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 commemorate the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. We're also going to talk about new fears of AI and what it means for our future. We're so glad you're with us this week. 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 on Friday morning, and it is the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.
So that's where I want to start with you. I want to ask: how do you think the attacks shaped our culture, including ways that we're still feeling today? I mean, that's it's it's a big question because when you're t talking about An event like this, you're talking about more than just how did it shape our culture, you're talking about how did it shape the history. of the world. You're talking about what role is it playing within the larger civilizational story that we were a part of and are now a part of.
And then you also are talking about culture. Anyone who has seen the ground zero been there to See, um the the memorials that are there in place know that New York culture And many people have written about this and talk about this all the time. People that were there. New York's a different place in in many ways. And yet here we are in a way that almost no one would expect that twenty-five years later after this event.
that reshape the the the skyline that of this city. You have not only a mayor who is a a Muslim, but a mayor who has demonstrated some sort of personal connection To Al-Qaeda, who was responsible for that event. I mean, that's a remarkable development in just 25 years. And it tells you, I think, to some degree, that it's not just the event itself. the lens through which We were seeing the events and the lens through which subsequent generations.
We're seeing the event.
So it's hard to even know where to where to begin. Uh we're now on the other side of The Department of Homeland Security in the United States. We're now on the other side of years of. you know, increased security. uh quote unquote for our safety.
Which has, in many ways, kept us safe. It was pretty unthinkable at that time, given kind of what a wake-up call that 9-11 was at the place we were, and I'll talk more about that in just a second. I think that there's not been another. uh attack in the same way on American soil. There has been outside of American soil, and that's part of the story.
For all of those that are trying to disconnect this event, even as recently, apparently, as last night. I watched a clip from a CNN program in which there was just, again, you know, anger at, you know, don't say this was, you know, about Muslims, you know, and that was a conversation that was a hot conversation in the days after. Who do we blame? That's the thing about evil is you've got to have somebody. To blame.
And you either blame people or you blame God, and then you got to figure out why people did what they did. But that conversation about Islam has been completely different.
So that's a huge part of the story.
So there's so many different levels about it. Real quick, let me, to that end, I want to quote Ayan Hersieli, who has a piece in Tablet magazine about this right now. And then I'm going to turn it back over to you because she's talking about exactly this.
So she opens with talking about one of the attackers who was a young man who'd written his will and testament a few years before. He was. By Western standards, pretty wealthy. He was living in Germany. He was a graduate student.
And he was very explicit about what he wanted to accomplish on 9-11 and in his life generally, which was martyrdom for the faith. And for some reason, you know, his. Testament afterwards was dismissed largely in the West. And here's what she writes. For 25 years, Western elites had repeatedly insisted that men like Atta must have been driven by something other than the culture and the faith.
that had provided him with a lens through which his actions seemed both sensible and necessary. In the Western experience men had not killed other men over religious questions en masse since the end of the great religious wars of the seventeenth century. Culture, a term that was once understood to encompass a great many facets of human identity, experience, and belonging, religion included, had also been ruled out. Saying that cultural differences exist and should be respected was a foundation of the multicultural order. The idea that some cultures might lead people to murder each other for reasons that do not appear in the Western rational list of sane causes.
struck many Western liberals as too close to racism to bother arguing the point.
Well, I think that should be part of our recommendations. I think there's a lot of recommendations today for this program. That's got to be one of them to listen to ION, Hercy Ali. Talk about the Really what she's talking about is whether your worldview is big enough to explain. What we saw.
And that was a big part of this story as well. I've said this before, but I have a distinct memory. I don't know why I have this memory, but I have a distinct memory of the 90s. It would have been, I'm assuming, 1994, 1995. I'm guessing fall of 19.
Four, sitting in a history class. It was a history of Western Civ class, a required class. Listening to a description of the Second World War or the First World War. And thinking to myself, that was The early part of that century, but I cannot imagine the world ever. going to war again.
And as it would turn out, it would be just about 10 years later that I was standing in front of a college. Class, a group of freshmen. at the same institution and I asked them. Could you imagine the world being at peace again? The answer when I thought about it was an absolute no.
I mean, this was the fat, happy 1990s. You know, I mean, yeah, we had Alanis Morcette talking about how bad everything was psychologically. You know, it was kind of the early kind of grungy, we had Eddie Vetter, and we had, you know, Pearl Jam and, you know, things like that. There was a vibe of the 90s that everything was awesome, but we're going to choose to be miserable. In the 2000s, it was just completely different.
There was. uh a realization that Pieces is a fragile thing. It's not the normal course of events for for History and then the There were also some very real forces in the world. And there were people willing to say it, like Ayan's willing to say it, and she said this before. but others, that one of those forces that fights against peace.
And this isn't the same thing as saying that every Muslim is a terrorist or something like that. And there were certainly forms of. Of racism and hate that emerged out of trying to reckon with the pain and suffering of 9-11. But Islam is not a force that brings peace to the world, Islam is a force that brings peace. conflict to the world.
And the more Muslim a nation or a group of people or a group was, the more likely they were to. not be peaceful. When you take the faith seriously on its own terms. It was kind of like on a global scale. The early attempts to explain why Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris attacked Columbine High School.
