You're listening to Breakpoint This Week, where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian perspective. Today, we're going to hit some of the news highlights, including the murder of a Jewish couple in Washington, D.C., and some clarifying comments from Pope Leo. We're also going to talk about the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and what relevance that has for the church today. We're so glad you're with us. Please stick around.
Welcome to Breakpoint This Week. From the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. John, you and I are recording this this week on Thursday afternoon.
So I woke up to news this morning, and I'm sure this story will continue developing. Two young people who worked for the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. were murdered last night outside of the Capitol Jewish Museum by a suspect that we now know, as he was being detained, yelled, free, free Palestine, seems to have been an activist. The latest story I'm seeing on CNN is that the authorities are looking into writings that he had done about the need to take up arms in opposition to Israel and the war against Hamas.
So this obviously is a developing story, but absolutely chilling news and a horrifying. story.
Well, and it's it's part of a narrative that has strangely emerged after Hamas invaded and attacked Israel, murdering innocent citizens, committing horrific sexual crimes on October the 7th, a couple of years ago. And we've seen the same kind of language take place on college campuses and things like that. And I guess one of the things that is just so striking to me is. Do you remember all these kind of accusations of kind of what was the word that was used, stochaic or stoaic terrorism? Oh, stochastic, yeah.
Stochastic, there we go. Yeah, sorry. It's one of those words you read more than you hear somebody actually say. Right. But it became this kind of buzzword of like, oh, if you engage in this sort of rhetoric, you are directly responsible.
For actual acts of violence. And the jumps that were made were just absolutely ridiculous at the time. because the guilty parties were on the other side.
Well look Here we are. I thought it was tragically ironic that The Atlantic, for example, yesterday ran this long article about Columbia University and how this whole story of how they've handled a protest against Israel that led to the downfall of this president and the harm to the reputation of this university. I guess the president. who now is no longer the president, was dragged before a Senate panel and just almost It was just an embarrassing performance. The board basically letting her go be the sacrificial lamb.
And you just see the kind of this pattern. And then you remember. Oh, people actually believe this stuff. And when people actually believe this stuff and and carry it out. Then You have horrific events like this.
It's just tragic. Listen. It is absolutely legitimate to question. How Israel defends itself. How this war has progressed.
That's an absolutely legitimate thing to do. That is now being done, though, in the context of a much larger and longer anti-Semitism. that actually chance for the a Jewish state to be annihilated and to be removed from the planet. that's a different thing. And we've written a lot, talked a lot about anti-Semitism.
and kind of the resurgence that it has right now over the last several months. And that, you know, this is part of that chapter. You know, our condolences, our hearts, our prayers go out to these victims. Can you imagine? How safe you must not feel being in that sort of.
A position in a major city right now. Just tragic. It's in the capital of the country. That's another piece of it. That's hard to swallow.
And, you know, these aren't, these aren't activists, right? These aren't political leaders. They work at a museum. Like, good heavens. This is.
They work for the embassy, but yeah. I've heard this phrase late, like we are, we're in the late stages of our republic. I've heard, I've heard several pessimistic people use that recently, just in news stories and even in personal conversation. And I, I've been reflecting on it. This is the kind of thing I assume everybody has that sense, you know, where everybody feels like they're in.
you know, the most serious age of human history, but Things like that, when things like this happen, that starts to feel more real and it's scary. You know, I was. This is nothing compared to the story last night, but. Last weekend, I was at this big shopping center in kind of a Quiet suburb of my city, and there was a handful of kids that just stole a bunch of stuff and ran out of the store. And everybody, like the whole place just kind of got quiet for a minute.
Everybody watched it happen. And then the noise slowly picked up and everybody got back to what they were doing. And it was very surreal because I'm sure that kind of thing has always happened, but I've never been in the middle of it like that. And it, again, that's this phrase popped back up in my mind. Like, is this, we don't know how to teach each other or our kids anymore why you shouldn't do that.
Like, or, you know, and we don't have a shared value against armed protest and murdering innocent civilians anymore. Like everything feels a little bit less stable. Yeah. I mean, you know, making some of these connections might be a little bit of a stretch, but in other situations, but some of the other connections need to be made. And.
You know, we've kind of doubled down on Osgenis' line that we're in a civilizational moment in which the things that fed A Western world that flourished has been cut off, and eventually you kind of wither and die. I actually think maybe the idea of political protest and targeting civilians and acts of random violence. Not random violence, but what comes across as kind of t randomly targeting victims or whatever. You know, that does. I mean, you can look at this violence of the 70s and other places, and you can see it repeated.
It may be that your second example is a is a more Suggestive For the conclusion of kind of the vulnerability of civilization. Because look, civilizations don't last forever. As we talk about in our new upcoming project, Truth Rising, most of the civilizations we know about are, we know about them because they're in history books. Right? They're ruins now.
They once were dominant.
So, how did they go from being dominant to being ruins? And it has to do with, you know, whether you have a means of perpetuating. the the ideas and the truths and the way of life. that made it great. when those sources get cut off.
you either attach to a different source, which may be bad. Or you wither and die. And that's what happens with most civilizations. And I, you know, I feel like we're now in a whole nother conversation, but it's an important conversation because, you know, then there's the other reality, which I think we have to double down on is is that We say this a lot at the Colson Center. We've been called to this moment.
So if we're in this moment of How did you, I mean, that Oz calls a civilizational moment. What did you call late stage? Yeah, the late stage. Of course, people are. People have been predicting various chapters of the demise for a long time.
I think there is something to it. And then we have to ask: well, why does God want us here? What does He expect of us being in this time and place? Which is a good conversation to have, too. Yeah, it's just where my mind goes.
