Ideas Have Consequences

Environmentalism, Transhumanism, and Your Life's Worth (part 2 of 2)

• Disciple Nations Alliance • Season 1 • Episode 53

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Welcome to part 2 of this 2-part series exploring what it means to be human in light of God’s design for us. If you have not listened to part one, we would encourage you to start there.

This week, we explore the two most prominent worldviews in the West that are vying for the redefinition of what it means to be human, as featured in The Atlantic’s article “The People Cheering for Humanity’s End” by Adam Kirsch. Anthropocene Anti-Humanism, commonly known as extreme environmentalism and Transhumanism, dangerously distort and diminish the true value of human life. Humans are not a blight on this planet or a biological machine that needs to be mechanically improved; instead, we are made in the image of God with souls and intrinsic value.

For those of you who are new, Ideas Have Consequences is a podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Our host is Scott Allen, who's joined by his coworkers Dwight Vogt and Shawn Carson, and our producer is Luke Allen.

Luke:

Hi friends happy New Year and welcome back to year two of Ideas Have Consequences. To start off the year, we are going to be finishing our two part series on what it means to be human. And part one, we discussed the Biblical worldviews' answer to this question. And today we're gonna look at the two most popular and widespread worldviews that exist in culture today, views that we are all confronted by on a daily basis, and examine their skewed and dangerous views of what it means to be a human. If you have not listened to part one of this series yet, we would highly encourage you to go back and listen to that episode as it really lays the stage for today's discussion. In fact, we don't just encourage you, we would plead with you to go back and start there. Because as we often say, before you confront a counterfeit, as we'll do today, you need to know the original. Thanks again for joining us on Ideas Have Consequences, happy New Year, and I hope you enjoy this episode. As Christians, our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. But our mission also includes to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected the second part of our mission. And today, Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.

Scott:

Okay, welcome back, we're gonna continue in the discussion of biblical principles that disciple nations. We've been talking about the first principle and in some ways the most profound principle, this biblical idea that all human life has dignity and worth, because were created by God in His image, with God given rights to life and to liberty, as well as obviously dignity and worth. But we're going to focus now on the counterfeits, the ideas that are counter to this principle that are shaping at a societal level. Our society, we talked about how all nations are ruled by policies and laws and curriculum and all of these institutional kind of aspects of any given nation, and how those arise from worldviews. They arise from these principles and these worldviews. So for Christians, we need to be focused on what are those principles that ought to be shaping society, that lead to human flourishing, and to God's purposes for the society? And what are the counterfeits, what are the demonic counterfeits that really are demonic? I mean, Satan's behind them, and he's using them to destroy, literally to destroy societies, to destroy nations. Guys, there's a couple that I want us to look at. And I want to draw your attention at this point to a to an article that I just read in the Atlantic. In fact, it's the current issue of the Atlantic, the January-February 2023 issue of The Atlantic magazine, and the articles title is the people cheering for humanity's end, and a disparate group of thinkers say that we should welcome our demise. And the author of the article is a gentleman named Adam Kirsch, and he is the author of a book called, quote The Revolt Against Humanity; Imagining a Future Without Us. I want to talk, I gave you guys the assignment of reading the article, because I thought it did such a terrific job of kind of describing the what I would call the view amongst kind of really powerful elites now in the West. That's counter to the biblical view of human life that we were discussing in our last episode. So yeah, I will say that both views that he's going to describe, and we'll talk about this in a second, both views are rooted in the worldview of atheism, of secularism. I mean, it's a worldview where there is no God. It's a strictly materialistic worldview, there is no spiritual reality, all there is is matter in motion. And when you start from that beginning point in your worldview, then you answer the question, what does it mean to be a human being, you end up with a Darwinian idea, that to be a human being is to be a material being, a machine, a material machine. It's to have no purpose, in the sense that we're evolved through a random process that didn't have us in mind, it just worked its way out randomly. We're no different than animals, because we're just simply highly evolved animals, we're certainly not made by God, we're not made in His image. We don't have purpose, we don't have dignity, we don't have worth, at least we don't have those things inherently, meaning inherent to ourselves in the way that God gives us those things in the biblical view. So they're both rooted in this post-Christian secular materialistic view. But what the article does is it shows kind of how that basic idea has manifest itself in one of a couple of directions in our contemporary time, and I want to describe that, and then I want to get your thoughts on that. How did how did you react to the article and these two views? Let's start with the first one. He describes the first view as the phrase that he gives for it. It's kind of a long phrase, but it's Anthropocene anti-humanism. And he describes this view basically, the author of this article describes this view as a view that's inspired by a revulsion. I'm quoting from the article, a revulsion at humanity's destruction of the natural environment. This word Anthro-, excuse me, Anthropocene. I looked it up. I was like, what does that word mean? It's a word that describes a historical period that we're in right now, where human beings are kind of playing a central role in history and in world events, that mankind plays a central role. The people that hold this view want us to move beyond that, they want to move to a new period of history, where man is dethroned, and man doesn't play a central role in human affairs, in fact, would be better for man not to exist. What drives this view is this kind of concern for the destruction of the natural environment. So people that are very concerned about the environment about global warming, the tendency is to view human beings as a blight on the world on the environment. So it welcomes kind of an end to humanity. Here's a couple of other quotes from the article, it believes first of all, it believes that our self-destruction is now inevitable. In other words, we've so destroyed the environment through global warming that it's just a matter of time now until we won't be able to live here any longer, we'll be killed off because of the excess greenhouse gases or whatever it may be. But the view goes on and says, that's an end that we should welcome. This is the article, we should welcome that end. Because in this view, the environment itself becomes kind of godlike. It's the thing that people worship and if human beings are a blight on the environment, in a sense human beings are the cause of evil in the world in this worldview. So, for redemption to happen, redemption in this view would be the preservation of the environment, you have to destroy human beings. So, guys, before we get to the second view, just your thoughts on this view? It? For me when I read this, I thought yep, yep, I definitely hear that view. I think that view is is significant. You hear it, particularly amongst people that say, hey, it's selfish, for example, this whole kind of idea of procreation. That's a very selfish act, you shouldn't have kids because the kids that you have are just destroyers of the environment. So if you really want to do good for the world, don't have kids, and that's not an uncommon thought now. Okay, enough for me, what are, as you read through this Anthropocene anti humanism, what what were your thoughts or reactions to this view? That's now on tap and quite dominant in our culture?

