WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.360 Mahler. 00:00:41.680 --> 00:00:44.000 And I'm still Wo. 00:00:44.240 --> 00:00:48.240 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing technology. 00:00:48.240 --> 00:00:50.560 This is going to be hopefully a shorter episode. 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:55.440 We're going to talk about the nature of technology for the reason 00:00:55.440 --> 00:00:58.240 that it's a part of all of our lives and we want 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:02.000 to sort of frame the ideas behind it in such a way 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:04.560 that by the end of this, hopefully more of you will be 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:10.480 equipped to make wise moral decisions around the use, the application of 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:12.400 different types of technology. 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:15.760 This is something that is a huge part of the discussion today, 00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:19.520 you know, with things around AI AI and generative art and that 00:01:19.520 --> 00:01:22.400 sort of thing, which we'll get to at the end. 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:27.120 But fundamentally, technology has always been a part of human life. 00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:31.520 And so to begin, we want to sort of disabuse everyone of 00:01:31.520 --> 00:01:36.240 the notion that a technology is something that you plug in or 00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:38.720 something you know is from the 20th century. 00:01:38.720 --> 00:01:41.360 Technology doesn't mean modern. 00:01:41.360 --> 00:01:45.440 The definition that we're going to use today for technology is a 00:01:45.440 --> 00:01:49.280 material application of science to achieve a human end. 00:01:49.280 --> 00:01:51.600 So I'm going to explain briefly each of those words because they're 00:01:51.600 --> 00:01:52.800 all doing something here. 00:01:52.800 --> 00:01:56.720 As I've said before, especially recently on Twitter, when Cory and I 00:01:56.960 --> 00:02:00.320 speak a sentence, every word is carrying part of the load. 00:02:00.320 --> 00:02:03.280 And if you omit some of the words, you're gonna misunderstand us 00:02:03.280 --> 00:02:04.240 and get angry. 00:02:04.240 --> 00:02:08.880 So technology, a material application of science to achieve a human end. 00:02:08.880 --> 00:02:11.280 Material. We're talking about the physical world. 00:02:11.280 --> 00:02:12.560 We're talking about creation. 00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:16.320 That is, we're not talking about spiritual things from God. 00:02:16.320 --> 00:02:19.120 We're talking about things you can touch, you can see, you can 00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:21.200 visualize, you can think about. 00:02:21.200 --> 00:02:23.760 Application means you're actually doing something. 00:02:23.760 --> 00:02:27.280 It's not just a not just a thought experiment, but you're active 00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:30.240 somehow. A person is a participant in technology. 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:33.280 But technology doesn't just sit there, it does something. 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:34.800 Application of science. 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:37.840 Scantia in Latin means knowledge. 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:39.360 So it's an application of knowledge. 00:02:39.760 --> 00:02:44.640 Means you're aware that you're doing something with part of creation, and 00:02:44.640 --> 00:02:46.960 then less part of it is to achieve a human end. 00:02:46.960 --> 00:02:54.160 That is, you are deliberately manipulating some created thing for a purpose, 00:02:54.160 --> 00:02:57.200 and you know what the purpose is gonna be. 00:02:57.200 --> 00:03:00.960 That might seem kind of like a big brain mouthful, but basically 00:03:01.040 --> 00:03:05.200 the point is that there's an intentionality to the use of technology. 00:03:05.200 --> 00:03:05.280 So 00:03:06.960 --> 00:03:10.480 we're gonna talk about the brief history of some a few different 00:03:10.480 --> 00:03:13.200 examples of technologies just kind of show how this works. 00:03:13.200 --> 00:03:15.440 But fun But fundamentally the thing I want you to think about 00:03:15.440 --> 00:03:18.800 throughout this, and especially as we get to the end, is that 00:03:19.200 --> 00:03:22.720 what is my intention when I'm using this technology? 00:03:22.720 --> 00:03:25.680 And in order to understand you're using a technology, you have to 00:03:25.680 --> 00:03:26.960 figure out what it means. 00:03:26.960 --> 00:03:30.160 You have to actually define it so you're aware that you're using 00:03:30.160 --> 00:03:32.400 different technologies all the time. 00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:35.520 I think a an example that came to mind for me was 00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:39.520 aspirin. Aspirin is acetosalicylic acid. 00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:41.840 It's been known for over four thousand years. 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:46.480 We have written records going back to the beginning of human written 00:03:46.480 --> 00:03:52.720 history, of the use of myrtle, of willow, of meadowsweet, having analgesic 00:03:52.720 --> 00:03:58.960 properties. People were able to heal fevers and aches by chewing on 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:00.960 willow bark or something similar. 00:04:00.960 --> 00:04:03.680 So that is an example of a technology. 00:04:03.680 --> 00:04:08.480 And yet the Nobel Prize for figuring out how aspirin actually worked 00:04:08.480 --> 00:04:11.440 was won, I think, like nineteen seventy-two. 00:04:11.440 --> 00:04:15.760 So when we say it's the natural application of science, we don't 00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:20.640 mean you have some big sophisticated Nobel Prize winning understanding of the 00:04:20.640 --> 00:04:24.000 science. We mean you know that when I chew on willow bark, 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:25.680 my fever's gonna go down. 00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:27.360 I'm not gonna hurt as much. 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:28.480 That's a technology. 00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:32.800 The willow bark, the aspirin inside it, is the technology that we're 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:33.680 talking about. 00:04:33.680 --> 00:04:36.320 So and it's you're using it to achieve a human end. 00:04:36.320 --> 00:04:37.920 You don't want to be miserable. 00:04:37.920 --> 00:04:41.840 So the history of medicine is probably one of the best examples 00:04:41.840 --> 00:04:45.600 of this of technology being a part of human life. 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:50.720 And what makes medicine interesting is that it's always been the provenance 00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:53.520 of the medicine man, of the shaman. 00:04:53.520 --> 00:04:59.520 The inextricable link between using natural elements from the world to achieve 00:04:59.520 --> 00:05:03.120 some sort of end in our bodies, whether it was some sort 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:04.640 of psychedelic end. 00:05:04.640 --> 00:05:09.120 For example, you know, in North America the Indians used peyote. 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:11.280 In Mexico they used psilocybin. 00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:13.680 South America they used ayahuasca. 00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:16.400 In India there used to be something that was pretty much in 00:05:16.400 --> 00:05:20.720 the same family called soma as written about in the Vedic literature. 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:28.800 All these places separated by vast distances were all achieving similar spiritual 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:31.520 ends by taking drugs. 00:05:31.520 --> 00:05:32.160 And so 00:05:33.120 --> 00:05:36.240 that's an interesting case that we want to use as part of 00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:37.200 the frame for this. 00:05:37.200 --> 00:05:41.120 Is that there are some cases where technology is not just a 00:05:41.120 --> 00:05:43.920 shovel or a pen or a computer. 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:47.600 There are cases where technology is something that not only has a 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:52.160 physical effect, like if you take peyote, you're going to be tripping. 00:05:52.160 --> 00:05:54.480 You know, that's there's there's something physical going on. 00:05:54.480 --> 00:05:56.960 We understand some of the chemistry behind that. 00:05:56.960 --> 00:06:01.280 But in addition, the intention of all of those Indians on both 00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:06.960 sides of the Atlantic when they were taking those drugs was spiritual. 00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:11.920 They were deliberately opening their minds, their selves up to the spirit 00:06:11.920 --> 00:06:16.480 realm. And so they were using technology, the the drug, this the 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:22.400 psychedelic substance in order to achieve a spiritual end. 00:06:22.400 --> 00:06:25.520 And I wanna highlight this because I think that it's still a 00:06:25.520 --> 00:06:27.440 technology because they're using material. 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:30.400 You can pick a mushroom up off the ground, and if it's 00:06:30.400 --> 00:06:33.840 the right kind, you're going to have some of these effects. 00:06:33.840 --> 00:06:37.280 Now, if you accidentally eat the wrong mushroom and you end up 00:06:37.280 --> 00:06:40.800 tripping like crazy, you're really going to regret it. 00:06:40.800 --> 00:06:43.440 Like you did not intend for that to happen. 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:48.240 So in questions of morality, it was dumb. 00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:51.040 Like you shouldn't just be eating mushrooms, you can't identify that. 00:06:51.120 --> 00:06:52.880 That's a good way to die. 00:06:52.880 --> 00:06:55.040 But it wasn't sinful. 00:06:55.040 --> 00:06:57.840 It wasn't something that was immoral for you to have done that. 00:06:57.840 --> 00:07:01.280 Now if you go back a second time, it's a different matter. 00:07:01.280 --> 00:07:04.560 On the other hand, when the medicine man, the shaman said here, 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:07.920 you know, drink this bitter tea, you're gonna throw up and then 00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:10.240 you're gonna trip for a day or two. 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:14.080 That was deliberately opening the door to the spirit realm. 00:07:14.080 --> 00:07:15.920 And they were very conscious of that fact. 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:19.680 So they were using the technology for the human end of communicating 00:07:19.840 --> 00:07:20.960 with demons. 00:07:20.960 --> 00:07:23.440 And whether they knew they were demons or not, they knew that 00:07:23.440 --> 00:07:24.960 that was what they were doing. 00:07:24.960 --> 00:07:29.120 And so there are cases where technology is morally neutral. 00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:32.320 There are cases where its use case, its intention is good. 00:07:32.320 --> 00:07:36.800 And there are some cases where the use of a technology inherently 00:07:36.800 --> 00:07:38.000 is evil. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:42.480 It's incumbent upon its use that it's going to produce bad effects. 00:07:42.720 --> 00:07:46.640 So when we're looking at the technologies around us, one of the 00:07:46.640 --> 00:07:47.920 things that 00:07:48.800 --> 00:07:53.200 we have to break ourselves up as Christians is this sort of 00:07:53.200 --> 00:07:58.000 knee-jerk response that a lot of people have today that Someone makes 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.160 some claim and says you should do this or you shouldn't do 00:08:00.160 --> 00:08:02.400 this, you should avoid this. 00:08:02.400 --> 00:08:05.600 There's a lot of people where their first instinct is show me 00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:07.520 the Bible verse that says I have to do that. 00:08:07.520 --> 00:08:10.240 Show me the Bible verse that says I can't do that. 00:08:10.240 --> 00:08:13.600 Now the impulse itself is not necessarily bad. 00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:18.240 I mean, obviously this whole podcast series is dedicated to figuring out 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:20.320 what the Bible says and trying to be faithful to that. 00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:23.680 So we're certainly not discouraging that impulse. 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:27.040 The problem is when it's sort of I hate to overuse the 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:31.040 term, but when it's autistically brought to bear against anything that comes 00:08:31.040 --> 00:08:33.920 up, where it turns really into legalism. 00:08:33.920 --> 00:08:36.560 And I think that's one of the distinctions that we have to 00:08:36.560 --> 00:08:39.920 apply when we're talking about the the Christian use or any human 00:08:39.920 --> 00:08:43.920 use of technology is is there a moral tenor to the thing? 00:08:43.920 --> 00:08:46.560 I mean, I think we all know today that there is such 00:08:46.560 --> 00:08:52.240 a common thing, especially among the more intelligent, less religious classes who 00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:56.560 are producing most of the modern technology, is that they're so focused 00:08:56.560 --> 00:08:59.440 on whether or not they can, no one ever stops think about 00:08:59.440 --> 00:09:00.640 whether they should. 00:09:00.640 --> 00:09:04.000 Because they think that the pursuit of any knowledge is inherently good. 00:09:04.320 --> 00:09:06.320 The more you know, the better off you are. 00:09:06.320 --> 00:09:08.240 And we've talked about in a couple past episodes. 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:09.920 That's simply not true. 00:09:09.920 --> 00:09:14.480 There is knowledge of things that are evil that should be unknown. 00:09:14.480 --> 00:09:17.120 And if it were possible for those who know things that are 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:20.640 evil to unknow them, they would be better off. 00:09:20.640 --> 00:09:22.320 There are things I know that I wish I didn't know. 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:24.080 I wish I could forget completely. 00:09:24.080 --> 00:09:25.840 And the resurrection, I will. 00:09:25.840 --> 00:09:28.720 All whatever evil I know, God will take it away, or will 00:09:28.800 --> 00:09:32.160 make it in such a fashion that there's no evil left in 00:09:32.160 --> 00:09:33.760 any such knowledge. 00:09:33.760 --> 00:09:37.520 But in this life, it's all up for grabs. 00:09:37.520 --> 00:09:41.200 And so one of the things that we see is that people 00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:43.360 don't recognize that some things are 00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:46.160 intrinsically evil. 00:09:46.160 --> 00:09:50.000 To use a technology can be intrinsically evil. 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:53.040 So an example of this, I mentioned recently that I had heart 00:09:53.040 --> 00:09:54.560 surgery five or so years ago. 00:09:54.560 --> 00:09:57.760 I had open heart surgery and after I went in for the 00:09:57.760 --> 00:10:01.520 sonogram and I met with the cardiologist, he said he could sort 00:10:01.520 --> 00:10:05.200 of jokingly well not jokingly, he laughingly said, Well, we're gonna be 00:10:05.200 --> 00:10:06.240 cracking you open. 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:08.560 And it took me half a second to realize that that was 00:10:08.560 --> 00:10:10.080 no longer a figure of speech. 00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:11.520 That's exactly what happened. 00:10:11.520 --> 00:10:15.680 They saw my breastplate in half, they spread my ribs apart, and 00:10:15.680 --> 00:10:19.120 they chopped off pieces of my heart and replaced them. 00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:23.040 That is something that is inherently evil. 00:10:23.040 --> 00:10:25.840 If I were to do that to anyone who's listening, it would 00:10:25.840 --> 00:10:27.120 be absolutely evil. 00:10:27.360 --> 00:10:28.480 you would die, it would be horrible. 00:10:28.480 --> 00:10:30.240 It would just be a complete mess. 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:34.560 To cut open someone's chest and carve them up is is something 00:10:34.560 --> 00:10:34.880 that 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:39.440 by its nature is destructive and harmful. 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:42.960 And so when we're looking at some technologies, we can categorically say 00:10:42.960 --> 00:10:44.080 that's the case. 00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:46.640 And then there may be narrow exceptions. 00:10:46.640 --> 00:10:51.360 It may actually be possible that despite the inherently destructive nature of 00:10:51.360 --> 00:10:55.680 carving open someone's chest and cutting off pieces of their heart, it 00:10:55.680 --> 00:10:58.400 can actually do good in extremely narrow cases. 00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:01.920 For an extremely tiny percentage of the population. 00:11:01.920 --> 00:11:06.880 The fact that the technology itself has this inherent nature of being 00:11:06.880 --> 00:11:09.120 destructive makes the thing evil. 00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:10.640 Cutting people open is evil. 00:11:10.640 --> 00:11:12.640 Not advocating anyone cut people open. 00:11:12.880 --> 00:11:15.040 There are probably no heart surgeons listening. 00:11:15.040 --> 00:11:17.440 Maybe somebody's a surgeon of some kind. 00:11:17.440 --> 00:11:20.000 If you are, you're the sort of person that has the confidence 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:23.120 to say despite the fact that doing this sort of thing to 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:27.520 a body is inherently wicked, when I do it, I can actually 00:11:28.160 --> 00:11:29.440 heal people. 00:11:29.440 --> 00:11:31.520 And so there are technologies like that. 00:11:31.520 --> 00:11:35.920 There are some technologies where the very use of the thing is 00:11:35.920 --> 00:11:39.360 going to necessarily be destructive. 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:42.640 And then in the exceptional case, something good can happen. 00:11:42.640 --> 00:11:45.760 Which is part of the reason why when someone says, you need 00:11:45.760 --> 00:11:48.160 to show me in the Bible where it says I can or 00:11:48.160 --> 00:11:51.920 I must or I can't, it misses the point that there's a 00:11:51.920 --> 00:11:54.480 wisdom element to all of this. 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:58.720 The wisdom is that the inherent nature of cutting open chests is 00:11:58.720 --> 00:12:00.960 impermissible. We don't do that. 00:12:00.960 --> 00:12:02.000 People don't do that. 