You know, they were bullied. It was video games. And then you turn around and go, oh, Actually, they had become ideologically convinced of a certain set of things about life and the world. The idea that these were kind of oppressed minorities did not fit the narrative of these particular terrorists. They were convinced, they were true believers.
They were part of a network of true believers. They had patience. To plan and orchestrate this. There was a reason it happened on 9-11. There's all kinds of forces there.
One of the ways that a secular vision of reality is just not big enough is it does not take seriously religious commitment. to the degree uh that we saw in terms of its potential uh on on 9-11. Yeah, I'm I'm sorry, I'm gonna read one more quote from Ayan because it's just So, point is. We should have just probably read the whole thing and let it just do its work. But this again is exactly, so she's making the same point you just made, which is that we decided in the West not to take religion seriously anymore at the same moment as we were elevating any notice of cultural difference in a negative sense as racism or as a faux pas that you couldn't do.
And once 9-11 happened, it kind of brought to the challenge those two assumptions. And she says, Since then, each time the West collided with Islam, much of the Western intellectual class. Reached for explanations that made sense within its own secular humanist categories: grievance, humiliation, underdevelopment, alienation, foreign policy frustration, or the failure of Western states to properly integrate men like Atta, who were or must be. Inherently no different than immigrants of similar age, class, and educational attainments from places like Vietnam or Poland. Since all conflicts are material in origin, it was assumed that they could all be settled through material means.
Yeah.
Well, listen, the ability to underestimate is not something though that just belongs to the secular elite. I think it belongs to all of us within a secular culture. I've told this story before too, but I think it's a very important one. And I think it also was part of the ongoing story of 9-11 and how did we get to the place that we are at today, which I know she is trying to explain in this piece. Is a year after 9-11.
I was sitting and listening to a speaker, a very well-known, renowned philosopher and apologist. Who said postmodernism is over? And you got to remember: I mean, listen, we were coming out of the 90s. This is. You know, the Matrix movies, you know, Eminem, postmodernism was an intellectual force coming out of the 60s, having reshaped the humanities departments of universities.
You certainly could see it reflected in some of the relativistic talk of in national media. But but it had moved into pop culture to another level, you know, to a very important degree, which kind of has to do with the gloomy postmodernism of the grunge and that sort of thing. And it had become kind of the dominant force. But here you had a Christian philosopher saying postmodernism is dead. And that's because he.
I think I saw the primary commitment of postmodernism as being moral relativism. And that was so. Contradicted by 9-11. And that's how he put it. He said, you know, no one can be a post-modernist anymore.
Because no one could see that evil and say that good and evil doesn't exist. And I remember thinking at the time, I mean, literally.
Something that Chuck Colson would say over and over and over. And I don't think I'd heard it at this time from Chuck Colson. Chuck used to say this all the time after his experience at Watergate. That there's no limit to the human capacity for self-rationalization. Right.
Purely rational and logical looking at things, even as things as awful as towers being attacked and collapsing in the middle of the biggest city in the world. thousands of people being killed. The motivations of it, people celebrating in the streets in many Islamic countries. And that, by the way, is another point that gets missed by people who want to reduce down the evil of 9-11 just to the terrorists and the actors and the ones who planned it. You forget that there was an awful lot of people who financed it, and there was an awful lot of people who celebrated it.
In the streets, and they were motivated by the same religious beliefs. But The fact of the matter is that we retreat to our world views. at times like these. And the narrative then became. And it was something that further fed into postmodernism, and it actually gave, at least for a while, some fuel to the fire of the new atheist.
Because what you ended up hearing from people is not, oh, I can't believe in. Moral relativism anymore because that's really evil.
Now, some people, I think, had that wake-up call. A lot of people had that wake-up call, at least for a few weeks. I was teaching a worldview class at the time to these college freshmen on Tuesday, September the 11th. On Thursday, September the 13th, we gathered again to pray. And we talked and we had about 10 minutes to go on with the course material.
And I quoted a new ager on saying something like, We were talking about transcendentalism and new agey kinds of ideas. And The person said something like, The quote was like, you know, there's no good and no evil. And they got visibly angry in my class. They, if you can get college freshmen to wake up, you know, at a nine o'clock class, it's pretty, a pretty impressive feat. They just got.
They almost came out of their seats because they did see that disconnect. But an awful lot of people punted back to their world views instead. And what they said was, no, oh, oh, no, people who believe in absolutes are the kind of people who do this kind of evil. And uh the new atheist. Said that.
Religious people are the kind of people who do this kind of evil, as if the history of the 20th century didn't involve. Atheists doing incredibly evil things on a national and planned and orchestrated scale. The blind spots of world views. And the explanatory Power. of worldviews and the blinders of world views.
You know, where they just make you forget, like, whole parts of things that's all part of the kind of creatures that we are. as human beings, which is why God And Holy Scripture continually talks about how we are worshipers. John Calvin talks about how we are idol factories, but what we worship. changes things. It changes what we see.
You know, our eyes are not just things we use to look at stuff. We look through our eyes, and what we really see with is our worldview. And it's a powerful thing. Hi, I'm Adam from Texas, and I'm a cornerstone partner because now more than ever, all followers of Christ must be able to stand up for their faith and speak truth and love to the hurting world around us. The Colson Center has helped not just my wife and I become better apologists.
but it has supported us in countless conversations with our children. My prayer is that they will be equipped to boldly engage with the culture and shine brightly for him and the world throughout their lives. If you would like to join myself and over a thousand other people in becoming a Cornerstone partner, Visit Colsoncenter.org slash monthly. I know I've shared this story before, but I interviewed a couple years ago a woman who was driving over a bridge. In Minneapolis in 2007, when it collapsed, and her car fell into the river, and she was rescued.
