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Matrix or Messiah:
AI, Singularity, and Paganism’s Rosey Technicolor Eschatology
“Does God exist? Not yet.”[1]
“Would [Singularity] change the very idea of what it means to be human?”[2]
“Never send a human to do a machine’s job.”[3]
“I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin.”[4]
Introduction
Truthxchange engages in responsible cultural apologetics, an effort that (1) Informs the public; (2) Equips the church; and (3) Protects the future. Given the apostle Paul’s diagnosis, TxC analyzes or “reads” the culture through the lens of the Truth being exchanged for the Lie.[5] Often this means understanding how paganism is packaged to the culture and the church. We have demonstrated how ancient pagan rituals and heresies populate and appear today – via sexual confusion, Statism, expressive individualism, and rank theological errors. What about science and technology? Surely, these are simply neutral tools, devoid of pagan underpinnings or aims. Or are they? Let’s get the gist.
Taming and Tempering the Technological Imperative
Christians, of all people, should never be Luddites. This is true for several reasons. First, Christians affirm that the created material world is good;[6] we are not Gnostics. Second, God commanded those created in His image to :
“[H]ave dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”[7]
This command remains in full force and effect after the Fall.[8] Executing this command requires innovation and technology. For example, notice the skill and technology, empowered by the filling of the Spirit, God conferred:
“The LORD said to Moses, “See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you: the tent of meeting, and the ark of the testimony, and the mercy seatthat is on it, and all the furnishings of the tent, the table and its utensils, and the pure lampstand with all its utensils, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the basin and its stand, and the finely worked garments, the holy garments for Aaron the priest and the garments of his sons, for their service as priests, and the anointing oiland the fragrant incense for the Holy Place. According to all that I have commanded you, they shall do.”[9]
Similarly, we see King Uzziah unleashing innovation among his people to create war technologies that produced strength and success:
And Uzziah prepared for all the army shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and stones for slinging. In Jerusalem he made machines, invented by skillful men, to be on the towers and the corners, to shoot arrows and great stones.And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong.[10]
God’s people have rightly appropriated and purposed technology to serve the purposes of God. Problems arise when technology is used for ungodly purposes, whether by unrighteous means and/or ends: abortion, embryo experimentation, forced sterilization and eugenics, [11] puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and “gender affirmation surgeries,”[12] Statist censorship of dissent,[13] covert medical experimentation like MK-Ultra[14] or the Tuskegee syphilis study,[15] et al. These misuses of technology occurred because the administrators forgot that Telos must control Technos: What a thing does is determined by its purpose – what it’s for, not what’s possible.[16] How can we think Christianly about the push for Artificial Intelligence?
AI, The Singularity, and a Pagan Worldview
AI and its culminating eschatology, what is called The Singularity – to be defined below, comprises more than really fast computation velocity. Artificial General Intelligence actually establishes an alternative rival worldview, one steeped in pagan assumptions, though dressed in 21st century sci-fi fashion and lingo. How so? AI, as currently promoted, has its own prophets, doctrine of regeneration, ethics, vision of social order, eternal life, resurrection, and eschatology.
- The Prophet and His Role
God created by His Word[17] and He puts His Word in the mouths of His spokesmen: prophets. And, He used prophets to foreshadow His Messiah – Micah, Isaiah, Daniel, Malachi, just to name a few. And, John the Baptizer prophetically prepared the way of the Lord.[18] Jesus too holds the office of Prophet, along with being Priest and King.[19]
So too The Singularity relies on prophets as well; they are called “futurists,” which sounds more scientific, sophisticated, and serious than “fortune tellers,” “clairvoyants” or “astrologists.” The Singularity’s chief prophet is Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is part cheerleader and part computer geek. He’s written profusely about his vision for achieving The Singularity.[20] By the way, just what is “The Singularity”?
“The Singularity,” when recently asked, Kurzweil explained:
is a metaphor borrowed from physics, will occurwhen we merge our brain with the cloud.[21]
Man merging with machine – what sort of creature will that be exactly? This proposal is qualitatively different from having a knee replacement or a shattered bone splinted with titanium rods or employing a heart/lung machine during complicated surgery. The idea here is not using machines or technology but combining with them. This apes the Christian doctrine of union with Christ but with crucial differences. Uniting with Christ preserves the Creator/creature distinction and does not forge another category of personhood – God stays God and man stays man. Not so with The Singularity.