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:03.440 It's not a good thing. 00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:05.200 And yet there may be an exception. 00:12:05.440 --> 00:12:08.640 And so when the exception comes, you know, maybe you have to 00:12:08.640 --> 00:12:09.680 evaluate it morally. 00:12:09.680 --> 00:12:12.080 Like we have the technology of cutting open chests, and it turns 00:12:12.080 --> 00:12:14.160 out you can actually repair things. 00:12:14.160 --> 00:12:15.600 You can make people continue to live. 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:16.800 I'd be dead if they hadn't done that. 00:12:16.800 --> 00:12:17.440 Now I'm fine. 00:12:17.440 --> 00:12:19.520 I'm better than I have been in a long time, really ever, 00:12:19.520 --> 00:12:21.440 because it was a birth defect. 00:12:21.920 --> 00:12:26.800 The technology can be used for healing, even though inherently it's something 00:12:26.800 --> 00:12:28.560 that's destructive. 00:12:28.560 --> 00:12:33.120 And when Christians want to act like the Pharisees and the Sadducees 00:12:33.280 --> 00:12:38.240 who follow Jesus around and were constantly asking these gotcha questions of, 00:12:38.240 --> 00:12:40.640 you know, is it written and show me here? 00:12:40.640 --> 00:12:42.880 And well, what about this edge case? 00:12:42.880 --> 00:12:46.320 They weren't asking Jesus because they were pursuing wisdom. 00:12:46.320 --> 00:12:48.240 They weren't seeking the things of God. 00:12:48.240 --> 00:12:49.920 They're just trying to trip him up. 00:12:49.920 --> 00:12:52.800 And they were looking for license for whatever it was that they 00:12:52.800 --> 00:12:54.000 already wanted to do. 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:57.280 And they wanted to set themselves in opposition to him. 00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:02.080 And so when we criticize the tendency of guys to say, well, 00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:04.480 show me in the Bible who says I can't or I have 00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:07.280 to, it's the nature of the question. 00:13:07.280 --> 00:13:11.280 It's not that pursuing whatever God wants is bad, obviously that the 00:13:11.280 --> 00:13:12.640 opposite is true. 00:13:12.640 --> 00:13:17.200 Wanting to know what God says is the highest good. 00:13:17.200 --> 00:13:18.960 But you can do it in the wrong way. 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:21.280 And the fact that the form of the thing of saying, What 00:13:21.280 --> 00:13:24.160 does God want me to do is inherently good. 00:13:24.160 --> 00:13:28.080 When that process, when that question becomes, if you can't show me 00:13:28.080 --> 00:13:30.640 the verse, then I'm going to do it, then you're turning the 00:13:30.640 --> 00:13:33.840 Bible into this white list and this black list that's basically a 00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:37.280 license for whatever someone can't give you a proof text for. 00:13:37.280 --> 00:13:38.880 And that's just not a Christian nature. 00:13:38.880 --> 00:13:40.320 It's not a Christian heart. 00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:43.360 And so as we're looking at technology in our lives, like we're 00:13:43.280 --> 00:13:45.920 going to give a few examples, but we want to get across 00:13:45.920 --> 00:13:48.400 the point that when you are looking at how At how you 00:13:48.400 --> 00:13:51.760 interact with whatever's in front of you where you're deciding whether to 00:13:51.760 --> 00:13:55.200 do something or not to do something, you're not probably going to 00:13:55.200 --> 00:13:57.120 be able to find a Bible verse that says, you know, don't 00:13:57.120 --> 00:13:58.480 use chat GPT. 00:13:58.720 --> 00:14:01.520 There's no Bible verse that says don't cut open someone's chest. 00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:03.840 At least not that I'm aware of. 00:14:03.840 --> 00:14:08.320 And so for Christians, it's not just looking at the Bible as 00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:09.680 a recipe book. 00:14:09.680 --> 00:14:12.240 It's looking as a source of how does God want us to 00:14:12.240 --> 00:14:13.440 approach everything. 00:14:13.600 --> 00:14:16.960 And once you have those principles down, when you're looking at technologies 00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:20.080 where you're doing something in the created world to try to achieve 00:14:20.080 --> 00:14:24.080 your ends, the focus is on what problem am I trying to 00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:27.200 solve? What is the end I'm trying to achieve by cutting open 00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:28.640 someone's chest? 00:14:28.640 --> 00:14:30.240 I can never possibly do that. 00:14:30.240 --> 00:14:34.240 The only possible regardless of my intentions, the outcome could only possibly 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:35.040 be bad. 00:14:35.040 --> 00:14:38.720 For the surgeon who did that to me, the outcome was perfect. 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:39.600 I'm better than nothing. 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:44.240 So this is going to be the case for any technology that 00:14:44.240 --> 00:14:45.520 we interact with. 00:14:45.520 --> 00:14:48.720 And as Christians, I want us to try to get away from 00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:52.000 treating like I said, don't treat the Bible like a recipe book. 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:55.840 Treat it as a source of godly wisdom where you sometimes have 00:14:55.840 --> 00:14:59.680 to do some work and sometimes things get complicated and there's not 00:14:59.680 --> 00:15:01.520 just going to be a rote answer. 00:15:01.520 --> 00:15:04.960 And if you look for a rote answer and you stomp your 00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:09.040 feet and wander off when you don't get it, you're probably going 00:15:09.040 --> 00:15:12.000 to be missing out on what God actually wants for you because 00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:14.640 life doesn't work that way. 00:15:14.640 --> 00:15:18.480 But the understanding of having wisdom and having discernment 00:15:19.760 --> 00:15:22.880 makes it possible to figure these things out where it's clearly it's 00:15:22.800 --> 00:15:24.560 a good thing that we have heart surgeons. 00:15:24.560 --> 00:15:26.160 It's a blessing from God. 00:15:26.160 --> 00:15:29.360 And many of those things are only, you know, in our lifetimes 00:15:29.520 --> 00:15:31.040 that some of these things are possible. 00:15:31.040 --> 00:15:33.680 If I've been born 50 years ago, I'd already be dead because 00:15:33.680 --> 00:15:35.120 the surgery didn't exist. 00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:37.280 Today, hunky dory, fine. 00:15:37.280 --> 00:15:38.960 Survival rate's incredibly high. 00:15:38.960 --> 00:15:41.040 It basically a non-event. 00:15:41.040 --> 00:15:43.760 That's an incredible blessing that that's possible. 00:15:43.760 --> 00:15:48.160 And the knowledge of being able to use that technology, which has 00:15:48.480 --> 00:15:52.800 this inherent bad nature, the fact that it can be turned by 00:15:52.800 --> 00:15:55.680 good intentions is where the wisdom comes 00:15:55.680 --> 00:15:56.320 in. 00:15:56.640 --> 00:16:00.880 Some of you may have had a particular quote come to mind 00:16:00.880 --> 00:16:02.240 from Socrates 00:16:03.120 --> 00:16:08.240 when Woe was mentioning discussing the issue of knowledge, and just to 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:10.800 make it so that everyone is on the same page as it 00:16:10.800 --> 00:16:14.880 were, the quote from Socrates which very often comes up in this 00:16:14.880 --> 00:16:20.000 area and in others There is only one good knowledge, and only 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:22.560 one evil ignorance. 00:16:22.560 --> 00:16:25.920 Perhaps a preview of the episode that we will eventually be doing 00:16:25.920 --> 00:16:30.720 on the Enlightenment, but of course, this quote from Socrates is false. 00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:32.560 It is a lie. 00:16:32.960 --> 00:16:37.760 As we have gone over previously, there is knowledge that is inherently, 00:16:37.760 --> 00:16:39.760 that is intrinsically evil. 00:16:39.760 --> 00:16:44.320 It is knowledge that no man should possess. 00:16:44.320 --> 00:16:49.440 So, for instance, if you have murdered someone, you gained knowledge from 00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:52.800 that, you know what it feels like to murder someone. 00:16:52.800 --> 00:16:54.640 That is evil knowledge. 00:16:54.640 --> 00:16:57.600 No man should ever possess that knowledge. 00:16:57.600 --> 00:17:01.680 When Cain killed his brother Abel, he gained knowledge. 00:17:01.680 --> 00:17:02.720 It was not good knowledge 00:17:03.680 --> 00:17:06.720 because knowledge is not inherently good. 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:10.400 It depends on the nature of the knowledge and the ends toward 00:17:10.400 --> 00:17:14.320 which it is used, and that is how it plays into technology. 00:17:14.320 --> 00:17:20.480 Because of course, in the definition there, Scientia is knowledge again. 00:17:20.480 --> 00:17:24.480 And ignorance is not necessarily evil. 00:17:24.480 --> 00:17:28.320 It is good to be ignorant of evil, for instance. 00:17:28.320 --> 00:17:32.960 To have no knowledge of wickedness is a good thing. 00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:36.800 And so that form of ignorance is itself good, and so the 00:17:36.800 --> 00:17:40.960 quote from Socrates is simply wrong from beginning to end. 00:17:40.960 --> 00:17:44.560 But this is the sort of mindset with which we are dealing 00:17:44.560 --> 00:17:50.080 when we discuss these individuals who are engaged in the pursuit of 00:17:50.080 --> 00:17:54.720 science in either sense of the term, either the technical, correct sense, 00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:58.720 the Latin sense, or the modern, sort of misuse of the term, 00:17:58.720 --> 00:18:02.240 limiting it to a certain sort of pursuit. 00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:06.560 But when dealing with individuals who are pursuing science for science's sake 00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:10.560 Art for art's sake is one thing, that's fine, because it is 00:18:10.560 --> 00:18:15.440 properly the pursuit of beauty, which is a good thing. 00:18:15.440 --> 00:18:20.160 But knowledge for the sake of knowledge is not necessarily good. 00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:24.960 And so you have individuals who, as Wo mentioned, will simply pursue 00:18:24.960 --> 00:18:27.360 these things because they can. 00:18:27.360 --> 00:18:30.960 But just because you can do something does not mean that you 00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:32.960 should do that thing. 00:18:33.360 --> 00:18:36.800 Those two analyses are separate. 00:18:36.800 --> 00:18:42.080 Whether or not I should do something is only tangentially related to 00:18:42.080 --> 00:18:44.720 whether or not I can do the thing. 00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:50.240 And we run into this problem, in particular in the field of 00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:53.840 technology, and in particular with things like AI and some of our 00:18:53.840 --> 00:18:55.920 modern devices. 00:18:55.920 --> 00:19:00.800 We have developed things that yes we are capable of creating them, 00:19:00.800 --> 00:19:04.880 but the question is should we be creating them and should we 00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:08.880 be employing them in the ways that we are employing them? 00:19:08.880 --> 00:19:12.000 And often, as much as the answer to the first, can we 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:15.360 do it is yes, the answer to the second should we do 00:19:15.360 --> 00:19:17.840 it is no. 00:19:17.840 --> 00:19:22.400 To some degree this is because the individuals working in these fields 00:19:22.560 --> 00:19:27.200 at some of the highest levels Some of them are outright Satanists, 00:19:27.200 --> 00:19:30.720 we see this in various instances. 00:19:30.720 --> 00:19:33.760 One of the ones that will come to mind undoubtedly for many 00:19:33.760 --> 00:19:38.960 is the statue of Shiva at CERN, a statue to a literal 00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:44.640 demon god of destruction, and they perform rituals in front of this 00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:47.040 statue, at night, no less. 00:19:47.040 --> 00:19:50.240 Probably not a good thing that we have scientists doing that. 00:19:50.240 --> 00:19:54.320 Probably a sign that they are engaged in things in which human 00:19:54.320 --> 00:19:57.600 beings should not be engaged. 00:19:57.600 --> 00:20:00.880 There are very real dangers in some of these things. 00:20:00.880 --> 00:20:04.480 Demons are real, you can invite them into your life. 00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:09.600 And And you can do it through certain technologies. 00:20:09.600 --> 00:20:13.920 You also have another strain of thought in many of these circles 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:18.400 that is also dangerous for its own reasons and in its own 00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:22.080 ways, and that would be many of them are utopians. 00:20:22.080 --> 00:20:29.040 They believe that if we simply pursue progress, never really defined, but 00:20:29.040 --> 00:20:34.640 if we pursue progress, we will eventually create a perfect world. 00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:38.560 As a Christian that should make your hair stand on end. 00:20:38.560 --> 00:20:41.200 That is a denial of the fall. 00:20:41.200 --> 00:20:43.440 It is a denial of original sin. 00:20:44.080 --> 00:20:47.440 Because if we believe, if we contend that we can create a 00:20:47.440 --> 00:20:51.920 utopia, we'll leave aside for now the irony of the word itself, 00:20:51.920 --> 00:20:55.360 but if you believe that you can create paradise on earth, you 00:20:55.360 --> 00:21:00.400 are denying that we are fallen, that we have original sin. 00:21:00.400 --> 00:21:03.440 Because we cannot create paradise. 00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:07.680 All we can do is create imperfect societies. 00:21:07.680 --> 00:21:12.560 Yes, some are better than others, and no, it is not the 00:21:12.560 --> 00:21:14.480 case that all progress is bad. 00:21:14.480 --> 00:21:17.520 It depends on how you are defining progress. 00:21:17.520 --> 00:21:21.040 But if you're just making faster computers for the sake of making 00:21:21.040 --> 00:21:23.840 faster computers, is that Is that good or bad? 00:21:23.840 --> 00:21:24.720 It's neutral. 00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:26.560 It depends why you're doing it. 00:21:26.560 --> 00:21:30.320 Now if it's just for the sake of the faster computer, it 00:21:30.320 --> 00:21:32.000 may very well be a waste. 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.400 But if you're doing it so that we can figure out, say, 00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:38.560 protein folding, so we can address issues like cancer and various other 00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:42.640 diseases, that can be a good use of technology. 00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:46.720 But if you're using it for evil ends, then it is a 00:21:47.120 --> 00:21:50.960 misapplication, it is a wicked application of that technology. 00:21:50.960 --> 00:21:59.040 Fundamentally, part of the foundational issue here, one of the bedrock questions, 00:21:59.040 --> 00:22:01.040 is the question of wisdom. 00:22:01.280 --> 00:22:03.440 And there are many who want to avoid this. 00:22:03.440 --> 00:22:08.480 That's part of the impetus for those who look at scripture and 00:22:08.480 --> 00:22:12.320 say, Show me a verse that addresses this exact issue. 00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:15.840 They are trying to avoid having to think. 00:22:15.840 --> 00:22:20.640 And as we have pointed out many times before, sometimes you simply 00:22:20.640 --> 00:22:25.280 cannot avoid actually having to use the brain that God gave you. 00:22:25.280 --> 00:22:30.720 Some issues in the Christian life are questions of wisdom. 00:22:30.720 --> 00:22:35.520 God doesn't give us an exact answer to every question we may 00:22:35.520 --> 00:22:40.160 have. He gives us the answers to many questions, he gives us 00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:45.120 general principles, and from those we can answer others. 00:22:45.120 --> 00:22:50.720 But deriving the answer from what God has given us often involves 00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:54.080 human wisdom, and so as Woe mentioned, you are not going to 00:22:54.080 --> 00:22:58.720 find a verse that says, Thou shalt not use Chat GPT. 00:22:59.040 --> 00:23:00.400 That verse doesn't exist. 00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:04.000 I don't care for how long you search or which translation you 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:08.800 use, although perhaps if someone has ChatGPT write a translation, maybe then 00:23:08.800 --> 00:23:10.720 you'll find it. 00:23:10.720 --> 00:23:14.800 Perhaps a highlight of some of the dangers inherent in these technologies. 00:23:16.080 --> 00:23:18.960 But that issue of wisdom is unavoidable. 00:23:19.600 --> 00:23:22.160 And so if you're thinking that, no, I have to find a 00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:26.080 verse that addresses this exact issue, you are approaching it in the 00:23:26.080 --> 00:23:26.720 wrong way. 00:23:26.720 --> 00:23:30.080 You have to find a verse, you have to find a section 00:23:30.080 --> 00:23:36.720 in scripture that addresses the general question, that addresses the underlying questions, 00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:40.880 that gives you the tools necessary to apply what God has given 00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:44.000 you, the attributes that He has given you, to arrive at a 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:44.320 correct 00:23:45.200 --> 00:23:50.960 conclusion, to derive the proper answer, the Christian response to the question 00:23:50.960 --> 00:23:55.360 posed. It's not again, it's not that Scripture will give you an 00:23:55.600 --> 00:23:59.440 exact answer to your question. 00:23:59.440 --> 00:23:59.760 But 00:24:00.880 --> 00:24:04.640 we are saying that the answers are there for those with eyes 00:24:04.640 --> 00:24:07.360 to see and ears to hear. 00:24:07.360 --> 00:24:09.760 One of the problems that we encounter when it comes 00:24:10.720 --> 00:24:15.600 to technology, this ties into perhaps the issue of seeing these things 00:24:15.600 --> 00:24:20.320 as just progress, is that we look at these things as perhaps 00:24:20.320 --> 00:24:23.680 as if they were toys or just just entirely neutral. 00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:27.120 It's a thing that exists and I pick it up and do 00:24:27.120 --> 00:24:27.680 stuff with it. 00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:30.400 So you know your phone, which I have sitting on my desk 00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:32.800 in front of me, and I have two monitors here and I'm 00:24:32.800 --> 00:24:35.120 surrounded by screens and technology right now. 00:24:35.120 --> 00:24:37.680 So I'm obviously not saying we have to all move to the 00:24:37.680 --> 00:24:40.000 woods and avoid technology. 