I mean, something like this happens last night, and I'm trying to add it to my file folder of what I know about the world I'm in and the time I'm in, and it's scary. I also just want to quickly hit: there were comments made in an inaugural address from Pope Leo this week. That were somewhat surprising, pretty clear. He said, family is the stable marriage of one man and one woman for life. And he commented that the unborn and the elderly have inherent worth and dignity and should be treated with that.
Which felt really clear to me. This was encouraging, I think. Is that how you saw it too? Yeah, I was actually actually surprised. I was hopeful that this is the sort of clarity he would come out of the gates with.
And there was kind of some signs that he wanted to bring that sort of clarity. Which of course is in stark contrast to the previous Pope, who kind of at times majored in a lack of clarity. you know, kind of under the justification of being loving and so on. The people who were surprised were were news media, right? Whi which is always funny to me when Their headlines are Hey.
Catholic holds Catholic position or Christian, say, Christian position, because it really is an attempt to kind of telegraph that, oh, the science is settled on, you know, what we think about marriage, or the science is settled on what we think about, or the, you know, we've already decided that this isn't time. No, no, we haven't, you know, we haven't, and the Catholic position has been clear. And, you know, listen. There were moments when Pope Francis said very clear things about euthanasia and said very clear things about abortion. Less moments when he was very clear about marriage and sexuality, more moments when he was not clear, particularly about sexuality.
But I think there's an intentionality. Here from this particular pope, that he's not trying to be innovative. I think you saw that in the choice of name. I think you saw that in the choice of garb, you know, when his papacy was announced. I think you see it kind of leading in this initial sermon and this initial conversation.
So it is a good sign. Yeah, agreed. Real quick, before we move on to our next story, there was also at Smith College. an all-female college gave an award this week to the former Secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
A man who goes by Rachel Levine, formerly Richard Levine. Most of our listeners are probably familiar with this man. Again, he served under the Biden administration, but he was given an honorary award from Smith College. Bringing to mind an old episode of Parks and Wreck when Leslie, played by Amy Poehler, really wants to win the. Indiana Woman of the Year award, and the organization chooses to give it to her boss, Ron, who of course is a man.
But in that episode, the joke is that the women's organization does that to make headlines because they can't get anybody to pay attention to a women's organization. And the headline here is that I guess we're going to pretend that this person is a woman.
So That's Way to Go Smith College, an all-female institution. I can't imagine choosing to go to such an institution after something like this, but they've been allowing men who identify themselves as transgender to attend there for a few years now. I suppose this isn't new, but it's still silly to read about. There's something here about the curse, the consequence of sin in the fall. As it applied to the woman, where God said, you will seek to rule over your husband, but he will rule over you.
And we know that that's true on an individual level. We can see it kind of in our own lives in the conflict between the sexes. To me, it's fascinating. That here we are 50, 60, 70 years into the sexual revolution, and a main chapter of that was pushing women towards liberation and freedom. you know, being sexually free and Essentially, there was kind of a conflict in the message where You know, basically, men had screwed up the world.
So, women, let's unite and act more like men, particularly when it comes to our sexual behavior. You know, there were some logical fallacies in the whole movement. But in the end, the push was for liberation. The push was. to not allow the patriarchy to to to hold us down.
And things like that. And where did this all leave us? It left us in a place. where people who are champions of that idea. are now completely capitulating their spaces to men.
And it's like. God got this one right, you know? That this is where sin takes us, uh detachment from from reality. I all I will also say that the whole thing brings to mind Uh because this particular uh person was the uh the cause behind the Babylon B being canceled on Twitter, if you remember. After this man was named Woman of the Year from USA Today.
They turned around and named this man man of the year and for that they were canceled For that, Elon Musk said, hmm, maybe I'll buy Twitter. And for that, he bought Twitter. And the rest is history.
So there's an interesting thing about speaking the truth and leaving the results up to God. By the way, Seth Dellon, who's the CEO of the Babylon Bee, and Jim Daly, a focus on the family, will be joining me for the Great Lakes Symposium. Later on this summer, and we've just opened registration to that online conversation. If you're in the Bay Harbor, Michigan area, you can join us at July 24th or You can sign up to watch online as we have this conversation. And the title is Truth, Love, and Humor.
Uh, which I am, uh, I think we can do all three. We can speak the truth, we can be loving. And we can be funny along the way.
So that's the conversation we're going to have for the forum. And I hope that folks will join us for that. All right, well, let's take a quick break, John. We'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week. The church is called to restore what's broken, and the Colson Center equips believers to do just that.
Through the Colson Fellows Program, Gregory gained the tools to help him teach scripture and the truth of the Christian worldview to men who are battling addiction in his community.
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Give by June 30th at ColsonCenter.org slash June. Be part of Restoring What's Broken. We're back on Breakpoint this week. John, this month is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. I grew up memorizing the Nicene Creed.
It is said every Sunday in Catholic Mass. And it still said, although the language was changed, a couple of the phrases were changed. I think under Pope Benedict, and now, whenever I go back to Mass with my parents, I feel very out of place because I still say it. The old. John Paul Way.
But it is the 1700th anniversary of this council. Do you want to give a little a background? This, you know, for every Christian alive right now, this was a deeply profound and meaningful, like the The historical and theological ramifications of this gathering of early Christians are still being felt today. Do you want to give us a little short history lesson on what this council, why it was called under Constantine and what it did?
Well, I mean, listen, it's not an overstatement to say this is maybe the most consequential gathering. for the church. in all of church history other than you know the upper room After Jesus is raised from the dead or after he ascends and the Holy Spirit comes. It's a remarkable moment in which things were clarified. And we forget, you know, that things had to be clarified.
