“Modern Technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is looking at. He takes no time to retreat or reflect. No rest, no meditation, no reflection or conversation. The senses are overloaded with stimuli. Man doesn’t learn to question his world any longer, the screen provides all the answers.” — psychoanalyst Joost Meerloo in 1956
“Now the real world is dying as everybody moves into the cloud… Everyone stares at the screens.” — Weezer
INTRODUCTION
Whether one realizes it or not, we are currently living through a spiritually-significant skirmish between the Analog and the Digital that will surely decide the future trajectory of humankind and whether we thrive as a God-fearing civilization or fall into further ruin.
The Analog, in case you were wondering, refers to God’s established reality in Creation; and the Digital is the synthetic counterfeit of man’s corrupted imagination.
This seemingly-innocuous controversy between the Analog and the Digital first emerged in the 1970s with the advent of the Third Industrial Revolution when the invention of user-friendly computers and their digitized processing began to have a colossal impact on how society creates, transfers and maintains the world around us. To be sure, many tasks in our daily lives have become more swiftly and efficiently performed with the use of digitization.
Yet now, some five decades later, we find ourselves at the forefront of a so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution that seeks to drive us into the forbidden territory of an indiscriminate, fully-digitized existence outside of God’s natural world. Using the implements of our advancing technology, the aim of these techno-rebels is to force mankind into the evolutionary climax of “Singularity” — that perceived point in time when human beings will be fully integrated with the machinery of artificial intelligence and genetically reengineered into a death-defying “post-human” species.
Sadly, this mad dash to digitize humanity is no longer the stuff of science fiction. In fact, there is a growing global movement called Transhumanism which is actively pursuing this agenda; and if the influential apostles of this godless philosophy have their way, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will, according to one report, soon challenge the “ideas” of what it means to be “human.”
In reality, of course, these transhumanists are not challenging “ideas,” but rather God Himself. Their shameless attempts to step on their Creator’s toes is clear evidence of their rebellion. Despite mankind’s sacred history of being created by God in His image, commanded to bring fruitfulness upon the earth, and toiling away for many thousands of years to build a human civilization that brings glory to the Creator, these techno-rebels still foolishly believe that our only hope of transcendence is to be plugged into a computer and enslaved by the cold calculations of the Digital.
In their spiritual blindness, however, they have failed to see the preeminent nature of the Analog of God and the path to eternal life found, not in digitization, but in the righteous precision and power of Jesus Christ, who is “before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).
THE CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OF THE DIGITAL
It might seem laughable to some folks when our latest digitally-driven technologies are perceived as an existential threat to mankind if left unchecked. Yet this isn’t some wild Luddite speculation. There are many prominent voices out there who have raised legitimate concerns in recent years about where this rapid rise in technology might be leading us.
In 2019, for example, philosopher Nick Bostrom was one of the first to warn about the possibility of there being “some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets devastated by default.” Fast forward to late March 2023, and we already have some confirmation that Bostrom’s concerns are warranted.
Recently, it was reported that Geoffrey Hinton, a scientist considered “the godfather of artificial intelligence,” admitted that it is “not inconceivable” that AI may develop to the point where it poses a threat to humanity. And now, hot on the heels of that concerning statement, Elon Musk and other tech leaders have published an open letter calling for a moratorium on further AI development, saying, “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs.”
Such a dramatic admission by high-tech experts should produce a chill down the spine. Certainly it is a scary thing when you sense fear from coddling parents about the prospect of their new “baby” growing up to one day destroy the world. But from a spiritual perspective, we should already be scared out of our boots about the dangers of AI and other such advancements. To be sure, Christians should have grave concerns about our increasing dependency on technology, especially if we come under God’s judgment like those in the past who “have forsaken Him… and worshiped the works of their own hands” (Jeremiah 1:16).
The troubling fact is, we are already standing knee-deep in the floodwaters of the Digital. Like it or not, we are living in a highly-digitized world that is quickly changing the way most of us think and live. Even now, the powers-that-be are in the process of fully digitizing every facet of our earthly existence: our work, our play, our money (i.e. CBDCs) — and now even our minds and bodies.
