6. A.I. & TRANSHUMANISM - What can I become?

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Good evening, brothers and sisters in Christ. Today, I want to address a topic that may seem distant from our everyday lives but is becoming more relevant in our world with each passing day: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Transhumanism. These are terms we may hear more frequently in news reports, academic circles, and even in popular culture. But what do they mean, and how do they relate to our Christian faith? Is it possible that the rise of AI and the pursuit of transhumanism—those movements that seek to enhance and transcend human limitations through technology—pose questions that we, as followers of Christ, must wrestle with?

Let's open our hearts to the wisdom of Scripture as we explore these topics today, and ask how we can navigate this brave new world while remaining faithful to God’s Word and purpose for humanity.

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I did not write that opening paragraph.

That paragraph was written by artificial intelligence. By something called SLIDE ChatGPT.

I actually asked ChatGPT to write me a whole sermon for me on this topic…and it did so!

It’a first attempt was only about 1500 words (a bit short for our taste) so I told it to have another go and it wrote me a half hour sermon, 3000 words on this topic…. and it completed the task in a matter of seconds.

I have the sermon here if you want to peruse it later on.

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I must say I have wrestles LONG with this subject this week. Artificial Intelligence and transhumanism are NEW issues. I can’t claim to have any great insight on the subject… what I’m seeking to do is t apply the truths of scripture to a challenging area. How successfully, well you can be the judge….and so (to be honest) it may well be that the best thing I can do tonight is to point you to someone else’s work which I have found helpful.

His name is Professor John Lennox. You may already be familiar with him… An Ulsterman by background… he’s a scientist and a emeritus professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, and a renouned Christian speaker and apologist.

He has written a book called SLIDE 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity

I haven’t finished the book yet but I am finding it very interesting.

And if you don’t want to read the whole book, there are a number of YouTube interviews with him speaking about this subject which are fascinating ad well worth your time.

Three headings tonight as we explore this whole area of Artificial Intelligence and (especially) transhumanism….

The dream of transhumanism…. the downfall of transhumanism… and the divine alternative.

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1. The Dream of Transhumanism

At this point some of you are thinking that the train has left the station without you on… I’ve mentioned two terms, and you may not know what they mean! So firstly, what is artificial intelligence?

RIFF - hear the phrase all the time / Amazon suggestions / Chat GPT - large language models / Scary - and fast developing. - Medical stuff - analysing scans

RIFF - Transhumanism… applying this technology to the human body.

Many quite seriously imagine a future where our human bodies and minds have been supercharged (by technology and artificial intelligence) so that we have mental and physical capabilities which FAR exceed our current limits.

One of the chief proponents of this view is the Israeli Atheist Yuval Noah Harari. He has said….

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the combination of AI and biotechnology means that we are very close to the point when you can hack human beings. There’s a lot of talk about hacking computers, emails and bank accounts. But we are entering an era of hacking humans. And I’d say the most important fact anybody who is alive today needs to know about the 21 century is that we are becoming hackable animals.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI

Hackable Animals - just think about that phrase.

Speaking of our current limits…. one of the goals openly spoken about in advocates of transhuman technologies is to HUGELY increase life expectancy… and even to put an end to death.

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Our reading from 2nd Corinthians said this…

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2 Corinthians 5:1 NIV

1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.

the TENT here is a reference to our human bodies… which like tents - are full of holes and always falling to bits. In other words we are limited in our mortal, fleshy bodies - this side of the fall at least…

Not so according to the dreams of the trans-humanists…

Because of coming technology… This same guy SLIDE (Yuval Harari) talks about a time coming when death itself will become (quote) “entirely optional for us”.

And so to capture it in a nutshell…. that is the dream of transhumanism…

to take this astonishing, rapidly advancing technology like artificial intelligence, biotechnologies… and to fuse this with our physical bodies FOR THREE BASIC REASONS….

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Increase contentment

Defeat death

Bring eternal life

Increase contentment - this will, they say, bring more joy, happiness, and human flourishing.. who wants to get sick, or have a limited body? who wouldn’t want their brain to be able to function at 10 times the capacity, or their body not to wear out.

defeat death - why should we die? if technology means that we can carry on living…? and livign (point 3) forever.. or at least as long as we choose.

bring eternal life. The transhumanist movement wants to life forever - or at least have the option of doing so, if they so choose.

And if you think this all sounds a bit far fetched… the sort of thing that can happily be ignored. Remember that governments, SOME big tech… and prominent individuals like Elon Musk (who is getting a second mention form this pulpit in two weeks) are concerned about AI and it’s possible future path.

Speaking about Artificial Intelligence, Musk Said (quote) SLIDE ““I think we are seeing the most disruptive force in history here. We will have for the first time something smarter than the smartest human.”

So much for the dream of AI and transhumanism… we’re beginning to hint at the downsides or the downfall… and that’s our second point.

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2. The Downfall of Transhumanism

Three things to note when it comes to the grand schemes of man.. by the way these ideas are nothing new..

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a) We have a bad track record

This takes us back to the Garden doesn’t it….? the idea that we can sideline God and remake ourselves in our own image… MULTIPLE SLIDE

Genesis 3:1–4 NIV

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.

History is littered, of course, with utopian attempts to remake MAN or the SOCIETY we form in radical ways which - we are always promised - will bring a new dawn of great hope.

What about the Nazi attempts at eugenics - a new race will be born they claimed, mankind purified and strengthened.

What about the Soviet attempts to radically re-craft man and society…

Both ended in rivers of blood - wether in the concentration camp or the gulag.

