This is the third 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.
As God’s Analog Creation is being systematically converted into the transhumanistic vision of the Digital, we should not be surprised to see the negative consequences of this reductive process in the current spiritual distemper of man’s art. Where once we glorified the beautiful handiwork of God in a masterpiece like Michelangelo’s David, we are now dismantling God’s Creation with the prominent display of a sculpture recently installed outside of The Gender Museum in Denmark that depicts a naked, bearded man with female breasts nursing an infant in his arms.
Alas, what are we to make of this cultural lurch from the sublime to the ridiculous? Have we truly lost the artistic ingenuity that inspired Michelangelo to release from a marble block the taut tendons and contracted muscles of a young David standing before Goliath? Or have our darkened hearts beguiled us into finding beauty in building a perverse idol that glorifies gender fluidity?
Surely there is a vast aesthetic difference between celebrating God’s artistry as found in Creation and celebrating man’s delusion enshrined in the twisted image of a father suffering from gynecomastia. Not only does the latter art hint at a prevailing madness, but it clearly reveals the spiritual dysfunction of the Digital where today’s woke “artists” are attempting to usurp God as divine Potter (Isaiah 64:8) and deconstruct His righteous jars of clay into a chaotic work of sinful man for dishonorable use.
As psychologist and author Dr. Rollo May rightly explains:
“If you wish to understand the psychological and spiritual temper of any historical period, you can do no better than to look long and searchingly at its art. For in the art the underlying spiritual meaning of the period is expressed directly in symbols.”
Indeed, if the corridor of time were built like an ever-expanding museum that exhibited the artwork of humanity throughout the ages until now, what would we notice as we walked through its unfolding halls? For many people, taking in this panoptic view of the rise and fall of human creativity would reveal a telling link between our historic periods of high art and our historic periods of drawing near to God.
As confirmed many times in Scripture, there is a grand marriage between our spiritual and cultural prosperity when we are nourished by the divine provisions drawn from constant communion with God through His revelation (2 Chronicles 7:14; James 4:8). In those spiritually-rich times, we are like “a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season… and prospers” (Psalm 1:3). Thus, we often find that the most beautiful art created throughout human history has been inspired by the revelatory art of God, which is namely expressed in the unmatched beauty of His Creation.
BLIND TO THE BEAUTY OF GOD’S WORKS
So what happens to the artwork of mankind when a civilization falls into widespread sinfulness and the population becomes spiritually blinded to God and His divine Art — or, as Matthew Henry puts it, when “the (fallen) world has not only gained possession of the heart, but has formed thoughts against the beauty of God’s works”?
A quick examination of today’s popular art reveals our tragic condition. Exhibited in the Human Art Museum of 2023 are the latest works of man’s creative misadventures that are often indicative of a notable underlying despair, spiritual confusion and demonic influence now commonly found in our transhumanistic age.
Hurrying past the chimeric sculpture in Denmark, we encounter our first exhibit: the Oscar’s latest “Best Picture” that envisions the unbiblical philosophy that every person, as if God, can create a new parallel universe with each life choice, thus creating a “multiverse” where one can exist in any number of self-affirming realities. But one must ask, hasn’t God already given us specific instruction on how to live a righteous life in the particular world He gave us?
Next, as we make our way to the Hall of Popular Music, we discover a recently televised performance at the Grammys of the award-winning song, “Unholy” that gleefully features a stage filled with hellish flames and dancing demons in blood-red costumes and satanic headgear. And last but not least, in the Gallery of Subversive Entertainment, we might stop to gasp at the sinful display of nationwide drag shows for little children where bedazzled clowns fondle themselves in playful sexualized poses to pollute innocent minds.
Clearly, as we view the current deconstruction of the Analog in the wayward imagination of man, we can easily confirm that our reprobate culture is flowing downstream from our sad spiritual condition. As explained in a video presentation by The Academy of Ideas:
“If the creations of great artists reveal the underlying psychological and spiritual atmosphere of the times, then an honest survey of modern art must lead one to consider the possibility that modern civilization is suffering from a spiritual sickness — a deep existential loneliness, an eruption of the demonic, a negation of human nature and a fragmentation of the human form, a celebration of chaos — and thus perhaps, even a “sickness unto death.”