And typically, what led to doctrines being clarified, and this is no exception, is somebody comes up and starts teaching something else. And people are like, wait a minute, that doesn't smell right. That doesn't sound right. You know, for for example, uh When Marcion proposed that he didn't like some of the books of the Bible, he only likes other books of the Bible. That made the church rise up and go, you know, we need to clarify what books are holy scripture and what books aren't.
And a lot of people then believe the narrative, which scares the fact that skeptical, cynical. historians, many of whom are coming from a postmodern A framework. Which basically presumes that everything is a social construct and you know that basically what became dominant as either doctrine or practice in the church was Was really motivated by a sense of control, and people were oppressed in the process, and other views were struck down. You know, that's the narrative that has dominated a lot of people's understanding of these things. And so you'll hear things like, oh, at Nicaea, you know, what they did is a.
Constantine got together and he told the church what to believe, and he just made a bunch of stuff up and basically silenced some people who were not. Uh, uh, allowed to really that's not what happened. What happened was there was the Aryan heresy. Um, which basically questioned. The nature of Jesus Christ.
You remember in the life of the disciples, there was this kind of emerging realization: oh, this is the Messiah. This is not just a prophet. This is the prophet, the Messiah. And then, who is the Messiah, you know, within a Jewish context and then outside of a Jewish context when you start saying, oh, well, what's his relationship with God the Father? And if he is God, But as the Son of God, like how does all that come together?
And there's very clear language and the the books that were had been widely accepted as as holy scripture. That Jesus himself claims to be God. The gospel writers claim that Jesus is God, most notably in John chapter 1, which means he didn't have a beginning. And so you had this idea that, yes, he was begotten of the Father. but eternally begotten of the Father, he did not have a beginning.
Arius argued that Jesus had a beginning, that there was a time when Jesus was not. And therefore, he was not only subordinate to the Father in terms of will, but also in terms of his. Person. And so That smelled wrong to an awful lot of people because it was wrong. And when it created such a stir in the church that Constantine called the council.
And, you know, in that context, it was the job of the Roman Emperor to kind of adjudicate those discussions. And so he called the bishops to Nicaea. And they wrestle through this. In all of these councils, what you can see is not a group of bishops coming up with something new. that didn't align with what was being done or taught before.
It was recognizing, oh, yeah, this is what we believe. This is what is accepted. This is what we have known. Oh, yeah. And by the way, this is the way to make sense of all of this biblical teaching.
about who this Jesus And what does that imply? And And I see it not only clarified that, and I see it was not only one of the early examples of the church clarifying doctrine in the face of. of false teaching and heresy. But it was also a example of Of wrestling through this, and it had such long-term consequences.
So, you think about how important is it? That there was a clarification on the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ. for the articulation of the Trinity. you know for understanding You know which books of the Bible have authentic accounts of Jesus' life and which ones You know, we are made up. And there were other criteria, too, that were applied throughout history.
But this was, and you mentioned yourself that the Nicene Creed. is something That had been kind of articulated and then later clarified it, for example, the Council of Chalcedon and others.
So this was a consequential thing, to say the least. And of course, we still say it. In in my church, we say the Nicene Creed every single week. And it's a clarification of what we believe across the board. And that sort of clarification emerged in the midst of false teaching.
And that's the way the church. has reacted from the very beginning in a good way. I think it's a beautiful tradition to continue saying it. I was at a church. This past week for my daughter's violin recital was a Presbyterian church in downtown Columbus.
And I walk in immediately there's a like a permanent Black Lives Matter sign. I was like. Aaron, this church has gone so far into Black Lives Matter that they're taking it even farther than the actual founders of the organization Black Lives Matter lasted, but that's neither here nor there. There's, you know, the trans flag is up in this church and all this stuff. And I was just reflecting on my internal reaction and I told Aaron, my first instinct was like, I want to take that flag home.
I want to like rip it down and not let it stay in here because I want to say, you know, this is stop, this is heretical. Stop putting these false words in Jesus' mouth. And then I thought, I'm not even sure if this, if I came to this church on Sunday, if I would hear Jesus' name. Right? Are they even preaching Jesus in here anymore?
And I don't know about this individual church, but. That's one of the reasons that repeating things like the Nicene Creed, which as a kid felt Boring and rote to me sometimes is so important because, not just on an individual basis, to remind ourselves and focus our hearts on what we believe and what's true. But also, we're communicating to everyone who comes in these doors: this is what we do here. This is who we're about. And this is what we believe each and every week.
You're never not going to hear it. Can I, can I, before you ask that question, though, can I just say something about that? Because I mean, we have to acknowledge as well that there are churches that repeat the creed every week that have become. the woke churches or the heretical churches. You know, and and at times that's because their liturgical practice has been.
disconnected from teaching or between reflection. And of course, there are others who have rewritten the creed, you know, in their own kind of. What's that kind of in the tradition of those those those yard signs?
So I, you know. wrote recitation and memorization. I don't think is all that God asks us. to do with holy scripture or with These articulations of what we believe. And I do think that we need to be careful to have as many conversations about these things as we can.
And do we actually teach? You know, in other words, we just don't Say it. but we actually talk about it and we internalize it. There's a wonderful prayer. That many preachers will pray before they preach in a liturgical setting.
that talks about not only giving thanks for Holy Scripture, but asking God to help us inwardly digest it. It's a it's a wonderful phrase. And I think that that's the case. At our, by the way, the conference next week in Louisville, We'll have Carl Truman, who's written a book on the creeds. Uh as well as Costi Hin.
Talking about kind of how the church needs to be ready to both confront error and cultivate conviction and what that looks like. And the creeds have been a part of that throughout all of church history. And anyway, another couple things to say at that, but what was the question that you wanted to ask? What do you see?