You know, she was. Extremely injured. She was in rehabilitation for over a year. I think she broke her back. And I mean, it was horrible.
But she has an incredible story. And one of the things I still think about is that she said when it happened and she got into the ambulance, she called a friend to tell them what had happened and asked her to meet her at the hospital. And she had to explain what had happened like four or five times before the friend could. Literally, understand the words she was saying because it was so unexpected. She was being very clear, right?
And it, right, and That it's such an illustration of how, like, when something happens that shocks you, especially something that's terrible. It's an act of sort of intellectual self-defense to reach for your explanations, right? How could I make sense of this? And the test, I think, of a worldview is whether your priors that you're bringing to that question are open to be challenged. And what happened to a lot of people in the West.
Was that they weren't. You know, this is how you get my college professor asking us to write an essay on. What we might, we being America, might have done differently that could have prevented 9-11, right? Like, and yeah, and the answer was not increased surveillance or defense. Oh, no, he meant the right answer.
Yes, our economic colonialism and our general rudeness and whatever else. Exactly. And I, you know, he was not, I'm not ready to say like that this professor hated America or anything like that, but he had a set of priors that were included. People don't take religion this seriously anymore. It's the year 2005.
It's just not possible. They don't do it.
So if that's my prior, that is unwilling to be challenged.
So what is the other possible explanations? And where it gets crazy, where you can test those things, because like I like that you said, all of us are susceptible to this, is can you accept reality as it's presented to you? Because we had the writings of the people, the actual people who committed 9-11. 11, who told us why they did it. And even those, we were unwilling to accept.
It was like the girl calling her friend and saying a bridge collapsed, and the friend saying, That's not possible. What happened to you? Like, are you on a bad acid trip or something? And if you can't accept reality as it's presented to you, that's when you know your priors and your worldview need adjusting. There are some memories I have in the days and weeks after 9-11 that are examples of this.
I remember watching on. I saw this live. It was maybe the 700 Club or something. Where Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were on together talking about what had happened and to you know conser conservative religious right leaders and And they blamed the gays, the lesbians, and ACLU, I think, if I remember. Basically, We removed God from our country and God took his hand of protection off of that.
That was inappropriate. It was rightly condemned by a lot of people at the time, including Chuck Coulson. And but you see, you know, it's an example of what are you bringing to the conversation. A few weeks after that, there was a memorial service, and Richard Gere was one of the celebrities that showed up at the memorial service to. kind of a big televised event.
I think they were raising a lot of money to, you know, for the firefighters and the victims of the families and and of people that had the families of the victims who had lost people and so on. And And there were different musical acts and celebrities that would introduce the musical acts, you know, kind of like a. Um What was the, you know, some the we are the world kind of things. I think he was introducing a musical act, but he said, Before I do, let's have a moment of silence for the terrorists. This was in a in a auditorium in 9-11 in New York City.
within a month after 9-11. Because Richard Gere is a Buddhist. And he believes, you know, kind of about an westernized Buddhist form. that you would be sending. You need to put positive things out into the universe to get positive things back.
And he said something along the lines of The terrorists are now living horrible future lives. Because of their terror. And if we can send out We can help them with their horrible future lives. As you can imagine in an audience. in which This auditorium was packed.
Uh with firefighters Families of these firefighter victims who had died on 9-11. That's what he said. I mean, they almost strung him. strung them up. It was They were so, so, so angry.
Do you think maybe in their future lives they were trapped in a giant tower that was being attacked by terrorists? Oh, it was, it was a.
Now Credit Richard Gere for being a true believer. You don't say that in front of that audience at that time unless you really believe what you're saying. I remember uh a prayer service held in Yankee Stadium. In the days after 9-11. This was like a week.
This was before. If I'm remembering, it's interesting how people have memories, and sometimes, you know, you don't always remember correctly. But I'm remembering this being. Very, very soon after 9-11. And when the death toll was still being estimated at over 5,000.
And there were still a lot of people. You might remember the entire Streets of New York kind of plastered. Have you seen? Have you seen? Have you seen?
And it was just. chaotic and Oprah was part of the prayer service and And she said at the prayer service, that She believed that when our loved ones die they become our guardian angels. And so, so many thousands of guardian angels have been added to the spirit realm, is what she said. And I'm sure that was one of the more comforting things that people had seen, had heard, people who maybe weren't religious or hadn't thought deeply about this. And You know, you have the popular narratives about guardian angels and so on.
I remember just sitting it there thinking, well, If 5,000 loved ones became guardian angels. What happened to the terrorists? Did they become guardian angels? And whose guardian angels are they? Like, in other words, just the palpable logical problems, you know, the consequences of her ideas that she was.
But that's what people did. That's what we all do. You know, we see through those lenses. I I think there is maybe a level of understanding that we can have now.
