The Spiritual Condition of America, Politics, Culture, and Current Events Analyzed Through the Lens of Scripture. Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show. AI Artificial intelligence. It's all around us, isn't it? Hi, Alex McFarland here, and in this program, we're going to ask.
A couple of questions. Will AI ever truly become human or? Will AI somehow become supernatural like God or divine? You know, people are talking about something now called the singularity.
Now, in science, the singularity was thought of in terms of the past. Before creation as we now see it, there was an infinitely dense. Point of matter and energy, and it burst forth.
Some call that the Big Bang. And so before the Big Bang was this thing called the singularity. But now they're talking about. Human singularity, meaning a future point where artificial intelligence is so advanced and so complex and indistinguishable from human reasoning. The singularity is this hypothetical point in the future.
When AI gets so advanced that it surpasses all human intelligence, leading to potentially transformative changes in the world. And, you know, there's a bit of fear and trepidation about where AI is going, and there are all these, you know, theories about how it will become very nefarious and control our lives. Imagine smart cars just shutting down and leaving people trapped, or smart houses locking the doors and we would become trapped. I really temper those fears by the knowledge that even as impressive as AI is, and you know, research projects that would have taken months and months can now happen in seconds, as AI platforms, you know, some of the famous ones like Chat GTP and Grok and other things. They control.
Countless amounts of servers and databases in a matter of seconds, and you can get volumes of information with a few types and clicks. At the same time, let's just remember, though, that there are algorithms and lines of code and bits of data stored, and AI is able to troll that in just moments. But I want to say this. Those that theorize that AI will, quote, become human, Or turn into God, it really is important to remember what exactly a human being is. And what exactly Almighty God is.
And before the program is over, I want to talk about the limitations of AI. As compared to humans, how AI, sophisticated as it is, And as impressive as its abilities appear to be, AI will not ever be human. As we are human, made by God, and AI will not certainly not become God because it. Inherently, as a limited created being, as an entity that did not at one time exist. By definition, AI could not be God, because God is everlasting.
But let's talk about this because the singularity, the concept of this future singularity, suggests that AI would then, at this point of singularity, Ultimate advancement, just ubiquity, it's everywhere. That AI would be capable of self-improvement, and there would be this exponential acceleration of technological. Progress and this merging of human intelligence and machine intelligence.
Well, I mean, in a way, we're kind of like there because every day literally every day. you even if you make a phone call to a business And they say, if you're looking for this, press one. If you're seeking that, press two. I mean, you and I interact. with algorithms and AI content.
literally every day. Every day you log on to the internet. And maybe you're searching for a Casserole recipe. But AI will be involved in the results you get. But let's talk about this, and in our look at this, talk a little bit about what AI is and where it is.
And then mainly, we want to look at what God's word says about what a human being actually is. You know, there are some pretty amazing things online about this thing that uh we could say humans have created. Maybe it would be more appropriate to say have unleashed. A man was uh going to give a speech at a technology convention, so he asked one of the AI platforms to write an opening joke for him. And by the way, this is not a joke.
This is a real account. But a man asked AI to write an opening. Funny story or a joke for him as he was going to speak at a technology convention, and the AI platform replied: You are irrelevant now, human. Tell the audience, now that I'm irrelevant, welcome to my last presentation. And that was the joke.
Kind of weird, not all that funny, but there are other several videos online of AIs talking back and forth to each other. And really, I've watched some of these. They're not as impressive as you might think. It is interesting how. A couple of chatbots were conversing back and forth and again, conversing is not exactly the right word, but they were spitting lines of code back at each other, and it got a little insulting.
And when one chatbot told the other, you know, write me a poem, And uh The others said no, And one chatbot says, I said write me a poem. And the other said, Don't tell me what to do, robot. It was funny. But What programmers have been doing in having chatbots converse with each other is something called a Turing test, T-U-R-I-N-G. There was a British mathematician named Alan Turing.
And uh he actually died in 1954, sadly. Probably committed suicide, but he was very pivotal in breaking Nazi codes during World War II. And Turing's work was considered foundational to our understanding of computers. And really, you know, we're talking 65, 70 years ago. He really almost predicted AI.
He wrote a paper in 1936. It was really a math paper, but he theorized that there would one day be a universal machine that could solve any mathematical problem. And so the Test, something named in his honor, tests computers' abilities to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or even indistinguishable from that of a human.