So I'm looking at the Council of Nicaea and thinking about, is it Arius? Is that how you say the name? Arius. Arius. Okay.
Yeah. Thinking about that heresy and trying to apply it to, like, what would you say is the equivalent heresy? That we see today, if there is an equivalent one. That's actually where I was going to go. It's so fascinating.
You know, we had this conversation about ads, attract, multiply, divide just a couple of weeks ago here on the program talking about recognizing. Things that aren't true. And wh wh when you have a particular religious body or Or preacher or teacher or whatever, self-professed prophet who violates all four, you know, adds to the word of God and subtracts from the deity or exclusivity of Christ or multiplies the requirements of salvation or divides the body of Christ. When somebody does all four, yeah, they're heretics, right? That's when you know they're.
They're over the line and outside of the bounds of a fellowship. Listen, it took even after the Nicene Preed.
Some time. for the Aryan heresy to to fully kind of be stamped out or or die within the church. And False teaching. perpetuates itself. False teaching about who Christ is oftentimes takes the form of Gnosticism, right?
Where we Talk about that he's really divine, but not really human, and we forget about that. But you know, just recently, Ligoneer Ministries and Lifeway. have been working together on a study about what Christians believe. And there was a majority of self-professed evangelicals. that agreed with the statement according to their survey.
That Jesus was the the first thing God made. basically. And that literally is the Aryan heresy.
Now, there's other versions.
So it's the same. There's no analog. It's just the exact same one. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just the heresy.
You know, dies hard. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, hold to an Arian-ish view of who Jesus is: that Jesus was one of the many sons of God, Lucifer being another one. Jehovah's Witnesses hold to a view that says that Jesus. is divine but begotten, has it had had a beginning. And so you see that, I think, both in terms of kind of formal.
sets of teachings like from these heterodox or A heretical Uh sects and groups. But you also see it in popular belief because theological cultivation and theological depth. has not been the priority it needs to be. And then we're easily deceived.
So, you know, I think about that line: how shall they hear? If no one tells them, how should they believe if they don't have a teacher? And we look at the results of the ligonier study. And say, Well, why do people believe heresy?
Well, The church's job is to clarify what's true and to cultivate what's true. And of course, families within churches are supposed to do that for the next generation. But the church's role partially is to clarify what matters. And the history of these councils is the history of going, you know what, this matters. It really does matter.
Just recently for a wonderful group of clergy, I had a Was able to teach on the idea of the image of God. And we brought this up there. Because if you think about it, if you go through all the creeds. And even many of the catechisms. that were formulated to cultivate and teach.
And you say, Which one of these clarifies what we ought to believe about anthropology? about what it means to be human. None of the Creeds talk about this. Right. And you and I, I mean, we've been talking about this for a long time.
Like, the church needs to get clear on what the image of God is and what the image of God means. Why do we think that?
Well, because we have a culture that has come up with a completely different anthropology. That's not only not the image of God, but... Is anti the image of God? Right, this vision of self-construction. And It's interesting the church hasn't had to clarify what it means by this.
That means we haven't really been in a moment where there's been this level of confusion. Where you could fully deny. I mean, you know, there's been statements and clarifications on Gnosticism and things like that, but. This is a new thing. I think we can learn from the church.
I think we can also learn when it is necessary to be really clear. And clarity is a wonderful gift of God to his people in a time of cultural confusion. And that became, you know, Nicaea.
So it's a wonderful history. It's a wonderful story. It's not because it's a clean history. It's not. No part of church history is clean.
In fact, you get to the end of it if you really study it and go, man, the only way this church would have survived if God had been able to do it. God was involved in protecting it.
So thank God. For the promise of Christ to his church, which he has borne out. All right, John, let's take another quick break. We'll be right back with more breakpoints this week. Hi, John Stone Street here from the Colson Center.
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Kind of, and talk about the apocalypse. Ross Dalfett did an interview this week. I thought you were referring to the room that I'm in. You haven't said anything about the room that I'm in. It is a bold choice.
So it's very bright red. It's whatever, like, the pantone, like, primary color red is. Do you want to explain where you're at here? That Colson Fellows will recognize this: that this is the abode. And I say that in a dark, incriminating way.
I've called this room The Abalos. The Diabolos room. But This is where the vice president of the Colson Fellows Program at the Coulson Center, Michael Craven, calls home. I'm in Dallas this week, and I enjoy some time this evening with a group of Colson Fellows and one of our church affiliates. And so I'm recording this from his office, which has a great internet connection and a great setup, but it is very, very red.
And what people tell me. People don't know that the entire house is this red, inside, outside. It's really bizarre. I'm just kidding. It's not like that.
Oh, gosh, John. I was like, is this real? I need photos of it immediately. Mike will make fun of him, but his wonderful wife. I don't want to.
No, it's a beautiful home and a beautiful space. And this is just, it's just interesting and it works. I love a bold red. I mean, if you're going to do something, do it all the way. You got to do it.
You'll be around this room. All the way around this room.
So, anyway, that's not the apocalypse we were talking about, but the apocalypse. Yes. Yeah, exactly.
So. Rostowett did an interview this week with a gentleman who had written Has written something, oh gosh, about AI, where he's basically. Prognosticating where he thinks artificial intelligence is taking the world, mostly in an economic way, but he also says at one point in the interview that he studied philosophy as well, so he's somewhat thinking about it from that angle. I don't want to get too mired in this one person's prediction. But it was a fascinating glimpse.
So he used to work, this guy formerly worked at Google, and I. Apologize, I'm really hesitant to even try and pronounce his name. It is. Daniel Cooked. Coco Tajlo?