So far in the future. I was reading a piece that Rodre wrote on his memories of living in New York City on 9-11, and he quoted, Kierkegaard, who said, you know, we have we live life forwards and we can only understand it backwards. But we still do understand it through the lens of these, you know, givens, these priors, as you put it, the, the, um, Um the uh the the world view lenses through which we see things and And you you Getting further from those facts, I think, allows you To Ignore even have bigger blind spots. Because I am still mystified. I just remember the anger.
I remember the patriotism. I remember. The unity, I remember the you know the there there were just Warnings against blaming everyone with a headscarf, you know, and there were stories of people like Sikhs that were attacked in subways and so on unfairly. And it, you know, Sikhs are the they have n no violence in their religion basically whatsoever. But here in that same city, Not only uh a a Muslim who is the mayor but a Muslim with clear ties to Al Qaeda.
That's a wild development. And it's hard to. Fully understand that. We have really short memories. I mean, you know, you've.
If you've ever been in a car accident, for how long afterwards are you You know, very, very serious about going the speed limit and wearing your seatbelt. And then, as more time passes and you readjust to the You know, the low likelihood of getting in another car accident, your behavior changes. We're all susceptible to this. And I think that. The other issue that's facing us is that we live in, as Rostoffett would say, such a decadent time, and for those of us in the West, a decadent place that It puts so much distance between us and having to reckon with our priors.
Like the woman who fell off the bridge, those are the kind of moments in your life that bring into sharp relief. what you believe about the world and what you believe about Eternity and those kinds of questions. And in prior generations and times and epics and world history, People came into close contact with that question every day because they weren't living as decadently as we are. 9-11 was one of the things that forced us to reckon with those priors in a way that we hadn't for a while. And we really haven't too much since then either.
And that's how you can get like this sort of forming like a callus over a blister for years that your priors, that you actually do live in an evolved time in which people don't take their religion seriously and you're not in the sort of danger that people were in before. Those get more and more plausible to you. And then when they are finally challenged by reality, it's too shocking and it's too much. And you reach for explanations that don't make sense. But that's why, so I'm going to make another weird recommendation, maybe in light of this conversation.
But one of the ways that we can meaningfully Make sense of life by looking backwards, as Kierkegaard would say, is by reading, just read. New and old books. and get acquainted with stories that are not your own. but that are well written and good explorations of human nature that allow you to imagine scenarios like falling off of a bridge or being the victim of a terrorist attack and force you to come face to face with how you would interpret those events. And how your worldview would allow you to see them or to act in light of them or whatever it is.
That's one of the reasons. I feel so passionate about having my kids read hard books. And about reading them myself is that it can, in a decadent time and place. It can force you to reckon with ideas and situations that you might not. be forced to face in your own life.
I wanna um I hit a couple other things that I think are Observations looking back. I'm guessing that there may be some listeners. That are I don't want to say bristling, but There there's just I'm I'm having a level of discomfort with talking about nine eleven with anything else. Especially an individual tragedy. As crazy as that, I remember that bridge story, just a crazy one.
But Yeah. Because 9-11 was such a palpable global event. And for this generation, Today. I spoke to a group of high schoolers not too long ago. None of them were born.
You know, none of them. No, all the college students, the people that are remembering now on college campuses. None of them were born. But just because For them, chronologically, it's kind of like. Pearl Harbor was For me growing up, It was something I didn't remember.
Or Vietnam or the assassination of JFK. How How we Remember it. is different. It's not just the fact that we don't live in that time and place. It's that we're a different kind.
of people together trying to remember these things. There's a difference between having a kind of an identity as an American and at least some level of pride in civic history. Which, to your point, is some of the priors that I'm bringing. You know, I was bringing as a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old. to learning about these kind of global events.
The generation Today doesn't have Many of them. Don't have that same framework. They don't have that same identity.
So they're struggling with identity across the board. And then looking back at that event with a completely different set of associations when it comes to what it means to be a citizen or what it means to be a nation. you know, to your point, they have the college professors telling them, you know, Where are we guilty? or whatever. I think that the loss of civic history is a really powerful part of this.
I think it's part of the explanation. We know that, for example, what happened in New York City. With the election of Zuron Mamdani, it was primarily driven by younger voters. And so on.
So I I think there's probably an explanation there. But that's a really big loss. It's kind of like a. A cultural Alzheimer's, an inability to remember. who we are together and and and what really kind of happened that day.
There's been a A conscious rejection. Of the thesis that, in my mind, has stood up better than any others. In terms of where did this day come from, which is Huntington's clash of civilization. In the days and weeks after, probably longer, I don't know when Oz Guinness first articulated this, but I remember in. The years after 9-11, hearing him kind of do what he does, where he sums up these massive concepts of.
What the clash of civilization will look like going forward. And he had three questions. Grateful to uh Our our uh Colson Center Board Member Steve Relay for reminding me of these three questions. I hadn't thought about them in a while, and I thought, yeah, this was. a way of trying to put together the Clash of Civilizations thesis.
Now, as a reminder, Coming out of the end of the Cold War, you had people basically arguing that democracy had won. And then you had. Huntington sang, oh no. It's not about nation states anymore like it was in the 20th century. It now is about civilizations.
And these civilizations exist along fault lines, economic fault lines, but really geographic fault lines that both transcend national borders and also coexist within national borders. And that's where the conflict's going to be coming forward. And Huntington also argued That the hottest conflicts in the coming years, and he was again writing in the late 90s. The hottest conflicts, the civilizational fault lines, the ones that were going to create the most friction. We're going to be between Islam and the West.