Dwight:

Well, it was pretty dark.

Scott:

Yeah, it is pretty dark. It's pretty anti-human.

Luke:

Sounds like a creepy movie.

Dwight:

Yeah. And I kept thinking, you at least ought to become Hindus or something so that you could become reincarnated as an animal. Because the end of human spirit would be just, why do you want to end your spirit? At least come back as a tree? Or maybe under the surface they are, they have that spiritual dimension? You say they're just secular atheists, but I'm thinking, that's so dark, because to extinguish your sense of your spirit. And it's wrong. It's just wrong. I mean, what they're doing for me in a nutshell is they're looking at man through the lens of Genesis chapter 3 and saying, man has totally fallen, totally without redemption, totally beyond salvation, that all he or she can do is destroy the planet. So it's better that we disappear.

Scott:

That's exactly right Dwight.

Dwight:

That is not a biblical view of humanity. I mean, can we destroy our planet? Absolutely we can destroy it. We could ignite a nuclear war tomorrow, we could all fire off every weapon that was ever developed in nuclear activity. And we probably have a little bit left, maybe nothing left to this planet. So yeah, we can destroy our planet. There's no question about it. But is the solution then we have to be destroyed because we have that potential? No. And I could argue a million times why that's not a good idea. But that's my initial reaction.

Scott:

Well, I want to just unpack a couple of things you said there, Dwight, because they're so I think helpful. I love what you said about there's a truth to this view, which is it's looking at fallen man, Genesis 3, right? That post-Genesis 3 man, human beings that are fallen, and that do destroy the environment. So it sees that, and Christians can go yeah, there's truth to that we are destructive of the environment, because of our selfishness and our greed. And just our inability to live out this dominion mandate that God gives us before the Fall, which is to care and to nurture, tenderly and humbly, this magnificent creation of Gods'. But what we as Christians have to do is go no there is something that happened before Genesis 3, there was Genesis 1-2. Man is actually, he's not just fallen, he's also made in God's image with dignity and worth, and he's got this God given capacity to do good in creation, to actually cause it to flourish. But the Fall hindered that, but Jesus comes back to restore us to our humanity. And then I love what it says in Romans about how even creation waits and eager expectation for the coming of the children of God. These restored, redeemed people, who then can treat the environment, the way that God intended it to be treated. This is the biblical view. But this new view on tap misses a ton of that. And it just starts with man as a blight on the environment. End of story. Let's get rid of men. Let's get rid of people, human beings, let's not have children. And they literally have an agenda to try to get world population down to something like 1 or 2 billion from the current 6 billion. I'm not kidding when I say this.

Luke:

No, Michael Mann, who's a speaker on the World Economic Forum, he's a climate scientist. And he said that I think it was either last year the year before the ideal population is 1 billion people

Scott:

Is 1 billion people. What's current population, Luke, do you know?

Luke:

Just past eight.

Scott:

Is it eight?

Dwight:

So Seven out of eight need to go.

Scott:

And this person that you described, Mann is his name?

Luke:

Michael Mann, yeah.

Scott:

He's not a fringe voice, he's a part of this World Economic Forum. This group is made up of the leaders of the most powerful economies, the prosperous and powerful economies in the world. I mean, this is a dominant view, just let that sink in for a second. This is a view held by powerful people. And they literally believe that the agenda going forward needs to reduce human population from its current 8 down to 1.