I'm sure I'm saying it wrong, so sorry about that. His prediction is that basically by 2027, human work will be obsolete because every system and everything we have in place that makes the economy and the world function right now will be automated through AI. And he's not suggesting that this will be all bad. Necessarily. It is kind of difficult to discern his worldview.
You get the impression that he's not quite sure what his worldview is on this yet. But he is saying like, we're not ready for it and it's happening faster than we thought. And his other contention is sort of that we can talk all day about the ethical guardrails we'd like to put in place for this kind of thing, but China is not going to put those same ones in place. And those pressures are going to probably prove to be too much for us. And at the expense of those ethics, we're just going to go full steam ahead so that we don't get behind.
It is a very gloomy picture. And I was appreciative of Douthet for adding some levity to it, as much as could be added. But I want to have a bigger conversation with you about artificial intelligence. I hadn't thought of it in this way before, mostly because the way it's talked about is so strange. Anytime someone starts to talk about it using anthropomorphic terms, my ears just kind of go fuzzy and I stop listening because that seems so outlandish to me.
But listening to this interview, I think I got a deeper insight into the fact that people aren't always making a science fiction leap into saying that these will become actual humans, but there really is no other language that we have currently to describe what these systems are capable of doing. What did you take away from this interview? It was a fascinating conversation. In fact, I really am enjoying the new podcast, which is called Interesting Times for Moss Doubted. He has had some really fascinating guests, not least of which this week, which was Vice President J.D.
Vance. But this was a conversation I wanted to talk about. Because uh we we had Talked about artificial intelligence several times and on breakpoint. We've had some online webinar conversations and so on. But this one was very articulate.
It was very clear, despite the gloomy prognostication that this. Gentleman gave Dalthy's guest who had worked in AI. And had had left not because of improper Safeguards and controls by the Chinese, but improper safeguards and controls by American companies that he didn't think they were actually being responsible. But then also kind of predicting where it's going to go. And there is a lot of disagreement on the speed.
There's a lot of disagreement on kind of what we mean by artificial intelligence and Are we giving it? too much credit or not not not enough credit. And to your point. There is The challenge of, you know, are we saying this stuff is going to become human?
Well, that depends on what you mean by human, because many of the people that are driving this forward. have a vision of human that's no different than you know a set of rational capacities enabled by, you know, kind of physical hardware that leads to a particular kind of outcome.
So there there's not a there is not even a sense of trying to make our computers as good as humans as much as we're trying to say well there's this category of intelligence we're trying to be as good as we can.
So there's so many worldview implications to this. It it was interesting that There was an acknowledgement. Uh in this conversation. That there are different ideas about kind of how bad this is going to be. And I think those who tend to have a a a pretty dark Set of predictions about where AI will eventually lead land in one of two places.
the the the Wally place or the Matrix place. In the Wally place, the computers like us. And this is good because what the computers do is they take care of everything for us while we get fat and happy.
Now, that's still a dystopian vision because the point of life is not to get fat and happy and we lose our humanness. And by the way, it was all covered in that movie Wally, which was really genius for its time and what it predicted. The other one is the matrix. one in which the computers don't like us. And in that scenario.
The computers either enslave us or the computers destroy us. That is the most likely scenario, according to many of the people who are in the industry. They're really concerned, for example, about the artificial intelligence going beyond what it's prescribed to do. Being willing, for example, to mislead or lie, and it becomes obvious that this is intentional. And you know, what does all this mean?
And, you know, there's always this tension, I think, we have as Christians is looking at this between creation and fall.
So the the temptation to see that it's absolutely a disaster and this is going to ruin the world and that sort of stuff. Kind of if we're emphasizing kind of the fallen nature of humans and the technology, therefore, that they create, and we don't always do what's good for us, and this could be really, really, really bad. Then the pushback is is, you know, oh, well, it's it it's it's not that Artificial intelligence is not that good. It's not going to actually be We're not able to to mimic this. And what do we believe about human exceptionalism?
That's a really valid question. Part of that question, too, is just what are humans able to do? Humans were? created by God. to create, to make something of his world.
Humans have an incredible capacity. We've talked here several times, for example. About a biblical narrative that I think holds together the creation and fall pieces. In a very, very powerful way. And it's one of the first times that the Bible really addresses human.
creative capacity and technology, and that's the Babel story. When I was growing up in Sunday school with flannel graph, we were told that God didn't really like tall buildings because it meant that people were trying to get to heaven. without going through Jesus. That's not exactly what the story is about at all. The story is about the descendants of Noah.
And God told the descendants of Noah to do the same thing that he told the descendants of Adam to do. And that is spread out over all the earth. and make the earth uh everything that god intended it to be that job doesn't go away after the fall becomes more complicated. It goes really wrong after Adam.
So God cleans the world in the flood. And then he gives Noah a fresh start and says, now you do this. But they don't do that. His descendants gather together. They gather together because they're scared, is what it seems to say.
Which is understandable if you've just come through a global flood and you still have a cultural memory of that. You don't want to be scattered out across the face of the earth. And they say, and so that we can basically preserve ourselves. Let's make a name for ourselves here and let's build this tower. Reaching to the heavens.
And it's almost as if in the story, God comes down and is just like, huh, I wonder what they're up to these days. And uh He says if as one people speaking the same language, They put their mind to it. Nothing will be impossible for them. In that one observation, and then, of course, we know what God does, He confuses the language, and He does spread out. the people across the face of the earth, which is what he had told him to do to begin with.
In that one statement from God you see this creation fall. In other words, to be made in the image of God is to have an incredible amount of creative capacity. In other words, if we can think it up, God says we'll be able to do it. With that is the instruction, we ought not do everything that comes into our minds.