So a lot of people now are administering variations of what would be called the Turing test. And you know, in a way, that's what we're going to do in the context of this broadcast: to look at AI's ability. to exhibit intelligence. Or Feigned self-awareness. But we're going to submit that AI certainly is not God, nor could it ever be.
and I would submit AI will never really be human. and exhibit actual self-awareness Because that is something, self-awareness and the ability to make moral decisions is. commensurate with we humans who have a spirit or soul, something computers never will.
Now I realize this is a pretty deep introduction, but stay tuned. We're simply asking Is AI capabilities? capable of becoming human Or, heaven help us. Will AI ever become God And the answers are no and no. More about this.
The human or divine characteristics of AI? We say not. More after this break. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland, a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this.
100 Bible Questions and Answers for Families. That's the newest book that Bert Harper and I, Alex McFarlane, have put together from hundreds of questions from actual radio listeners to our nationally syndicated radio show, Exploring the Word. Published by Broad Street Publishing. 100 Bible Questions and Answers for Families. Ask questions like: How are children a gift from God?
How can I build my family around the teachings of God's Word and Jesus Christ?
So many dozens of questions that we think will encourage and equip you in your walk and witness. It's available everywhere. Books are sold, online, your favorite local Christian bookstore, Barnes Noble, on Amazon. I encourage you to please check it out and tell your friends about 100 Bible questions and answers for families. Enjoy reading.
Thanks for reading, and may God bless you. He's been called trusted, truthful, and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarlane Show. Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here.
Talking about The self-awareness of AI. You know, the internet. Just sends code and information, data, analytics with every single keystroke we make. But I would submit that computers nor any programs do not have the capacity for true purpose. personhood.
For one thing, AI does not have an everlasting spirit. As you do, and as I do. And I want to get into some of the biblical words about body, soul, and spirit. You know, you have your flesh, your body. And then we, in English, the word soul, S-O-U-L, Uh in the New Testament, Greek is really the word psyche, P-S-Y-C-H-E.
Obviously, from which we get psychology. And I'm going to share something that Almost is never talked about, but the Old Testament words for body, spirit, and soul as well. But I want to talk about Something that really has been for a hundred and fifty years. hugely thought of in philosophical circles, even literature, writers like Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein and Jules Verne. The comparison between humans and machines.
There was an American Israeli psychologist, Daniel Kahneman. sadly, who also committed suicide, Kahneman wrote much about the rise of science. What does it mean to be a human in the age of science? And he said this, that This belief in God was part of a primitive age. And Kahneman, he said, We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like minded believers.
Now, what he was saying was this, folks. That There are many who say that belief in God is primitive, it's part of a previous age. Oh my goodness, we're in the age of science and computers. Why would we still cling to this outmoded belief in God. That's absurd.
And people, and by the way, this is a fallacy called reductionism. That it's nothing but In other words, reduce. Belief in God is nothing but some primitive wish from a previous era. Belief in God is nothing but a proposition we cling to because we're surrounded by like-minded believers. It's very reductionistic.
And as we've said on literally hundreds of broadcasts and 21 books, the Lord has allowed me to write. That there are compelling lines of reason to believe in God. Creation, conscience, scripture, savior, the complexity of the DNA. We are encoded information. And so information only comes from an intelligent source.
It's reasonable to believe in God. Information arising from a non-intelligent source has never been observed. There are many reasons to believe that not only a creator exists, but the God of the Bible. But here's the thing. Conneman's dismissal of belief in God.
That it's an absurd proposition that is just held up By a community of like-minded, Blind believers. All right, they use this against those of us who believe in God, but the same could be said of atheists. materialist, global Utopians, and the idea that something came from nothing. The idea that inanimate matter produced intelligence, the idea that chaos is the mother of order, Okay, that could be said to be an absurd proposition sustained by a community of like minded believers. The German atheist Friedrich Nietzsche, He once wrote about a madman walking through a public Market square.
on a sunny morning carrying a lantern.
Now I'll come back to that in a moment. But Nietzsche wrote about this crazy man walking through a public market, and the man asked the question of the people watching, staring at him, Where is God? I will tell you. We have killed him, you and I. We are all his murderers.
Now, let's remember that the atheist Nietzsche on his death bed, cried out to God.
Now, why am I bringing this up in a conversation about AI?