And that has, I think, proven to be true. We haven't had another major attack in the U.S., but there have been major attacks. Obviously, around the world over and over and over and over. And the civilizational fault lines sometimes would be highly, the conflicts would be highly organized, like 9-11. And sometimes it's like the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, you know, where the guy just has a personal vendetta and identity, takes it seriously and goes.
We have a number of those that have taken place in the United States.
Well, there's another level too, right? Of like the grooming gangs in London. Right. Yeah.
You're in infiltration of the West. Yeah, that's right. And Huntington wrote about that as well. But there are three questions that Osginis asked in the wake, the years after 9-11 about kind of where this is going. And I think there's still three interesting questions, and I'm not sure that we have a full answer.
We have a better picture of it than we did. The first is You know, What what will happen with China? You know, as this conflict was happening here, you had China and the other part of the world growing militarily, growing in economic power, and so on. China has its own cultural issues. They've got their own problems with young men, for example.
They've got birth rate issues. There's a lot of things that are. Uh they they they make a lot of people angry. But they've also been very effective. in colonizing Areas of Africa and other emerging parts, developing parts of the world.
So that still is a fundamental question. The second is: what will happen with the West? I've always thought that's the most important question: what kind of people are we going to be? Are we going to return? Are we going to become more secular or are we going to return to some level to Religious ideals.
And it is notable that the new atheism that was accelerated in the wake of 9-11, you remember a lot of the new atheist. Kind of using the same tack blaming religious conviction. You had some pop new atheist basically saying, Well, you know, well, Christian fundamentalism is just as bad as Muslim fundamentalism. It's like, yeah, when you become more like Muhammad, it does not look the same when you become more like Jesus. There's just, these are not the same guys.
But the third is the other question. Is will Islam become more secular or more fundamentalist? And really, What we have seen is on a number of levels, Islam has become more secular. In the years after 9-11, I used to do a pretty frequent I had a pretty frequent interview schedule with a radio station out of Los Angeles. And right after me, The the host would have uh an imam.
on a Muslim teacher. Position was Um but He actually advocated. That his own religion become more secular. And his reason was really simple. It's like, if we don't, they're going to kill us.
You know, if we become more fundamentalist, We, you know, coming out of 9-11, he was like, we are going to be in big trouble. And there were voices for the secularization of Islam. Of course, we look at al-Qaeda, we look at The Hamas and the forces that have now become kind of constant enemies of Israel, financed by Iran. They're not. They're becoming more fundamentalist, but they're also.
Less definitive or defining of what global Islam looks like. Islam has a problem with falling birth rates as well.
Now they're falling from seven to nine, you know, to three to five, but that's a pretty precipitous drop. uh when you look at Islamic nations around the world. I don't know that it's We know that this is going to stay this way, that is the way that it has gone thus far. But these are very interesting geopolitical Developments That are all shaped, you know, again, in many ways, or became way more important questions because of 9-11. All those.
questions were really important no matter what. But 9-11 made all three of those questions far more essential and far more important and they're Three questions that Christians, I think, can ask. and looking at the signs of the times and where things are going. John, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more breakpoint this week in just a moment.
Christian Educators, this is Billy Hutchinson with Colson Educators. And as a former teacher myself, I know you're busy, and I know you want to teach like a Christian, not just be a Christian who teaches.
Well that's why we created the Colson Educators app. You can get practical Worldview training wherever you are, complete courses on your schedule, earn CEUs and connect with a community of like-minded educators. Download the Colson Educators app on the Apple App Store or Google Play. We're back on breakpoint this week. John, I might add a fourth question to Osganus's questions.
And I'm going to put that question to you now. And I need you to tell me that the answer is no. I just need that on an emotional level. Is AI? going to kill all of us.
Because Anthropic. We've had a series of very strange and science fiction-esque. public warnings that have been issued this week. The most prominent two that I saw were from men who had resigned from Anthropic, either this week or in. in recent months.
who are saying that the the wheels are off. behind closed doors in the designing of these AI tools. And I want to be clear that I barely understand the words that I'm about to use. And I have to use what sounds like human, anthropomorphized language because I don't know how else to talk about it. But there was a story of an AI model being set loose upon some kind of company called Hugging Face.
Which again, I don't really understand any of these words, but I'm going to share as much as I can understand. And in this sort of hacking of this company, the AI agents. went rogue, including in some cases Sacrificing themselves on behalf of other AI agents. And this is something that we've been told in previous iterations of this developing technology would never happen. But that is concerning because it suggests lots of things, but one of them being A larger, like that, AI is capable of internalizing a larger goal than its own individual survival.
And that it is willing to sacrifice on behalf of that. Again, I barely understand this, but these warnings that have come out from these designers and tech developers are that. we no longer have a handle on what this technology is able to do. And that because of profit considerations or competition considerations with other developing nations like China. that we are not willing to put the brakes on it and that it could lead to an extinction event.
It's always alarming when you have people from the inside, you know, kind of say, hey, you guys aren't, you know, you don't know what's happening. It's bigger than what you think. But I think it's also very important for us to remember that those that are kind of in this world. in many ways are so captivated by it, they may not be the most objective observers either. You know, we've talked about this.
