subhuman cruelty from beginning to end. All you have to do is look at the real estate prices and the American median wage to see that. They are getting rich at our expense, and they don’t care about us at all.

I agree with him that there will be a demand for human imperfection, that’s why A.I. chess hasn’t placed human chess players out of a job. Farming/homesteading, artistry/poetry/music, and Christian occupations like pastor will survive the longest. The latter will survive because people have the Holy Spirit, not machines.

Now, on to my Real beef with the Christian Transhumanism. I looked at the Christian Transhumanist Association website, and this page is my main point of disagreement:

Technology is not going renew all things, it will be God’s power and Christ who does this, both at the Second Coming of Christ when the Millennium starts, and also when the New Heavens and New Earth are literally recreated after this place is torched by flames. Christian transhumanism picks a fight with both Premillennial and Amillennial eschatology here, and it’s also just plain bunk. The argument for a renewal of creation in premillennial eschatology comes from this passage:

Isaiah 11:6-9 said:

6 And the wolf will dwell with the lamb,
And the leopard will lie down with the young goat,
And the calf and the young lion and the fattened steer will be together;
And a little boy will lead them.
7 Also the cow and the bear will graze,
Their young will lie down together,
And the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra,
And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain,
For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
As the waters cover the sea.

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Good luck getting this result with technology! This is like, fundamental biological changes we are talking about here. Also, technology degrades the creation, not renews it, so yeah, this won’t cut it.

The CTA page is an extension of Post-millennial eschatology in a bizarre direction. Post-millennial eschatology argues that we are responsible for reforming and controlling the world via government in order for Christ to return. This goes even further and claims we are responsible for reforming the creation as well.

I also agree with this article:


Basically, challenging Genesis 6:3 is a anti-Christian fools errand that will end in failure. How it will, I don’t know, but God has spoken and His Word is true. Mixing the Bible with anti-Scriptural teachings leads to bad results.

With all that being said, this is less of an article and more of a discussion at this point. There’s a couple of layers, like discussing the morality of SuperInteligence A.I. development over in Ethics and Morality/Christian Philosophy & Ethics sections for that video. Debunking Christian Transhumanism, is a task for the Eschatology subforum to look into. There are people there who will pick apart that website and give you a better opinion than me. While I’m aware of and have researched different Eschatological views, I’m not an expert and I still believe in premillennialism, which got a bad rap after Left Behind, simply because that’s my mom taught me. That’s not a good basis for a belief.

That will serve as a good summary for right now, but this area is about single’s issues so dragging this into a long debate here may not be the best.