This is the second installment of the series, “The Evil Of Digitizing The Analog Of God,” which Biblically explores the rebellious agenda of transhumanism to erase God and the boundary between His Creation and the virtual reality of our advancing digital technology.
UNDERSTANDING THE DIGITAL VS. THE ANALOG
So what is meant by putting forth the metaphorical argument that “the Digital” of transhumanism is an evil and dangerous corruption of the righteous design of “the Analog” established by God for the fruitfulness of mankind?
Technically speaking, digitization is the process of converting analog information like an object, image, document, or signal into a computer-relatable language encoded with a mathematical combination of “ones and zeroes.” Though its primary function is to speedily generate and disseminate data, it has become a darling of transhumanists because digitization can also be used as a powerful tool to transplant reality and, according to journalist Gil Press, “encourage the replacement or augmentation of the physical with the virtual or online presence.”
Of course, the “physical” that they desire to replace is nothing less than the creation of God, which, in a rhetorical sense, is the “Analog” of God. This is so because long ago He spoke the world into existence and saw that everything He had made answered the plan which His eternal wisdom had conceived; and “Behold, it was very good” (Psalm 33:6-9; Genesis 1:31).
Why call it the Analog? Think of an analog watch built with a traditional clock face and hands. Back in the days before digital watches, it was just a “watch.” But now, to differentiate it from the digital display, we call the very first watch, “analog.” The name is an example of a retronym, which is defined as a word created to avoid confusion between older and newer types of creations, usually because of advancements in technology.
From a Biblical standpoint, therefore, the Analog can be broadly defined as the elemental state of the world as originally created by God (even after the “generation loss” caused by the Fall), and the Digital can be viewed as the latest attempt by man to improve upon or completely remake that original design by digitization or digitally-driven science and technology.
Today, most people would likely assume that the digital process is superior to the analog. But such is not always the case. In the area of sound recording, for example, many audiophiles will tell you that digitization has not served us well. As often reported by those who have ears to hear the difference, the digitized music presented in compact discs and streaming audio can generally sound compressed, lifeless, bass shy and synthetic; whereas analog from vinyl records and tapes has “a physicality and immediacy in the sound of musical instruments” that is “warm, airy, and much closer to a live performance.”
The public at large, in fact, seems to agree with this assessment. Worldwide sales of vinyl records have increased sharply in recent years as people everywhere have rediscovered their fondness for the analog listening experience which, as one audio engineer tells us, “feeds the soul” because it most faithfully captures the original signal and waveform of God.
Indeed, according to mathematician Katrina Morgan, there is a credible scientific reason for this perception. “Analog captures a physical process,” she explains, “whereas digital uses mathematics to reduce the process to finite bits of information. What, if anything, is lost in that reduction is difficult to pinpoint. But the limitations of math in replicating reality may factor in to the difference in listening experiences reported by so many vinyl lovers.”
If Morgan’s general assessment is correct, there is a real danger of corrupting reality when we try to copy it with a binary conversion process that is inherently limited and reductive. Is it not prudent, then, that we ask what other aspects of God’s “analog” world are not improved by digitization?
THE INCREASING DISSONANCE OF THE DIGITAL
To put it plainly, human beings are not computerized robots; we are image-bearers of God formed from the earth and comprised of flesh, soul and spirit (Genesis 2:7; Zechariah 12:1; Matthew 26:41; 1 Thessalonians 5:23). While the Digital is nothing but a “hall of mirrors, deterministic, cold and sterile,” we as part of the Analog are “numinous, reverberative, warm and fertile.”
Can we not spiritually discern the important difference? Our earth and sea is vast and spacious and teeming with life, and it vibrates with His wisdom, eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20; Psalm 104:24-25). Did God not create the physical world with these nurturing properties so that mankind could “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28)?
Surely, this is why the Analog has a pleasing full-spectrum resonance, and the reason why we find that there is an increasing dissonance in the world when we blindly pursue a conversion to the Digital.
For decades, digitally-driven science and technology has been touted for their revolutionary capacity to usher in a new age of health and well-being, and yet in many ways our lives do not appear that much improved. Perhaps more than ever before, we are finding our highly-digitized world struggling with a malaise of the spirit, a strange wave of sicknesses, and the menacing advent of unexpected death. So why does it seem we are no longer truly thriving on this earth?