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Now look…. A balanced approach is needed of course… we are also told in Genesis that we are creative people - made in the very image of our creator no less… and that we are to fill the world and subdue it… so we are NOT anti-technology, far from it. At its best technolgy is a gift of God and a reflection of his character in us - he is the rgeat maker after all.

But we should… it seems to me… be very cautious of attempts to remake ourselves as people.

Because… letter b now….

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b) We have a dark desire to be divine

To go back to that chief proponent of transhumanism SLIDE Yuval Noah Harari…. one of his most popular books in this area is called Homo Deus.

Now I never did latin in school, but even I know that means Human Gods.

This idea that we can be NOT ONLY those who are made in the likeness of God… but those who become like God’s is (literally) the oldest temptation in the Bible.

The very next verse in Genesis finds Satan tempting the woman with his lies by saying…

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Genesis 3:4–5 NIV

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

And this first sin sets the pattern for all those other sins that follow. We disbelieve God’s word… and instead we set ourselves up as mini-Gods… not necessarily with grand technological ambitions - we just want to sit on the throne and call the shorts of our lives… ignoring God’s word and setting right and wrong however suits our selfish whims, isn’t that the heart of our sin.

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And what of the tower of Babel - what a profound story… Remember it? “let us reach the heavens” they said…. “let us made a name”… we’ll be like God… they said.

Someone once (aptly) said ‘behind every skyscraper there’s an even bigger ego.

We have a dark desire to be divine…. to play at God… that is the state of our hearts. AND (speaking of which)….. letter c.

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c) We cannot change our hearts

Our Fundamental Disposition, outside of Christ, is that (to quote the prophet Jeremiah) SLIDE Jeremiah 17.9

Jeremiah 17:9 NIV

9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

Beyond cure is (elsewhere) translated “desperately wicked”.

This is what all utopian movements forget…. YES technology will advance. We will need to ask some hard questions the ethics of biotech and transhumanism.

But here’s the thing… whatever is done cannot and will not change the sinfulness of the human heart. Which of course is why all great technological advances - for all their benefits - have a dark side.

We have nuclear power… but also nuclear weapons.

The word industrialised our manufacturing….. but also our tools of war (making the last century bloodiest on record).

The internet brought us relational connectivity (in some ways)…. but dehumanised culture through porn.

The list goes on…. whatever the technological advance… our greatest problem - the heart of the human problem, as we so often say, is the problem of the human heart.

What about No. 3 though…

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3. The Divine Alternative to Transhumanism

We going to spend the rest of our time, mostly in this passage we had read from 2 Corinthians 5 - lets revisit it together. So read again together from v1… MULTIPLE SLIDES

2 Corinthians 5:1–5 (NIV)

1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God…

All these futuristic predictions about AI and transhumanism can seem very dark, dis-topian even… but there are, I think, great reasons for Christian people to be encouraged. That’s letter a….

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a) Be encouraged - our culture desires gospel truth

What does the transhuman movement desire…? people are searching for….

Deep contentment

Defeat of Death

And eternal life.

AND HERE’S THE THING. It should be no surprise to us that people desire these things…. because these desires (says the Bible) are actually hard-wired by the creature into us his creatures.

What did we just hear? This desire to leave the tent of our mortality… this desire for heavnely glory….. for eternal life… where does it come from? v5 again….

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2 Corinthians 5:5 NIV

5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Solomon put it in differnet words in that ancient book of Ecclesiastes 3:11 SLIDE

Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart…

With his usual eloquence CS Lewis put it like this…

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Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. ... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthy pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. ... I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and help others to do the same. CS Lewis

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We can say to this whole movement… look it’s great you want to solve the death problem, but you are 20 centuries too late. Jesus Christ has already broken the death barrier. (That’s a John Lennox phrase - I love that, don’t you? - Jesus has broken the death barrier.

YES… int he words of Paul in 2 Corinthians… we GROAN in the present day…. we live with the debilitating conditions of a world marred by sin… and with human bodies that fail and fall to bits… but we can also LONG with HOPE… to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.

And we can be sure of reaching it because Jesus Christ - like a needly through fabric has gone through death…. and if (like a thread through a needle) we are joined to him by faith… we too ALREADY HAVE eternal life…. we will (like him) burst through death and on into everlasting life.

And how is all this achieved? Well here is the wonderful, topsy turvey counter-intuitive message of the gospel…. NOT by us becoming Gods… but by God becoming a man. Taking on frail fresh… dying for sins… in our place. TACKLING (in a way that no technology ever can) the real HEART of the problem - which is the sin problem of the human heart.

Don’t settle for some transhumanist parody of the gospel - go for the real thing. All who are in Christ (as John Lennox puts it) are heading for the greatest upload in history…

So Be encouraged - and not just personally encouraged by the gospel (that’s wonderful of course) but be encouraged in a wider way - the society which is all around us…. which seems so anti-christian in so many ways…. it actually asking questions which only Jesus can answer. It actually has itches that only the gospel can scratch.

That should give us hope as we hold firm on the gospel and and hold it out to others.

Secondly, letter b (this is incredibly brief)

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b) be engaged - we need Christian thinking in this area

When was the last time you heard a sermon on artificial intelligence? I guess this might be the first?

We need Christians in this area - we will be forced to do ethical thinking.

We have something wonderful to say and to share!

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c) be active - we need a ‘’fleshy’ Church

RIFF A fleshy church - real connection - Stuff on in person being for the wealthy /The dangers of a dis-embodied life… screen time, virtual friends, lack of connection to physical world and real people.