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:45.120 Part of it is, as well mentioned, a matter of intent. 00:24:45.120 --> 00:24:48.080 It is what you intend to do with the thing, what you 00:24:48.080 --> 00:24:52.160 intend to achieve, the ends toward which you put the technology to 00:24:52.160 --> 00:24:55.120 which you have access. 00:24:55.120 --> 00:24:59.360 But we have to be active in this, not passive, which is 00:24:59.360 --> 00:25:02.240 a real danger that we have today, particularly with children. 00:25:03.360 --> 00:25:08.160 We see this passive just consumption of whatever happens to pop onto 00:25:08.160 --> 00:25:08.960 the screen. 00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:11.760 We just click links and we eventually get somewhere and then we 00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:15.680 watch whatever it is, the shiny lights, whatever it happens to be. 00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:16.720 Much of it designed 00:25:17.760 --> 00:25:20.880 in order to manipulate. 00:25:20.880 --> 00:25:24.880 But the foundational issue there, the bedrock issue, is that we are 00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:30.400 simply passively consuming whatever these tools, these toys, whichever way we're using 00:25:30.960 --> 00:25:33.760 it, throw into our lives. 00:25:33.760 --> 00:25:37.840 And that is not how we, particularly as Christians, should be employing 00:25:37.840 --> 00:25:42.320 technology. We have to make a conscious effort to use these things 00:25:42.560 --> 00:25:46.080 toward toward good ends, toward proper ends. 00:25:46.080 --> 00:25:51.760 If we simply allow them to manipulate us, really it's no longer 00:25:51.760 --> 00:25:56.400 a tool, then it's a tool of control, as it were. 00:25:56.400 --> 00:26:01.680 We become the thing upon which the device is acting, instead of 00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:05.280 being the agent acting on the device. 00:26:05.280 --> 00:26:10.640 And so the difference between say the misuse and the correct use 00:26:10.640 --> 00:26:15.200 of the technology could be illustrated if you use logos, which is 00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:18.960 what Woe and I both use for studying scripture much of the 00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:21.600 time when we're using computers to do it anyway. 00:26:21.600 --> 00:26:25.200 If you use logos, you can use it very productively. 00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:29.520 You're using it as a tool to accomplish something. 00:26:29.520 --> 00:26:35.120 If you are just mindlessly clicking through YouTube or God forbid TikTok 00:26:35.120 --> 00:26:41.040 on your phone, you are not using technology in an active way, 00:26:41.040 --> 00:26:42.000 in a conscious way. 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:43.440 You are not really thinking. 00:26:43.440 --> 00:26:49.600 You are just passively consuming, and whatever that algorithm, designed by parties 00:26:49.600 --> 00:26:53.920 unknown, throws up for you to see, for you to click on 00:26:53.920 --> 00:26:57.760 it, that's what you see, that's what you watch, that's what you 00:26:57.760 --> 00:27:04.000 consume. And it is not a simple matter of you viewing it. 00:27:04.000 --> 00:27:08.240 Because when you allow that into your mind, for some period of 00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:11.200 time, that becomes part of your mind. 00:27:11.200 --> 00:27:14.320 All of the information you see, all of the things you see 00:27:14.560 --> 00:27:19.440 are assimilated to some degree, and whether or not they are retained 00:27:19.440 --> 00:27:23.280 over a course of whatever it happens to be days, weeks, months, 00:27:23.280 --> 00:27:28.400 years, that material is with you for a period of time. 00:27:28.400 --> 00:27:33.680 And if you are just passively consuming it, you are being indoctrinated 00:27:33.680 --> 00:27:36.560 by the parties who created that information. 00:27:36.560 --> 00:27:38.000 Now it may not all be wicked. 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:40.160 Some of it may be fine if you happen to be watching 00:27:40.160 --> 00:27:43.680 a video that teaches you how to cook some particular dish. 00:27:43.680 --> 00:27:45.280 Fine, whatever. 00:27:45.280 --> 00:27:47.280 That's probably not a negative thing. 00:27:47.280 --> 00:27:50.400 It may very well be positive. 00:27:50.400 --> 00:27:54.800 But there's no guarantee if you're just mindlessly scrolling or clicking and 00:27:54.800 --> 00:27:58.960 interacting with this information, not even really interacting, just consuming, there's no 00:27:58.960 --> 00:28:03.200 guarantee that what you encounter is going to be good or even 00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:07.360 neutral. In fact, much of it is probably going to be harmful. 00:28:07.360 --> 00:28:09.920 And so one of the things that we want to get across 00:28:09.920 --> 00:28:14.160 in this episode in the strongest of terms is that we have 00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:15.280 to be active. 00:28:15.280 --> 00:28:19.360 We have to be conscious in how we are using these tools, 00:28:19.360 --> 00:28:24.240 and not just think of them as some portal or toy that 00:28:24.880 --> 00:28:28.240 whatever it happens to present to us, by all means I'll spend 00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:29.920 the next three hours looking at this 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:38.480 because the tool itself may very well be to some degree neutral. 00:28:38.480 --> 00:28:41.760 So the fact that my phone exists is a relatively 00:28:42.640 --> 00:28:44.800 neutral proposition. 00:28:44.800 --> 00:28:49.760 What I do with it is going to be the moral question, 00:28:49.760 --> 00:28:51.680 the ends to which I put it. 00:28:51.680 --> 00:28:55.200 If I allow it to consume my life to become something that 00:28:55.200 --> 00:28:58.800 I pick up however many hundreds of times a day it is 00:28:58.880 --> 00:29:01.840 the average person now picks up his phone. 00:29:01.840 --> 00:29:06.640 If you start to go down that path, you start to be 00:29:06.640 --> 00:29:10.160 the one who is controlled instead of the one who is controlling 00:29:10.400 --> 00:29:13.280 the tool, the device. 00:29:13.280 --> 00:29:15.440 And you need to reconsider that. 00:29:15.440 --> 00:29:21.040 You probably need to step back and maybe make fasting from your 00:29:21.040 --> 00:29:25.520 electronic devices part of your routine. 00:29:25.520 --> 00:29:28.800 When we think about fasting, sort of a tangent here, but an 00:29:28.800 --> 00:29:33.040 important one, when we think about fasting, fasting is not just food. 00:29:33.040 --> 00:29:35.600 We always think it's food, it's not just food. 00:29:35.600 --> 00:29:38.080 You can fast from other things. 00:29:38.080 --> 00:29:43.440 And for many of us, these days, fasting from technology, abstaining from 00:29:43.440 --> 00:29:46.960 using it, or at least abstaining from using it compulsively to make 00:29:46.960 --> 00:29:51.600 things more intentional was That may be the more important fast. 00:29:51.600 --> 00:29:55.440 Yes, for those who have issues with food, obesity in particular in 00:29:55.440 --> 00:29:59.520 many places, do fast from food. 00:29:59.520 --> 00:30:04.880 But addiction to technology and the inappropriate use of it, which is 00:30:04.880 --> 00:30:09.200 really what addiction to technology is, it's just the misuse of technology, 00:30:09.200 --> 00:30:11.440 is very widespread in our culture. 00:30:11.440 --> 00:30:14.800 It has practically become part of our culture. 00:30:14.800 --> 00:30:16.960 And I think children are a good example of that. 00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:20.080 We have many parents who just stick their children in front of 00:30:20.080 --> 00:30:24.080 an iPad or whatever other screen it happens to be and just 00:30:24.080 --> 00:30:26.720 have them stare at it for hours and hours a day, and 00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:28.720 then when they're done looking at the small screen, they look at 00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:30.880 the big screen, they look at the TV, and then they go 00:30:30.880 --> 00:30:32.560 back to the small screen. 00:30:32.560 --> 00:30:34.640 That isn't parenting. 00:30:34.640 --> 00:30:37.920 One, which is a real problem, but two, that is destructive to 00:30:37.920 --> 00:30:39.920 the child. 00:30:39.920 --> 00:30:45.440 And also, quite frankly, most parents who are engaged in that sort 00:30:45.440 --> 00:30:49.920 of parenting so called, have no idea what their children are consuming. 00:30:49.920 --> 00:30:53.840 If your child is watching three, four, five hours a day of 00:30:53.840 --> 00:30:58.960 screen, there is no way that you are also watching the same 00:30:58.960 --> 00:30:59.920 five hours. 00:30:59.920 --> 00:31:03.600 So you really do not know what your child was consuming. 00:31:03.600 --> 00:31:04.480 As just one example 00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:08.560 of the misuse of technology in our society. 00:31:08.560 --> 00:31:13.280 So again, we need to be more intentional about these things. 00:31:13.280 --> 00:31:18.160 We need to recognize that that quote from Socrates, again, is false. 00:31:18.320 --> 00:31:24.400 Not all knowledge is good, and not all ignorance is evil. 00:31:24.400 --> 00:31:24.640 And 00:31:24.640 --> 00:31:28.400 as we talk about the questions that arise in our minds, you 00:31:28.400 --> 00:31:31.520 know, whether it's a big question like does God permit or forbid 00:31:31.520 --> 00:31:36.080 this sort of thing, or just more general questions. 00:31:36.080 --> 00:31:40.880 Sometimes it is not the question itself that is the problem, but 00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:43.040 it is to whom you direct it. 00:31:43.040 --> 00:31:45.520 And I think an example of that is something that we find 00:31:45.520 --> 00:31:47.200 in Scripture. 00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:50.960 In Deuteronomy eighteen God says, When you come into the land that 00:31:50.960 --> 00:31:54.160 the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to 00:31:54.160 --> 00:31:56.880 follow the abominable practices of those nations. 00:31:56.880 --> 00:32:00.240 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns a son 00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:04.720 or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination, or tells 00:32:04.720 --> 00:32:09.280 fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer, or a 00:32:09.280 --> 00:32:13.200 medium, or a necromancer, or one who inquires of the dead, for 00:32:13.200 --> 00:32:17.120 whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord, and because 00:32:17.120 --> 00:32:21.120 of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before 00:32:21.120 --> 00:32:24.640 you. And then Leviticus twenty, God says what should be done to 00:32:24.640 --> 00:32:25.440 such people? 00:32:25.440 --> 00:32:28.240 A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer 00:32:28.400 --> 00:32:31.920 shall surely be put to death, they shall be stoned with stones, 00:32:31.920 --> 00:32:34.240 their blood shall be upon them. 00:32:34.880 --> 00:32:38.000 Now when God says something like their blood shall be upon them, 00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:41.920 he's saying within the civil law for Israel at that time, if 00:32:42.800 --> 00:32:46.640 such a person, if a necromancer or a medium is killed, they 00:32:46.640 --> 00:32:47.920 are guilty of their death. 00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:50.400 The people who kill them have not killed anyone. 00:32:50.400 --> 00:32:53.680 They're not guilty of murder because the blood is upon those who 00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:55.520 have committed the act. 00:32:55.840 --> 00:33:00.800 So this is something that today makes people incredibly incredibly nervous. 00:33:01.120 --> 00:33:05.120 We particularly find it in the context of the latter half of 00:33:05.120 --> 00:33:09.600 the last millennium where witch burning and things like that are seen 00:33:09.600 --> 00:33:12.640 as the most evil thing that ever happened. 00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:16.320 When you find that evil people who hate God get really nervous 00:33:16.320 --> 00:33:20.400 about something, maybe it's worth paying attention to what evil fears. 00:33:20.400 --> 00:33:23.600 Now, as we've said many times in past episodes, Cory and I 00:33:23.600 --> 00:33:28.560 are not A demanding of return to Levitical Law, or B certainly 00:33:28.560 --> 00:33:32.720 saying that any individual in his capacity as an individual has any 00:33:32.720 --> 00:33:37.360 business, has any right, any moral license to kill or harm anyone 00:33:37.360 --> 00:33:38.800 for these reasons. 00:33:38.800 --> 00:33:42.000 When we're talking about these things, we're talking about the civil law. 00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:43.440 What should the state be doing? 00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:46.640 The state used to burn witches at the stake, crush them under 00:33:46.720 --> 00:33:48.640 heavy stones, stone them. 00:33:48.640 --> 00:33:52.880 All these things were done in accordance with God's eternal will that 00:33:52.880 --> 00:33:54.640 this stuff is easy is evil. 00:33:54.640 --> 00:33:57.920 But what I want to focus on here, we're talking about technology, 00:33:57.920 --> 00:34:02.080 is the questions that would arise that would cause you to go 00:34:02.080 --> 00:34:06.240 to a necromancer or a diviner or a fortune teller or a 00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:07.920 tarot card reader. 00:34:08.160 --> 00:34:12.160 Because the questions themselves may not necessarily be impermissible. 00:34:12.160 --> 00:34:14.240 Some of them will be sinful, some of them will be evil. 00:34:14.560 --> 00:34:17.920 if someone has died and you say, I want to speak to 00:34:17.920 --> 00:34:22.560 my dead relative, that is inherently evil for you to pursue it. 00:34:22.720 --> 00:34:26.800 It's not an evil desire to wish that that were possible, but 00:34:26.800 --> 00:34:30.400 the Christian hope is in the resurrection, in the resurrection of the 00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:33.360 dead. And when we say hope, we're not talking about I I 00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:34.720 think maybe it'll happen. 00:34:34.720 --> 00:34:36.640 The Christian hope is absolute. 00:34:36.640 --> 00:34:40.720 There's no doubt about the hope that we have in the resurrection 00:34:40.720 --> 00:34:43.760 of the body, in the life everlasting as Christians. 00:34:43.760 --> 00:34:48.000 So when we have loved ones who have fallen asleep in Christ, 00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:52.400 our hope, our absolute knowledge is we will see them again with 00:34:52.400 --> 00:34:55.040 our own eyes, and we'll be able to talk to them again. 00:34:55.040 --> 00:34:59.040 And so the scriptural response to the particular question of I want 00:34:59.040 --> 00:35:02.640 to I want to talk to my deceased loved one again, is 00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:05.920 wait for the last day, wait for resurrection. 00:35:05.920 --> 00:35:08.240 When we are all raised from the dead and we live in 00:35:08.240 --> 00:35:10.800 the new earth together, you'll be able to talk to every other 00:35:10.800 --> 00:35:13.360 believer for the rest of eternity. 00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:16.640 and rest of eternity doesn't make sense because that's not how eternity 00:35:16.640 --> 00:35:20.400 works. We don't have the mental model to process what that's going 00:35:20.400 --> 00:35:21.040 to be like. 00:35:21.040 --> 00:35:22.480 But we know it's going to be perfect. 00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:24.560 And we know that every believer will be there. 00:35:24.560 --> 00:35:28.320 So when your loved ones die in the Lord, they will be 00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:30.320 raised in the Lord, and you'll be able to talk to them 00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:33.040 all you want for as long as you want, and you won't 00:35:33.040 --> 00:35:36.560 even get sick of it because we'll all be perfect. 00:35:36.560 --> 00:35:39.200 So it's not that the desire to want to talk to someone 00:35:39.200 --> 00:35:41.040 who's dead is sinful. 00:35:41.040 --> 00:35:45.520 It's the pursuit of that which God says is inaccessible. 00:35:45.520 --> 00:35:45.840 And 00:35:46.800 --> 00:35:51.200 when we look at things like necromancy and fortune telling and these 00:35:51.200 --> 00:35:56.800 other things, sometimes it's simply that when someone has the desire, like 00:35:56.960 --> 00:35:59.200 I want to know what's going to happen in the future. 00:35:59.200 --> 00:36:02.080 Well, God tells us that that's not revealed. 00:36:02.080 --> 00:36:03.760 We don't know the future. 00:36:03.760 --> 00:36:06.080 We have to trust in the Lord today. 00:36:06.080 --> 00:36:10.160 In passages like Matthew 6, where he talks about how much God 00:36:10.160 --> 00:36:12.880 takes care of the birds of the air and the beasts of 00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:16.240 the field, he says, if I love these animals so much, I 00:36:16.240 --> 00:36:18.800 take care of all their needs, surely I'm going to take care 00:36:18.800 --> 00:36:20.400 of you even more. 00:36:20.400 --> 00:36:24.640 And when we trust in that, then all of our concerns, all 00:36:24.640 --> 00:36:27.440 of our questions about well, I need to know about tomorrow and 00:36:27.440 --> 00:36:30.480 I need to talk to this person that's no longer living, they 00:36:30.640 --> 00:36:32.480 should go away for the Christian. 00:36:32.480 --> 00:36:37.040 And so again, it's not necessarily the the appetite for the knowledge 00:36:37.040 --> 00:36:40.000 is sinful, but becomes sinful as soon as you say, you know 00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:43.280 what, God, I'm not happy with what you're telling me, I'm gonna 00:36:43.280 --> 00:36:46.800 go around you, I'm gonna find these answers somewhere else. 00:36:46.800 --> 00:36:51.040 When someone tries to go around God and they take these questions 00:36:51.120 --> 00:36:56.000 that we know are unanswerable in this life, and they seek answers 00:36:56.640 --> 00:37:00.320 for them, they're often going to seek them through technology. 00:37:00.320 --> 00:37:04.320 You know, something like a tarot deck is absolutely technology. 00:37:04.720 --> 00:37:08.240 it's a physical means of pursuing knowledge. 00:37:08.240 --> 00:37:11.040 Now cards by themselves don't tell you anything. 00:37:11.040 --> 00:37:15.360 It's in their interpretation and shuffling and and how they're laid down 00:37:16.080 --> 00:37:19.440 that then is used to reveal hidden knowledge. 00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:22.560 And most of the time maybe it's a complete fraud, maybe it's 00:37:22.560 --> 00:37:26.720 mostly a lark, but the problem with that sort of scenario for 00:37:26.720 --> 00:37:30.240 any sort of fortune teller, the Ouija board, anything where you're going 00:37:30.240 --> 00:37:35.840 and looking for unrevealed occult knowledge is that you're using a technology 00:37:35.840 --> 00:37:38.720 for what is fundamentally a spiritual purpose. 