Science doesn’t nullify genuine faith any more than faith invalidates genuine science.
For all of modernity’s immense progress in the circumstance of the species and the staggering exponential growth and application of knowledge, some things can’t be changed.
Human nature, the core of our being, is driven by as many different emotions, motivations, and competing personalities as there are people. Those attributes are as determinative now as they were at the dawn of human history.
Reading about the great empires of antiquity reveals rulers, dictators, and kings vexed with the same military, diplomatic, and cultural conundrums leaders face today – just in a low-tech version. Change up the landscape and the technology, and the political intrigues of Julius Caesar read like the front page dramas of our own time.
It’s not just politics or the culture either. From King Solomon’s time forward, we can read about the accumulation of incredible wealth by empires and individuals throughout history and the attendant problems of inflation, deflation, production, distribution, incomes, and currency – not to mention greed and corruption. This is due to the unrelenting, inescapable laws of economics that can’t be outwitted, ignored, or circumvented, regardless of the era.
And God. The argument about the existence of God – or gods – rolls through all of recorded history too, and is no less or more controversial now than then.
In 2017 mega-bestselling novelist (The Da Vinci Code) Dan Brown had a new novel out, Origin, which Mr. Brown said was inspired by the question, “Will God survive science?” At the time, Reuters New Service quoted Mr. Brown as stating, “Humanity no longer needs God but may, with the help of artificial intelligence, develop a new form of collective consciousness that fulfills the role of religion.”
Mr. Brown was joining a conga line of detractors reaching back several thousand years predicting the impending demise of religion, Christianity specifically. “Are we naive today to believe that the gods of the present will survive and be here in a hundred years?” he asked. Mr. Brown promised that a “form of global consciousness” would become a new “divine” for the world.
Finally lowering the intellectual boom, he said, “Our need for that exterior god that sits up there and judges us…will diminish and eventually disappear.”
The last fifty years or so have seen an avalanche of such books and authors that usually claim to debunk faith – mainly Christianity. They extol the utopian future where supremely sophisticated, intensely analytic, and carefully shaped minds will step into some higher gear of conciseness or have their heads fitted with a USB port. Now AI has arrived as that reality.
Will artificial intelligence (AI) be the new God?
Only six years after Mr. Brown’s comments, some in the AI community believe that day is here. On Conversation, explores the concept in a March article, Gods in the Machine? They begin, “We are about to witness the birth of a new kind of religion. In the next few years, or perhaps even months, we will see the emergence of sects devoted to the worship of artificial intelligence (AI).”
Of course, Klas Schwab, chairman of the World Economic Forum, and his top advisor, Israeli professor Yuval Noah Harari, firmly believe that the world will never return to the pre-pandemic “normal.” The world, they say, is ready and eager for a new world order- The Great Reset – which includes a new god. (Which sounds very strange coming from fanatical atheists.) “You will own nothing and be happy,” claims Mr. Schwab. Mr. Harari explains, “The era of free will is over.” His latest book is modestly titled Homo Deus (Man-God). We now will be gods with AI and evidently without any choice in the matter.
Recently Elon Musk was interviewed by Tucker Carlson and stated that he and Larry Page, Co-founder of Google, were good friends and that Mr. Musk would often stay at Mr. Page’s house when in the Bay Area. They talked a great deal about the future of AI. Both men were deeply involved in AI research companies, and Mr. Page now controls around 75% of the available brain power working on AI. Mr. Musk told Mr. Carlson, “[Mr. Page] really seemed to be — wanted sort of digital superintelligence, basically a digital god, if you will, as soon as possible.”
Wow. It seems to me that worshiping AI as a god is a lot harder – and more dangerous – than believing in a God that reveals Himself in creation, history, and His Word. But I’m not a complicated guy.
And in the era of extreme intolerance concerning anything outside of a narrow band of approved group-think, if you happen to be a skeptic in any sense towards anything purported to be associated with science, you’re automatically a bigoted extremist, an all-around lout – a denier.
I’ve never had a dog in the fight in the “science vs. God” debate. I’ve been an avid fan of science since I was a kid. I am mechanically inclined and have followed, as best a layman can, a variety of scientific disciplines for decades.
But, I’ve never had to park my understanding of science at the curb to study the Bible, attend a worship service, or believe in the Creator God and His redemptive plan for mankind.
They complement, not complicate, each other. Science doesn’t nullify genuine faith any more than faith invalidates genuine science. You can look at the world scientifically, logically, rationally, and mathematically and come around the corner to meet God waiting for you.
And it is a position that the scientific community, after a season of aggressive anti-faith pushback, is edging towards ever so carefully and quietly.
First, with every passing discovery in the universe, the evidence of a grand design is hard to escape. The observable universe is not random but exquisitely balanced with a finely tuned operating system. It exists in a symphony of motion where a fraction of a degree, or fractionally more or less energy, would not allow its existence at all. The universe had, the consensus now suggests, a single beginning “event.” Every atom was created and flung into the void in that one event. Those same atoms exist now in 170 billion galaxies stretching out 13.8 billion light-years, containing trillions upon trillions of stars. Give or take.
In inner space, each passing year brings more startling evidence from molecular biology. The inner life, like the external universe, is extraordinarily complex and precise. The DNA tightly wrapped in each cell contains all of the genetic instructions used by the body for every phase of development and functioning. Only a pinprick of DNA contains coded instructions whose volume staggers the imagination and dwarfs any information storage man has yet devised. How can all the information to assemble a unique life form, from a flower to a baby, be so extraordinarily designed?
To worship AI as a god made by human hands is so irrational that I doubt any respectable AI will allow it, but regardless I’ll not be among the faithful. I’m a believer in binary logic – things are, or they’re not. I can believe in science that demands evidence to support conclusions while also acknowledging that behind science is the Creator of all science. No app is required.
