World Views

Good Reasons to Read Through the Bible in 2022

 Have you ever read through your Bible in a year? If you haven't I hope to encourage you to do so. In the past Christians have saturated themselves in the Bible. How else could the "Miracle at Dunkirk" have happened.? The British Expeditionary Force found itself with its back to the sea and surrounded by German tanks and infantry, a dire situation indeed. A British officer broadcasted over a shortwave radio channel that was monitored by the folks at home , the following three word message, "But if not..." The Germans listening in had no idea what it meant but the British public new right away. It was from Daniel 3:18 and the passage was about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo's statement to King Nebuchadnezzar before being thrown into the fiery furnace. The British public was inspired and mobilized  commandeering  any vessels capable of crossing the channel to rescue the stranded army. An armada of fishing vessels, yachts,  sail boats, tug boats and ferries launched by three words and the rest is history. Could this same scenario have played out today? Sadly, I think not.

Bible literacy is at an all time low. A recent Lifeway study from 2020 found that only 32% of Americans who attend a Protestant church  regularly, say they read the Bible everyday. Uh Oh, "Houston we have a problem!"  Why the disconnect with the 68%? Too busy binge watching Netflix, posting on and reading FaceBook, Twitter, SnapChat, video games? Face it we live in a time where  distractions are only a click away consuming way too much of our free time. We have become slaves to the digital god. What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Do you check your email  and see who posted what on your social media accounts? Think about it, what does that say about you and your priorities?

Why is it so important to read God's word?  Here is what Moses has to say about it to Israel before they crossed into the "Promised Land." 18“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,21that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth." 

In Matthew 4:4 , Jesus quotes Deut. 8:3, "Man does not live on bread alone but on every word  that comes from the mouth of the Lord."  God's word is for our spiritual  sustenance  and life.  1 Peter 3-15-16 says: 15"But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, 16 For it is written : 'Be holy, because I am holy.'" This raises the question how can I become holy, a sinner? Jesus answers this question in John 17:17 in a prayer for his disciples: "Sanctify them with truth; your word is truth." We are sanctified (made holy) by the truth. (God's word) Proverbs 2:6: "For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;"   We know that God's word is the bread of life but it also imparts on us wisdom and understanding.

In summary Moses thought it was important to have God's word always before us and to teach it to our children. God's word is our spiritual food that sustains our faith, sanctifies us and gives us wisdom, understanding  and knowledge of God our creator and redeemer. It's not too late to start reading your Bible, just start! There are many plans for reading through the bible in a year or even 2 years, pick one and get started!  Happy New Year and God bless you and your families. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom," (Collossians 3:16) 

The Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments on Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization

On Wednesday, 2nd, December 2021, the SCOTUS heard oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization. Pro-abortion activists brought suit against the State of Mississippi for passing legislation that would ban abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, but much more is at stake here. Mississippi's law is in direct contradiction to the 1973 Roe v Wade and its successor decision 20 years later, Casey. This is the case that pro-life advocates have been waiting for, the case that should overturn two birds with one stone. Scott G. Stewart Attorney General for the State of Mississippi opening address to the court was nothing short of masterful. "Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood  v. Casey haunt our country. They have no basis in the constitution. They have no home in our history or traditions. They've damaged the democratic process. They poison the law. They've choked off compromise. For 50 years, they've kept this court at the center of a political battle that it can never resolve. And 50 years on they stand alone. No where else does this Court recognize a right to end a human life." The response by the Left was weak and very predictable. They are relying on 50 years of precedent, fairness (It's not fair to overturn Roe because for 50 years women have depended on it being there for them.) and this would be a step back from modernity and that is unthinkable!

Precedent alone is not a good enough reason to overturn any decision by the Court. Take for instance the 1896 decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ruled that racial segregation was legal and did not violate the U.S. Constitution. It was overturned in 1952 in the case of Brown v. Board of Education.  Plessy was precedent for over 50 years, did that make it immutable law.? No, it was morally wrong and an unconstitutional decision that was correctly overturned. Roe and Casey likewise are unconstitutional, morally wrong and need to be overturned.