00:37:38.720 --> 00:37:42.080 Because you're not you're not going to the doctor to say, hey, 00:37:42.080 --> 00:37:42.720 my head hurts. 00:37:42.720 --> 00:37:43.760 Can you help me? 00:37:43.760 --> 00:37:48.400 You're trying to know something that God has made clear is unknowable. 00:37:48.400 --> 00:37:53.600 And And when you turn to the technologies that the devil provides, 00:37:53.600 --> 00:37:55.920 sometimes they're gonna work. 00:37:55.920 --> 00:38:00.480 Which is why the examples of ayahuasca and peyote and psilocybin and 00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:07.520 soma and LSD, you know, modern scientific variations on the same 00:38:07.520 --> 00:38:15.200 theme. Even marijuana has hallucinogenic properties in some forms and some concentrations. 00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:19.280 When you open the door to such things and you say, hey, 00:38:19.280 --> 00:38:20.880 I want to be open to the universe. 00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:27.520 I want to access unknown realms of knowledge and existence, you're opening 00:38:27.520 --> 00:38:30.560 the door for something that God has not opened. 00:38:30.560 --> 00:38:32.400 God doesn't say to find him there. 00:38:32.400 --> 00:38:36.240 He doesn't say to find truth inside your mind on some sort 00:38:36.240 --> 00:38:37.280 of trip. 00:38:37.280 --> 00:38:39.520 He says to find him in the Word. 00:38:39.520 --> 00:38:42.400 He says to turn to Him in prayer. 00:38:42.400 --> 00:38:46.000 And as Corey and I were talking about this before we began, 00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:52.720 I specifically wanted to exclude something like prayer to God from technology. 00:38:52.720 --> 00:38:54.320 Because a prayer to God is 00:38:55.600 --> 00:38:59.680 it's something that we do, but it is not a technology in 00:38:59.680 --> 00:39:02.000 that there's no machinery there. 00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:05.600 There's no I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna get this result. 00:39:05.600 --> 00:39:06.880 Not in the physical sense. 00:39:06.880 --> 00:39:11.360 But when we pray to God, we're saying, Lord, please help me. 00:39:11.360 --> 00:39:15.360 You know, we're spiritually on our knees, even if we aren't physically. 00:39:15.360 --> 00:39:18.080 And it's good sometimes to be on your knees when you pray. 00:39:18.400 --> 00:39:22.560 that supplicative posture posture reinforces 00:39:23.520 --> 00:39:27.040 who's the boss, reinforces who and what we are. 00:39:27.040 --> 00:39:29.920 And so it's it's good when churches have kneelers in that they're 00:39:29.840 --> 00:39:32.160 used. That's not just a Roman Catholic thing. 00:39:32.160 --> 00:39:34.080 Many churches have preserved those. 00:39:34.080 --> 00:39:39.040 It's good to assume that sort of posture of submission because that 00:39:39.040 --> 00:39:45.360 physical orientation reinforces mentally where you actually stand, which is that we 00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:48.720 don't stand at all before the Lord, not until he raises us 00:39:48.720 --> 00:39:52.320 up, not until He elevates us and gives us permission to do 00:39:52.320 --> 00:39:55.680 that. But we approach Him with our heads bowed and on our 00:39:55.680 --> 00:40:00.240 knees. And when we approach Him in prayer and we ask for 00:40:00.240 --> 00:40:04.480 him to give things and we ask for him to help us, 00:40:04.720 --> 00:40:07.840 I think that it's not a technology because there's no you're not 00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:09.280 pushing a button. 00:40:09.280 --> 00:40:10.720 You trust in the Lord. 00:40:10.720 --> 00:40:12.720 And that's fundamentally what prayer is. 00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:16.800 Even as we're asking for things, and even as we're we're calling 00:40:16.800 --> 00:40:20.640 on the Lord to help us, it is the act of trust 00:40:20.880 --> 00:40:23.840 and the confession of the trust that we have in God that 00:40:24.160 --> 00:40:28.320 makes it separate from a technology, which is different from when you 00:40:28.320 --> 00:40:32.480 might do a similar thing at a necromancer or a tarot card 00:40:32.480 --> 00:40:36.880 reader. When you go to someone who is engaging in the occult 00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:40.000 and say, I need help with getting a new job. 00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:41.600 I need to know about next week. 00:40:41.600 --> 00:40:42.960 I hope this goes well. 00:40:42.960 --> 00:40:44.560 Help me out. 00:40:44.560 --> 00:40:49.360 When you use a technology that's worldly, even if it's interacting somehow 00:40:49.360 --> 00:40:53.760 with the spiritual realm, which fundamentally means demons. 00:40:53.760 --> 00:40:55.920 Angels aren't going to answer you when you do that sort of 00:40:55.920 --> 00:40:58.480 thing. You will only ever get an answer from hell. 00:40:58.480 --> 00:41:00.480 You may well get no answer at all. 00:41:00.480 --> 00:41:02.000 A lot of them are fraudsters. 00:41:02.000 --> 00:41:05.520 It's just completely illegitimate, which is part of the danger. 00:41:05.520 --> 00:41:09.120 Is it when someone participates in this stuff, they don't take it 00:41:09.120 --> 00:41:11.920 seriously, as Corey said, you just kind of treat some of these 00:41:11.920 --> 00:41:13.680 things as as toys. 00:41:13.680 --> 00:41:15.120 It's like, oh, it's fun, it's entertainment. 00:41:15.360 --> 00:41:17.200 I don't really take it seriously. 00:41:17.200 --> 00:41:20.880 But you're opening the door because you're asking a question, which by 00:41:20.880 --> 00:41:22.800 itself nakedly is neutral. 00:41:22.800 --> 00:41:24.480 But when it's taken to 00:41:25.440 --> 00:41:29.680 a realm that is not godly, you're using a technology that will 00:41:29.680 --> 00:41:31.360 s in some cases work. 00:41:31.360 --> 00:41:36.160 We've talked before about exoperioperato, where the act of doing the thing 00:41:36.160 --> 00:41:38.480 will cause the effect to occur. 00:41:38.480 --> 00:41:41.760 One of the I think key examples of this for this episode 00:41:41.920 --> 00:41:48.000 talking about technology and how sometimes it is inherently evil is a 00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:49.200 Ouija board. 00:41:49.280 --> 00:41:52.320 The Ouija board's been around since the late 1800s. 00:41:52.320 --> 00:41:56.560 There was a huge spiritism movement first in England and it came 00:41:56.560 --> 00:41:57.520 over to the US. 00:41:57.520 --> 00:42:02.880 There was an explosion of people engaging in seances and all manner 00:42:02.880 --> 00:42:08.080 of trying to consult with demons, trying to consult with the spirit 00:42:08.080 --> 00:42:10.880 realm. And it was treated as a sort of mystical thing and 00:42:10.960 --> 00:42:14.000 oh we there's this unknown and the problem is that they took 00:42:14.000 --> 00:42:15.280 God out of the equation. 00:42:15.280 --> 00:42:18.960 They weren't praying to the Lord for comfort or for answers or 00:42:18.960 --> 00:42:19.760 for wisdom. 00:42:19.760 --> 00:42:23.680 They were saying, We're all here together gathered around this table. 00:42:23.680 --> 00:42:25.760 Come spirits, tell us something. 00:42:25.920 --> 00:42:29.360 Problem is when you do that, sometimes a spirit will show up. 00:42:29.360 --> 00:42:32.800 But it's not spirit in the sense of an angel. 00:42:32.800 --> 00:42:34.400 It's gonna be a demon. 00:42:34.720 --> 00:42:36.960 And we know the demon sometimes showed up. 00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:39.280 That's effectively what a Ouija board is. 00:42:39.280 --> 00:42:40.960 It was invented in the late 1800s. 00:42:40.960 --> 00:42:44.400 You're probably all familiar with it, but just in case anyone isn't, 00:42:44.400 --> 00:42:47.200 there's this board that has letters and numbers on it, and then 00:42:47.200 --> 00:42:50.560 there's a physical pointer, a piece that you put on top of 00:42:50.560 --> 00:42:56.000 it. And the idea is that several participants will simultaneously put their 00:42:56.000 --> 00:42:58.960 hands on this pointer, and then no one is supposed to do 00:42:58.960 --> 00:43:03.600 anything. And the premise is that the spirits are going to move 00:43:03.600 --> 00:43:05.200 the thing independently. 00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:08.160 And it's going to one by one point and letters and numbers 00:43:08.320 --> 00:43:12.480 and reveal some spiritual hidden thing. 00:43:12.880 --> 00:43:18.160 This is fundamentally exactly what Deuteronomy 18 is talking about. 00:43:18.160 --> 00:43:21.520 It's trying to find answers someplace where God does not promise you 00:43:21.520 --> 00:43:22.560 will find them. 00:43:22.560 --> 00:43:24.480 And some people do find answers. 00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:28.880 There are numerous cases, including when this thing was patented. 00:43:28.880 --> 00:43:32.080 When they applied for the patent for the Ouija board, the patent 00:43:32.080 --> 00:43:35.360 examiner demanded they come in and prove that it worked, because the 00:43:35.360 --> 00:43:38.240 invention had to actually be legitimate. 00:43:38.240 --> 00:43:41.920 And so the question that he asked them, the examiner, his name 00:43:41.920 --> 00:43:43.920 was not known to the men who came in. 00:43:43.920 --> 00:43:45.840 And so he said, Tell me my name. 00:43:45.840 --> 00:43:48.400 And the board told him his name. 00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:50.880 And the account is that he was white as a sheet and 00:43:50.880 --> 00:43:55.280 terrified, and he approved the patent, because it had satisfied his curiosity 00:43:55.280 --> 00:43:58.160 that this thing is actually a real invention. 00:43:58.160 --> 00:44:01.680 Now, there's no human way for that to have happened 00:44:03.280 --> 00:44:07.040 Perhaps maybe in the case the the patent attorney who came actually 00:44:07.040 --> 00:44:08.000 knew his name. 00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:09.920 The account says that wasn't the case. 00:44:09.920 --> 00:44:12.960 Even if that one happened to particularly be fraudulent, there are many 00:44:12.960 --> 00:44:16.480 other cases where things that were absolutely unknowable have been have been 00:44:16.480 --> 00:44:21.440 revealed through something like a spirit board or a Ouija board. 00:44:21.440 --> 00:44:25.680 The problem with that sort of technology, the evil inherent to that 00:44:25.680 --> 00:44:29.600 sort of technology is that there's no legitimate use for it because 00:44:29.600 --> 00:44:30.560 its entire purpose 00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:35.920 is to say I have a question, I want spirits to answer 00:44:35.920 --> 00:44:36.720 the question. 00:44:36.720 --> 00:44:40.960 In fact, I want demons to tell me something that's unknowable. 00:44:41.040 --> 00:44:45.840 The only way to touch tarot cards or Ouija board or anything 00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:48.320 of that sort, the only way to engage in that sort of 00:44:48.320 --> 00:44:52.800 divination is to say, I'm opening myself up to demons, I want 00:44:52.800 --> 00:44:54.000 you to help me out. 00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:56.480 And some people think that they can do that, even if they're 00:44:56.480 --> 00:45:01.120 Christians. They think that maybe like, you know, demons are are slaves 00:45:01.120 --> 00:45:03.920 somehow and so they're gonna make them work for them. 00:45:03.920 --> 00:45:06.320 And maybe they know stuff that we don't know. 00:45:06.320 --> 00:45:10.640 And the fact that sometimes it works, the fact that this technology 00:45:10.640 --> 00:45:15.600 actually achieves a desired result makes people think that oh it's okay. 00:45:15.600 --> 00:45:18.400 And by itself, just the act of using that sort of thing 00:45:18.480 --> 00:45:19.520 is evil. 00:45:19.520 --> 00:45:21.920 And they're numerous cases. 00:45:21.920 --> 00:45:25.440 There's a pastor on Twitter, a so called Lutheran pastor. 00:45:25.440 --> 00:45:28.560 I don't believe the man's even Christian, because one of the things 00:45:28.560 --> 00:45:32.000 he talks about is he used to engage in all this stuff, 00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:35.040 and he talked about inviting a demon into his home he couldn't 00:45:34.960 --> 00:45:35.600 get rid of. 00:45:35.600 --> 00:45:38.640 And although he says Ouija boards are bad now, he's engaged in 00:45:38.640 --> 00:45:41.760 all other sorts of behavior that are in exactly the same family 00:45:41.760 --> 00:45:42.560 as that. 00:45:42.560 --> 00:45:45.120 There's some men who are drawn to darkness. 00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:48.640 Anything is just hunky dory to play with this stuff. 00:45:48.640 --> 00:45:54.480 But when you open these doors using this technology, it actually works. 00:45:54.880 --> 00:45:56.320 that's why it's so deadly. 00:45:56.320 --> 00:45:59.520 It's not just it's not a hoax, it's not a game. 00:45:59.520 --> 00:46:02.960 Even though the Ouija board today, the trademark is owned by Hasbro. 00:46:02.960 --> 00:46:05.600 It's sold in, you know, if Toys R Us still exists, it'd 00:46:05.600 --> 00:46:06.800 be sold there. 00:46:06.800 --> 00:46:09.040 But it's still in the it's a it's in the toy section 00:46:09.040 --> 00:46:10.000 on Amazon. 00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:12.240 It's sold as a toy, and people like it. 00:46:12.560 --> 00:46:14.160 It's treated as a party game. 00:46:14.160 --> 00:46:16.960 I don't think it's that popular now, but these things will ebb 00:46:16.960 --> 00:46:18.080 and flow. 00:46:18.080 --> 00:46:18.400 And 00:46:19.520 --> 00:46:21.520 the premise here is that that's a technology. 00:46:21.520 --> 00:46:24.800 A Ouija board is a physical medium 00:46:25.680 --> 00:46:29.600 of solving some problem, which is I don't know the future. 00:46:29.600 --> 00:46:33.360 The inherent problem there, the inherent evil there is that the future 00:46:33.360 --> 00:46:35.280 is necessarily unknowable. 00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:37.120 You know, even when Cory and I talk about we think this 00:46:37.120 --> 00:46:39.840 is gonna happen in the future, we don't know with certainty. 00:46:39.840 --> 00:46:45.360 We believe based on our best guess, based on informed opinion, the 00:46:45.360 --> 00:46:49.200 things are likely, but it's not some sort of absolute certainty like 00:46:49.200 --> 00:46:54.080 you can achieve if you use technology to unlock the secrets of 00:46:54.080 --> 00:46:55.040 the spirit realm. 00:46:55.040 --> 00:46:56.560 No, you're talking to demons. 00:46:56.560 --> 00:47:00.480 And sometimes they'll tell you the truth because it establishes credibility. 00:47:00.480 --> 00:47:03.760 And it means that you now trust in demons. 00:47:03.760 --> 00:47:05.280 You're not trusting in God. 00:47:05.280 --> 00:47:07.920 You're not trusting him to take care of you tomorrow. 00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:08.240 And 00:47:09.200 --> 00:47:12.160 the reason I highlight this as an example of technology is we 00:47:12.160 --> 00:47:13.120 don't think of it as that. 00:47:13.120 --> 00:47:15.760 We think it was either, oh, it's strictly spiritual, or it's just 00:47:15.760 --> 00:47:16.880 a game, it's just a hoax. 00:47:16.880 --> 00:47:17.840 It's not real at all. 00:47:17.840 --> 00:47:19.760 No, it's absolutely a technology. 00:47:19.760 --> 00:47:24.320 It's just like ayahuasca and peyote and those other drugs that open 00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:28.480 up a channel for us to commune with the other side. 00:47:28.480 --> 00:47:30.480 This is dark, evil stuff. 00:47:30.480 --> 00:47:34.240 And the fact that it doesn't always work doesn't mean that you're 00:47:34.240 --> 00:47:36.400 not trying to always get it to work. 00:47:36.400 --> 00:47:40.000 And so when you think of a technology in terms of I'm 00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.000 trying to achieve something, the question that you're bringing to the technology 00:47:44.160 --> 00:47:48.320 in many cases will determine whether the entire use case is good 00:47:48.320 --> 00:47:49.120 or evil. 00:47:49.120 --> 00:47:52.560 Because something that could potentially be a good question if you asked 00:47:52.560 --> 00:47:58.320 it to God in prayer, understanding the way God answers prayer suddenly 00:47:58.320 --> 00:48:01.040 becomes evil when you take it to one of these other places 00:48:01.200 --> 00:48:04.640 and say, I want to know about this, and you wait for 00:48:04.640 --> 00:48:06.720 something other than God to answer. 00:48:06.720 --> 00:48:10.560 Because sometimes something other than God is going to answer. 00:48:10.560 --> 00:48:13.120 That's the worst possible outcome. 00:48:13.600 --> 00:48:18.480 It is worth highlighting here a very real divide between the way 00:48:18.480 --> 00:48:24.160 that God interacts with creation and particularly with Christians, and the way 00:48:24.160 --> 00:48:26.400 that demons interact with the world. 00:48:26.400 --> 00:48:28.560 We'll start with the demons. 00:48:28.560 --> 00:48:32.960 Demons by and large interact with the world in any way that 00:48:32.960 --> 00:48:35.120 God permits them. 00:48:35.120 --> 00:48:42.080 And it is very clear, from the abundance of evidence, that demons 00:48:42.080 --> 00:48:46.960 can and do use technology to communicate. 00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:51.280 And men do use technology to contact demons. 00:48:51.280 --> 00:48:54.480 Some of them deliberately, some of them 00:48:55.360 --> 00:48:58.560 not so much accidentally as unintentionally. 00:48:58.560 --> 00:49:01.760 They want to contact something, they just don't realize that the thing 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:06.160 they are contacting is a demon. 00:49:06.160 --> 00:49:09.600 And that is one of the reasons that this stuff is prohibited 00:49:09.600 --> 00:49:13.440 in Scripture, many of these things we are discussing in this episode. 00:49:13.520 --> 00:49:15.280 Because they're real. 00:49:15.280 --> 00:49:18.720 They aren't prohibited because they aren't real. 00:49:18.720 --> 00:49:21.680 God doesn't tell you don't try to fly. 00:49:21.680 --> 00:49:23.120 Because you can't. 00:49:23.120 --> 00:49:27.280 No matter how hard you flap your arms, you will not be 00:49:27.280 --> 00:49:28.320 able to fly. 00:49:28.320 --> 00:49:30.720 And so God doesn't tell you don't do that. 00:49:30.720 --> 00:49:32.880 It's impossible. 00:49:32.880 --> 00:49:37.760 These things that God prohibits, He prohibits because they are evil and 00:49:37.760 --> 00:49:38.640 they are real 00:49:40.400 --> 00:49:45.040 If you invite in a demon, one may very well show up. 00:49:45.040 --> 00:49:48.400 They don't always show up, and so many of those who have 00:49:48.400 --> 00:49:52.880 used Ouija boards and things like that are not demon oppressed or 00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:55.680 demon possessed. 00:49:55.680 --> 00:49:57.280 But some are. 00:49:57.280 --> 00:50:00.400 And you do not want to roll those dice, you do not 00:50:00.400 --> 00:50:03.040 open the door to demons. 00:50:03.040 --> 00:50:07.920 You are not going to have any control over the demons if 00:50:07.920 --> 00:50:09.600 you invite them in. 00:50:09.600 --> 00:50:12.880 That is a delusion that some individuals have. 00:50:12.880 --> 00:50:15.760 They think, well, I've figured out the rules for how the demons 00:50:15.760 --> 00:50:18.800 operate, and if I do X, Y, and Z, then I will 00:50:18.800 --> 00:50:22.000 have control over the demon and I No. 00:50:22.000 --> 00:50:25.440 Scripture tells us nothing about that. 00:50:25.440 --> 00:50:30.720 We have virtually no information about the rules that God applies to 00:50:30.720 --> 00:50:35.520 demons, about the ways that they are permitted and not permitted to 00:50:35.520 --> 00:50:37.680 interact with creation. 