This prevailing “sickness,” as first put forth by Christian thinker Søren Kierkegaard, is the sin-soaked despair most commonly suffered by those who refuse to consciously “exist before God” and therefore are spiritually unable to become “a human self whose criterion is God.” This is the sickness of the spirit spoken of in Scripture which plagues today’s society and often brings degradation and chaos to our creative process (Ecclesiastes 2:23; Psalm 32:10; Revelation 9:6).
By failing to approach God by faith in Jesus Christ to receive the forgiveness of sins, the despairing artists and techno-rebels of the Digital are unable to see the “infinite reality” of God’s Creation that can spiritually guide them into an abundant creative life that brings glory to our Triune Creator through the works of Father, Son and Spirit (Matthew 12:28; John 15:26; Acts 10:38; Romans 1:4; 1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Corinthians 13:14).
Biblically speaking, these detractors of God’s Creation are spiritually blind (Isaiah 42:18; Romans 1:28; 2 Corinthians 4:4). Such people, having a carnal wisdom and cold intellect, have always been dismissive of the supernatural and, as a result, do not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:14). To them, such transcendent truth as the existence of a Creator is nothing but incomprehensible foolishness because their minds have not been inclined by the Holy Spirit to perceive the beauty and force of a Creation that has been clearly signed by its Maker.
Governed instead by their animal appetites and the pride of life (1 John 2:16), the proponents of the Digital are amazed that our universe, which they believe to be randomly formed out of nothing, has survived this long without their help. Thus, with an inflated sense of self importance, they tinker with the essential building blocks of life to improve their form and function, and seem little concerned when they have several parts left over to chuck in the bin right next to their discarded copies of the Bible.
No doubt this is why the ruling technocrats in our governments and corporations are busy ushering in the Great Reset of civilization and propagandizing the masses to become thoroughly obsessed with modifying, augmenting and digitizing almost every part of our God-bestowed reality. They are frantically redesigning our natural foods, modifying our natural weather, editing our natural DNA, enhancing natural pathogens in “gain-of-function” biolabs, medically-altering our natural genders, computerizing our natural brains, and immersing us in a myriad of virtual “safe spaces” where we can pursue an unnatural electronic immortality and even play God.
In their spiritual deadness, however, the woke artists, scientists and transhumanists of our time are not rebuilding a better world, but further destroying the one we have been already given. They may truly believe they are serving mankind by tossing aside the things of God, but they are still left with the moral culpability of stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the general revelation of Creation that is clearly perceived in nature that proves God created the world as a wholly original and proprietary work of divine art and craftsmanship for His glory (Romans 1:18-20).
EXPOSING THE DARK ARTISTS OF THE DIGITAL
The central problem with the building of the Digital, therefore, is not so much in our advancing technology (which certainly poses no threat when done in proper measure), but rather in the wayward philosophy of the ruling elites who wish to play God so that they can have full control over the world in which they exist. Their flawed solution, of course, is to create their own reality in the Digital so they can gain divine power and thereby eliminate God and His controlling will from their lives.
Sadly, God’s natural world is seen by these transhumanists as their greatest enemy. As Zoltan Istvan, a prominent transhumanist, readily admits, “I don’t believe in evil, per se, but if there was such a thing, it would be nature — a monster of arbitrary living entities consuming and devouring each other simply to survive.” Indeed, according to author Wesley J. Smith, Istvan and other transhumanists long for “an indefinite and sterile existence“ and “want to rid the world of biology” in favor of “concrete, steel, and code.”
In truth, however, the Digital with all its high-tech “steel and code” is nothing more than a deceptive forgery of God’s divine handiwork, and should be condemned as idolatry of the works of man’s rebellious imagination. Surely the prophet Isaiah could well say to us today as he did back then: “See, they are all a delusion; their works amount to nothing; their images are as empty as the wind” (Isaiah 41:29).
To be sure, transhumanists and their ilk are no different than “heathen philosophers” who, according to Joseph Benson, reject the Creation account of Genesis and hold to a different cosmogony that is “uncreated and eternal, independent of God and not obedient to His will.” They refuse to see that the Bible brings a spiritually-profound record of the origin of things, and that “by faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Hebrews 11:3).