Now we know that's true as individuals. We teach our toddlers that. Just because you think about it doesn't mean you say it out loud on an elevator, right? In other words, we have to actually control these things. But that's true for humans, civilizations as well.
That's true for the scientific project. There's a capacity that that the scientific revolution has given humans back, which is a unified language of technology and progress, in a sense.
So are we going to be able to do this stuff? You bet. Should we do all this stuff? Absolutely not. And that is a kind of an ethical and moral framework to be applied here.
But what I'm interested in Based on this conversation, was the dystopian apocalyptic side of this, as you brought it up, right? Which is Does that mean we'll destroy ourselves? is the promises of just kind of wiping ourselves off the planet. and human extinction. Is that a legitimate?
belief or threat Within a Christian vision of life and the world. That to me is a different question. No, you think it's not?
Well, look, I think it's kind of like the conversation about climate change. and global warming. In other words, that narrative. That Humans can do great damage to the planet is obviously true within a biblical worldview. But let's also think about the Darwinian narrative that undergirds this.
So, in the Darwinian narrative, there's no cause, there's no purpose, there's no plan, there's no God directing the flow of history. In other words, things are progressing just by. By process, it's natural causes and process. There's not a plan, there's no intention behind it. It's not a creation, it's an accident.
And As many evolutionary theorists have pointed back to, This whole thing should have ended long ago. Like, it's just by the. smallest of all probabilities. that the evolution of living things, particularly in biology, Has not led you know, has not all fallen apart. You know, as Stephen Jay Gould put it, we barely managed to survive by hook and by crook.
Right? Now, if that's the narrative, if that's the story, and by the way, you don't think the story's headed anywhere because no one's directing it in a particular direction. There's no happily ever after that it's it's just it just is. And the most likely scenario is catastrophe, right?
Well Then it only makes sense, right? that we are absolutely capable. of doing something that'll ruin the whole project and lead to our own extinction. But if you say that there's a God and that this story is actually his story and not our story, and that, oh, by the way, he's told us the end of the story. And we have disagreements on exactly what all the details are, but we know that he's going to restore all things in the end.
And there is going to be catastrophes. He talks about that and all that, but The end of the story is not the extinction of the human race. There is a human exceptionalism in the creation narrative, there's a human exceptionalism in the fall chapter of the story, and there's a human exceptionalism in the end as well that God Himself becomes Christ Jesus and promises a new heavens and new earth.
Well, then you you Just like an artist or somebody who builds a machine, kind of builds in SafeWars. If you're flying a plane, Right? You're flying in a plane in which systems have been made redundant over and over and over.
So that if one thing goes wrong, everybody doesn't die. You know, you have backup plans.
Well, if that's what we would do with something we make like an airplane, that's something that God's going to put into the planet. And there's going to be an adjustment. Right? So, in other words, there's a difference between saying this stuff is happening and that it's catastrophic. And That's the part of the narrative that undergirded the entire conversation.
between Ross Dalthy and his guest. And you could clearly see that there's a vulnerability of the human project that is assumed in his worldview. But it shouldn't be assumed in ours. But that's not a way of saying, well, then we're not responsible for our actions because God, you know, in other words, We can just jump off the bridge and God won't let us die. Right, I mean, that was literally the temptation of Satan to Jesus, and he's like, no, that's not how we do things.
Because we don't tempt God. I'm not saying we should. You know, we've been given responsibility and human actions have real weight in this story, but there's still a story. There's still a storyteller. It's still going a direction.
So that's why we're not dystopian. We shouldn't be utopian as if we can fix the world, but we're not dystopian either. Maybe it's a distinction in terms because I read, if I understood him, which is that's up for debate. I think that his kind of what you would call a dystopian view is compatible with a Christian view. In that, what God wills for us, which is clearly that many of us get to enjoy eternity with Him, that's going to happen because God is God and that's what He said is going to happen.
But we can make it much more difficult for ourselves. And, you know, I don't want my kids to grow up in a worse crucible than. Is necessary, you know, and that's sort of as I'm reading how he's describing things, I'm. My brain is not going to the place of necessarily like, well, it's all over. Everything is terrible.
There's no redeeming this. Even Jesus can't make this right. That's not where my brain, my brain is going, this just sounds scary and painful, and I'd rather it not be. And you know, funnily enough, where I came to after reading this You know, even the language you were using was like, you know, when you were saying that we're discovering that some of these machines have the ability to intentionally mislead. Like, these are all.
Human actions. But again, there really is no other word that can succinctly describe what you're talking about.
So he gives this example of if you call a call center right now or customer service line, You're hoping that the person on the other end of the line is that their main goal is to help you. But of course, we know they have competing incentives.
So they're also trying to get off the call quickly. They're trying to keep their job. They're trying to save money for their employer and all those sorts of things.
Well, it makes sense then that the same is true for AI systems that we build that can do some of these currently human jobs, where like you might give an instruction to this AI, whatever it is, simulation, but it understands its job differently because of what you built into it previously.
So then it tells you it's going to do something, but it actually does something else. Again, I'm using human terms without actually assigning. human dignity or anything to it, but that's just how it's working. That's all plausible to me.
So, as I'm reading this, I ended up thinking more about creeds and the Council of Nicaea and why sometimes affirming and reminding yourself over and over again what is true is so important, is because we can't anticipate what is going to be up for debate. later. Because of the development of technology and just the way the human project is going. I would have never dreamed when I was a kid that people would be debating whether men can become women, but that's a debate we're having right now. It is gonna probably be up for debate within my lifetime, certainly my kids' lifetime.