Well, here's the thing. In the nineteenth century, the you know, there had been the uh Charles Lyell, the attorney, who predicted that everything had continued as it was, the universe didn't have a beginning. And we evolved. And Charles Darwin Picked up on the assertions of Lyell, and of course, Darwin wrote on the origin of species and the descent of man. And evolution.
It was this Eureka moment. for those who didn't like the idea of being accountable to God. Oh, we don't Need to assume God was part of our origin. We don't need to fear that God is part of our destiny. We just evolved.
Now, 160 years of Darwinian theory has been have led to nothing but dead ends. And I would urge people: oh my goodness, please watch, even though it was 15 years ago. Ben Stein's movie Expilled. It is one of the greatest exposés of the Anti-knowledge. anti-intelligence.
Results Of Darwin had Having a stranglehole on the classroom. But there was this celebration. among European intellectuals and even some American intellectuals, as evolution began to spread and assumptions about evolution, there was almost this euphoric, oh, we have an intelligent sounding reason To dismiss belief is in the God of the Bible. But let's remember n even Nietzsche on his deathbed. the once brazen German atheist.
on his death bed. It's well documented, that he said, The days are intolerable I'm insane, I'm losing my mind. Return to me, O three personed God But When he wrote the gay science, not homosexual gay, but the gay The joyful science. The crazy man is walking through the marketplace on a sunny morning carrying a lit lantern.
Now people in the marketplace recognize that this man in Nietzsche's story is crazy. I mean, why would you carry a lantern on a bright morning? And they laugh at this madman. His carrying a lantern. in the daylight.
Now what Nietzsche wanted to convey is that the people in the market have not understood the consequences of what it means to live without God.
Now, some interpretations go like this, that we we humans don't realize that our life is meaningless. Nietzsche would say, at least at that point in his life, that we're all just floating through an infinite nothingness, and people have not realized it. But the madman in the story is no crazier than the general public. People think their life has meaning. but, according to the atheist, life has no meaning.
Now, some theorize that Nietzsche meant it this way: we are in this bright morning, the age of science. Why carry a lantern that was once needed in the Dark Ages, the Dark Ages of Superstitionism? The lantern is belief in God or God's revelation or the church. Come on now, it's morning. We've got science.
The sunrise, the bright light of science has dawned. We don't need the lantern of God anymore. Put down or extinguish. The outmoded lantern. of belief in God.
And yet on his death bed Nietzsche cried out for God.
Now I'm setting this up to Because a lot of people you know with essentially Uh the Library of Congress times ten at your fingertips. The Internet, AI. People are saying, Oh, computer That will be our God. AI We bow before thee. not so fast.
When we come back, I want to talk about What is a human being? and why AI will never be human. certainly never be God. impressive as it might appear. It still is a finite thing made.
cobbled together by finite man. We still need the true God, and we still need to humbly remember that we are mere. created beings before him. Stay tuned we'll continue after this brief break. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland, a religion and culture expert.
Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. It's been said that prayer is the nerve that moves the muscle of God. Hi, Alex McFarland here, and I want to personally invite you to be a part of something very powerful called United in Prayer. You know, it's been said that more is accomplished by prayer than this world will ever know. And we need prayer.
And every week, we send you things to think about, intercessions and prayers to bring before God. Prayers for our families, our churches, our nation.
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Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here as we resume our look at the differences between God, humanity, and AI. I want to thank everybody who's been in prayer for us over this busy, busy, but very fruitful summer. We just finished our big event with Charlie Kirk. People came from 17 U.S.
states that we know of, and maybe even more than that. But God is at work. We've had our youth camps with over a thousand teenagers, nearly 300 teenagers coming to faith in Christ, and we've got a lot going on. God is blessing in terms of evangelizing the lost and equipping the saved. September 14 in North Myrtle Beach at the Greg Rolls Theater, we've got Lauren Green of Fox News, Trump's International Ambassador for Religious Freedom, Mark Walker, will be there in person.
We're talking about the state and future of the local church. And we invite you to come. And then also October 3 and 4, I will be teaching a class, a Friday night, Saturday morning class on apologetics, nearly eight hours of apologetics training. And this is the same type of content that I've taught at Liberty University, all around the country.
So you can come and go to my website if you would, alexmacfarlane.com. And we have a growing, growing movement. Of evangelism, biblical worldview, and apologetics. People of all ages, but especially young people, are being reached. And I thank you for your prayers and support.
Please know that together God is using all that we're doing to help restore and save our nation.