Luke:

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like we're starting out this episode really strong and really negative.

Scott:

Well we are.

Luke:

Because I know for a lot of people out there, well, I know.

Dwight:

It is negative. Anti-human.

Luke:

And rightfully so. But a lot of people out there were taught all the way up, kindergarten through 12th grade, that these are the things we're going to talk about in this episode that the environment is falling apart. And a lot of it's due to man and so forth and the greenhouse gases and climate change. And because of that this sounds very extreme. But we're we're doing on this podcast Ideas Have Consequences, is we're taking the idea here, the base paradigm. And that paradigm is going to work itself out in the principles and in the policies and in the practices. This idea has been around now for about 200+ years, longer than that, actually, but dominantly in the last 200 years. And it's worked its way all the way through those steps. And it's in the practice level now. But what we're looking at is where are these practices going to lead us? And it's extremely dark,

Scott:

It's extremely dark. It leads to the destruction of human life. Go ahead Luke, I didn't meant to interrupt you.

Luke:

But at the same time, I empathize with these views, because a lot of them I've wrestled with myself, I love creation, I love God's creation, I love the nature that he made. With that I'm always reading about it and learning about it, and a lot of people in that space, absolutely believe this worldview that we're talking about. So it's influenced me, that worldview is influenced me, and why it's so attractive, sorry Dad. And why it's so attracted to so many people, including myself being a Christian, is that it takes a lot of truth from the Bible. And then it spins in lies. And as we see, throughout any worldview that's dominant, that's the way it works.

Scott:

It's almost always that way, there is a core of truth, but then it's going to add lies to it, in a way that often is subtle as well, right?

Luke:

And here, we see that one of the core truths there is that creation is beautiful. It's amazing, we can all appreciate it. And then another truth is humans are here to steward the Earth, to take care of it. But if you take that too far, what

is this Genesis 2:

15, God took Adam and he placed them in the Garden of Eden so that he might work it and take care of it. And environmentalists here say, humans working the garden, have heard it and not taking care of it. And this is destroying the earth. And now humans are, a blight on the planet. And the lie here is that the creation, though, because of that, is now God. And humans, we don't matter any more than the animals. So those are the lies that are built in in those spoil the whole thing. So I see the minor truths that are played in, but they're so diluted, that it's very toxic.

Scott:

Yeah, we can understand it. And I appreciate you kind of saying I understand, I can see how people would believe this. The thing that I struggle with Luke is it's just such a negative view of human beings, they're only doing bad or harm. And I think, how can anyone really see that? Yes, we can see the harm that people do. But I think one question I would always have for these people is have people done good for the environment? Have they actually done something that's helped, have we seen progress, environmental progress anywhere that people have done? Men, men and women have done? Yes, we have! I mean, I think You just have to be so blinkered and blinded to not see that, but they they seem to be.

Luke:

Yeah, that's one of the quotes from the article is from David Benatar, who's an anti-natalist philosopher. And he says, essentially, he argues that the disappearance of humanity does not deprive the universe of anything valuable. Like, that's crazy.

Scott:

That is how anti-humanist it is. It doesn't drive the universe of anything valuable. Notice the other thing that it does, which I think is fascinating, because it separates people from the rest of creation, or from nature, like somehow we're not a part of nature. I call it nature because it's not a creation in this view. It's just the environment. But somehow we're separated out from that as this entirely negative force, which I'm like, How do you do that? Why aren't we part of it? But somehow we're seperated out from it as this uniquely evil thing.

Dwight:

We made the mistake of over evolving.

Scott:

Maybe that's it Dwight.

Dwight:

But then you got to make sure no chimpanzee in the future after we're gone evolves further and it starts the cycle over again.

Scott:

Shawn, thoughts from you on this?

Shawn Carson:

No, I thought it was interesting everything that you guys have already said. And I think the new religion of this is reason, science, and technology. So reason is now the highest good that we aspire to. And again, it comes across as very elitist again, because here's brilliant people, supposedly, science-wise, technology-wise, who are going to create a new universe for us, or help us to preserve ourselves to some degree or another, which I thought was fascinating. But I just think, it's a false religion, if you want to say it that way. Because it's taking the creation and elevating it to a place of being God. It's not just in nature, because it's also man, because man, in his elite nature, can create something that carries him further into the future, just not in the present form that he's in. So I just think it's very hierarchical in that way, too. And who gets to decide who that 1 billion would be? Of course it'd be the smartest, right? Survival of the fittest. But anyway, I just think that that's a really interesting religious view. But I think also, there's just massive inconsistencies, just like you pointed out, Scott, like separating man and woman from the rest of creation, creating, we should create new forms of intelligent life.

Scott:

Oh, I think you're talking about what we're going to get to Shawn actually the transhumanism, but yeah.