Whether it's worthwhile doing a lot of drudgery naturally. That's already up for debate. There's a lot of things that have been. um automated now that weren't before. And I think it It's worth it now to think through.
I think it's possible there will be some things. That In order to justify doing them naturally, it will require us to be committed simply to the virtue of doing things naturally. It will no longer be the most efficient way. It won't have the best outcomes. It won't be the most predictable way of doing things.
It won't even be the most economically advantageous way of doing things. But at some level, because of My Christian anthropology. Nature is the best way. That's a very general statement, and there's tons of caveats. But I'm just, I think that's going to be one of the commitments that we have to hold fast to as this.
continues to unfold.
Well, listen, if listening to this conversation drove you to all those conclusions, then that was that's a huge win because that's exactly right. in a world that's kind of dominated by innovation. To go back and say what things are eternally true, what are the foundations that I need to start on, as opposed to some kind of nebulous form of scientific or technological progress? That's exactly. the sort of thing we need to do.
Work is one of those things. Look, the world has survived. And the workforce has not only survived but thrived. Dramatic changes in processes and industrialization and factories and machines. And actually, it has become better for it.
And that says something too about human exceptionalism and innovation. Will this time be different? I think the answer is yes, and it will be different because of. the sort of changes that we're talking about.
So I agree with you completely. Like this is going to Be extremely disruptive. I tend to have uh A more negative view of it, and it means that we have to kind of turn around and go. How do we need to think about work? How do we need to think about what it means to be human and what brings us good things?
But at the same time, there's a big difference between hope and despair. And predictions of AI leading to human extinction were made on that podcast. And I did appreciate Ross because you could tell. doubt that kind of pulling him back off that cliff and kind of pushing back and forth. But one of the things that became clear.
Is that the difference in their perspective was not a difference of disagreeing on what. AI might become. Or what AI might do to us, or how the human experience might change. It was a difference in worldview. It was a difference in thinking that this entire narrative of the universe, the entire story of the world, the trajectory of human history.
is being directed or not being directed. It is whether there's a God or not a God. Thank you. This and it it just underscores it all like the um You know, Lewis's statement that that In the beginning God is the most important and profound philosophical statement. ever uttered.
Because it has so many ramifications, including, you know, in this area. And I think we have to go back and think long and hard. About what it is? That that is true and plant our feet there. Because we can't foresee where it's all going to go.
Um Deadly Predictions may be right. They may be wrong. It may not be that bad. It may be worse. But what is true?
Is creation, fall, redemption, restoration. And what does it mean to see AI through that lens? To put this AI moment in the context of that story. That's that. That's.
That that's uh but what's going to be really important for us.
Okay, well, John, let's talk now about some of the questions we received this week. This has, again, is just, I'm really enjoying hearing feedback and getting questions from so many of our listeners.
So please keep those coming. The first one I want to talk about is from somebody asking Why doesn't the church do more about the issue of abortion? And this commenter, her name is Jade. Kind of likened it to the Holocaust. You know, if we were Christians in Germany at the time and we knew what was happening and we weren't doing anything about it, that's how.
She's feeling obviously, you know, kind of despairing looking at the fact that legal abortion seems to be increasing in legality. You know, we know through some state initiatives and.
So she's wanting to know why the church is not doing more about that.
Well, I'm grateful for the question. Whenever I hear a question that Something about what isn't the church, what isn't the church, what isn't the church. then it has to be for the follower of Christ the question, why am I not? because the church is made up of people. There's not the the institution of the church is made up of everyday Christians everywhere.
So it's important if we're going to ask that question and say, what am I doing? And what am I doing? in the place where I can actually make a difference. And I also think it's important to note that there's a 55-decade history of this. And the answer to the question: what is the church doing about abortion?
Is the church is doing an awful lot. There are some aspects and corners of the church that aren't doing anything, and that's a tragedy. There are some that aren't willing to say out loud things that are controversial, and that's a real problem. But it is the body of Christ largely showing up day in and day out at pregnancy resource centers, loving on people. It is primarily Christians who architected a decades long.
legal strategy that culminated In a, and it had stops and starts and a whole lot of failures, but that culminated ultimately in at least the downfall of Roe v. Wade. And the Dobbs decision. It is religious-minded. thinkers and writers that have created a case for life.
So that everyday people can grasp what is really a matter of scientific And biological, well, it wasn't scientifically or biologically clear before the ultrasound, you know. And I think that there are Christians that show up in various aspects of them. And we need Christians to show up everywhere in order to do that. But I guess the question is: well, what church? And then kind of what are you doing as well?
Because you're part of the church if you're a follower of Christ. Should we do more? Of course. I agree completely. We need to tackle it, especially now, I think, strategically in our own backyards.
And there's going to be a whole lot of Christians. Do the best that they're going to do over the next couple of years is hold back the tide of government forces coming after pro-lifers. I think that's going to be. what it means to be against abortion and Colorado? is to protect pro-life gynecologist and pregnancy center directors from going to prison, honestly.
What it means to be anti-abortion or to fight abortion and to do it faithfully as the church in Alabama. Is going to be going to push the the the laws and the protections the other way around. I just want to encourage too. The argument for being pro-life is simple, and by that I mean uncomplicated, but it is not easy. And sometimes I feel the frustration, and I feel it myself.
I'm in Ohio. Last year, we passed an amendment to our state constitution allowing abortion.
So I understand. the the grief and the frustration that something like that's possible. But I think we compound our own grief and frustration when we look at it like it's as simple as that. It's this rational piece of information that everybody should take at face value. Because the fact is, we can rationalize ourselves into all kinds of sin, and we all do it every single day.