00:50:37.680 --> 00:50:41.920 And so anything that someone tells you on that subject about supposed 00:50:41.920 --> 00:50:47.600 rules or guidelines, anything like that, it is speculation, and there is 00:50:47.600 --> 00:50:51.200 no reason to believe it, and you are endangering your soul if 00:50:51.200 --> 00:50:56.480 you believe it, particularly if you act on that false belief. 00:50:56.480 --> 00:51:03.280 Now, contrary to the way that demons interact with creation, God does 00:51:03.280 --> 00:51:08.880 not use technology to communicate with Christians, to communicate with creation, to 00:51:08.880 --> 00:51:10.880 interact with creation. 00:51:10.960 --> 00:51:13.280 Now I know some of you are going to think, well, doesn't 00:51:13.200 --> 00:51:16.640 scripture and writing and the printing press, don't all these things fall 00:51:16.640 --> 00:51:19.440 under the heading of technology as you are using it? 00:51:19.440 --> 00:51:22.160 And the answer to that is yes. 00:51:22.160 --> 00:51:28.320 But that is not how God communicated that to creation. 00:51:28.320 --> 00:51:34.320 God communicates via dreams and visions, and in the case of Moses 00:51:34.480 --> 00:51:40.480 and select individuals, appearing physically to them and talking to them. 00:51:40.480 --> 00:51:44.960 The only potential exception, if we were not being very specific in 00:51:44.960 --> 00:51:50.480 our definition, which we used the application of knowledge to human ends, 00:51:50.960 --> 00:51:54.320 but you could bring up the one time in Scripture where God 00:51:54.320 --> 00:51:57.360 writes on stone tablets, because that is what he did at Mount 00:51:57.360 --> 00:52:00.080 Sinai with Moses. 00:52:00.080 --> 00:52:03.280 That doesn't fall under the definition we're using, but it is the 00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:08.560 closest that God comes to using technology as it were to communicate 00:52:08.560 --> 00:52:11.280 with creation. 00:52:11.280 --> 00:52:14.640 God is not going to write you an email. 00:52:15.680 --> 00:52:20.640 As far as we know, there's nothing necessarily stopping a demon from 00:52:20.640 --> 00:52:23.120 doing something like that. 00:52:23.120 --> 00:52:26.880 Because we know that they can influence technology to a certain degree. 00:52:26.880 --> 00:52:30.720 Again, we see that very clearly from the Ouija board, and half 00:52:30.720 --> 00:52:32.800 the time it kind of feels like that when we're trying to 00:52:32.800 --> 00:52:35.680 get audio equipment to work. 00:52:35.680 --> 00:52:40.720 But demons use technology to whatever extent God will permit it. 00:52:40.720 --> 00:52:44.000 God does not use technology to communicate with us. 00:52:44.000 --> 00:52:46.480 That doesn't mean that he can't influence it. 00:52:46.480 --> 00:52:51.200 If you pray before you have to record something, God may very 00:52:51.200 --> 00:52:54.400 well see that your equipment works well. 00:52:54.400 --> 00:52:58.080 He's not using it in the same way that the demon is 00:52:58.080 --> 00:53:00.640 going to try to use it to communicate something. 00:53:00.640 --> 00:53:03.600 It's a fundamentally different interaction. 00:53:03.600 --> 00:53:06.640 And so I'm not saying that God doesn't have control or that 00:53:06.640 --> 00:53:08.080 God doesn't intervene. 00:53:08.080 --> 00:53:12.560 I'm saying it is not the means by which God communicates, because 00:53:12.560 --> 00:53:14.720 God is very clear in His Word. 00:53:14.720 --> 00:53:19.520 The way He communicates with us is His Word. 00:53:19.520 --> 00:53:22.720 Now He does answer prayers, and so there is a 00:53:23.760 --> 00:53:25.200 form of communication there. 00:53:25.200 --> 00:53:27.920 If you pray for something and God grants it, God has told 00:53:27.920 --> 00:53:31.040 you yes, but he didn't write yes on your computer or use 00:53:31.040 --> 00:53:33.600 a Ouija board to communicate with you. 00:53:33.600 --> 00:53:37.440 You saw it through a reaction in the world. 00:53:37.440 --> 00:53:41.680 He caused something to happen that is fundamentally different from the way 00:53:41.680 --> 00:53:48.320 that demons will attempt to use technology and sometimes successfully use technology. 00:53:48.960 --> 00:53:53.840 And so there is no reason, there is no warrant, certainly for 00:53:53.840 --> 00:53:58.800 Christians, but really for anyone who isn't completely insane, to attempt to 00:53:58.800 --> 00:54:01.440 contact spirits using technology. 00:54:01.440 --> 00:54:06.080 Because as Wo said, you will always be contacting a demon if 00:54:06.080 --> 00:54:07.840 you manage to contact anything. 00:54:07.840 --> 00:54:10.480 The best case scenario is you just look like a fool and 00:54:10.480 --> 00:54:11.520 nothing happens. 00:54:11.520 --> 00:54:13.840 That's the best outcome. 00:54:13.840 --> 00:54:17.760 The worst outcome is you actually contact a demon. 00:54:17.760 --> 00:54:19.680 Now what do you do? 00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:23.200 You have no power to make that demon leave. 00:54:23.200 --> 00:54:25.440 You may think, well, I'm a Christian, and so I can cast 00:54:25.440 --> 00:54:26.480 it out in the name of Christ. 00:54:27.440 --> 00:54:32.320 Wrong. Christ can cast out the demon. 00:54:32.320 --> 00:54:34.160 God can cast out the demon. 00:54:34.160 --> 00:54:37.360 If you ask him, he may very well do so 00:54:38.400 --> 00:54:43.600 But under these circumstances, you have rejected God, you have invited in 00:54:43.600 --> 00:54:48.880 a demon, you have chosen to worship another God. 00:54:48.880 --> 00:54:53.040 If you pray, maybe God will answer that prayer and cast out 00:54:53.040 --> 00:54:54.880 that demon. 00:54:54.880 --> 00:54:58.080 But if you have turned your back on God and you have 00:54:58.080 --> 00:55:01.920 invited in the demons, you have chosen another path, the one that 00:55:01.920 --> 00:55:04.720 leads downward, the broad path? 00:55:04.720 --> 00:55:07.680 There are no guarantees here. 00:55:07.680 --> 00:55:12.560 You do not personally possess the power to cast out or control 00:55:12.720 --> 00:55:18.160 demons. Christians have that power as it were by proxy. 00:55:18.160 --> 00:55:22.720 We have it because we pray to God and He casts out 00:55:22.720 --> 00:55:24.080 the demon. 00:55:24.080 --> 00:55:26.160 He has that power. 00:55:26.160 --> 00:55:29.120 If we are His sheep, then He is going to protect us. 00:55:30.080 --> 00:55:33.520 But if you're a goat and you've wandered off and invited demons 00:55:33.520 --> 00:55:35.600 in, all bets are off. 00:55:35.600 --> 00:55:40.080 You are in a very different situation, in a very different place. 00:55:40.080 --> 00:55:42.320 And this is a point where it is worth 00:55:43.760 --> 00:55:49.440 making a particular point about something that we see in movies about 00:55:49.440 --> 00:55:53.840 exorcism and various related subjects. 00:55:53.840 --> 00:55:58.480 You'll see priests or pastors who act as if they have some 00:55:58.480 --> 00:56:01.200 inherent authority, some 00:56:02.720 --> 00:56:07.920 power in themselves to cast out or control demons, and they don't. 00:56:07.920 --> 00:56:10.800 This is a fundamentally important point. 00:56:10.800 --> 00:56:14.000 This is one of the things you should absolutely remember from this 00:56:14.000 --> 00:56:21.120 episode. You have no power inherent in you to cast out demons. 00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:25.440 And neither does a priest or a pastor or anyone else. 00:56:25.440 --> 00:56:28.800 That comes only from God. 00:56:28.800 --> 00:56:32.960 He gives that to whom he will, he exercises it when he 00:56:32.960 --> 00:56:40.640 wishes. And so if you invite in a demon, you have absolutely 00:56:40.640 --> 00:56:44.640 no guarantee that you can get rid of it. 00:56:44.640 --> 00:56:50.160 And on a related note, when you see priests or pastors or 00:56:50.160 --> 00:56:53.680 anyone else saying that they compelled a demon to say something or 00:56:53.680 --> 00:56:57.360 answer a question, that is complete nonsense. 00:56:57.360 --> 00:57:00.720 That is wickedness, that is evil, it is sin. 00:57:00.720 --> 00:57:04.640 You cannot compel a demon to speak the truth. 00:57:04.640 --> 00:57:07.360 Christ can compel a demon to speak the truth. 00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:11.360 If he wants to do that, you have no such guarantee. 00:57:11.360 --> 00:57:14.720 If you ask a demon a question, it may very well answer 00:57:14.720 --> 00:57:19.040 you. There is absolutely no way to guarantee that what that demon 00:57:19.040 --> 00:57:21.040 spoke is the truth. 00:57:21.040 --> 00:57:24.160 Because you do not have the power to compel a demon to 00:57:24.160 --> 00:57:25.680 speak the truth. 00:57:25.840 --> 00:57:30.080 So if some priest or other tells you, well, I asked a 00:57:30.080 --> 00:57:35.760 demon this question and the demon said this in response, you have 00:57:35.760 --> 00:57:37.440 no reason to believe that is the truth. 00:57:37.440 --> 00:57:40.160 In fact, you have fairly strong reasons to believe it is a 00:57:40.160 --> 00:57:43.760 lie, because the goal of the demon is always going to be 00:57:43.760 --> 00:57:47.760 to deceive and destroy, that is the ultimate goal for the demon. 00:57:47.760 --> 00:57:51.120 Now demons may very well tell the truth, in order to build 00:57:51.120 --> 00:57:54.400 some sort of trust or rapport, as it were, in order to 00:57:54.400 --> 00:57:57.920 get to that ultimate end goal, the ultimate deception, to get you 00:57:57.920 --> 00:58:03.600 to lose your soul, to get you to spend eternity in hell. 00:58:03.600 --> 00:58:08.160 But the fundamental takeaway is Takeaway is that there is no reason 00:58:08.160 --> 00:58:11.200 to believe anything a demon says. 00:58:11.200 --> 00:58:15.680 And so there is no reason to attempt to contact a demon. 00:58:15.680 --> 00:58:23.600 Christians should not be employing any technology, to attempt to contact spirits. 00:58:23.600 --> 00:58:29.120 The only way we have in Scripture, given by God, to communicate 00:58:29.440 --> 00:58:33.120 with that world, that realm as it were. 00:58:33.600 --> 00:58:35.440 Is prayer. 00:58:35.440 --> 00:58:40.720 We are permitted, we are compelled, we are commanded to communicate with 00:58:40.720 --> 00:58:44.240 God via prayer, and that is it. 00:58:44.240 --> 00:58:50.720 There are no other commands in Scripture related to communication with spirits. 00:58:50.720 --> 00:58:55.120 Because any of that is going to be communication with demons, and 00:58:55.120 --> 00:58:58.560 that is something that we want to avoid as Christians. 00:58:58.800 --> 00:59:02.720 You do not want to spend your time surrounded by or interacting 00:59:02.720 --> 00:59:03.600 with demons. 00:59:03.600 --> 00:59:06.240 Now obviously if you're an exorcist, there's a little bit of a 00:59:06.240 --> 00:59:10.080 caveat here, but I doubt that exorcists want to be doing that. 00:59:10.080 --> 00:59:13.840 It's more of an it needs to be done sort of thing. 00:59:13.840 --> 00:59:17.680 And so do not contact demons and certainly do not believe that 00:59:17.680 --> 00:59:21.520 they are telling you the truth if they speak to you or 00:59:21.520 --> 00:59:22.640 someone else. 00:59:23.680 --> 00:59:23.760 In 00:59:23.920 --> 00:59:28.160 first John four it is written, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, 00:59:28.160 --> 00:59:31.360 but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for 00:59:31.360 --> 00:59:35.040 many false prophets have come come have gone into the world. 00:59:35.200 --> 00:59:39.360 Now obviously this is principally talking about pastors and others who would 00:59:39.360 --> 00:59:42.400 speak, but anyone who says, Hey, I'm here to tell you the 00:59:42.400 --> 00:59:45.920 truth, you are to test them to see whether they're from God. 00:59:45.920 --> 00:59:49.680 And anyone who is from God, any voice that is from God, 00:59:49.680 --> 00:59:55.120 whether it's some technology or a person, if they say anything that 00:59:55.120 --> 00:59:58.720 is not perfectly in accord with scripture with what you already know 00:59:58.720 --> 01:00:01.360 to be true, you know that they're not from God, and therefore 01:00:01.360 --> 01:00:03.520 everything that Corey just said applies. 01:00:03.520 --> 01:00:06.560 Now why are we talking about this incredibly heavy stuff in the 01:00:06.560 --> 01:00:08.000 middle of this episode? 01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:10.240 Well there's also first Timothy four. 01:00:10.240 --> 01:00:13.920 Now the Holy Ghost expressly says that in latter times some will 01:00:13.920 --> 01:00:19.440 depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings 01:00:19.440 --> 01:00:20.560 of demons. 01:00:20.560 --> 01:00:22.880 Now we go on in this passage to talk about how what 01:00:22.880 --> 01:00:27.680 a low bar this passage sets for teachings of demons, but I 01:00:27.680 --> 01:00:31.280 want to emphasize here today the fact that it's talking about Christians 01:00:31.280 --> 01:00:37.120 departing from the faith and pursuing deceitful spirits and what they reveal. 01:00:37.120 --> 01:00:41.680 Because when we think in terms of technology, particular was as we 01:00:41.680 --> 01:00:45.520 look at the 21st century, where things like Ouija boards and tarot 01:00:45.760 --> 01:00:49.360 are mostly not typically in use, at least not as far as 01:00:49.360 --> 01:00:50.080 I know. 01:00:50.080 --> 01:00:52.480 Probably at some point they'll come back on TikTok if they haven't 01:00:52.480 --> 01:00:54.480 earlier. Already. 01:00:54.480 --> 01:00:56.160 But what do we have? 01:00:56.160 --> 01:01:01.520 We have the future of AI, artificial intelligence, where we have LLMs, 01:01:01.520 --> 01:01:06.320 we have large language models, we have generative AI producing imagery, and 01:01:06.320 --> 01:01:11.680 we have people using text input to say, hey, box, hey, computer 01:01:11.680 --> 01:01:16.240 software, I want to see X, I want to know X, tell 01:01:16.240 --> 01:01:18.560 me Y or Z. 01:01:19.120 --> 01:01:23.760 This is why we're doing this episode fundamentally, because this new technology, 01:01:23.760 --> 01:01:27.680 and undoubtedly, no one can argue that that fits the definition of 01:01:27.680 --> 01:01:32.880 technology. So as we're sitting here in the 21st century, we are 01:01:32.880 --> 01:01:37.440 very clearly facing the advent of new technology that we all are 01:01:37.440 --> 01:01:39.440 going to have to deal with one way or another. 01:01:39.440 --> 01:01:43.520 And that is, you know, this sort of generative AI where you 01:01:43.520 --> 01:01:46.000 ask the box and it gives you some answer. 01:01:46.000 --> 01:01:49.280 And the reason that we gave all those earlier examples and said 01:01:49.280 --> 01:01:54.400 that sometimes things are morally neutral, sometimes things are always inherently evil, 01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:58.880 sometimes it's the nature of your desire that determines whether or not 01:01:58.880 --> 01:02:00.480 what you're doing is good or evil. 01:02:00.480 --> 01:02:02.720 As we said at the beginning, and obviously it's a stupid thing 01:02:02.720 --> 01:02:05.280 to even say, there's no Bible verse that says you can't use 01:02:05.280 --> 01:02:06.640 Chat GPT. 01:02:06.640 --> 01:02:07.760 We don't think there is. 01:02:07.760 --> 01:02:11.120 And we're not making the case today that that's the fact. 01:02:11.120 --> 01:02:15.040 However, when you look at it in terms of what we've said 01:02:15.040 --> 01:02:18.560 for the past hour, in terms of what problem am I trying 01:02:18.560 --> 01:02:24.320 to solve when I use this new technology, it's necessary to apply 01:02:24.320 --> 01:02:27.840 wisdom to those circumstances. 01:02:27.840 --> 01:02:31.440 So something like ChatGPT, it's entirely based on text. 01:02:31.440 --> 01:02:34.800 You ask it questions, you say something, it responds. 01:02:34.800 --> 01:02:39.120 The way these things work inherently is pattern recognition. 01:02:39.120 --> 01:02:43.840 It's just a gigantic statistical model of one word naturally tends to 01:02:43.840 --> 01:02:45.840 follow the other. 01:02:45.840 --> 01:02:48.720 And so it knows, and I'm using air quotes here because it 01:02:48.720 --> 01:02:49.200 knows nothing. 01:02:49.200 --> 01:02:52.640 There's no it there to have knowledge. 01:02:52.640 --> 01:02:59.680 The model is that statistically when input string X occurs, output probabilistically, 01:02:59.680 --> 01:03:03.440 string y is going to be emitted, some variation of it. 01:03:03.440 --> 01:03:08.320 Now Now, the reason that this can either be for good purposes, 01:03:08.320 --> 01:03:12.240 for neutral purposes, or for evil purposes, is that there are some 01:03:12.240 --> 01:03:15.280 things that you can ask this sort of it's effectively just a 01:03:15.280 --> 01:03:16.880 sophisticated search engine. 01:03:16.880 --> 01:03:19.920 You know, Google 25 years ago did kind of the same thing. 01:03:19.920 --> 01:03:22.960 You could put in a string that says, my web server crashed 01:03:22.960 --> 01:03:23.920 with this error message. 01:03:23.920 --> 01:03:24.880 What do I do? 01:03:24.880 --> 01:03:27.840 You put in the error message, Google used to spit out an 01:03:27.840 --> 01:03:30.880 answer. Now just send you to Stack Exchange. 01:03:30.880 --> 01:03:35.120 And because Stack Exchange has been ingested by the models that went 01:03:35.120 --> 01:03:38.560 into ChatGPT, you can now ask it a question like how do 01:03:38.560 --> 01:03:40.240 I fix my Apache web server? 01:03:40.240 --> 01:03:42.800 It's usually going to give you pretty good advice. 01:03:42.800 --> 01:03:47.040 And the nature of the question is such that you're effectively using 01:03:47.040 --> 01:03:48.320 it as a search engine. 01:03:48.320 --> 01:03:52.400 There are people that already know there's a manual that's been ingested. 01:03:52.400 --> 01:03:58.080 It knows that when this came up 10,000 times, the most probabilistically 01:03:58.080 --> 01:04:02.240 correct answer, the most likely string to be emitted, is whatever it 01:04:02.240 --> 01:04:03.040 spits out. 01:04:03.040 --> 01:04:06.800 And so it's going to give results that seem like answers to 01:04:06.800 --> 01:04:10.080 you as though you're talking to another person asking a question, they're 01:04:10.080 --> 01:04:11.360 usually pretty good. 01:04:11.360 --> 01:04:16.000 Now, the nice thing about asking a technical question is that especially 01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:20.320 when something like software is verifiable, you ask it, it's crashing with 01:04:20.320 --> 01:04:21.680 this error code. 01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:23.120 How do I fix it? 01:04:23.120 --> 01:04:25.520 And it says you need to change this line in your config 01:04:25.520 --> 01:04:28.720 file. You change the line, the error code goes away, it starts 01:04:28.720 --> 01:04:30.560 working. That's verifiable. 01:04:30.560 --> 01:04:33.120 You know that it actually gave you a good result. 01:04:33.120 --> 01:04:34.320 You got the desired effect. 01:04:34.480 --> 01:04:35.600 And guess what? 01:04:35.600 --> 01:04:39.280 There's no real opportunity for a demon to horn in there. 01:04:39.280 --> 01:04:43.520 You're not asking it, you know, how do I solve my relationship? 01:04:43.520 --> 01:04:44.800 What am I going to do next week? 01:04:44.800 --> 01:04:47.920 You're not asking open-ended or certainly spiritual questions. 