Who is Ray Kurzweil and what influenced his views? Kurzweil, the ethnically Jewish “prophet,” was reared in the Unitarian Universalist tradition[22] – in other words, he was steeped in an established version of the Perennial Philosophy – all paths lead to “god.” One chronicling of this worldview, by none other than Aldous Huxley, explains that:
“The Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions.”[23]
Early on, Kurzweil did not obscure that his technology project was in fact a spiritual one. He titled his early work The Age of Spiritual Machines (1969). A more recent book pulses with tones of grasping for spiritual eternality: Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever,[24] which promises to “help you transcend the boundaries of our genetic legacy and optimize your health for longevity.”[25] Plainly, Kurzweil’s project involves far more than making fast computers go faster. He promotes a vision of life, a worldview, one intentionally imbued with spiritual connotations and implications.
- The Necessity of Regeneration – Being Renewed from Within
The Christian faith teaches that after the Fall, mankind is “dead in trespasses and sins.”[26] As a result, redemption requires being born again:
“Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”[27]
Paul explains it this way: God saved us “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”[28] The point is that change occurs because of something outside of us is introduced inside of us.
Well, the same thing occurs with The Singularity worldview, but it’s dressed up in technology. As Kurzweil the prophet explains:
“Making it [The Singularity] possible will be brain-computer interfaces which ultimately will be nanobots – robots the size of molecules – that will go noninvasively into our brains through the capillaries.”[29]
Voila! Mankind is reborn from within by machines – to infinity and beyond??!! Frankly, I find changing my car’s oil and keeping our dishwasher running more than sufficiently challenging. I cannot imagine calling the Geek Squad to change the nanobots in my brain!
- The Need for Rules and Ethics
Scripture informs us that “sin is lawlessness.”[30] Explicating this truth, the Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches that sin is “the want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.”[31] And, while redemption flows from God’s mercy and grace alone, a redeemed life will reflect sanctification – increasing holiness. By what standard? The law of God serves as a pattern for our conduct in gratitude for our graciously bestowed salvation.[32] Life has rules.
In the same way, The Singularity worldview also must have rules – rules without any true transcendental source. As Kurzweil puts it:
“I’ve been involved with trying to find the best way to move forward and I helped to develop the Asilomar AI Principles [a 2017 non-legally binding set of guidelines for responsible AI development]. We do have to be aware of the potential here and monitor what AI is doing.”[33]
However, he makes clear that such rules are solely human and that any potential risk of AI is outweighed by its (promised) future benefits – a plainly pragmatic – and relativistic – ethical approach:
“But just being against it is not sensible: the advantages are so profound. All the major companies are putting more effort into making sure their systems are safe and align with human values than they are into creating new advances, which is positive.”[34]
This sounds good until we start asking questions, like who’s a human? Nazi Germany aligned its public order to human values too – except that those values excluded other actual humans. And, what happens when the potential “new advances” dwarf the rule’s application? Does the innovation or the non-legally binding rules prevail? Newer becomes better; because something canbe done, it must be done. Trust the science??!! His version of rules are really means of control by those in charge; they are not truly nor equally binding because they are not actually objectively transcendental.
- The Dawning of a New Social Order
Jesus’ public ministry commenced with a bold proclamation of a new social order: The gospel of Kingdom of God.[35] This truth precipitated social impact: healings, cleansings, demonic deliverance, abundant life.[36] Accordingly, Jesus commanded His disciples to pray for the Kingdom to come.[37] And, He told them to seek that Kingdom and its ethics (righteousness and justice[38]) in their lives, as a matter of priority.[39] Jesus’ coming produced a different society.