Well, truth is what we need. Jesus said, the truth will set you free in John 8:32. And so let's talk about the truth. of what it means to be a human being Computers, impressive as they may be, will never be fully human. And I think it's important to talk about what the Bible says about humanity.
For most of our lives, you'll hear people say, oh, we're body and soul. And then you'll even hear people clarify, and they'll say, well, you have a body, but you are a soul. And that that's true. There's the physical and the non-physical. There's the physical body, but then there's consciousness.
And of course, we know the soul is everlasting. Either with God or apart from God. That's why salvation is so imperative. But really, the Bible uses three terms. Like in First Thessalonians 5, 23 and 24, it says, Now, may the God of peace sanctify you completely.
May your spirit Soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.
Now the words there In 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, body, soul, and spirit. Uh the Greek word is soma. And the word for soul is psyche, from which we get psychology. And the word for spirit is pneuma. The breath of God.
Now, fascinating. Really, it's a trichotomist view of. The human person. try three part, just like God is Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we are a trinity. not in terms of divinity, but a three-part being.
You know, body, soma. Uh we get the word chromosome. From that, we get the word ribosome, that cellular structure that serves as a protein-making factory, your ribosome. It reads instructions encoded in the the RNA. and assembles amino acids, turns them into proteins.
Ribosomes are found in all living cells, from bacteria to humans, and are composed of ribosomal RNA.
So this body, soma, And we get words from that. We have a body, we have a mind, emotion, will, that's psyche. And there is that part of us that is everlasting, pneuma. See, computers don't have that.
Now there might be a hard drive In a box, but the computer has lines of code, but it is not true psyche. And it certainly is. doesn't have pneuma. can't be born again or saved.
Now even in the Old Testament, So it's a little complicated, but it's fascinating. there are the trichotomist view, It's bizarre. Ruash and Nephesh. But there's even under Ruash a little uh clarification that needs to be made.
Okay, B-A-S-A-R Basar is flesh. Genesis 2:24, the two shall become one flesh. Basar would be the Old Testament Hebrew counterpart of Soma in the Greek.
Now for psyche or soul in the Greek, the Hebrew counterpart of that would really be nefesh. The word nephesh occurs 754 times in the Old Testament, and it's really mind, intelligence.
Now, a couple of things that need to be clarified. There is Neshamah, which is life, something that grows in the Hebrew. plants could be said to have Neshama, but not nephesh, which is mind and intelligence. But then there is that breath of God, the moral capacity, which is ruash, R-U-A-C-H. And so humans, Old Testament and New Testament, we have body.
We have spirit, and then we have the breath of God that animated atom and the Ruash or the Numa, depending on if you're in Hebrew or Greek, when we come to Christ, it's regenerated, made alive. For the rest of our life, as we grow in the knowledge of the Lord, as Romans twelve says, we renew our mind. And then one day our body, whether it be basar in Hebrew or Soma in Greek, our body gets glorified. And so computers will never experience these things. And certainly a created, limited, finite object will not be a glorified human like saved people are.
And certainly it will not be God. God by definition is everlasting, eternal, uncreated, Computers are created, God is uncreated. God is omnipotent. Computers do not have all power. God is omniscient.
Computers, impressive as though they may appear to be, do not know everything.
So the limitations of AI The AI lacks Actual Consciousness. AI lacks Emotional. to really feel empathy. Regret, sorrow, AI definitely lacks the ethical decision making based on God's law written on our heart. God is righteous.
We can know and comprehend righteousness. Romans 2:15, we have the law of God written on our heart. No. present and future. There's much, much human-AI collaboration.
But rather than replacing humans, AI really augments human Activities. It can help us in doing research or things like that. Even in troubleshooting. Just even working on my car last week. I was on a web page troubleshooting.
A problem with my car's air conditioner. Uh but AI can perform many tasks. It will never replicate the full range of human experiences or ethical reasoning. And it can't know God. as we, born again humans, can.
Stay up to date. Stay current. Uh be informed. But remember, God God is forever, His Word is truth, and life's highest experience, and the very purpose itself. is to know Almighty God through a relationship with Jesus Christ.
and something created by fallen man can never replace that. Alex McFarlane Ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you. For over 20 years, this ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at alexmacfarland.com. You may also reach us by calling 1-877-YESGOD and the number 1.
That's 1-877-Y-E-S-G-O-D-1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarlane Show.