As reported by journalist Jacqueline PrauseIt, our world is quickly being transformed by a “fusion of advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, quantum computing, and other technologies,” including “ubiquitous, mobile supercomputing, intelligent robots, self-driving cars, neuro-technological brain enhancements, and genetic editing.”
While some of these recent digital inventions have improved the welfare of humanity, there are others that are not so beneficial and God-honoring — especially if these tools are put into the haughty hands of those who “have no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18). Ethical lines can be easily crossed by such arrogant people in positions of power, and very soon we may find ourselves more and more immersed in a Metaverse or Second Life where the ancient boundaries set by God are virtually erased so that separation from God can be explored as a new digital frontier.
Indeed, as the leading globalists and transhumanists of the World Economic Forum make inroads into the governments of several powerful nations (which it appears they are doing), the very essence of what makes us human will be next in the official queue to be digitized, manipulated and merged with our perpetual machines. Their ultimate goal is simply this: to live eternally as sentient robots or in a sophisticated virtual world — and shockingly, they make no bones about it.
“Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will not stop at becoming part of the physical world around us: they will become part of us,” boasts WEF chief Karl Schwab. “Indeed, some of us already feel that our smartphones have become an extension of ourselves. Today’s external devices, from wearable computers to virtual reality headsets, will almost certainly become implantable in our bodies and brains.”
Their end game, of course, is not about a provisional life well lived, but godlike immortality found in their twin idols, Science and Technology. As author Wesley J. Smith explains it, “transhumanism denigrates both the natural world and normal human life as irredeemably limited, and worst of all, ending in death! They yearn to possess extraordinary capacities without having to work to attain them. Rather than pursue virtue, transhumanism expects to overcome human nature through applied technology.”
Summing up his indictment, Smith soberly concludes that transhumanists see human beings as “so many meat machines,” which allows them to “presume the right to technologically remake us into a ‘better’ species — essentially, high tech eugenics.”
These smug transhumanists are therefore nothing less than Gnostics of the Digital age who hope to transcend what they see as the evil of this material world. With advanced technology at their disposal, they are all but saying, “Come, let us build a tower that reaches to the heavens” (Genesis 11:4), a decree which certainly mocks the “Let us make…” decree spoken by the Triune God at creation (Genesis 1:26).
Biblically viewed, their plan is to build a “computer tower of Babel” which will rise into the Cloud where Artificial Intelligence and the Supreme Will of the Transhuman Elites will rule like a divine godhead to reprogram humans into eternal “economic agents” to serve the “greater good” of the Digital. But don’t worry about your enslavement: there will still be plenty of virtual “fun and games” to placate the masses — a veritable smorgasbord of digital delights geared to our residual flesh.
No doubt this all sounds rather sinister and foreboding, like a dystopian Hollywood thriller, except the actual “thrills” are all too deadly to be found entertaining. As writer Justin Deschamps explains this immediate danger: “Once the bulk of society begins using virtual reality solutions for life, a positive feedback loop will (and arguably already is) pushing humanity toward degrees of self imposed slavery that would make regaining freedom almost impossible.”
In other words, transhumanism is a utopia that will always materialize as a dystopia. This is the dangerous bait-and-switch scenario first articulated by the philosopher, Jorge Riechmann, who fears the blind pursuit of a high-tech industrial revolution will bring untold damage to our civilization.
Thankfully, these transhumanists will eventually fail in this effort to “lengthen their days” and thwart God’s will (Ecclesiastes 8:13). Yet until that divine judgment comes upon them, they may very well lead much of humanity down a primrose path and pathology that will cause immense harm to those who were specifically created by God to thrive, not in the windmills of the imagination, but in the nourishing physical world our Creator gave to us for our dominion and well-being (Genesis 1:28).
Time will tell how this plays out, of course, but all is not lost if the distracted masses would only hear the rising dissonance from our conversion to the Digital and turn off the noise before it’s too late.
We will explore this issue further in the next installment of my essay series, The Digital Will Never Make Us Better.