If Dobbs overturns Roe and Casey that will be a milestone victory for pro-lifers, but we can't sit on our laurels. The states will decide abortion laws for their own state separate from the others, therefore  we will be divided into pro-life states and pro-abortion states. We can not rest until abortion is gone from all 50 states. We must keep pressing on.

Artificial Intelligence and Man

The title of an Opinion/Commentary on  2 November in The Wall Street Journal caught my attention, "The Challenge of Being Human in the age of AI," authored by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher. Kissinger was U.S. Secretary of State,1973-1977, Schmidt was CEO of Google, 2001-2011, Huttenlocher is dean of the Schwartzman College of Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They are authors of, "The Age of AI: And Our Human Future."

Besides the obvious privacy concerns and the "garbage in, garbage out" worries, the authors are making a case for AI challenging the primacy of human reason. Historically, man has sought to understand reality and our place in it. The authors site the last 300 years following the Enlightenment as the Age of Reason, or to put it another way science rules. Now through human  ingenuity we have ushered in the Age of AI. They claim AI is obviating human reason by being able to investigate and perceive aspects of the world faster than we are able to and in some cases in ways we don't fully understand. 

The authors site three examples in their article, Google DeepMind created a program called AlphaZero that looked at the game of chess anew and developed a not quite human strategy. Grandmaster Garry Kasparov described it as shaking the game  "to its roots." In 2020 MIT researchers instructed their computer to go through millions of iterations of compounds the goal being to discover new ways of killing bacteria. They came up with a compound they named Halicin. This compound would have been prohibitively expensive to develop through traditional means and took only days verses years to discover. Lastly GPT-3, a language model that consumes internet text, and spits out original text that meets Alan Turing's standard of displaying "intelligent" behavior indistinguishable from that of a human being.

While each of these achievements are remarkable in their own way, let's take a step back and look at the big picture here and what the authors are getting at. Do these advances in AI and computing point to the human being having to redefine our role in the world? The article strongly hints that such a "reboot" of what it means to be human is on its way. Chillingly they remind us that for the last 300 years we have been guided by Descartes philosophical maxim, "I think therefore I am" to the future of, "if AI 'thinks,' what am I?"

How should we as Christians think about this? First off, man has been "made in the image and likeness of God." Computers are tools conceived and built by man with our God given minds and abilities. They are lifeless, they do not have a soul nor can they know or worship the living God, only man can and does. The last 300 years the authors call the Age of Reason glosses over the  fact that Enlightenment  philosophy was a man centered philosophy that leaves out the metaphysical all together and is therefore a Godless and atheistic  worldview, not worthy of our admiration. Likewise, the "New Age of AI" will be more of the same: input sinful man creates sinful man output. We as Christians are not anti-science we are all about discovering truths and and using our God given minds to do so. Where we differ is how we use these discoveries. Do we glorify man or God with them? The article raises the possibility of programming morality into  the AI but fails to mention whose moral compass would be used. I can imagine that all the world's religions and philosophies would be mixed in to make a sausage like "RoboReligion," and some would come to worship the omniscient RoboGod. I get it that it is quite clever to program a computer to beat me at chess, I fall for the "Queen's Gambit" every time. The antibiotic MIT's computer discovered was named after the murderous Hal, a computer from the futuristic movie, 2001 a Space Odyssey and by the way the antibiotic has very little clinical usefulness. The fact that a computer can digest the internet and compose human like essays is interesting but, could it compose poetry like Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats or Dickinson? No I think not, because computers have no emotions or a soul to draw from. Computers are great analytical tools and when used as such are awesome in their performance, but to think that we can program humanity into a lifeless box of electronic components is a fool's errand.

Christian's need to be very wary and stay informed about scientific developments and be involved in the ethical and philosophical questions new scientific discoveries and technology present to our daily lives. Without strong leadership and influence in these matters by Christians, we will suffer from the consequences of the secular mind and worldview.

Link to WSJ Article