Try as they might, the transhumanists will fail in recreating the world in the Digital because God has “set the earth on its foundations, so that it can never be moved” (Psalm 104:5); and He specifically placed it there for the physical habitation of mankind and the lower creatures of earthly purpose (Isaiah 45:18). Therefore, no matter how hard one tries to imagine a different world, the earth in all its fullness belongs to the Lord (Psalm 24:1), and is “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).
Based on this truth alone, should we not applaud the great Artist of the universe as we step back and gaze upon the beauty of Creation?
ADMIRING THE DIVINE ARTWORK OF THE ANALOG
Every one of us has been given the capacity in our God-given consciences to admire and be generally instructed by the beauty of Creation (Romans 1:20, 2:15). As one unnamed German poet was long ago compelled to write, “If thou would attain to thy highest, go look upon a flower, and what that does unconsciously do thou consciously.” Though expressed outside of a purely Christian understanding, the writer was nevertheless echoing a Biblical concept of striving to be “imitators of God” who are “thoroughly furnished for every good work” (Ephesians 5:1; II Timothy 3:17).
Indeed the beauty of God’s Creation, and the dynamics between the physical and spiritual, have often been an enduring theme of the world’s poets. Despite moments of overbearing romanticism, the poet often expresses, with thought-provoking prose, the truths of Scripture in this matter (Acts 17:28).
The Bible, in fact, is divine poetry that “refreshes the soul” (Psalm 19:7). God’s revelation produces this metaphysical effect because we, as image-bearers of God framed out with the intertwining essence of body, soul and spirit, are easily captured by Higher truths that speak to our hearts. This is why the Analog in its earthly and spiritual interaction is righteously fitted for our habitation and contemplation, and the Digital in its deadness fails to comprehend the life force contained in the commerce between heaven and earth.
It is no coincidence that God often reveals His truth by pointing to His beautiful Creation. As Creator, God specifically designed us to powerfully connect to the aesthetics of the world we live in. This fact has been confirmed by a recent 2012 study from New York University which found that the region in our brains that produce inward contemplation and self-assessment were stimulated by experiencing the sight and sound of great beauty.
The Scriptures are rampant with the familiar imagery of nature being used to evoke and communicate spiritual insight to our hearts and minds. How often the prophets and the psalmist speak of the earth rejoicing because of God’s goodness. The sea roars, the fields exult, the trees of the forest sing for joy, the mountains and the hills break forth into singing, and the trees of the field clap their hands (Psalm 96:11-12; Isaiah 55:12).
Jesus also pointed to the aesthetics of nature for our edification. In Luke 12:27, for example, we are compelled by Jesus to “consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Using this keen observation from Creation, the Lord enjoins us to behold the flowers of the field so that our hearts might be filled with the soothing emblem of God’s righteous provision and thus be unburdened by any anxious or distressing thoughts.
Likewise, in the great songs of Moses and David, the lyrical imagery of the lush earth and thirst-quenching waters stirs our hearts to praise God when we contemplate how He restores our souls just as the elements of nature bring physical nourishment. To the Hebrew prophet, the teachings of God are likened to “gentle rain upon the tender grass, and showers upon the herb” (Deuteronomy 32:2); while the Psalmist sings of “green pastures” and “still waters” as he praises the great Shepherd who guides him in “paths of righteousness” for the restoration of his soul (Psalm 23:2-3).
Thus God, as divine Poet and Artist, has created a world that is spiritually-rich and full-throated in its expression of truth, which is done for our godly instruction and growth. Surely we join with the psalmist in acknowledging, “Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well” (Psalms 139:14).
From the very first morning of Creation, in fact, you can see His artistic flourishes. How perfectly the dawn breaks on the world, coaxing the orange-rose sun upward and slowly nudging in the new day to rouse the sleeper. Such a blissful start of the day surely has no equal and is a lovely reminder of how God made the world and said, “Let there be light, and there was light” (Genesis 1:3).
Against the twisted fantasies of sinful man, the earth stands as the beautiful and expressive reality of the eternal, self-existing, transcendent, omnipotent Triune God: The Father (Psalm 102:25; 1 Corinthians 8:6), the Son (John 1:3; Hebrews 1:2), and the Spirit who swept over the face of the waters at Creation (Gen. 1:2; Psalm 33:6).
It is a grand and sweeping statement of God; and truly, as the psalmist David wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).