The Singularity will do the same, supposedly. Because the proposal is that AI will largely make human work obsolete, many human jobs will be eliminated. Not to worry, says Kurzweil. The answer of this futurist is a Statist solution accomplished by a grand transfer of wealth: Universal Basic Income. As Kurzweil cheerfully explains:
“Certain types of jobs will be automated and people will be affected. . . . Universal basic income will start in the 2030s, which will help cushion the harms of job disruptions. It won’t be adequate at that point but over time it will become so.”[40]
This is fanciful, coercive, dehumanizing economic utopianism destined for disappointment and disaster.[41]
- The Promise of Eternal (or at least a Replicant) Life
Jesus came that we might have life abundant[42] as well as life eternal.[43] This eternal life ultimately culminates with a resurrected enfleshed bodily life.[44]
The Singularity likewise apes Christianity at this point as well, but with some rather bizarre twists. The agent of salvation? Technology. As Kurzweil gushes:
“Everything is progressing exponentially: not only computing power but our understanding of biology and our ability to engineer at far smaller scales. In the early 2030s we can expect to reach longevity escape velocity where every year of life we lose through ageing we get back from scientific progress. And as we move past that we’ll actually get back more years.”[45]
We supposedly will “go back in time” when “longevity escape velocity” occurs. Kurzweil himself is well into his 70’s. How can he remain alive until this Singularity occurs, supposedly in 2040? Well, he’s crafted his own personal plan for immortality, and this is where his vision gets equally Pollyanna and creepy. His first rule of staying alive? Not dying. How? Swallowing almost eight dozen pills daily, awaiting the coming of The Singularity:
What is your own plan for immortality?
My first plan is to stay alive, therefore reaching longevity escape velocity. I take about 80 pills a day to help keep me healthy.
However, he has a fallback plan should he die, replete with a “resurrection” of sorts: being frozen then reanimated when The Singularity arrives; and if that fails, he’s creating a “replicant” – an afterlife AI avatar – which will [supposedly] “represent [his] personality faithfully”:
“Cryogenic freezing is the fallback. I’m also intending to create a replicant of myself [an afterlife AI avatar], which is an option I think we’ll all have in the late 2020s. I did something like that with my father, collecting everything that he had written in his life, and it was a little bit like talking to him. [My replicant] will be able to draw on more material and so represent my personality more faithfully.”[46]
Notice the implicit Gnosticism here. He equates interacting with a machine with talking with someone he knows is dead. This is simply cosplay as the younger generation calls it. Dead men don’t talk. In his zeal to overcome the curse of death, Kurzweil is willing to deny reality. Sin tends to do that. This proposal represents the next step beyond “gender ideology” – where being male and female cease to be unchanging metaphysical categories and become simply performative objects of subjective desires, supposedly.
Now, The Singularity redefines humanity and its creational binary itself, thereby gutting the imago Dei. This is transhumanism which denies human exceptionalism. Oxford scholars Marcus du Sautoy and Nick Bostrom last month connected the dots. They called the human/machine hybrid merger as nothing short of Copernican because it would necessitate rejecting the uniqueness of humanity, particularly relating to humans alone possessing a higher consciousness:
“I think that we are headed toward a hybrid future,” Sautoy told Popular Mechanics. “We still believe that we are the only beings with a high level of consciousness. This is part of the whole Copernican journey that we are not unique. We’re not at the center.”[47]
The article’s author understood the implications of this proposal: Humanity as an idea is now subject to editing and redefinition:
“Of course, this “Brave New World” of a hybrid AI-human existence brings with it a plethora of issues both political and personal. What will humans do for jobs? Could we possibly live forever? Would that change the very idea of what it means to be human?”[48]
Indeed, what does it mean to be human? Scripture asks – and answers – that important question in many ways. Man, because he’s (1) a creature (2) made imago Dei, can only be rightly and fully defined and understood in relation to the One whom he images: The Creator God. Note how the psalmist profoundly and poetically does so:
To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth![49]
My view of redeemed humanity’s eschatology is already quite optimistic. I don’t need nanobots floating in my capillaries nor being plugged into the Matrix to enhance it. And, I find replicants repellant. Let’s keep virtual reality virtual.
Rather than pinning our hopes on The Singularity, let’s instead place our hope on the One who loved us and gave Himself for us – the Blessed Hope, Christ the Lord who claims every square inch as His own, including our future:
Christ has died;
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
[1] Attributed to Ray Kurzweil.
[2] A Scientist Says Humans Will Reach Singularity Within 21 Years,https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a61777484/2045-singularity-ray-kurzweil/
[3] Agent Smith in The Matrix Trilogy
[4] Neo in The Matrix Trilogy
[5] Romans 1:25
[6] Gen. 1:9
[7] Gen. 1:26
[8] Gen. 9:1, 2
[9] Ex. 31:1-11
[10] 2 Chron. 26:14,15
[11] Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927)
[12] The processes for “affirming” so-called gender transition.