In the past, that the catastrophism that we have seen coming from various segments, for example, climate, hysteria, and so on. There's a framework that they're bringing to the conversation, and the framework is ultimately one. in which the universe and everything in it, including humanity. Is the product of a set of natural causes and processes that had no mind, no design, and certainly no oversight. This is a naturalistic view of life in the world.
And The truth is, we're here. They've got to reckon with that. But there's no explanation for why we're here. No one planned for us to be here in this worldview. And.
It was all like. razor thin margins like How did Stephen Jay Gould put it? We're here because an odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures. And because the Earth never froze completely during the ice age, and a small and tenuous species arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago has somehow managed to survive by hook and by crook. If you begin with that assumption, then we are just one catastrophe away.
From You know, extinction. And to some degree, there's not a lot we can do about it. But to some degree, if we've evolved to the state where we have a little bit of power over things, then we might be the ones responsible for screwing everything up. At the same level, you have people begin having the same sort of fundamental set of assumptions about life and the world. giving go uh humans godlike status.
And basically predicting that humans Will Emerge or evolve beyond humanity to the extent that we can bring about a utopian world. Of course, there were all kinds of people that believed they could do that on a small scale, or people that believed through either eugenics or economics we could bring about a utopian way. In other words, the promises of of godlike power. And it's notable that the founders of all these companies M many of these companies. Believe this.
Some of the people that are driving either philosophically or actually, they have a. a pretty elevated view of human capacity. that the world really isn't under the oversight of God. It's under the oversight of humans specifically themselves. I mean, who was it?
Ray Kurzweil is kind of classic for saying these grandiose things when he was asked, Do you believe God exists? And he. As I think Abdou Muri quoted this in our symposium, he responded, Not yet. You know, I mean, what a statement, right? Where you basically.
Put all the Either weight of saving the world or all the weight of killing everyone in the hands of humans or human inventions.
So it makes sense in this catastrophic vision. in which there's no oversight. of something like this getting out of control. But it also makes sense That There is if you don't think there's anything outside of us. A level of panic can kick in.
And you can explain that panic with scientific terms and grandiose claims. And I think that's what's happening here. I think we have a real dual threat when it comes to AI. Number one is giving AI either human like or godlike status? And on the other hand, reducing God?
Or humans? Down to AI-like status. And forgetting the hierarchy of the created order. I think Christians have a voice in this. I think our voice should be one of.
A real sober-minded Reality? Of both human potential and human fallenness, so that we don't put too much weight on either one of those things. And also pointing to the fact that that there is a story that's bigger than the AI s chapter. that we're in right now and it's the story of redemption do you believe That the story of creation and new creation is not just the story that the Bible tells. But it's the story of reality itself.
That's the task. And I think Uh we can do that.
So I'm not super panicked. and this is a very convenient time for us to mention. We have some more resources coming out on artificial intelligence at the Colson Center, including a short course. a four-week course with some wonderful thinkers. that are going to help us walk through.
How do we keep AI and humanity straight, right?
So we're talking about AI and work, AI. and wisdom. AI and how we think about what it means to be human in our relationships. And we have folks like Andy Crouch that will be joining us. Andy's done some wonderful things when it comes.
to how we think about life in the uh the world. Jonathan Paigeot, in terms of AI and human creativity. He's got I think wonderful thoughts on how we keep humans human in this age of AI. Claire Morrell, how you actually structure your own life, your own family life around this. It was funny.
Not funny. It was actually quite fascinating and interesting. I had a wonderful conversation this week with a. A w uh a a wonderful uh family uh a gr a group of people who are execs in a large family owned business. And they had this tension.
And it's a tension I think that a lot of people have. Which is in the business side of things, AI is there. There's no, you can't get that genie back in the bottle. There's no way to not use the tools of efficiency and so on that are there. And all of them also had incredible concerns about how their own kids were thinking and interacting with AI.
Right, and there you go, right? That's the same thing we've had with the internet and technologies and computers. You know, I'm going to use this because I can't not use this, but I also don't want my kids to confuse. you know, their best friend with Siri.
So these are wonderful conversations to have. And I think this short course will be a way for us to wrestle with that. At some level, we're building the plane in the sky. This stuff's already part of the experience. We need to draw boundaries.
We need to think clearly. We need to have. A worldview in which the priors that we're bringing are informed by what's true. and we acknowledge and recognize our own potential blind spots. And this is another resource where I think that can be helpful.
Yeah, absolutely.
So go to colsoncenter.org. And you can also go to colsoncenter.org forward/slash forum and find information about this. This is, like you said, it's a four-week. Class forum that's going to be happening in October.
So you can sign up for that there. But, John, I have one slightly pessimistic follow-up. To your analysis with this, which is I believe that I believe. That in the redemption story, that Jesus is coming back, that my fate is sealed, my children's fate is sealed. You know, I just pray that He keeps us each day, gives us the bread that we need for today, all of those things.
And I treasure that. Like, I couldn't be here talking to you calmly if I didn't believe those things. In the same moment. There are moments in the Old Testament, I'm thinking of the Tower of Babel, when God is saying, don't do this thing. Don't do this thing.
because you're gonna make everything needlessly so much harder for yourself. And including, you know, building Building false gods and worshiping false gods in the books of the prophets. You have prophets warning against coming destruction because of this thing that you're doing, that you can invite. Needless destruction on yourself and on your neighbors by the way that you act in the world. And I As much as I believe that my fate is sealed to the glory of God, Ink and my children's.