Shawn Carson:

But it was just in the first part of the article that we should create new forms of intelligent life so that we're not truly Homo sapiens. And it's just that idea again, we are going to usurp the even the Darwinian theory and view of life by now becoming the creator of our own futures.

Scott:

You're getting a little ahead of where I wanted to be. We're going to come to that one because that's fascinating. It's a related but quite separate kind of thread of thought that's dominating our culture right now. That the article describes as transhumanism, and I'll try to explain that a little bit. But just to kind of maybe put a bookend on this Anthropocene anti-humanism, I'll share a couple thoughts. Just a couple of thoughts. One is, this isn't new, this idea has been around for a long time, I think of Thomas Malthus, the famous British economist of the 1800s. And he put forward this theory that of carrying capacity that as humans multiply, our population increases. Creation or nature, there's only so many resources to go around. And at some point, we're going to outstrip those resources. And at that point, there will be a dying off just kind of inevitably, just because we'll run out of food, we'll run out of resources. And so he was postulating this in the 1800s. What we're talking about now is just a kind of a more modern version of that, but where he goes wrong and where this goes wrong, and I think it's because they have a Darwinian view of people, they see people largely as animals, meeting consumers of scarce resources. But the Bible doesn't see us as simply consumers of resources. The Bible sees us fundamentally as creators of resources, because we have this God-given capacity to create because we're made in God's image and he creates, he created the heavens and the earth. So we're constantly creating, we're creating new resources, new sources of wealth, we've actually made the world far more wealthy, far more prosperous, but it's like they've got blinders, they do not see that or they won't acknowledge that, this creative capacity for good. So final point for me on this is just to take these ideas seriously. It's very dark, people believe this though. This governs their thinking, and ideas have consequences. And so as dark as it is, don't be surprised by powerful people, putting in place policies, practices, laws, to get at the end that they want, which is this kind of culling of human population. We we saw it, we saw it in China in the 20th century, they put in place a one child policy for this very reason. And we know what that resulted in. It was just an absolute catastrophe of human life. All of these forced abortions, and you name it. And now the whole population system in China is out of whack. It's a messed up disaster. But what was driving it was the same basic idea. So we've seen it, we're going to see it, we're going to see more of it. Bill Gates, by the way. Microsoft fame and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a huge believer in this worldview. This is his worldview. And he's a very influential player on the World Economic Forum. Of course, he's got all this money that he puts behind these ideas. Now, the World Economic Forum, for example, right now is looking at things like food supply. They're looking at vaccines. People say, Oh, that's a conspiracy theory, they would never do that. No, they would never use vaccines or food supply to try to call human population. That's horrible to even think about? I have no proof that that's happening. None whatsoever. And I want to believe that it's not. But my point is to say, you have to take their ideas seriously. They're going to work that worldview out. So we actually shouldn't be surprised by some of these things. In fact, we should be kind of expecting that to happen if they really believe this, which they do. Take them at their word, this is what they want to see happen.

Dwight:

Yeah, my closing thought on this is just as Christians, again, this strikes at who are we as human beings? And did God give us agency? And did he give us the command to rule with that agency? And if we deny, if we buy into this, we're basically saying, No, we're a problem. We're not a solution. And God is wrong. God committed a huge mistake in creating us and giving us dominion. And that is a terrible thing of unbelief.

Scott:

And Christians buy into this.

Dwight:

So Christians buying into that. So as the church, what do we do as a church on Sunday morning, and I'm saying, we need not just to stay optimistic, but we have every right to be optimistic. In fact, we were commanded to be optimistic, because we are to be the solution, not the problem and not furthering the problem. But we are to provide the solution. And it's funny, I get World News magazine. And about every other month, they have an article, like on science about something happening, and I was we were thinking about today's session, I thought, wow, there was something in September, and I went back and looked at it. And sure enough, it was a Mission to the World missionary, Jan Stutite, one of our colleagues is with Mission to the World. Well, this is in Africa, and there's a guy named Frank somebody or other. But he was talking about this farmer-managed natural regeneration process, that they're teaching, missionaries were teaching farmers in the Sahel area. And he said, It started about 40 years ago, it's active today, gave the name of a person who is a Christian who's behind it, not all of it, but certainly promoting it. And he says, you look at the US Geological Survey, as looked at the Sahel, and today sees 30 or 40 years later, sees 200 million more trees than 40 years ago, and the population has increased. He says it's counterintuitive, that that part of the world would be greener and more productive when the population has increased. And it's because of management.

Scott:

Exactly.

Dwight:

And then this month, there was an article about how, and we're familiar with this, Growing Culture God's Way I think it's called, but just the impact that's having in Africa, out of 1/6 of an acre, they're teaching families to feed themselves for a year, so family of six with 1/6 of an acre because of technology. So we have to promote these things, we have to be optimistic.