[13] https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-blocks-order-curbing-biden-administration-social-media-contacts-2023-10-20/
[14] https://www.history.com/mkultra-operation-midnight-climax-cia-lsd-experiments
[15] https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm
[16] Jeffery J. Ventrella, From Telos to Technos – Implications for a Christian Public Life and Ethic (2017). Accordingly, eyes canlook directly at the sun, but that is not their design and is contrary and injurious to their purpose.
[17] Gen. 1
[18] Matt. 3:1-3
[19] See, e.g., Jesus’ Threefold Office of Prophet, Priest, and King, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/jesus-threefold-office-prophet-priest-and-king and also WSC Q&A 23
[20] His most recent book is generating lots of talk – and hope – just like any other religious impulse: The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge with AI (2024)
[21] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/29/ray-kurzweil-google-ai-the-singularity-is-nearer –
[22] Michael Peragine (2013). The universal mind: The evolution of machine intelligence and human psychology. San Diego: Xiphias Press. ASIN B00BQ47APM. “He was born to secular Jewish parents who had escaped Austria just before the onset of World War II. He was exposed via Unitarian Universalism to a diversity of religious faiths during his upbringing.”
[23] Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West (1945 [2009]) – quote taken from the book’s Amazon blurb. https://www.amazon.com/Perennial-Philosophy-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0061724947
[24] Kurzweil and Grossman, Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (2010).
[25] https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Nine-Steps-Living-Forever/dp/1605292079/ref=pd_sim_d_sccl_3_4/135-7506341-1027239?pd_rd_w=0kOD7&content-id=amzn1.sym.fc475966-e837-48fc-9ed0-f4ca6ae9337b&pf_rd_p=fc475966-e837-48fc-9ed0-f4ca6ae9337b&pf_rd_r=FTJ2C6N3SAS9WAPQYQBY&pd_rd_wg=W6BNU&pd_rd_r=2f60d601-f999-4c9c-9c17-fa5737ee5055&pd_rd_i=1605292079&psc=1
[26] Eph. 2:1
[27] John 3: 3-36
[28] Titus 3:5
[29] See note 21, supra.
[30] 1 John 3:4
[31] WSC Q & A 14
[32] As Calvin put it the third use of God’s law is our rule for living the Christian life. Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.7.12
[33] See note 21, supra.
[34]See note 21, supra.
[35] This is particularly evident in Matthew’s account: 4:23, 9:35, and 24:14
[36] As the Faith spread, the societal impact benefited all by rescuing abandoned infants, condemning abortion, valorizing women, eliminating chattel slavery, establishing religious liberty, et al.
[37] Matt. 6:10
[38] The same Greek term – dikaiosunē – can be validly translated as both “justice” and “righteousness.”
[39] Matt. 6:33
[40] See note 21 supra.
[41] See, Ryan Khurana, The Indignity of Universal Basic Income, https://catalyst.independent.org/2019/06/07/the-indignity-of-universal-basic-income/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzva1BhD3ARIsADQuPnUFvLOZRJeMF8Lpu9wkBWEgpjiCi6uTsZ9bNL8UzzLx9hPFnfrRHRoaAtYNEALw_wcB, and also, Charles Blain, Universal Basic Incomes Fails to Get to the Root of Urban Poverty, https://fee.org/articles/universal-basic-income-fails-to-get-to-the-root-of-urban-poverty/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzva1BhD3ARIsADQuPnUewMhw5xRa36NAhvUkDTQ0f4U_ihHNixStuOVbUu_g_CJTacAvXW0aAnMjEALw_wcBand Robert E. Wright, Universal Basic Income? Universal High Income?, https://www.aier.org/article/universal-basic-income-universal-high-income/ and Max Gulker, Universal Basic Income Is Little More Than Smoke and Mirrors,https://www.aier.org/article/universal-basic-income-is-little-more-than-smoke-and-mirrors/
[42] John 10:10
[43] John 3:16, 1 John 2:25 and many, many others.
[44] John 5:29
[45] See note 21, supra.
[46] See note 21, supra.
[47] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a61777484/2045-singularity-ray-kurzweil/
[48] Id.
[49] Psalm 8