Statistically, we are in poorer overall health, despite amazing advancements in diagnostics, trauma medicine and other specialties. The CDC, in fact, has recently reported decreases in life expectancy and increases in obesity and drug overdose rates. Fertility rates have plummeted 50% over the last 70 years, post-pandemic deaths rates are up by 40%, and three million more people between the ages of 16-64 have been added to the U.S. disabled population in the last two years.
Even worse, our usually-resilient young people are now more prone to serious health problems. The incidence of cancer in people under 50 has increased around the world. Millennials have also noticed a spike in strokes among their peers, as 10% of U.S. victims are now under the age of 45. And the autism rate among American children (which back in 1970 only affected one in 10,000) has now dramatically risen to one in 36 (CDC).
Truth be told, something very strange is going on when public school systems are scrambling these days to provide more classroom space for the rising number of psychologically troubled or special-needs students.
Tracking alongside this massive health crisis is the diminishing morality of our failing culture. Sin and self-centeredness are rampant diseases spreading through our society because of our constant exposure to toxic entertainment, the inflammation of moral chaos in schools, and the turbo-cancer of deviant social media ideologies that are quickly eating away at the spiritual muscle of this country.
Even now, a significant segment of our population is worshiping individuals and corporate entities that are hard at work slaughtering unborn babies, embracing euthanasia, censoring free speech, ignoring basic human biology, promoting child self-mutilation, normalizing pedophilia, poisoning our world with toxic chemicals — and worst of all, glorifying Satan. Considering the level of our moral confusion, no wonder we appear to be on the brink of starting World War III and don’t seem to care.
So what’s going on here? Why has the reverberating signal of this analog world, which once sounded warm and fertile, suddenly become cold and sterile?
Could it be that with all our attempts to create a better world by re-engineering our biology, modifying our foods and manipulating our weather, we are actually destroying the very existence that God in His wisdom gave us? Is it possible, in fact, that the powers-that-be have created an epidemic of distemper and malaise among the masses because they arrogantly believe they can redesign God’s creation by biologically-tweaking and digitizing every aspect of our reality for their transhumanistic dream?
Have we forgotten how to maintain the distinction between God’s domain and our own? (Genesis 3:22; Isaiah 55:8-9).
APPRECIATING THE GODLY CLARITY OF THE ANALOG
Even with the hardships intrinsic to our fallen world, much of our current unsoundness would dissipate if we as a society would only look once more to God, embrace His creation and righteously used it for His glory (Isaiah 55:7, 66:2; Deuteronomy 4:30).
In His wisdom, God has graciously given us an ecosystem that is specifically calibrated to bring forth our security, nourishment and necessary provisions. The sun brings us sustenance through heat and light, the moon produces the cleansing tides, and the seasons bring perpetual renewal of the earth, providing the times of seeding and harvest, and bringing forth our food from plants and animals (Genesis 8:22; 9:3).
Yes, it is wild and unpredictable, but much to our benefit. Storms come, hardships of drought bedevil us, and microscopic organisms will sicken us. But such buffeting makes us stronger (Romans 5:3-4). The baby chick dies if helped out of its shell. It must struggle to break free in order to build up its strength and energy. Any lack of resistance might weaken it to the point of atrophy.
Likewise, our God-given immune system is specifically designed to be strengthened by sickness and exposure to natural toxins. The elements of the earth supply us with natural remedies to help bolster our immune response. Many plants and minerals have been successfully utilized for their healing properties by traditional physicians, proving that God has seeded His creation with “herb for the service of man” (Psalms 104:14; Isaiah 38:21; Psalms 51:7). In fact, every significant pharmaceutical product developed by man came from the various homogeneous substances and vegetation of God’s earth that was observed to cause certain changes in our health when applied or ingested.
Through millennia, mankind’s dominion of the earth has taken us to grand heights of civilization where human beings have displayed excellence in art, culture, governance and societal infrastructure. Indeed the spectacle of the Great Pyramid of Giza, Machu Picchu, the Great Wall of China, and the other great wonders of the ancient world amaze us with the immensity of their sophisticated design, conceived and built by sheer muscle and the power of the naked mind.