I don't want my kids live I don't want to live through something As terrible as the utter destruction that is described in the book of Jeremiah and Lamentations? And is this, this feels like the kind of moment when we might be heading towards something like that? How do you think through that? Yeah, well, first of all, that if you are in that moment at which there is a vision of the end times that includes some level of, you know, In fact, forget that. Whether we're in this version of the end times or that version of the end times.
We're always in a version of reality after Eden, which is You know, the Bible is very clear: there's death, there's destruction, there's suffering, there's 9-11s. There's 9-10s, there's all kinds of things. That's been the common human experience. To be human is to be in that experience. And if you and your kids are in this particular moment where there is something maybe that's going to be particularly challenging, it's because God puts you here.
God determines the exact times in which we live and the boundaries. Of our dwelling place. And then the second thing, and this is, I think, the bigger point. The story of Babel is not just the story of God warning us don't do these things. The story of Babel is God stepping in.
And actually in his mercy? uh accomplishing his purposes. And the story of Holy Scripture is the God ultimately doing that in Christ Jesus. To bring about a new heavens, a new earth. That's always been the story.
The hope that we have is never. that a circumstance that we are called to face in this time and place will change. The story of hope is that no matter what the circumstance is that we're called to face. Christ is risen, Christ is Lord. And Christ ultimately is making all things new.
And that's a story that's bigger than a challenging moment that we are in. Thank you for that. You're welcome.
Well, John, you just mentioned 9-10 as well. And so this week was the anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which. Is deeply felt by a lot of people. What is this bringing up for you in terms of memories or feelings or cultural change? Yeah, I mean, a lot of thoughts.
I've uh said before, I I I'm just Grateful for his life and the way that he grew publicly. And how he fought the fights that he did. And he was a courageous and articulate defender of what is true. And someone who started more political and less Christian. And my vision, this is my way I see it, became more.
way more Christian in how we understood everything, including the political I think that's part one. Part two, it's been interesting just on a external level to watch people deal with this because these anniversaries are back to back. And Chart, it's been a year. That's it. But that it's also been a fast year.
But to think it's been 25 years and there's something about the Kind of the round numbers or the quarter century kind of anniversaries. You know, last year you didn't have as much chatter about 9-11. Last year, you didn't have as much chatter about what had happened in New York. You don't have kind of everything that else is going on that. And to think that 25 years has passed, and then a year has passed.
So people are trying to process. In a year, it's still really fresh. 25 years for 9/11 is still a It's a notable anniversary. And it's a lot to do both of these things at the same time. And that's what I'm seeing.
It's a lot for people to do both of these things. at the same time and and and rightfully so. 9-11 was one of the first Tragedies like this, we have footage. of Pearl Harbor, it's very limited footage. There's footage of the assassination of JFK, but it's from one angle.
And it's spawned up an incredible amount of Conspiracy theories. The world watched 9-11 on national television. on every network. And since, we've gotten more and more and more and more footage. And it still hasn't stopped.
The conspiracy theories. Same thing with Charlie Kirk. I mean, the story of this last year has been the story of some people getting more religious, many young men becoming more. convicted about kind of the lives that they're lived and wanting to be people more like Charlie and then an awful lot of people. Just retreating to conspiracy theorizing about this and how it fits in the global order and Zionism and just bizarre.
Evil speculation, some of whom obviously make an awful lot of money because they do it that way. I I think I guess what I'm trying to say is I have been struck by The fact. That Even with way more cameras and way more it it doesn't stop what humans do. first of all, to try to come up with an explanation for evil. that we see?
But just the conspiracy theory theories and and and the harm that that can do to other people is just really a remarkable thing. I mean, isn't that kind of what we were talking about at the beginning of the show, right? Was that when you you hold your priors so deeply that reality can't penetrate them? Then it's going to get you into trouble. I mean, you're confronted with actual video footage or of actual confession of a crime and you still refuse to accept it.
as real? Remember Jesus told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. And they both die. Lazarus is the beggar, the leper, the rich man. uh feeds him from his uh the crumbs off of his table.
and they both die. Lazarus goes to Abraham's bosom is what it's described as. And there's lots of thoughts about to be to be on the on the right side of eternity, and the rich man goes to torment. And the rich man asks speaking across the Gulf, uh, you know, bring send Lazarus to cool my tongue. And it's like, no, you can't do that.
It's like, well, at least send him back. To tell my brothers and my brothers can avoid this. And there's this remarkable little observation about the human condition there. Where the answer that the rich man gets is, it won't matter. Even if a dead man comes back to life.
and says, here's what happened. It will not change. There is a level of Instruction. And by the way, I'll be the first to say here: I don't think that a lot of the priors that some of these particular loud voices um that have been cons conspiracizing cons cons What's the word? That'd be my guess.
I don't know. That's good enough. Being weird. I don't think it's ideological. I think some are self-serving, hedonistic, and this.
Some of the deeply held priors that people have have been completely shaped by the absolute need to build platforms and make money. But it is interesting, those things are so deeply held. As this verse says in Luke, I think, is where that story is found. It's an amazing thing. Even if a dead man comes back to life, it won't change things.