Scott:

Well, and there's real reason there, Dwight, I mean, even in our own country, the United States, the air is cleaner, water is far cleaner, there's more trees than there were in the early 1900s. And yet, there's a whole lot more people and this is the part that these folks have such blinders to. Yes, the destruction is real, but so are all the new resources and ways that we can conserve and improve the environment, and that's actually happened. I mean, this has happened, and it's something that has happened because it's who we are. We actually have this amazing capacity that God's given us to leave the world better than we found it, literally better, more prosperous, more fruitful, more resources, we can leave the world with more resources than we found it. That's an amazing thing. Animals don't do that, only people do, because we're made in God's image with this creative potential.

Dwight:

The other thing I'd like to say is you have to look for this information.

Scott:

You do. It's hidden, it's really hidden.

Dwight:

If you go to the first page in Google, the messaging is the world is coming to an end and you're the problem.

Scott:

There's a really great book that looks at it, and I'll just mentioned it, it's called the Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon, he's not a Christian. But he's got a very Christian view of these things. And he says, The ultimate resource is the human mind, because it creates solutions to problems. And there's a new book just out, it's kind of a new version of that, maybe Luke, we can put that into the notes for this session, because I don't have the title off the top of my head, but you do have to look for it. It's being hidden, because people that are in power right now do not hold it this view.

Dwight:

Page four or five on your Google search.

Luke:

That's why I call this a religion as well. And yet, they would never say that, they'd say we're scientific. And I say no your religion, because you started with something scientific, climate change, which it is changing. It's been changing ever since the last Ice Age, or it's always changing before the Ice Age and now, but then they take that idea and they run with it to their ends. And they kind of leave science behind in a lot of these things.

Scott:

I'd say I think this view is left science behind.

Luke:

I think it's run away with it and like nobody in schools learns about the Sahel. And the way it's becoming greener. In the last 15 years, the total Earth has become 15% greener, that's huge. That's bigger than the continental US, has become greener. Human ingenuity has led so many more people out of poverty in the last so many years, I think it's in the last since the 80s. It went from 4-in-10 people living off $2 a day to now it's 1-in-10. That's crazy. No one knows about that. So it's being hidden. And I would I would just encourage all of you to do your research to look these things up. And the fact that you're going to come away with is that human ingenuity far outweighs our ability to destroy the planet.

Scott:

But again, human ingenuity, let's say it again, has to be redeemed. There is this fallen nature. Even in its unredeemed state can still do good, but it can do a lot of harm, and so the biblical answer is redemption, but that redemption needs to affect the way we steward creation. And we work with creations, it's not just a personal redemption for our spirits and souls and heaven and this and that it's to affect the way that we live in creation.

Luke:

Yeah, absolutely. It's another one of those concepts in the Bible that's we need to hold in tension, just like grace and truth. God's first command to humans was to work the garden and care for it. That's dominion and stewardship. Not one or the other, both at the same time in tension.

Scott:

Absolutely. Back to the article, he talks about two strands of principles of human life that now were dominant. This is one, this anti-humanism rooted in kind of modern environmental movement. The second is transhumanism. And for people that aren't familiar with that, even though that's getting quite a bit of attention right now, let me just read a couple of quotes from the article. Well first of all, let me just

describe transhumanism this way:

Transhumanism, I would say is just the merging of human human beings with digital technology and genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. It's the bringing together of technology and human nature with the stated goal of changing people of changing homosapiens into some new higher kind of being. Some people talk about this as the fourth industrial revolution. And when they speak of that, again, this is the World Economic Forum speaks of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in a very positive way, like this is wonderful, that we're into this fourth industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution was mechanical this would have been, in the late 1700s, early 1800s. The beginning of the Industrial Revolution with the steam ships and steam engines and this and that, that was kind of industrial revolution number one. The second one was with the invention of electronics. The third one was the digital age, that now we're into my lifetime, more or less. And then the fourth one which we're now kind of on the cusp of is the marrying of the biological and the digital. This is transhumanism or the fourth industrial revolution. A couple of quotes from the book, the author says, like anti-humanists, transhumanists contemplate the prospect of humanity's disappearance with serenity. But what worries them is the possibility that it will happen too soon before we've managed to invent our successors. In other words, we've got to use technology to create new human beings that will overcome these challenges that we're facing with global with climate change, or whatever it is, he goes on. And he says, they glory in scientific and technological process and the supremacy of reason. But they believe that the only way forward for humanity is to create new forms of intelligent life that will no longer be homosapiens. Transhumanists believe that genetic engineering with nanotechnology will allow us to alter our brains and our bodies so profoundly that we will escape human limitations such as mortality, and confinement to the physical body. In other words, they dream of a time when we can literally take all of our brains, our thoughts, and what's in our mind, and essentially digitize it, and upload it into the cloud. And so we kind of achieve a kind of non-biblical, eternal life in that way. I'm not kidding. This is what drives these folks. And ultimately, the author goes on him, I thought this was very profound, ultimately, the source of all the limitations that transhumanism chafes against, of all the excuse me, of all the limitations that transhumanism chafes against is embodiment itself. In other words, it's a very anti-embodied worldview, the body is the problem. So we've got to change the body, we've got to change it or move beyond it. And in this respect, it's similar to kind of the ancient Greek or Gnostic idea that embodied human life is a problem, it's evil. And the biblical worldview, of course, is we were talking about in our last episode, it's just the opposite. It has this incredibly high powerful view of embodied human life, the body itself is really important. Jesus came and took on human flesh, and our bodies matter, they're sacred, right. So this view, because it's secular doesn't believe in God sees human beings largely as just machines, we are just biological machines, and we can tinker with those machines, to our heart's content. There's nothing sacred about that. So you have, for example, Elon Musk, launching his new company, Neurolink, which is literally going to create cyborgs, it's going to embed computer chips into our brains, so that we become kind of half machine half human being, I mean, that's being done right now as we speak, genetically modified human beings, it's all of these implications, these consequences, that are that are now on the cusp of happening is is the second kind of view that's dominant, that the author talks about. Guys, what are your thoughts on this fourth industrial revolution, transhumanism, this kind of marrying of, of technology and biology to create some new human species?