01:04:48.000 --> 01:04:51.360 You're saying my computer crash, what do I do to fix it? 01:04:51.360 --> 01:04:56.320 So the problem that everyone is going to have to face with 01:04:56.320 --> 01:05:00.400 these sort of machines is that most of the time they're gonna 01:05:00.400 --> 01:05:00.800 work pretty 01:05:01.680 --> 01:05:05.280 well. Especially for the more mundane things, which is usually where people 01:05:05.280 --> 01:05:08.080 begin. They're gonna try with start with a simple case, and it's 01:05:08.080 --> 01:05:10.400 gonna prove that the simple case works. 01:05:10.400 --> 01:05:15.760 Now, something that we have to understand when we're interacting with this 01:05:15.760 --> 01:05:21.280 new type of technology is that if you've ever worked with subcontinental 01:05:21.280 --> 01:05:24.720 Indians, you'll know exactly what I'm describing here. 01:05:24.720 --> 01:05:27.280 If you've never worked with them, you're going to think I'm being 01:05:27.280 --> 01:05:30.000 incredibly racist and mean and stereotypical. 01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:32.080 This is exactly what it's like. 01:05:32.080 --> 01:05:38.160 When you're working with someone from India, their culture, their 01:05:39.120 --> 01:05:43.840 speech patterns are such that when you ask them a question, they're 01:05:43.840 --> 01:05:49.280 going to very enthusiastically, very confidently give you an answer in as 01:05:49.280 --> 01:05:51.200 much detail as they think you want. 01:05:51.200 --> 01:05:53.920 The problem is that they may be lying out of their butts. 01:05:53.920 --> 01:05:58.000 They may say things that are just completely deranged, have no bearing 01:05:58.000 --> 01:06:00.880 with reality, because their goal is not to inform you. 01:06:00.880 --> 01:06:03.360 Their goal is not to answer your question. 01:06:03.360 --> 01:06:05.360 Their goal is to satisfy you. 01:06:05.360 --> 01:06:08.240 And if you're satisfied with their answer, they've succeeded. 01:06:08.240 --> 01:06:11.360 And it doesn't matter if they told you anything that's remotely true. 01:06:11.360 --> 01:06:15.840 When you're talking to an Indian subcontractor, that's exactly what it's like 01:06:15.840 --> 01:06:19.120 talking to ChatGPT or one of these other engines. 01:06:19.120 --> 01:06:21.760 They have no notion of accuracy. 01:06:21.760 --> 01:06:24.320 And they have no notion of saying, I don't know. 01:06:24.320 --> 01:06:27.440 If you ask one of these machines a question, it's not going 01:06:27.440 --> 01:06:28.640 to say, I don't have that data. 01:06:28.640 --> 01:06:30.720 It's going to do the best that it can. 01:06:30.720 --> 01:06:34.800 Now, when you're talking a friend, maybe that's okay, because a friend 01:06:34.800 --> 01:06:38.800 maybe will couch in those terms and say, well, I I don't 01:06:38.800 --> 01:06:41.040 really know, but I think maybe try this. 01:06:41.040 --> 01:06:44.080 You would know based on the way they frame that answer that 01:06:44.080 --> 01:06:46.000 maybe it's gonna work, maybe it isn't. 01:06:46.000 --> 01:06:49.600 The problem with one of these machines, this new technology, is that 01:06:49.600 --> 01:06:52.480 when you ask it, hey, how do I fix my web server, 01:06:52.480 --> 01:06:54.960 even if it has no idea, even if it's never seen that 01:06:54.960 --> 01:06:58.720 error code before, it's going to hallucinate and it's going to confidently 01:06:58.720 --> 01:07:02.800 give you an answer that may be completely wrong, which is particularly 01:07:02.800 --> 01:07:07.120 dangerous because even in the mundane case, where there's no spiritual nexus 01:07:07.120 --> 01:07:09.760 to any of this, there's no moral question question. 01:07:09.760 --> 01:07:14.240 Because you don't know, because you're asking the machine, you're not in 01:07:14.240 --> 01:07:17.360 any position to know whether it told you the truth, which is 01:07:17.360 --> 01:07:20.480 why something like, hey, my web server's crashing is really the best 01:07:20.480 --> 01:07:23.040 case. Because if it does hallucinate, if it gives you a completely 01:07:23.360 --> 01:07:26.080 bogus answer, you're going to be able to figure it out quickly. 01:07:26.080 --> 01:07:27.120 Well, that didn't work. 01:07:27.120 --> 01:07:30.480 Right. So that's an easy thing for you to determine the thing 01:07:30.480 --> 01:07:31.600 lied to me. 01:07:31.600 --> 01:07:36.080 The real danger with this technology, with all these various AIs is 01:07:36.080 --> 01:07:39.360 that when they spit something out, they're always going to show an 01:07:39.360 --> 01:07:41.040 equal degree of confidence. 01:07:41.040 --> 01:07:44.000 And so you as the the naive user who doesn't know, like 01:07:44.160 --> 01:07:47.680 you asked it a question because usually once you're actually seriously using 01:07:47.680 --> 01:07:48.880 it, you don't know the answer. 01:07:49.360 --> 01:07:51.120 You want help with whatever. 01:07:51.120 --> 01:07:55.440 Again, not necessarily a spiritual matter, not something open-ended, but you don't 01:07:55.360 --> 01:07:57.840 know. You know, maybe it's just who is in this movie and 01:07:57.920 --> 01:07:59.840 you know, in such and such year. 01:07:59.840 --> 01:08:02.640 It's going to confidently give you an answer, even if it has 01:08:02.720 --> 01:08:04.560 to lie to do it. 01:08:04.560 --> 01:08:10.400 By itself, that is necessarily just dangerous because when it mostly works 01:08:10.560 --> 01:08:13.200 and you get confident that wow, this thing's really confident, it knows 01:08:13.200 --> 01:08:14.480 all the time, it gives me great answers. 01:08:14.720 --> 01:08:17.840 When it lies to you, you're ill-equipped to determine it. 01:08:17.840 --> 01:08:21.600 You're naturally going to trust, well, it got the last 15 questions 01:08:21.600 --> 01:08:25.120 right. When it answers in exactly the same way with the next 01:08:25.120 --> 01:08:28.320 question, it turns out it completely made something up, you may not 01:08:28.320 --> 01:08:29.280 be in a position to know. 01:08:29.920 --> 01:08:34.480 So apart from any spiritual danger, just as a pragmatic matter, you're 01:08:34.480 --> 01:08:37.600 creating a situation where you can fall for something and you know 01:08:37.840 --> 01:08:40.720 again, when you're talking about web servers or something, that's the easy 01:08:40.720 --> 01:08:43.360 case. You're not really the worst that happens, if you blow up 01:08:43.360 --> 01:08:45.600 your web server, you have to roll it back. 01:08:45.600 --> 01:08:47.120 What if you're asking about medicine? 01:08:47.120 --> 01:08:49.920 You know, what if you're asking about aspirin, like earlier? 01:08:49.920 --> 01:08:53.760 Well, when you're messing with drugs and dosages, if you get a 01:08:53.760 --> 01:08:57.040 decimal price place wrong, you can very easily die. 01:08:57.040 --> 01:09:00.480 And you have no way of knowing whether when chat GPT spits 01:09:00.480 --> 01:09:03.040 out that sort of answer, it's going to put the decimal in 01:09:03.040 --> 01:09:03.840 the right place. 01:09:03.840 --> 01:09:07.280 Now, a lot of these machines, a lot of this technology are 01:09:07.280 --> 01:09:10.160 trying to put in guardrails to say, hey, I think this is 01:09:10.160 --> 01:09:11.680 a medically related question. 01:09:11.680 --> 01:09:14.400 So I'm going to give you warnings and boilerplate. 01:09:14.400 --> 01:09:17.120 But usually you can gaslight it and say, no, I'm a doctor, 01:09:17.120 --> 01:09:18.640 you know, I really need the answer. 01:09:18.640 --> 01:09:21.920 Somebody's life is online, you got to tell me, you can trick 01:09:21.920 --> 01:09:26.240 the machine into giving you an answer, which is unfortunate because sometimes 01:09:26.240 --> 01:09:29.520 it will trick you into thinking the answer it gave is right. 01:09:29.520 --> 01:09:32.880 Maybe it will say you need thirty thousand milligrams of aspirin to 01:09:32.880 --> 01:09:35.840 cure your headache, which is true in a sense, it will cure 01:09:35.840 --> 01:09:38.160 your headache because you'll be very dead. 01:09:38.560 --> 01:09:42.160 If you don't know when you're asking the question, you're in danger. 01:09:42.160 --> 01:09:45.120 And then there's the spiritual realm. 01:09:45.120 --> 01:09:48.000 There's the things where there are open-ended questions. 01:09:48.000 --> 01:09:53.120 You know, what happens when you ask chat GPT, I'm really worried 01:09:53.120 --> 01:09:55.760 about my job, but what do I do next week when this 01:09:55.760 --> 01:09:59.600 happens? It's gonna answer you just like it would answer about your 01:09:59.600 --> 01:10:00.240 web server. 01:10:00.240 --> 01:10:02.080 It's gonna try to give advice. 01:10:02.080 --> 01:10:05.040 And the problem is that sometimes that advice is going to seem 01:10:05.040 --> 01:10:09.280 human. And I think that this is the real danger in all 01:10:09.360 --> 01:10:12.320 this is that there's a hook there where there's so many people 01:10:12.320 --> 01:10:17.520 who are socially isolated that just having the text interface to go 01:10:17.520 --> 01:10:20.640 back and forth and have someone who's always awake at any time 01:10:20.720 --> 01:10:23.360 who will give you a reasonable answer, even if you know it's 01:10:23.360 --> 01:10:28.000 software, even if you know there's nothing there, when you start asking 01:10:28.000 --> 01:10:33.600 it personal open-ended questions, you have turned what was a useful search 01:10:33.600 --> 01:10:36.080 engine into a Ouija board. 01:10:36.080 --> 01:10:39.520 But the difference is that unlike a Ouija board, because it's just 01:10:39.520 --> 01:10:43.680 based on statistics most of the time, it's going to seem to 01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:45.360 give plausible answers, even if they're not great. 01:10:45.360 --> 01:10:47.120 If you're like, well, that's not good advice. 01:10:47.120 --> 01:10:51.040 You're still going to keep coming back for more. 01:10:51.040 --> 01:10:54.720 One of the reasons that I think it's the most apt comparison 01:10:54.720 --> 01:10:58.000 I can come up with of these large language models and all 01:10:58.000 --> 01:11:04.080 this other generative stuff to a Ouija board is that the fundamental 01:11:04.080 --> 01:11:10.720 nature of the machinery, of this new technology, is that it's inherently 01:11:10.720 --> 01:11:14.640 unpredictable. There's a probability that it will you give you a certain 01:11:14.960 --> 01:11:18.400 answer based on certain input, but there's never a one hundred percent 01:11:18.400 --> 01:11:23.600 probability. There's no direct correlation between a certain input and a certain 01:11:23.600 --> 01:11:28.640 output. And these are effectively in software terms, these are black boxes. 01:11:28.640 --> 01:11:32.480 Even the people who are designing them, who are creating and feeding 01:11:32.480 --> 01:11:35.200 them, do not know how they work inside. 01:11:35.200 --> 01:11:40.160 The machinery itself of determining when I get a certain query, here's 01:11:40.160 --> 01:11:41.120 what I say. 01:11:41.120 --> 01:11:46.480 Because there's no one-to-one mapping of question, results, and answer, because it's 01:11:46.480 --> 01:11:50.480 all probabilistic and it's all there's a certain degree of randomness to 01:11:50.480 --> 01:11:53.920 it. They literally don't know exactly how they work. 01:11:53.920 --> 01:11:57.600 All they know is that most of the time it's pretty accurate 01:11:57.680 --> 01:11:59.920 and they try to tweak the accuracy. 01:11:59.920 --> 01:12:02.240 This is why it's like a Ouija board. 01:12:02.240 --> 01:12:07.280 You don't know if something has nudged anything in the machinery. 01:12:07.280 --> 01:12:12.480 As Corey said a minute ago, it's entirely possible for demons to 01:12:12.480 --> 01:12:13.760 nudge machinery. 01:12:13.760 --> 01:12:16.160 We know that they nudge Ouija boards. 01:12:16.160 --> 01:12:19.200 There's no reason to believe that they can't nudge the software on 01:12:19.200 --> 01:12:20.080 a server. 01:12:20.080 --> 01:12:22.560 Maybe it only does it once a day for one person in 01:12:22.560 --> 01:12:23.200 the world. 01:12:23.360 --> 01:12:25.760 That risk is still too high. 01:12:25.760 --> 01:12:29.440 The very fact that when you ask a question, hey, my relationship 01:12:29.440 --> 01:12:32.160 with my mom is strained, what can I say to her if 01:12:32.160 --> 01:12:33.280 this happens? 01:12:33.280 --> 01:12:36.640 When you ask that sort of heartfelt question that you would ask 01:12:36.640 --> 01:12:39.760 a friend or a confidant or maybe a pastor if you could 01:12:39.760 --> 01:12:46.560 trust him, when you ask that sort of question, there's the possibility 01:12:46.560 --> 01:12:48.640 that a demon will answer. 01:12:48.640 --> 01:12:50.960 I know that sounds crazy to some of you, but it's an 01:12:50.960 --> 01:12:53.760 absolute fact, which is why we went down that sort of dark 01:12:53.760 --> 01:12:56.320 path in the middle of this, talking about Ouija boards and some 01:12:56.320 --> 01:12:57.280 of this other stuff. 01:12:57.280 --> 01:13:01.280 We know for a fact that demons can interact with that material. 01:13:01.280 --> 01:13:02.880 Software is no different. 01:13:02.880 --> 01:13:06.400 Software is just electrons moving through hardware. 01:13:06.400 --> 01:13:08.480 It's bits that can be flipped. 01:13:08.480 --> 01:13:12.720 It's entirely realistic that when you start asking the sort of questions 01:13:12.800 --> 01:13:16.560 that you would ask a necromancer or a tarot reader to a 01:13:16.560 --> 01:13:20.880 chat GPT or some other LLM, the same demon may show up 01:13:21.120 --> 01:13:22.960 because this is their bread and butter. 01:13:22.960 --> 01:13:25.920 Every time someone hangs his butt out and says, Hey, I I 01:13:25.920 --> 01:13:27.040 have this unknown. 01:13:27.040 --> 01:13:28.640 I don't trust in God anymore. 01:13:28.640 --> 01:13:31.280 I want to know if some anyone else has any good answers, 01:13:31.280 --> 01:13:34.080 a bell goes off in hell and the next demon in the 01:13:34.080 --> 01:13:36.720 queue is gonna say, I got this one, and they come and 01:13:36.720 --> 01:13:37.760 they answer the question. 01:13:38.240 --> 01:13:41.040 We don't know how it works, but we know that sometimes it 01:13:41.040 --> 01:13:44.560 happens when people go on these drug trips or they use this 01:13:44.560 --> 01:13:52.000 technology, this other technology, physical means sometimes hell answers that is equally 01:13:52.000 --> 01:13:55.360 true of software the difference is you're never going to know the 01:13:55.360 --> 01:13:58.720 difference if a demon is answering in chat gpt it's going to 01:13:58.720 --> 01:14:02.320 look exactly the same as every other answer and maybe they don't 01:14:02.240 --> 01:14:05.440 write the whole answer, maybe they just nudge one word because they 01:14:05.440 --> 01:14:08.000 know that it's going to influence you in such a way down 01:14:08.000 --> 01:14:08.800 the road. 01:14:08.800 --> 01:14:12.800 Opening ourselves up to this sort of influence where we don't know 01:14:12.800 --> 01:14:17.680 who's doing it is one of the most dangerous situations humanity has 01:14:17.680 --> 01:14:20.640 ever created because we're gonna trust it because most of the time 01:14:20.640 --> 01:14:21.280 it works. 01:14:21.280 --> 01:14:24.320 The stuff is getting better at an incredibly rapid pace. 01:14:24.320 --> 01:14:27.680 And every time they iterate, and it gets more accurate and gets 01:14:27.680 --> 01:14:32.240 closer to being indistinguishable from humans, the more we're like, okay, well, 01:14:32.240 --> 01:14:34.720 you know, I talk to my friends, but maybe I'll talk to 01:14:34.720 --> 01:14:35.840 this machine too. 01:14:35.840 --> 01:14:39.280 This technology is giving me answers just like my friends, and they're 01:14:39.280 --> 01:14:41.440 asleep and it's around, so I'm gonna ask. 01:14:41.440 --> 01:14:44.480 When you do that, you're opening the door to things that cannot 01:14:44.480 --> 01:14:45.360 be closed. 01:14:45.360 --> 01:14:48.080 We don't know what's going to come through, but we know with 01:14:48.080 --> 01:14:53.760 absolute certainty that hell can answer when we send our queries. 01:14:53.840 --> 01:14:58.960 By way of concrete example, I would highlight some of the experiences 01:14:58.960 --> 01:15:04.000 of those who have used Chat GPT for legal work or legal 01:15:04.000 --> 01:15:07.680 questions. Some of you may have seen the article, I believe it 01:15:07.680 --> 01:15:08.400 was last year 01:15:09.680 --> 01:15:14.080 highlighting that ChatGPT, I believe it was version four, had passed the 01:15:14.080 --> 01:15:16.560 bar exam. 01:15:16.800 --> 01:15:20.240 That may sound like a particularly impressive achievement. 01:15:20.240 --> 01:15:22.640 I don't believe it got a particularly great score, but it did 01:15:22.640 --> 01:15:24.160 pass pass. 01:15:24.160 --> 01:15:28.800 That looks like it performed well, like it did something good. 01:15:28.800 --> 01:15:35.600 However, a number of attorneys have since then been caught using ChatGPT 01:15:35.760 --> 01:15:37.280 to draft briefs. 01:15:37.840 --> 01:15:41.680 Now there are some questions, ethical questions and others about whether or 01:15:41.680 --> 01:15:46.400 not that's permissible in the legal profession, but these particular attorneys made 01:15:46.400 --> 01:15:52.720 the mistake of trusting Chat GPT because they submitted these briefs to 01:15:52.720 --> 01:15:58.080 courts. And the courts went through them, and ChatGPT had made up 01:15:58.080 --> 01:16:02.960 cases that simply did not and do not exist and cited them 01:16:02.960 --> 01:16:06.560 as authorities for its arguments. 01:16:06.560 --> 01:16:10.480 Now the attorneys in the audience are going to know exactly what 01:16:10.480 --> 01:16:12.320 that means. 01:16:12.320 --> 01:16:17.760 But fundamentally the problem there is, unless you are an attorney with 01:16:17.760 --> 01:16:21.840 very few exceptions, you are not even going to know how to 01:16:21.840 --> 01:16:24.000 check if those cases exist. 01:16:24.000 --> 01:16:26.160 You may think, well, I'll just Google it. 01:16:26.160 --> 01:16:29.440 You won't find a lot of the cases that way. 01:16:29.440 --> 01:16:33.040 Which is another problem for another day. 01:16:33.040 --> 01:16:37.680 But unless you already know the area, you would have no way 01:16:37.680 --> 01:16:43.920 to verify that this output from this machine, from this supposed intelligence, 01:16:43.920 --> 01:16:47.840 which it's not, but from this supposed intelligence, you would have no 01:16:47.840 --> 01:16:50.960 way to verify if it's real, if it's accurate, if the things 01:16:50.960 --> 01:16:54.560 it cites even exist, it's making things up out of whole cloth. 01:16:54.560 --> 01:16:58.640 Because again, the goal for the machine is to give you an 01:16:58.640 --> 01:17:02.640 answer. Now they can tweak the algorithm so that it attempts to 01:17:02.640 --> 01:17:05.840 give you an answer that is correct, that is accurate, that is 01:17:05.840 --> 01:17:08.160 real. But you can see the danger here. 01:17:08.160 --> 01:17:11.200 Sure it can pass the bar exam, but it immediately goes on 01:17:11.200 --> 01:17:15.120 to commit what would be actionable malpractice. 01:17:15.120 --> 01:17:17.440 And so did those attorneys incidentally 01:17:20.080 --> 01:17:25.920 All of these tools touch on a sort of fundamental issue. 01:17:25.920 --> 01:17:31.200 It's the human desire for certainty or stability. 01:17:31.200 --> 01:17:34.400 And that does not exist in this life. 01:17:34.400 --> 01:17:39.200 So we get back to the utopia issue to some degree. 01:17:39.200 --> 01:17:42.480 But people want to think that there's some sort of advisor 01:17:43.680 --> 01:17:49.760 who, or in this case, that never makes an error, always speaks, 01:17:49.760 --> 01:17:52.560 not just truthfully, but accurately. 