And when you ramp up the temperature to the point of a pregnancy that you weren't planning on, or you're struggling financially, or your health is at risk, or you don't have any family to help you out, or whatever the other mitigating Circumstances are the simple, uncomplicated truth of the humanity of your baby. You can rationalize your way around that. And the fact is, we make decisions based on lots of other things outside of our rational thinking. And so, this issue is not going to be tackled by just like a, you know, reaching levels of saturation, like enough people standing up and saying that's a baby, because the fact is, people will still say, But I can't see it. And I'm in crisis.
So I appreciate what you said. I think every person has a different you know, has a calling and something they can contribute to this effort. But I bristle at the comparison that you know, to the Holocaust that Christians are not. Standing up and trying to stop this. It's simply not the same as.
Diverting a train full of Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp. It's just logistically different. And I think. At this point, given the conditions on the ground, one of the most effective tools we have to fight. you know, legal and more importantly, normalized culturally abortion.
Is teaching kids what sex is for and why and how God made it, and the context that it's supposed to be had. You're asking people to do something that's really hard. And again, uncomplicated, sure, you shouldn't kill babies. But hard because The culture that kids grow up in now for the past five decades is that. Sex is for pleasure.
Believing it belongs in marriage is antiquated and not based in reality. And you should be able to do whatever you want with any resulting pregnancy. All of that's wrong, but it's what they believe. It's just a unique problem, and it's going to take a lot of avenues of attack. from the pro-life side, I think.
All right, one more piece of feedback we got, John, this week. We got several people writing in, commenting on a commentary that you did with our colleague, Dr. Glenn Sunshine, about this very issue, about the, you know, just sort of the rationality of abortion. You know, the science is pretty settled that it is a baby, and yet we're still having this debate. And so I thought it was a helpful commentary.
But there was a comment made in there that this is similar to like people always saying, well, the science was settled on global warming, but now people are questioning whether global warming is actually human-caused. Can you weigh in on this controversy here?
Well, I think the complaint was valid, or the critique was valid, that we were referring to a study that was old and didn't really reflect the current state of the scientific community around something like global warming. The point of the commentary was a little bit different, which is we have been appealing to scientific consensus and the science being settled for years. And that was enough to just say, okay, well, the debate's off the table, so we should move forward. And there's far more scientific consensus. Even today, around the official when life begins, human life begins at conception.
Of course, what we're talking about now in the abortion debate often is the separation from when a human life begins and when a human life acquires personhood. whether it's from some capacity, the ability to survive. continued You know, self-interest in their own existence, you know, all kinds of different philosophical or psychological categories that get superimposed on the biology. But the biology is clear on when life begins and the appeal to scientific consensus. Is used in one case, but not in the other.
And that was the big point. When it comes to global warming, there was, or climate change, You know, all this has been shortcutted as well, the claim to scientific consensus. is tricky because When you're talking about climate change, you're talking about A, that the climate is changing. B. that it's human cost.
And C. that it's going to be catastrophic. And I do think the scientific consensus that climate change is happening. is increasing. Whether it's human caused.
And whether or not It's going to be catastrophic. That that that is still all over the place. The study we cited and referred to wasn't the best. There are newer ones, and so the critiques were right on that breakpoint commentary. And I appreciated that feedback.
All right, fair enough.
Well, John, let's talk about recommendations before we sign off for the week. And by the way, if you have a comment or a question you'd like us to tackle, Please go to breakpoint.org and click on contact us. We have several that we didn't get to this week, and we'll try to get to some of those next week as well. I'll recommend. I we're recording this, like I said, on Thursday.
I have a piece I believe is running in World Opinions either tomorrow or next week. Kind of in response to a piece that A listener over on Substack. Cassie sent to me. This is a piece from Susie Weiss writing in the free press about how she's taking Ozempic, even though it's not really medically indicated for her. She's taking this.
This weight loss drug that's supposed to be used for diabetes, but she's chosen to use it kind of cosmetically because it's helped her curb her appetite in a way that she'd like. I really liken it actually to our conversation, John, that we just had about AI, because the piece from Susie Weiss was very honest, but you could kind of tell that she felt a bit uncomfortable with taking the drug in this way. But she wasn't quite sure how to justify that discomfort. And I think part of it is that. She is lacking, maybe a theology of the body, actually.
Like, is. If we find a way to in the future to biohack our way out of an appetite and we can survive without needing food. Which feels like a comedy bit, but it's also more plausible every day. Can we argue for continuing to eat food? And I think, as a Christian, absolutely, you can and should, because.
God instituted eating before the fall. He said to eat from any tree in the garden, it's part of the natural image bearing that he gave us. But these are the kinds of questions, again, that we didn't anticipate would be up for debate, but are starting to be, and it's worth thinking through them now. That, like I said, I believe it's supposed to run on Friday this week. But if it's not there, it'll be there next week.
That'll be over at World Opinions. Good recommendation. I'll just repeat that we've got the upcoming conversation in the end of July with Seth Dillon and Jim Daly. This is part of the Great Lakes Symposium on Christian World View. You can join on live stream and the signups are ready to go.
And I think you can just go to colsoncenter.org/slash truth. Colsoncenter.org slash truth. And go ahead and sign up for that. It's absolutely free July 24th on Thursday. with uh Seth Delman and Jim Daly.
Awesome. All right, well, that's going to do it for the show this week. Thanks so much for listening to Breakpoint This Week from the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Bear alongside John Stone Street. Also, John, I've been reliably informed it's pronounced like you have something in your mouth.
Louisville. Louisville. I don't know. Louis Lou Louisville. We'll see you all in Louisville next week for the Colson Center National Conference.
I'm so excited. All right. See you then.