Luke:

Quick note again, yeah, for the audience, I think it might sound like we're coming off too strong and too harsh, and like, oh, you guys are being a little extremist here. I could see some people would be thinking that. But what we're doing in this episode is what we're doing is we're analyzing ideas. And we're saying, if these consequences actually happened, they're going to be destructive. And the reason for that is these two worldviews. They take two of the fundamental four worldview questions. What is man, what is God, so forth? And the answer those first two ones, completely misaligned with the Bible. And because of that, the consequences will always be disastrous towards humans. So it's good to say, even if these things don't actually happen, if these two worldviews we look at, their futures don't actually come to pass, they can still wreak a ton of havoc all along the way, as those consequences play out, just like we've seen communism do. Communism never actually worked, but it wreaked a ton of havoc. So it's good to understand this as Christians and recognize them right from the get go as early as possible. We're a little late on the whole environmental side, but we still need to understand these and understand them soon. So this is just a little side note as we can discussion here.

Scott:

Yeah. Thanks, Luke. Good clarification.

Dwight:

Yeah, my reaction to this is just just how seemingly absurd it is the idea that you could create a human being digitally, and I'm actually less concerned about us doing that. And because it seems so impossible, but I'm more concerned about us thinking we can do that, and creating some alternatives along the way, such that we accept a form of being human that's inferior. And I'm thinking of the person that instead of hiking the Grand Canyon, they put on digital goggles and pretend they're hiking the Grand Canyon, and I'm thinking, well, there's no way you can completely experience the Grand Canyon through goggles. You know, my son in law just did this, and I thinking what a diminishment of your life experience. I think of this Japanese guy that just married his Alexis. To speaker recently.

Scott:

It makes sense when you think that we're just machines. It makes sense. I mean, it's horrible, but it makes sense if that's your worldview, if that's the way you see reality.

Dwight:

Yeah, but it was a perfectly programmed, it's not Alexis itself, but something like that. It's perfectly programmed to respond to him the way he would want somebody to respond to him. So he gets a non-human response that's so human, but it feels like human, and it's exactly what he wants in a human. And so it's in a box, but it talks to him, and he can talk to it. And yet, it's not human, and he's missing, any married this thing.

Scott:

You're talking about the consequences of these ideas, this transhumanism and they're real, Luke, you said if these come, they're coming, like right now, I think that's the thing. This is very much here and coming fast. Exactly.

Luke:

And yeah, and I mean, as it's coming along the way, let's not forget that there's victims of these trials and these tests, and as they treat humans like machines, they're gonna hurt a lot of humans along the way. And it's just a complete denial of again, what it means to be man, man is not just physical, he's also spiritual.

Dwight:

I think it'll be the diminishment of life experience, and who a person thinks and feels they are.

Scott:

iI feel like the anti-humanist view that we talked about earlier leads to the destruction of humanity, literal destruction. This one leads to the debasement of human life, it debases it, it wants to create something that's greater than but it's going to create something that's less than.

Luke:

Always, that's like common sense. You can't create original ideas. I mean, okay, so God is the original thinker, he can actually create, unlike anyone else in the world. And then he made us in His image to do that as well. But anything we come up with is not original in a way. It came from God, or from sin. So then, if we want to create something, our little robot, we're going to need to put knowledge into it. That's the only way it can understand anything. It cannot create anything original, everything it has came from man. So essentially, we are the god of this robot then. But then that gives well one, way too much power to the person that creates it. And two, it's just a lesser man.