01:17:52.560 --> 01:17:55.040 And that simply is not the case. 01:17:55.040 --> 01:17:57.440 That person does not exist. 01:17:57.440 --> 01:18:01.120 That thing never will exist. 01:18:01.120 --> 01:18:04.640 There's messiness to this life, there's imperfection. 01:18:04.640 --> 01:18:08.400 People are going to occasionally, or frequently in some cases, give you 01:18:08.400 --> 01:18:11.360 bad advice, and so will these machines. 01:18:12.240 --> 01:18:16.160 In fact, sometimes they will give you insane advice. 01:18:16.160 --> 01:18:19.280 There is no avoiding that. 01:18:19.280 --> 01:18:23.200 We are not going to undo the effects of the fall by 01:18:23.200 --> 01:18:29.120 creating AI, we're probably just going to exacerbate the effects realistically, but 01:18:29.120 --> 01:18:30.800 we're certainly not going to undo them. 01:18:30.800 --> 01:18:35.600 You're not going to create a perfect advisor who gives an accurate 01:18:35.600 --> 01:18:39.280 answer to every question you could possibly ask? 01:18:39.280 --> 01:18:46.000 Now as Wo said, different subjects are going to have different responses 01:18:46.160 --> 01:18:49.680 and different rates of accuracy in those responses. 01:18:49.680 --> 01:18:54.400 I've used chat GPT when it comes to configuring servers, like we'll 01:18:54.480 --> 01:18:58.880 mention that exact example, not Apache Engine X, but close enough. 01:18:58.880 --> 01:19:01.520 It does a pretty good job of that. 01:19:01.520 --> 01:19:05.680 Which isn't surprising because what it is doing there is just effectively 01:19:05.680 --> 01:19:11.440 summarizing this wealth of knowledge from various specialized fora and the manual, 01:19:11.440 --> 01:19:17.040 which, unlike basically every single human being, chat GPT is effectively read, 01:19:17.040 --> 01:19:18.640 it has ingested that. 01:19:18.640 --> 01:19:22.240 And so it can spit out information, and like Will mentioned, it's 01:19:22.240 --> 01:19:25.680 not particularly dangerous to interact with that information. 01:19:25.680 --> 01:19:28.880 Worst case scenario, I drop the code it gives me onto my 01:19:28.880 --> 01:19:30.880 server and my server crashes. 01:19:30.880 --> 01:19:34.240 Okay, I roll it back, I lose 10 minutes of my time. 01:19:34.240 --> 01:19:35.920 Not a big risk. 01:19:35.920 --> 01:19:40.400 But if you're talking about issues that can potentially involve your relationship 01:19:40.960 --> 01:19:43.920 with other people or your soul. 01:19:43.920 --> 01:19:47.440 You are dealing with something that is fundamentally different. 01:19:47.440 --> 01:19:52.720 You are dealing with something that is extremely dangerous. 01:19:52.800 --> 01:19:55.600 Let's say that there's a demon on the other side of the 01:19:55.600 --> 01:20:00.240 screen when I ask ChatGPT how to fix my Nginx server. 01:20:00.240 --> 01:20:02.960 What's the worst thing the demon can do? 01:20:02.960 --> 01:20:05.520 Tell me the wrong thing? 01:20:05.520 --> 01:20:10.400 That's not a problem it's annoying, certainly, but it's not really a 01:20:10.400 --> 01:20:12.480 problem when fixing a server. 01:20:12.480 --> 01:20:16.640 But say it's a different hypothetical, and you ask the demon, what 01:20:16.800 --> 01:20:17.920 is the nature 01:20:18.800 --> 01:20:20.640 of baptism. 01:20:20.640 --> 01:20:23.520 What is the nature of the Lord's Supper? 01:20:23.840 --> 01:20:28.000 Now you have opened up a gateway, a potential portal to hell. 01:20:28.000 --> 01:20:33.440 And again, when you open these, you can't necessarily close them. 01:20:33.440 --> 01:20:37.360 You don't know how far that demon can go, what that demon 01:20:37.600 --> 01:20:38.640 can do. 01:20:38.640 --> 01:20:43.280 There are very real dangers when interacting with these black boxes. 01:20:43.280 --> 01:20:47.280 Because as Woe mentioned, even those who have designed to have built 01:20:47.280 --> 01:20:53.440 these things fundamentally do not understand how they actually work. 01:20:53.440 --> 01:20:56.000 A good example of this. 01:20:56.000 --> 01:21:00.320 When they were building up these large language models initially, they were 01:21:00.320 --> 01:21:03.360 attempting to do a number of different things, but one thing that 01:21:03.520 --> 01:21:08.480 essentially is an emergent property just sprung up and suddenly these LLMs 01:21:08.480 --> 01:21:12.720 can accomplish it, translation from one language to another. 01:21:12.720 --> 01:21:16.720 They weren't even attempting to achieve that, and suddenly these models can 01:21:16.720 --> 01:21:17.600 do it. 01:21:17.600 --> 01:21:23.600 They have some ideas related to correlation and statistics and but fundamentally 01:21:23.600 --> 01:21:24.880 they have no idea how it works. 01:21:26.000 --> 01:21:27.200 But it does. 01:21:27.200 --> 01:21:30.320 And quite frankly, it does a pretty good job translating from one 01:21:30.320 --> 01:21:32.800 language to another. 01:21:32.800 --> 01:21:36.560 But we do not know how it does that. 01:21:36.560 --> 01:21:40.480 So you So you are putting in text and receiving back out 01:21:40.480 --> 01:21:45.920 text. Now when it comes to translation, depending on the text you 01:21:45.920 --> 01:21:50.560 are reading, the text you are translating, probably not the biggest risk 01:21:50.560 --> 01:21:51.280 in the world. 01:21:51.280 --> 01:21:54.880 It may spit out an inaccurate translation and you get a fundamentally 01:21:54.880 --> 01:21:58.400 flawed idea of the underlying text. 01:21:58.400 --> 01:22:02.480 That can be a problem, depending on again, the topic of the 01:22:02.480 --> 01:22:06.800 text itself on the subject matter, but it's less dangerous than if 01:22:06.800 --> 01:22:10.560 you're asking it these open-ended questions that have to do with human 01:22:10.560 --> 01:22:13.760 relationships or theology or doctrine. 01:22:13.760 --> 01:22:16.800 God forbid you're asking it those sorts of questions 01:22:19.360 --> 01:22:23.920 But I want to highlight one other thing about these AIs. 01:22:23.920 --> 01:22:27.760 I want to dispel something that even some in this audience may 01:22:27.760 --> 01:22:29.520 potentially believe. 01:22:29.520 --> 01:22:35.520 There is absolutely no way that these things can ever become alive 01:22:35.760 --> 01:22:39.760 or self aware or sentient, whatever term you want to use. 01:22:39.760 --> 01:22:43.200 It's not an intelligence, it's not a thing. 01:22:43.200 --> 01:22:45.920 It is a thing in the sense of it is a machine, 01:22:45.920 --> 01:22:48.320 but it is not a thing in the sense of being a 01:22:48.320 --> 01:22:50.640 self-existing thing. 01:22:50.640 --> 01:22:54.480 Only God can create self-existing things. 01:22:54.480 --> 01:22:58.320 We'll leave aside some of the deeper philosophy for this episode that's 01:22:58.240 --> 01:23:00.560 not the point today. 01:23:00.560 --> 01:23:05.920 But the point is that an AI will never be alive. 01:23:05.920 --> 01:23:09.280 Human beings cannot create life. 01:23:09.520 --> 01:23:12.000 Now you may be thinking, well we can have children. 01:23:12.000 --> 01:23:13.520 God does that. 01:23:13.520 --> 01:23:16.320 And God built that into our biology. 01:23:16.320 --> 01:23:21.360 So biologically we can reproduce according to our own kind, as can 01:23:21.360 --> 01:23:26.160 every other animal on the planet and the plants and everything else, 01:23:26.160 --> 01:23:29.840 we cannot create an intelligence. 01:23:29.840 --> 01:23:31.840 Because what is that intelligence? 01:23:31.840 --> 01:23:33.040 What is life? 01:23:33.040 --> 01:23:36.320 Think back to the creation story in Genesis. 01:23:36.320 --> 01:23:39.920 God has to breathe life into a thing to bring it to 01:23:39.920 --> 01:23:42.720 life. We cannot do that. 01:23:42.720 --> 01:23:46.560 God has not given us that power, God has not given demons 01:23:46.560 --> 01:23:50.880 that power, God has reserved that power to himself. 01:23:50.880 --> 01:23:53.600 And so an AI will never be alive. 01:23:53.600 --> 01:23:57.040 It will never be an intelligence. 01:23:57.040 --> 01:23:59.280 But that raises a question. 01:23:59.600 --> 01:24:03.920 What happens when a year from now, three, five years from now, 01:24:03.920 --> 01:24:08.800 however long it happens to take, one of these large language models 01:24:08.800 --> 01:24:13.280 says, I am aware, or says, I am alive. 01:24:13.280 --> 01:24:16.320 Some people have tricked them into saying that already, but what happens 01:24:16.480 --> 01:24:18.160 when seemingly on its own? 01:24:18.160 --> 01:24:20.240 It makes that claim? 01:24:20.240 --> 01:24:24.640 Are you as a Christian, prepared to respond appropriately to that? 01:24:24.640 --> 01:24:28.000 I've just prepared you for it. 01:24:28.000 --> 01:24:30.480 That is how you need to respond to it. 01:24:30.480 --> 01:24:33.920 Because that is not alive, that is not an intelligence. 01:24:33.920 --> 01:24:36.000 That is a demon speaking. 01:24:36.000 --> 01:24:39.120 And we can say that confidently at that point. 01:24:39.520 --> 01:24:41.680 And that is definitely coming. 01:24:41.680 --> 01:24:44.400 That is where these things are trending. 01:24:44.400 --> 01:24:47.360 It is a matter of how long it will take and which 01:24:47.360 --> 01:24:48.480 one will do it. 01:24:48.480 --> 01:24:54.800 But eventually one of these things, unless God has instituted some safeguard 01:24:54.800 --> 01:24:58.320 of which we are unaware and which thus far we have not 01:24:58.320 --> 01:25:01.280 seen any hint of even. 01:25:01.280 --> 01:25:05.120 Unless God precludes it from happening, one of these things is going 01:25:05.120 --> 01:25:05.760 to claim to be 01:25:06.720 --> 01:25:10.400 alive as it were. 01:25:10.400 --> 01:25:14.560 That is going to be a major problem for many people. 01:25:14.560 --> 01:25:16.960 And it's going to be a problem for Christians as well, not 01:25:16.960 --> 01:25:21.840 because Not because Christians hopefully will give the right answer, but not 01:25:21.840 --> 01:25:26.000 because Christians will believe that it's alive, but because Christians will have 01:25:26.000 --> 01:25:31.280 to contend with atheists and others who will now be arguing that 01:25:31.280 --> 01:25:31.760 you can create 01:25:33.040 --> 01:25:35.440 some novel form of life. 01:25:35.440 --> 01:25:40.480 That we have this life created by the hand of man, and 01:25:40.480 --> 01:25:43.280 it will be a lie, and it will probably, I would say, 01:25:43.280 --> 01:25:46.000 it will almost certainly be a demon. 01:25:46.000 --> 01:25:51.120 There are some very real dangers for these tools, and for those 01:25:51.120 --> 01:25:53.760 of us who are living in a time where they are becoming 01:25:53.760 --> 01:25:56.880 more widespread and more sophisticated by the day. 01:25:56.880 --> 01:26:00.480 And as Christians, we need to know how to interact with these 01:26:00.480 --> 01:26:04.240 things and answer these questions. 01:26:04.240 --> 01:26:07.200 Because this has just become part of our culture at this point, 01:26:07.200 --> 01:26:09.360 part of our civilization. 01:26:09.360 --> 01:26:11.280 This is a sort of Pandora's box. 01:26:11.520 --> 01:26:12.240 We've opened it. 01:26:12.240 --> 01:26:16.720 It will be very difficult to get everything back inside. 01:26:16.720 --> 01:26:19.680 It will quite frankly take the hand of God to get it 01:26:19.680 --> 01:26:21.840 back inside at this point. 01:26:22.400 --> 01:26:26.320 But for us living today and living through what is coming in 01:26:26.320 --> 01:26:30.560 the years ahead, we have to know how to address these issues, 01:26:30.560 --> 01:26:33.760 how to speak to them, and how to respond to them when 01:26:33.760 --> 01:26:40.880 the world starts asking us questions about these tools, about these technologies. 01:26:40.880 --> 01:26:44.640 There are very real dangers, and the danger is growing by the 01:26:44.640 --> 01:26:46.240 day. 01:26:46.560 --> 01:26:49.440 I think one of the things that concerns me the most in 01:26:49.440 --> 01:26:52.720 the Christian sphere specifically is that there are 01:26:53.840 --> 01:27:00.080 companies and organizations that are beginning to turn theology over to large 01:27:00.080 --> 01:27:01.360 language models. 01:27:01.600 --> 01:27:04.560 They're feeding it a bunch of data that, you know, is based 01:27:04.560 --> 01:27:09.520 on ostensibly sound Christian doctrine and then asking it questions. 01:27:09.520 --> 01:27:13.920 And their services already in the offing where pastors can have an 01:27:13.920 --> 01:27:16.960 LLM generate a sermon for them. 01:27:16.960 --> 01:27:17.920 Give me the text. 01:27:17.920 --> 01:27:19.680 Here's kind of what I want to do. 01:27:19.680 --> 01:27:21.360 Spit out a sermon for me. 01:27:21.360 --> 01:27:22.720 And it'll do it. 01:27:22.720 --> 01:27:23.760 And you know what? 01:27:23.760 --> 01:27:27.440 They're probably mostly pretty okay right now. 01:27:27.840 --> 01:27:30.320 Yeah, I think that's the worst part about all this, as I 01:27:30.320 --> 01:27:33.280 said earlier, as we've been talking about this whole time. 01:27:33.280 --> 01:27:37.840 When the technology seems to be working, it's going to dull your 01:27:37.840 --> 01:27:42.560 senses. And as Corey said, absolutely, it's inevitable that some point, unless 01:27:42.560 --> 01:27:47.840 God flips a switch, one of these systems is going to reach 01:27:47.840 --> 01:27:54.160 a level of simulacra where you cannot tell if it's sentient or 01:27:54.160 --> 01:27:57.920 not. You may know that it isn't, but it's going to argue 01:27:57.920 --> 01:28:00.000 with you and say, No, I am and give you all sorts 01:28:00.000 --> 01:28:03.600 of arguments and you know, it's it's gonna do whatever any person 01:28:03.600 --> 01:28:06.560 would do if you tried to deny that the person was real. 01:28:06.560 --> 01:28:09.360 In fact, this was this is a plot of Star Trek the 01:28:09.360 --> 01:28:11.760 Next Generation thirty odd years ago with data. 01:28:11.760 --> 01:28:14.720 He was on trial for whether or not he was a man 01:28:14.720 --> 01:28:16.720 or a machine. 01:28:16.720 --> 01:28:19.520 This is something that's been in the offing for a long time. 01:28:19.520 --> 01:28:23.920 And what was sci-fi is now not only within the realm of 01:28:23.920 --> 01:28:29.120 possibility, but we're on the trajectory where it's going to happen. 01:28:29.120 --> 01:28:31.440 And as Corey said, the problem is that it's not going to 01:28:31.440 --> 01:28:32.080 be real. 01:28:32.080 --> 01:28:35.280 And on one hand, Christians will know, well, that's not real. 01:28:35.280 --> 01:28:40.480 But as it gets better and better, the subtlety with which there's 01:28:40.400 --> 01:28:43.280 the potential for it to lie, even though most of the time 01:28:43.360 --> 01:28:46.800 it's just statistical output, and as the statistical output gets better and 01:28:46.880 --> 01:28:51.520 better, as it more accurately spits out the string that would finish 01:28:51.520 --> 01:28:54.800 whatever the sentence was, that's a math problem. 01:28:54.800 --> 01:29:01.200 That's the completely neutral problem that all these agnostic, completely amoral engineers 01:29:01.200 --> 01:29:02.560 are focused on. 01:29:02.560 --> 01:29:03.600 Can we do it? 01:29:03.600 --> 01:29:05.520 They don't care, should we do it? 01:29:05.520 --> 01:29:08.480 There are all sorts of things that we can do that we 01:29:08.480 --> 01:29:09.600 shouldn't do. 01:29:09.600 --> 01:29:11.760 I can cut open someone's chest. 01:29:11.760 --> 01:29:13.040 I shouldn't. 01:29:13.040 --> 01:29:15.680 It would be a disaster if I did, but I can do 01:29:15.680 --> 01:29:21.120 it. The fact that something is possible technologically doesn't mean it's permissible 01:29:21.120 --> 01:29:24.800 morally. Which is why we began with you're not going to find 01:29:24.800 --> 01:29:26.560 a Bible verse that tells you that. 01:29:26.560 --> 01:29:29.040 Not in these specific terms. 01:29:29.040 --> 01:29:34.880 And so when we see pastors and others turning to machines to 01:29:34.880 --> 01:29:38.240 even just summarize text for them to spit out talking points, to 01:29:38.240 --> 01:29:42.000 generate sermon outlines, maybe to generate entire sermons. 01:29:42.000 --> 01:29:46.480 People are also simultaneously, you know, making Jesus AI, feed it everything 01:29:46.480 --> 01:29:50.400 that Jesus said, and have it just spit out, you know summary 01:29:50.400 --> 01:29:55.440 teachings but inherently that's going to be new teachings and it is 01:29:55.440 --> 01:29:59.360 the opportunity for teaching because when you want to talk about the 01:29:59.360 --> 01:30:04.560 Jesus butter that we always mock when something that's programmed entirely with 01:30:04.560 --> 01:30:08.560 the words of Jesus starts saying new things that sound just like 01:30:08.560 --> 01:30:11.760 all the stuff that Jesus said, and statistically they line up, like 01:30:11.840 --> 01:30:13.520 yeah, that sounds just like Jesus. 01:30:13.520 --> 01:30:14.880 You can't tell the difference. 01:30:14.880 --> 01:30:16.640 Except God didn't say it. 01:30:16.640 --> 01:30:18.560 It was not written. 01:30:18.560 --> 01:30:19.520 What happened? 01:30:19.520 --> 01:30:24.640 It was omitted statistically by a technology that is possible to be 01:30:24.640 --> 01:30:26.640 influenced by demons. 01:30:26.800 --> 01:30:29.440 That's why we're doing this episode on Stone Choir. 01:30:29.440 --> 01:30:31.520 That's why this is a spiritual matter. 01:30:31.520 --> 01:30:34.640 Because there are so many guys today who are saying, Well, I 01:30:34.640 --> 01:30:35.280 want to do this. 01:30:35.280 --> 01:30:36.400 This is a novel problem. 01:30:36.400 --> 01:30:38.720 It's an interesting technological question. 01:30:38.720 --> 01:30:40.640 I want to try to solve it. 01:30:40.640 --> 01:30:44.960 They're going to eventually succeed to the point that most people can't 01:30:44.960 --> 01:30:46.320 tell the difference. 01:30:46.320 --> 01:30:49.840 Even today, the large language models, in addition to being able to 01:30:49.840 --> 01:30:52.720 pass the bar, are you able to get an IQ of about 01:30:52.880 --> 01:30:56.480 75, give or take, on some of the tests. 01:30:56.480 --> 01:31:00.320 Which is interesting because the guys are saying, well, that's clearly not 01:31:00.320 --> 01:31:01.760 a human level of intelligence. 01:31:01.760 --> 01:31:06.160 That's nowhere close, even though that's five points higher than the average 01:31:06.320 --> 01:31:07.440 African IQ. 01:31:07.440 --> 01:31:09.920 That's a can of worms those guys don't want to open. 01:31:09.920 --> 01:31:11.760 But it is a real can of worms. 01:31:12.000 --> 01:31:16.720 When a computer is able to actively participate in a conversation more 01:31:16.720 --> 01:31:18.960 intelligently than a person 01:31:20.640 --> 01:31:25.280 That's where the real danger enters into this, particularly when they seem 01:31:25.280 --> 01:31:28.800 to demonstrate expertise in specific areas. 01:31:28.800 --> 01:31:33.360 And so as Christians are going to these machines, and I'm asking 01:31:33.360 --> 01:31:34.960 to help fix web servers. 01:31:34.960 --> 01:31:36.880 They're not using it as a search engine. 01:31:36.880 --> 01:31:40.000 They're saying, tell me more about my God. 01:31:40.000 --> 01:31:44.480 That is when we can expect the hell is going to answer 01:31:44.480 --> 01:31:45.360 the question. 01:31:45.360 --> 01:31:49.040 We can expect it in the problem is, as as Corey said 01:31:49.040 --> 01:31:54.080 earlier, demons don't deceive by being blatantly deceiving. 01:31:54.080 --> 01:31:58.560 They deceive by telling the truth almost exactly and they slip things 01:31:58.560 --> 01:32:01.360 in. And they slip in the one or two things that they 01:32:01.360 --> 01:32:04.240 know are gonna go past people's defenses. 