THE TRANSCENDENT MORALITY OF THE ANALOG
Even the heavenly precepts of God have been woven into the multi-layered weave of Creation and cannot be dismissed nor counterfeited. When sin entered the world through Adam, the nurturing landscape of the earth was soon pierced with the growth of thorns by God’s righteous decree, and yet how intuitively the sharp, jagged brush seemed to appear as a natural by-product of man’s rebellion (Genesis 3:18).
From that point on, briers, thistles and thorns were among us, sometimes symbolically entering the sides of our flesh with persistent pain (Judges 2:3; 2 Corinthians 12:7); or choking the seeds and fruit of the word of God (Matthew 13:22); or even worse, being twisted into the shape of a crown to mock our Savior and spill His blood because of our sin (Matthew 27:29).
And what about the dark deed of Cain bringing sharp reaction from Creation? Did the first bloodshed of man not have a voice that immediately cried out to God from the soil (Genesis 4:10; Numbers 35:33)? And did this not speak to how the sin of murder can, in a spiritual sense, agitate the elements of the world with the shrill, oscillating resonance of wrongdoing? As Charles John Ellicott wrote, “the earth will grant no peace to the wretch who has stained her fair face with the life stream of man.”
Corrupted by man’s rebellion, Creation even now joins us in lamenting our degraded and lost state and yet yearns for redemption and release from the tragic consequences of the Fall (Romans 8:19-24). Surely, then, God’s law has been supernaturally written on the elemental heart of His creation, and specifically, the heart of man (Romans 2:15; Hebrews 8:10). Because of this fact, the transcendent morality of the Analog can never be rightly converted into the spirit vacuum of the Digital where transhumanists intend to program themselves as gods to “do what thou wilt,” in apparent subjugation to the satanic law of Thelema.
Despite the impossibility of their subversive plans, however, these techno-rebels will continue their conversion to the Digital in a mad attempt to erase the Biblical understanding that human beings, through Adam’s disobedience, lost their spiritual life, became dead in sin, and are now subject to the power of the devil — unless God’s grace intervenes to save them (Ephesians 2:1-2). In fact, this moral erasure is already happening according to Christian apologist and journalist Joseph Kerr, who writes:
“Morals, rationale, ethics, emotion, and conscience… all of those are absent from Artificial Intelligence. They cannot be programmed… AI is incapable of any of those human traits; they are God-given. Only humans are image-bearers of God, not animals, not computers, not holograms, only people. AI programs cannot assimilate or reflect those traits.”
Thus, Artificial Intelligence is incapable of perceiving evil, and as a consequence, it cannot even be relied upon to tell the truth. According to Wikiwand, there is a phenomenon called “AI hallucination,” which is “a confident response by an AI that does not seem to be justified by its training data.” In other words, AI is prone to lie — and does so boldly!
“AI hallucination gained prominence around 2022 alongside the rollout of certain large language models such as ChatGPT. Users complained that such bots often seemed to ‘sociopathically’ and pointlessly embed plausible-sounding random falsehoods within its generated content” (Wikiwand).
What this indicates, therefore, is that in the virtual world of the Digital, truth is relative. This is because AI and virtual worlds are predominately created by people who are perfectly fine with abandoning objective truth and morality in the pursuit of their fantasies — just like their father, the Devil (John 8:44). As social commentator Dr. Robert W. Malone points out:
(The proponents of the Virtual world) are deeply invested in the belief that reality is whatever they believe it to be. Truth is relative. There is neither objective truth, reality, nor ethics. In the world of online gaming and virtual reality, there is no objective ground truth, no actual physical reality to contend with. Only a sort of “Truthiness,” a sense of “that seems plausible.” And a whole lot of fantasy.
Sadly, the virtual fantasies currently available to the public have already proven themselves to be a “wild, wild West” of lies, deception and immorality. Youngsters and teens who have entered into the Metaverse as fantasy characters have reported incidences of being approached by adult users for virtual sex; and according to experts and law enforcement officials, these increasing online offenses are normalizing pedophilia and giving a safe haven for pedophiles, and other reprobates of the Digital, to act out their sinful impulses.
But then again, isn’t that kind of the point (and the dirty little secret) behind sinners immersing themselves in a digitized fantasy world separate from God and the beautiful display of His Will as found in the great art of His Analog earth?
We will explore this issue further in Part Four of this essay series, The False Hope Of A Digital Salvation.