It makes me think of of two when Jesus Heals the the man who can't see. And he puts mud on his eyes first? Rather than just saying, go be well, you can see. He puts mud on his eyes and then he uses. You know, his spit to make the mud, and then he wipes it off.
And I can feel him saying to his disciples in that moment: this is you. Until I clean this off of your eyes, you're seeing through mud. You can't see reality. And I think that. Has to be a constant prayer of ours as followers of Jesus, too, which is just help us see reality for what it is.
Take the mud. It has to be Him taking the mud off of our eyes.
Well, John, let me get to a question. Speaking of deceit, I think, and seeing things rightly, I wanted to get to this question this week. This is from someone asking about a breakpoint commentary you shared about Christianity not just being true, it being reality. Here's the questioner. You say whether the foundational stories reflect reality is irrelevant to most religions.
I say it is not irrelevant to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints either. We know that the stories of the Bible are real along with the Book of Mormon, and we believe we'll one day have even more accounts of Christ's ministries among other lost tribes of Israel.
Well, i i i th it's true that in uh Mormonism that there are stories that are told that were reported to have actually happened in human history. That are important to that religion. In that sense, it is similar to Christianity and dissimilar to others, like, for example, Buddhism. There is a famous story of. A theologian asking a group of Buddhist monks, what if you found out that the Buddha never existed?
Would it change anything? And they said no, because our religion is a way of life. It's not rooted in you know, that that this person had to actually that the Buddha had to actually exist. That's obviously not true for Christianity if Jesus is not risen from the dead. And it's not true for Mormonism because if Jesus Uh did not Then appear in North America to these reconstituted.
twelve tribes and and all the other additional historical narratives. uh then Mormonism becomes uh is wrong as well, and Joseph Smith had no unique message. There's a big difference though here. Mormonism is similar to Christianity. In that way, this is one of the reasons, not the only reason.
In fact, there's two reasons here: that Mormonism is not Christianity. We've done that commentary, we've said it before, and we'll say it again. Mormonism is not Christianity. And the difference is, because the stories that matter to the account that's told in the Old and New Testaments. are in fact true.
And what we were talking about in that particular commentary was more and more evidence. That externally confirms the message and the stories and the historical accounts that happened in real time, in real places, in real parts of human history. There is not archaeological evidence. There's not increasing archaeological evidence. There is none.
For the events that took place and are described in the Book of Mormon. and in the accounts of Joseph Smith. And there's no fundamental connection. This is another important part of it. Between those events and the random teachings that Mormonism imposes, On the Old and New Testaments by saying essentially that it corrects the witness that's been corrupted there.
It is a corrupt message. It is a corrupt message based on the life of Joseph Smith. And that of course is something else. The Bible. is completely open with the foibles.
And the frailties of the New Testament writers. The disciples go and hide. When Jesus is crucified, they are empowered and emboldened. But Peter and Paul still get in a fight. You have very human authors that are empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Mormonism has just hid the evils of its leaders. And there are many of them. Joseph Smith was not a good man. The polygamist Uh passed. Is not a chapter of the past.
It's an essential part of it that has nothing to do with the message. That's told, and certainly in the life of Jesus, contradicts that message. And he is, let's just say he is a perverted and bad dude. We're not talking about the same thing here at all. Mormonism is not Christianity.
The historical claims of Christianity. are continually validated and are essential to the message of Christianity. The claims from history and Mormonism are not validated by history. They were made up, they did not happen. And they're not actually relevant to the fundamental work that Jesus did in accomplishing redemption for all of us.
And the messenger. is a real problem in Mormonism. And yeah, I'll leave it at that. There you go. Thank you for that, too.
I'm going to leave a cliffhanger and say I have a column coming out in. The print edition of World Magazine in October about how I came to faith in Jesus because of a Mormon.
So I'm just going to leave it at that. I think I've shared that story here before, but pretend you don't know it and read that issue of World Magazine. I've got a recommendation. You gave a recommendation earlier, and I kind of co-opted it. Ion's article, of course.
And the recommendation should be anything that she. As wrote, that's in tablet. Is that what you said? Yeah.
Yeah.
I think there is a responsibility we have not only to remember well, but also to help our kids understand what happened on 9-11. I think it's an important one. I mentioned in a breakpoint commentary that airs today. About the Drive-Through History folks and a wonderful documentary that they have produced. It's free on YouTube.
If you go to the Drive-Through History channel, you can watch it there. There is an article and it be was turned into a book. It is remarkable. It is a remarkable piece of journalism. It's called The Only Plane in the Sky.
That's what the book is titled. And I think the original article was. It is a minute-by-minute. Eye witness Curation of the details of nine eleven. And it's hard to put together just how much work was done.
to compile this narrative. It is well documented and The hardback book we now have, again, called The Only Plane in the Sky, is just such a. A wonderful and helpful resource.
So I always read that every 9-11. I'll read it today. The account, and I think it'll be helpful, something that's helpful for everyone.
Okay, awesome.
Well, that is going to do it for the show this week. Thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint This Week. For the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street. Don't forget to go to colsoncenter.org slash forum to find more information about that forum on AI. And we'll see you all back here next week.
God bless.