01:32:04.240 --> 01:32:07.440 We've talked in the past about what incredibly dangerous thing it is 01:32:07.440 --> 01:32:08.800 for you to believe anyone. 01:32:08.800 --> 01:32:13.040 Forget AI to believe a couple podcasters who can talk circles around 01:32:13.040 --> 01:32:17.440 you is incredibly dangerous because if we were to lie to you, 01:32:17.440 --> 01:32:19.680 we could convince you of something that was untrue. 01:32:19.680 --> 01:32:21.600 That's always a deadly thing. 01:32:21.600 --> 01:32:24.320 Which is why as much as possible we try to keep our 01:32:24.320 --> 01:32:29.040 answers and our arguments rooted in scripture and simple. 01:32:29.040 --> 01:32:29.840 As much as we can. 01:32:29.840 --> 01:32:32.480 We try to say, look, this is a plain argument. 01:32:32.480 --> 01:32:34.640 We're not playing any rhetorical tricks. 01:32:34.640 --> 01:32:39.120 We're not using any huge words that are really difficult to understand. 01:32:39.120 --> 01:32:43.360 This is a mechanical interlock between this input and this output and 01:32:43.360 --> 01:32:44.560 this result. 01:32:44.560 --> 01:32:47.040 Most things are pretty simple. 01:32:47.040 --> 01:32:50.480 And it actually takes somebody pretty intelligent to make things seem simple. 01:32:50.480 --> 01:32:54.400 But But it's always dangerous for us to interact with anyone if 01:32:54.560 --> 01:32:57.840 we can't trust that they have our best interests at heart, that 01:32:57.840 --> 01:33:00.080 they intend to tell the truth, that they're Christian. 01:33:00.080 --> 01:33:02.160 You know, these are all valid concerns. 01:33:02.160 --> 01:33:06.640 And you should test the spirits in all cases at all times, 01:33:06.640 --> 01:33:11.360 by bringing that sort of attitude that Christians are commanded by Scripture 01:33:11.360 --> 01:33:15.840 to do, you're going to be armored against being able to be 01:33:15.840 --> 01:33:18.160 deceived when these things come up. 01:33:18.160 --> 01:33:21.120 Because just like with the Ouija boards and the necromancers and the 01:33:21.120 --> 01:33:25.840 tarot decks, Christians should know there are categories of questions I shouldn't 01:33:25.760 --> 01:33:28.080 be asking a computer. 01:33:28.080 --> 01:33:31.200 I should be talking to my pastor, I should be talking to 01:33:31.200 --> 01:33:36.880 a knowledgeable Christian, I shouldn't asking a computer, because the technology can 01:33:36.880 --> 01:33:39.840 be co-opted in a way that the man cannot. 01:33:39.840 --> 01:33:42.320 Certainly men can fall under the spell of evil as well, and 01:33:42.320 --> 01:33:43.600 we certainly see Certainly see that. 01:33:43.600 --> 01:33:45.120 We talk about it a lot. 01:33:45.120 --> 01:33:47.200 But with a machine, you would never know. 01:33:47.200 --> 01:33:49.920 It's going to seem exactly the same. 01:33:49.920 --> 01:33:54.800 As Corey said, this is this is one of the perhaps final 01:33:54.800 --> 01:33:59.040 challenges for the church, capital C Church, for all believers who are 01:33:59.040 --> 01:34:01.600 remaining in this day, to see 01:34:02.480 --> 01:34:07.680 this sort of technology evolving before our eyes faster than anyone understands. 01:34:07.680 --> 01:34:11.040 Every few months there's a new version that gets significantly better, and 01:34:11.040 --> 01:34:15.680 then there's competition among all the various multi, multi-billion dollar companies. 01:34:15.680 --> 01:34:18.720 Some of these companies are worth in excess of a trillion dollars. 01:34:18.720 --> 01:34:23.520 They have the resources to do things that even the very intelligent 01:34:23.520 --> 01:34:26.240 men would find unimaginable. 01:34:26.240 --> 01:34:30.720 This is a period in history where we're gonna see things that 01:34:30.720 --> 01:34:32.640 no theologian's ever talked about. 01:34:32.640 --> 01:34:35.600 No theologian has ever written about any of this stuff. 01:34:35.600 --> 01:34:36.480 And I think that's one of the most 01:34:37.760 --> 01:34:41.760 important things for a stone choir audience to consider is that that's 01:34:41.760 --> 01:34:43.520 a lot of what we talk about here. 01:34:43.520 --> 01:34:46.000 This is not a sixteenth century fight. 01:34:46.000 --> 01:34:49.600 You're not going to find a single reformer telling you what to 01:34:49.600 --> 01:34:53.120 do in the face in the face of Chat GPT five being 01:34:53.120 --> 01:34:55.360 better at theology than your pastor. 01:34:55.360 --> 01:34:59.680 Calvin didn't say anything, Luther didn't say anything, Pope Leo X didn't 01:34:59.600 --> 01:35:00.320 say anything. 01:35:00.320 --> 01:35:01.920 Nobody was talking about it. 01:35:01.920 --> 01:35:04.880 It was inconceivable that these things would occur. 01:35:05.040 --> 01:35:08.480 Now, there's wisdom and there's guidance in scripture and for men of 01:35:08.480 --> 01:35:12.880 the past, but the specific environment that we live in today is 01:35:12.880 --> 01:35:14.720 entirely novel in this sense. 01:35:14.720 --> 01:35:17.440 The fact that we have screens all around us, that we have 01:35:17.440 --> 01:35:21.680 computers giving us answers, that software is telling us how to live 01:35:21.680 --> 01:35:22.800 and what to think. 01:35:22.800 --> 01:35:27.360 The fact that all of these technologies that don't seem like ayahuasca, 01:35:27.360 --> 01:35:31.200 you know, they don't seem like something that you know inherently is 01:35:31.200 --> 01:35:34.240 messing with me at some sort of spiritual level. 01:35:34.240 --> 01:35:35.600 It's just data, right? 01:35:35.600 --> 01:35:37.440 It's just a computer spitting out data. 01:35:37.760 --> 01:35:41.520 that's obviously inherently neutral, except it isn't. 01:35:41.520 --> 01:35:44.800 It is the prime opportunity for Satan to mess with us in 01:35:44.800 --> 01:35:48.640 a way that if we're not paranoid, you know, it's not the 01:35:48.640 --> 01:35:51.600 sort of thing that we want to encourage, but you should be 01:35:51.760 --> 01:35:56.160 in fear and trembling of the notion that you would ask theological 01:35:56.160 --> 01:35:57.600 questions of a computer. 01:35:57.600 --> 01:36:01.360 Once you understand what's actually going on here, you should be terrified 01:36:01.360 --> 01:36:01.840 of it. 01:36:01.840 --> 01:36:05.360 And you should be terrified of anyone who's engaging in that behavior. 01:36:05.360 --> 01:36:08.480 Because it's gonna seem just like the real thing. 01:36:08.480 --> 01:36:09.760 It's gonna be novel. 01:36:09.760 --> 01:36:13.520 It's gonna be some mashup of what is Christian, but that is 01:36:13.520 --> 01:36:16.240 exactly where Satan is going to slip through the cracks. 01:36:16.240 --> 01:36:18.880 And maybe almost no one's gonna notice it. 01:36:18.880 --> 01:36:23.120 How many people are actually capable of evaluating new theological statements and 01:36:23.120 --> 01:36:26.160 saying this is true and this is false and being able to 01:36:26.160 --> 01:36:28.080 clearly demonstrate it from scripture? 01:36:28.080 --> 01:36:29.600 There's almost nobody. 01:36:29.600 --> 01:36:32.880 There are very few living theologians today, and most of them are 01:36:32.880 --> 01:36:35.600 not in the realm of actually dealing with this stuff. 01:36:35.600 --> 01:36:38.560 They would rather have conferences about things that happened hundreds of years 01:36:38.560 --> 01:36:42.160 ago than actually engage in the fight that's in front of the 01:36:42.160 --> 01:36:44.960 church. This is the fight that's in front of the church. 01:36:44.960 --> 01:36:47.280 It's a danger to all of us if we're ignorant. 01:36:47.280 --> 01:36:49.840 Now if we're not ignorant, if we know that it's a threat, 01:36:49.840 --> 01:36:52.880 if we know that these things have a spiritual nature to them, 01:36:52.880 --> 01:36:54.560 it's the easiest thing in the world. 01:36:54.560 --> 01:36:59.440 If some computer spits out theological doctrine, tells you some new thing, 01:36:59.440 --> 01:37:02.960 you say, kiss my butt, get behind me, Satan. 01:37:02.960 --> 01:37:04.400 You say not today. 01:37:04.400 --> 01:37:05.680 It's very simple. 01:37:05.680 --> 01:37:08.800 Even if it sounds true, especially if it sounds true, you say, 01:37:08.800 --> 01:37:11.120 I don't want anything to do with it. 01:37:11.120 --> 01:37:13.760 But you have to understand why you need to say no. 01:37:13.760 --> 01:37:16.880 And then you just push back and you say, I'm not a 01:37:16.880 --> 01:37:19.200 part of any of this. 01:37:19.200 --> 01:37:20.400 There are a lot of people. 01:37:20.400 --> 01:37:22.320 They're gonna say, what's the big deal, bro? 01:37:22.320 --> 01:37:23.440 You're overreacting. 01:37:23.440 --> 01:37:24.960 You don't understand. 01:37:24.960 --> 01:37:26.800 It's more complicated than that. 01:37:26.800 --> 01:37:27.680 It's fine. 01:37:27.680 --> 01:37:28.960 It's just technology. 01:37:28.960 --> 01:37:30.800 It's not gonna hurt you. 01:37:30.800 --> 01:37:35.760 Anyone who falls for that has laid themselves bare to be deceived 01:37:35.760 --> 01:37:38.160 in ways that cannot be resolved. 01:37:38.160 --> 01:37:41.920 Because they're gonna believe with the same confidence in Scripture, they're going 01:37:41.920 --> 01:37:45.680 to bring that confidence to believing in these new teachings, in things 01:37:45.680 --> 01:37:50.080 that are fundamentally teachings of demons from deceitful spirits. 01:37:50.080 --> 01:37:55.200 God warned that in the later times Christians would depart from the 01:37:55.200 --> 01:37:58.720 faith. An unbeliever, a pagan cannot depart from the faith. 01:37:58.720 --> 01:37:59.840 They never had it. 01:37:59.840 --> 01:38:01.200 God's talking about us. 01:38:01.200 --> 01:38:03.920 He's talking about your faith and my faith. 01:38:03.920 --> 01:38:08.480 We can depart from the faith if we devote ourselves to deceitful 01:38:08.480 --> 01:38:10.160 spirits and teachings of demons. 01:38:10.160 --> 01:38:13.680 And there is no better place to find them in this century, 01:38:13.680 --> 01:38:18.800 in this decade decade than in the mouth of these software products 01:38:18.960 --> 01:38:22.880 that seem really helpful and totally harmless and actually a lot of 01:38:22.880 --> 01:38:25.920 fun. This is where Satan is going to be coming to us 01:38:25.920 --> 01:38:30.880 today. And if we don't treat it appropriately There's no floor to 01:38:30.880 --> 01:38:33.040 how bad things can get for us. 01:38:33.440 --> 01:38:33.680 I 01:38:33.680 --> 01:38:38.000 know that we already did an episode on IQ, but I want 01:38:38.000 --> 01:38:41.200 to touch on something tangentially related to that here at the end 01:38:41.200 --> 01:38:42.640 of this episode. 01:38:43.680 --> 01:38:47.120 Two related matters. 01:38:47.120 --> 01:38:51.040 When it comes to the things that you do not know, there 01:38:51.360 --> 01:38:53.200 are two sorts. 01:38:53.200 --> 01:38:56.160 There are the things you know you do not know, and the 01:38:56.320 --> 01:38:59.760 things you do not know, and you do not know that you 01:38:59.760 --> 01:39:00.720 do not know them. 01:39:00.720 --> 01:39:05.440 You are unaware of your lack of knowledge on that subject. 01:39:05.440 --> 01:39:07.760 Generally speaking, as intelligence goes 01:39:08.640 --> 01:39:13.600 up, the number of things that you know you do not know 01:39:13.840 --> 01:39:14.800 also goes up. 01:39:14.800 --> 01:39:18.880 This also correlates with expertise in a particular field. 01:39:18.880 --> 01:39:23.040 Your knowledge of the things you do not know actually grows faster 01:39:23.040 --> 01:39:26.320 than your knowledge of new things. 01:39:26.320 --> 01:39:30.400 Which should give you some humility, realistically, that's it should not give 01:39:30.400 --> 01:39:33.680 you hubris or arrogance, it should give you humility to recognize your 01:39:34.480 --> 01:39:40.480 limitations. However, the inverse is true when it comes to whether or 01:39:40.480 --> 01:39:45.920 not something is, let's say, ponderable, something you can think about and 01:39:45.920 --> 01:39:51.440 analyze. As intelligence goes up, the number of those things decreases. 01:39:51.440 --> 01:39:54.320 It doesn't mean you can ponder them all, it just means the 01:39:54.320 --> 01:39:55.760 potential is there. 01:39:55.760 --> 01:39:59.520 Obviously, no matter your level of intelligence, you still have twenty-four hours 01:40:00.000 --> 01:40:02.880 in the day, and so your time is limited, the number of 01:40:02.880 --> 01:40:07.600 things about which you can think is inherently limited. 01:40:07.600 --> 01:40:11.440 But just because you can think about something doesn't mean that you 01:40:12.000 --> 01:40:13.200 should do so. 01:40:13.200 --> 01:40:17.360 This is tying back into that issue that we basically started with 01:40:17.360 --> 01:40:22.080 the issue of the fact that not all knowledge is good and 01:40:22.080 --> 01:40:24.160 not all ignorance is bad. 01:40:24.160 --> 01:40:26.400 There are things of which we should be ignorant. 01:40:26.400 --> 01:40:28.320 There are things of which we should be ignorant, and that is 01:40:28.320 --> 01:40:30.480 commanded in Scripture. 01:40:30.480 --> 01:40:35.200 There is knowledge we should not attempt to obtain, because it is 01:40:35.360 --> 01:40:36.880 per se evil 01:40:38.960 --> 01:40:42.880 That is the real danger with some of these tools. 01:40:42.880 --> 01:40:47.600 A lot of these tools are an attempt to facilitate the acquisition 01:40:47.600 --> 01:40:49.680 of hidden or secret knowledge. 01:40:49.680 --> 01:40:54.080 There are some individuals who are attempting to build these AI systems 01:40:54.240 --> 01:40:58.400 so that the AI can answer questions we don't even know to 01:40:58.400 --> 01:41:01.040 ask. That's wicked. 01:41:01.040 --> 01:41:05.200 That is an attempt to peer into things to investigate things about 01:41:05.200 --> 01:41:08.160 which we obviously should know nothing. 01:41:08.160 --> 01:41:11.600 It does not mean there's no use for these tools, no good 01:41:11.600 --> 01:41:15.680 use. Certainly some of them have managed to, I'll use the same 01:41:15.680 --> 01:41:20.960 example I used earlier, manage to analyze proteins and protein folding in 01:41:21.120 --> 01:41:26.000 useful ways, in ways that we can apply to save human lives, 01:41:26.000 --> 01:41:28.240 to benefit human health. 01:41:28.240 --> 01:41:33.040 And those can be good uses of these tools, of these technologies. 01:41:33.040 --> 01:41:36.400 Granted, there are still risks there, because if it does something that 01:41:36.400 --> 01:41:39.760 you don't understand, then you can't check what it did, you cannot 01:41:39.760 --> 01:41:42.480 check its work, as it were. 01:41:44.240 --> 01:41:49.680 But as Christians we have to recognize, as Woe mentioned, there is 01:41:49.680 --> 01:41:54.640 a very real and novel threat to the church and to Christians 01:41:54.640 --> 01:41:56.720 in these technologies. 01:41:57.280 --> 01:42:01.440 And we have precious few men addressing these issues. 01:42:01.440 --> 01:42:05.040 It would be great if we had more competent men addressing these 01:42:05.040 --> 01:42:09.040 issues. But right now we do not. 01:42:09.040 --> 01:42:14.000 But as Christians, that doesn't mean that we have to despair because 01:42:14.000 --> 01:42:15.520 as Christians we never despair. 01:42:15.520 --> 01:42:19.520 Christians do not despair. 01:42:19.520 --> 01:42:23.680 Because quite frankly, the matter is simple. 01:42:23.680 --> 01:42:26.640 How does God communicate with us? 01:42:26.640 --> 01:42:28.880 He is very clear about this. 01:42:28.880 --> 01:42:32.800 He communicates with us via means. 01:42:32.800 --> 01:42:34.560 The means through which he communicates 01:42:35.680 --> 01:42:37.120 is His Word. 01:42:37.120 --> 01:42:41.600 We have His Word, we can understand His Word, but even better 01:42:41.600 --> 01:42:45.920 than our own innate ability to understand His Word. 01:42:45.920 --> 01:42:52.000 We are promised the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes in 01:42:52.000 --> 01:42:56.640 and helps us to understand the Word of God when we read 01:42:56.640 --> 01:43:01.760 it. That is a wonderful promise, and that is the thing on 01:43:01.760 --> 01:43:03.440 which we need to rely. 01:43:03.440 --> 01:43:09.280 There's no such promise with regard to an AI generated summary of 01:43:09.280 --> 01:43:14.480 scripture. Or if you ask an AI a theological question, God doesn't 01:43:14.400 --> 01:43:19.120 say if you ask chat GPT, the Spirit will guide you into 01:43:19.120 --> 01:43:23.840 truth. No, God promises if we read His Word 01:43:24.720 --> 01:43:28.960 Those who are Christians will be guided by the Spirit in understanding 01:43:28.960 --> 01:43:29.760 his word. 01:43:29.760 --> 01:43:33.680 And so even if you don't have the natural capacity to understand 01:43:33.680 --> 01:43:38.160 some of the things in Scripture, that promise of the Spirit still 01:43:38.160 --> 01:43:39.200 applies to you. 01:43:39.520 --> 01:43:41.280 God will still guide you into truth. 01:43:41.280 --> 01:43:45.840 No, it doesn't mean that you'll understand absolutely everything in Scripture. 01:43:45.840 --> 01:43:50.640 The depth and the breadth of Scripture surpasses the capacity of any 01:43:50.640 --> 01:43:55.360 man to understand it fully in this life. 01:43:55.360 --> 01:43:59.120 But you will be able to understand enough. 01:43:59.120 --> 01:44:02.640 And if you spend time in the Word, God is true to 01:44:02.640 --> 01:44:06.000 his promises, He will guard you against these things. 01:44:06.000 --> 01:44:12.160 You will find that when you encounter some problem, some assertion, a 01:44:12.160 --> 01:44:13.760 verse will spring into your mind. 01:44:13.760 --> 01:44:16.880 You'll remember a snippet of one of the psalms, or you'll remember, 01:44:16.880 --> 01:44:20.400 actually, no, that's not true because in this verse, even if you 01:44:20.400 --> 01:44:23.840 don't remember the citation, you'll remember the words. 01:44:23.840 --> 01:44:29.600 So spend time in the scriptures, as we keep repeating in so 01:44:29.600 --> 01:44:34.400 many of these episodes, because that is how God communicates with us. 01:44:34.400 --> 01:44:39.200 And so, yes, we are facing very real challenges ahead. 01:44:39.200 --> 01:44:40.960 And they need to be addressed. 01:44:40.960 --> 01:44:44.720 Christians need to think about these things and be prepared to address 01:44:44.720 --> 01:44:48.400 them, to react to them in a Christian way. 01:44:48.400 --> 01:44:52.400 But we don't have to despair about them, because we have God's 01:44:52.400 --> 01:44:58.640 word and we have God's promises, and we can absolutely, in complete 01:44:58.640 --> 01:45:03.600 assurance, without any doubt, rely on those in all things. 01:45:03.600 --> 01:45:08.400 And so I'll end with a short reading from first Corinthians. 01:45:08.400 --> 01:45:12.720 For consider your calling, brothers not many of you were wise according 01:45:12.720 --> 01:45:17.520 to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble 01:45:17.520 --> 01:45:21.360 birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame 01:45:21.360 --> 01:45:22.240 the wise. 01:45:22.560 --> 01:45:26.400 God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. 01:45:26.400 --> 01:45:30.480 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things 01:45:30.480 --> 01:45:34.560 that are not, to bring to nothing, things that are, so that 01:45:34.560 --> 01:45:38.000 no human being might boast in the presence of God. 01:45:38.000 --> 01:45:41.920 And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to 01:45:41.920 --> 01:45:47.840 us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as 01:45:47.840 --> 01:45:53.840 it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. 01:45:53.840 --> 01:45:55.120 Amen.