Dwight:

Where I get confused is giving technology, the label of human such that technology becomes transhuman. We become technology. Because I don't want to speak against technology, I'm thinking of a guy in our church that he can hear because of a coaxial implant. It's like he's got digital ears. And yet he can hear me, it's like amazing, you know? And, there's lots of things that are happening on this science and the health and medicine world that's beneficial to human beings, but we are controlling the technology. These ears aren't human ears anymore. We cross the line when we give technology the name and label human.

Scott:

I think that's such an important point Dwight, because in this worldview, the worldview of transhumanism, we are purely a biological machine. There is no spirit, there's no soul, there is no image of God. And when you think that way, then yeah, you can tinker to your heart's content. And the idea that transhumanists have is that an artificial intelligence is no different than human intelligence. There's no fundamental difference because we are machines. It's just a machine type type of knowledge or learning and it's in no respect different than what we possess. So it's just a mechanical, mechanistic view of what it means to be a human being, which is consistent with Darwinian evolution. But the biblical view is, of course, there's a kind of a machine, like mechanistic kind of aspect to us. But we're so much more than that!

Dwight:

What's debasing about is as you're talking I'm thinking, it's like saying, okay, Dwight, because there's some people would say this, that Dwight is just the product of all of his experiences in life, his chemical makeup, and material matter interacting with nature, and that has formed somebody called Dwight. And I go no, no, I'm not just a product of every stimuli that's ever happened in a unique way. I'm me, I know that because I can look inside me and I go, no, there's a Dwight in there. And that Dwight is my soul, and that's the soul that lives beyond death. But you deny the soul by saying, we're just what happened.

Scott:

That's what it does, and that's why it's so debasing, because it reduces us to machines.

Dwight:

And then we're not humans!

Scott:

And we're no longer humans.

Dwight:

Because we have souls and humans have souls.

Scott:

Yeah, really well said, Shawn, you're getting ready to say something I think?

Shawn Carson:

No, I just think it's fascinating. To me, the thought of being influenced to adopt these ideas seems pretty far out to me in some ways. But I think to me, there's a caution in the sense that, as a Christian, trying to or working towards developing a biblical worldview, when the world is telling me that the universe and nature and the climate change, and I need to get on board with all of that. And then I start getting into those ideas, without the proper understanding of the context for what that is, or whether that means, I thought it interesting that one of the ideas that they had was self-sacrifice is something that we should do or are kind of commissioned to do. And that meant as a transhuman, I surrender myself into this computer to take over me, I'm thinking, No, all of those things are, in and of themselves, you think wow, that's a little bit outrageous, I can't imagine doing it. But at the same time, I think we are being influenced. And I just think, how do we take this down to a practical level? And to me I think, what is it that I'm buying into, that the culture is telling me about, that I haven't really thought clearly about, I haven't really researched and seen what God said, or tried to understand it from his perspective. And therefore, I may not be an environmentalist to that degree, but I'm an environmentalist to a big degree, versus thinking, okay, I need to hold environmentalism in the context of a biblical worldview, that it is here, it's part of God's creation, that we are called to steward, not to worship, and not to exploit. But there's a balance in there, and that's what we're called as Christians to do. And I think then modeling that, and then speaking out of that, to the world that we live in to each other, to others, you confront those kind of radical lies and crazy ideas by being rooted and grounded in it, and an understanding of what reality and what truth really is. But if you don't know what truth and reality is, you can become prey to those crazy ideas. I do think to me, that's the call. We're calling each other, we're calling others to participate in that development of a worldview. You can listen to what the culture has to say, but listen to it within with an open mind to say, okay, look, how is it different from what the Bible says.

Scott:

Exactly

Shawn Carson:

Because there is an eschatology. We all believe that. It's not a bunch of holograms running around. That's not the eschatology that Christ talks about.

Scott:

I think we're going to have to come back to this transhumanism just because it's become so important in our culture and and really kind of unpack what it means and like you said, Shawn, how is it different from the biblical view of things, Dwight, you made a really good point. We certainly Yeah, I mean, we need to live Coram Deo, all things before the can use technology to make improvements to human life, prothstetics, hearing aids, and these kinds of things. But where it goes too far is when we think that we are nothing but machines. And we don't transcend any longer, the machines that we make, we're just machines. And then you've got this group of people, powerful people that think we can tinker around and create these new cyborgs. And these machines, that's where it goes really off the rails. So, but guys, bringing this back to our point of discipling nations, we've been talking about the biblical principle of what it means to be human beings and looking at these two counterfeits. And one of these three options are going to be determinative and shaping a culture in a nation. It's just the way it is, it's gonna, if it's not this, it's going to be this. I think the challenge for us as Christians is to say we can't just sit passively by, while powerful anti-human demonic ideas are beginning to shape the culture, they're beginning to shape policy, curriculum, every other institution in the society, and I just want to kind of bring us to our conclusion of the episode here by talking about what we do, how do we respond? And for me a couple of thoughts on that. Number one is we have to know, Shawn, this is your point, I think we have to know the truth, we have to know what does it mean to be a human being, what is that biblical principle, you really know that. And I think here, there's a level of knowledge, we can kind of know it at a surface level. But there's a much deeper level of knowledge. This is what we were talking about earlier, when we talked about Mother Teresa, she had a deep understanding of this biblical principle in a way that really shaped her life in every respect, I think we can have a shallow understanding in the sense that we can say the right thing. But we don't live it out, we're shaped more by whatever the culture is influencing us towards. So as Christians, we need to know it deeply, in a way that it really does shape our lives. And it shapes the way we treat people in our lives, in our own families. Our aged grandparent who's on life support, or whatever it is, who are those people that are in really vulnerable places in our own lives? And how do we see them? And what are we doing in our neighborhoods, in our cities, it starts with us. And then beyond just this personal application I would say, we do need to be part of speaking into the culture, upholding the biblical view, giving voice to that and joining with others in pro-life movements, anti-euthanasia movements, anti-trafficking movements, there's movements, we need to be a part of those movements, be supporting those movements. So lending our energy and our voice to those movements. And raising the flag against transhumanism and this, this really deeply destructive anti-humanist environmental movement. We need to be challenging those, challenging those biblically, they're going off the rails, and it will lead to destruction, face of God. And one thing I think we really need to do is, I terrible destruction, we need to be kind of prophetic, I guess, is what I'm saying in the sense that the prophets, were the ones mean, I'm thinking about this episode, I can hear the that spoke out against the idolatries and said, If you keep pursuing that you're going to be destroyed. And I think we have a role there to play. What are your thoughts on just how do we practically go forward here guys, with this principle to disciple nations? criticism now, oh, you guys don't care about creation, you don't care about the planet, and you don't like technology, and it's like no, not at all. By no means. One thing I would like to see Christians do is to kind of take back these spaces, like we said, one of these worldviews is always going to win. Environmentalism, that worldview has taken over the sciences, I would love to see Christians go into that space and model what it means to be a steward of the planet and to take domain of the planet. I would love to see people go into the spaces of tech and technology, I mean, those are amazing spaces. The innovation that's happening right now, it's totally cool. But let's model a biblical worldview in those spaces. Don't let this other worldview take over. Because God speaks to those spaces. He speaks to every single space and we need to be in those, modeling that so that we can take back ground in a way. And Luke, there are people there doing that and I think when you see them but you're right, they're often ignored because this position isn't dominant anymore. The biblical position is the minority view now, so they're often overlooked purposefully so we have to be ones that when we see people in the places doing the things you're describing, we go look at that, look at this example, look at this model.

Dwight:

Which is what World Magazine is doing, which is really great to see. I think for me, my comment would be for the church and for us as Christians is to not be deceived as ourselves, we say, be clear on our biblical worldview, but not be deceived. And the deception of Anthropocene is that humans are the problem. And we're irredeemable. And so seven out of eight of us need to leave, our sacrifice will be our goodness, that's a lie. That's a lie.

Scott:

It's a demonic lie. You can see Satan behind that.

Dwight:

Don't let any part of that come into your soul, and Great thoughts, Dwayne. Amen. Well guys, we're just scratching then the other one Transhumanism is saying, You're not good enough, you don't have the potential to be good enough. So you actually need AI to take over your life. And you need to become technical, or you need to be absorbed in technology so that you become something other than who you are. And to both of these lies, God says, No, I created you to have dominion, I created you in my image, and I came to redeem you from your sin. And I can fill you with my spirit and give you the wisdom to solve these problems, to do good. We're saved for good works, and that's his solution. the surface. But there's probably no more important principle for the discipling of our nations than this one, that the way that we view human beings, do we view human beings and do we treat people as image bearers of God made in His creation, or made in His likeness, created by him with dignity, value, inherent dignity, inherent value, regardless of economic condition, or skin color, or male, female. Once we deeply understand this and live this out, and on standing firmly on the basis of this challenge, these demonic counterfeits, this is how we disciple nations, this a really important way that we disciple nations. And we need to we need to be a part of that in our own nations at this time. Thanks for listening. And we really appreciate you tuning in to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences.

Luke:

Thank you so much for joining us on this series on what it means to be human as God defines it. Because we are all influenced by worldviews, and especially by the two worldviews that we talked about today. Hearing a counter-narrative can sometimes sound a little crazy or even far-fetched. So for those of you who would like to learn more about what we're talking about today, please feel free to check out this episode's landing page we've compiled a list of resources to help you further study this topic. And that episode landing page as always is linked down in the show notes below. Ideas Have Consequences is brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. To learn more about the DNA, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, or on our website, which is Disciplenations.org.