Looking at these feats from the view of our so-called advanced intellect, we are still mystified by the discovery of a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator from ancient Greece that determines the positions of the sun, moon, Mercury and Venus for any chosen date. And we likewise marvel at the Roman Empire’s masterful technology, culture and architecture that brought decay-proof concrete, fine highway systems, antiseptic surgery, and urban aqueducts and pipelines for the promotion of health and sanitation.
Even around the turn of the 20th century, we as a people had the ingenuity and drive to replicate those historical achievements when we showed off our capabilities at two different World’s Fairs in Chicago (1893) and St. Louis (1904). These amazing universal exhibitions spanned an area of several hundred acres, and yet neither one of these grand projects took more than two years to build.
Despite the lack of digital technology, these shining “temporary” cities featured stunning advanced cement and masonry work, intricate electric lighting, and massive architectural structures of beauty that gloriously housed the world’s latest technology. Sadly, many of those exposition buildings were later demolished as short-term structures, and yet the ones that survived have stood the test of time because of their quality of workmanship.
Looking back on some of these lofty achievements of the past, it is hard to see how our new focus on the Digital has given us any significant advantage, especially when we have foolishly abandoned our ancient technologies with little regard for their down-to-earth sensibility and timeless quality. Instead, we have come to rely on our new machines to think for us and build for us, and in the process we have become dumb and lazy. Yes, we’ve gained all the bells and whistles of a high-tech civilization, but we’ve lost the use of our brawn and brain, and our focus on the righteous God-given dominion of the earth.
All around us is stark evidence of our plight. Our once-glorious urban centers are in decay, filled with crime, homeless camps and shuttered buildings. Our nation’s power grid is shaky and often experiencing outages. Our roads, bridges and water lines are crumbling with worthless patchwork repairs that only delay the inevitable. Train derailments from rusty, buckled rails are at an all-time high. Factories and food processing plants are shutting down or burning down. And sea life is washing up on the East coast and dying because of off-shore wind turbine farms that are supposed to be helping the environment.
The sad truth is, we have simply lost our way in the real world as we look more and more to our “screens” for solace. Indeed we have forsaken the righteous qualities of God’s green earth and blue waters for the seductive call of the Digital and the promise of a high-tech world without hardship or death. And because of that, we are failing to thrive in the Analog of God.
“In the years to come,” warns Revolver News, “American infrastructure will fail more and more often, as America becomes less capable of maintaining the core elements of a First World country… The Heroic Age of Americans who actually built infrastructure is long past… Right before our eyes, America is losing that ability to sustain the complex systems that are the markers of modern civilization.”
Biblically viewed, we surely know the solution for this perplexing problem, but we are too arrogant to concede that God had it right all along. This is why our civilization is crumbling and our spirits are in chaos (1 Corinthians 14:33). John Mark Hicks hits the nail on the head when he states:
“Civilizations rise as they pursue the divine agenda (scattering throughout the earth, subduing the chaos within creation, and serving the creation–and all this includes the creation of culture, the use of technology, diverse languages, etc.). But they fall when human arrogance becomes mired in self-aggrandizement and self-worship.”
This arrogance is at the root of our problem, as pride arrives just in time to initiate the tragic fall (Proverbs 16:18). We may be technologically advanced, but it isn’t helping us if we wield our latest digital tools as weapons against God. To this point, Christian blogger Stephanie Dawn writes:
“Humans are becoming puffed up with pride in their own wisdom, believing they have overcome any need for ‘God’ through science and technology. They are probing and manipulating the building blocks of both animate (DNA) and inanimate (particles) matter. This clearly is in the Creator’s realm, and I believe crosses boundaries we are not meant to cross. Humans are about to plunge headlong into a deception so strong, so convincing, as to render themselves unsaveable… And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short (Matthew 24:22).
Thankfully, all is not lost because God is still in control, the Spirit is still moving, and salvation is always near with the redeeming power of Jesus Christ — if we only have faith.
We will explore this issue further in the next installment of this essay series, In Praise Of The Divine Art Of The Analog.
