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- [00:01]
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Welcome to breakpoint, a daily look at an ever changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet. Dr. John Lennox is a renowned mathematician, bioethicist and lay theologian who's written many books on religion, ethics and the relationship between science and God. His most recent work, God, AI and the End of History, and also the book 2084 and the AI Revolution. Both confront the challenging and confusing reality of AI, all from a Christian worldview. In our recent conversation for the Breakpoint podcast, Dr. Lennox made an essential distinction between narrow AI that's high performing processing tools that easily integrate into modern life and artificial general intelligence, or AGI. That's the idea of superintelligence based on existing human intelligences are something just radically new. It's the AGI version of AI that's evoking such serious concerns today. As Dr. Lennox clarified in our conversation, what's driving much of the push for AGI is transhumanism, a worldview that stands in stark contrast with Christianity. Here's Dr. Lennox.
- [01:16]
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Part of the AGI hype is the desire on the part of people like Yuval Noah Harari to create transhumans. We're evolving up to a higher stage. We take our own genetics into our own hands and we develop superhumans and so achieve a certain kind of immortality. And I found it very interesting that he suggested that his best seller, Homo Deus, he suggested that the agenda for the 21st century really amounts to, firstly, to solve the problem of physical death. He said, in a short time, we won't have to die. We can die, but we won't have to because we solve this physical dying as a technical problem. Secondly, we will increase, massively increase human happiness by biogenetic engineering merging with machines and all the rest of it. And that's their plan to achieve some kind of eternal life. Now, when I meet that, I have a habit of smiling at people and saying, you're too late. And they say, what do you mean we're too late? Well, I said the problem of physical death was solved by 20 centuries ago when God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. And as for uploading our brains into some kind of silicon state, I can tell you of a far better and much more credible uploading because, and this is the point where I think the Christian message makes a lot of sense to people. I say, look, because God has in that sense solved the problem of physical death, then the Christian message is centered on that and says because of it, he can offer anyone who trusts Jesus that he will one day upload them into another world and they will live permanently because they will have received a life, a new life in this age that will carry them on into eternity.
- [03:32]
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What Christians have to do, Dr. Lennox continued, is contrast what he called the AI metanarrative with the biblical metanarrative at every chance we have.
- [03:43]
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That gives us an opportunity. John I believe that great differential between the biblical metanarrative and the AI metanarrative, to put it crudely, the transhuman AGI narrative is humans trying to become gods. That is explicit in Harari's book Homo Deus, the man who is God. Now, that was first suggested by a snake in Genesis 3, so we might be very careful of following it. But all through history, all through history, there has been this attempt to push humans to a godlike status. Now, that encourages me to point out to people the vast difference between that narrative and the Christian narrative, because the Christian narrative is not of humans trying to turn themselves into gods. It is the exact reverse direction that God himself has become human. And people can see that you're claiming something. And I point out to them that the most amazing thing about human beings, model 101, so to speak, is that God could become one, which is awesome in its conceptuality. God became human. The Word came to be flesh, came to be human, which is the exact opposite of the transhuman narrative. And of course, what adds to that, that God became human in order that he could elevate his created humans into his own sons and daughters sharing his life. That's the message I think we ought to put out into the transhuman space. And it's a much more credible one because there's much more evidence for the power of Jesus Christ transforming lives than the power of AI transforming lives morally.
- [06:04]
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Throughout our conversation, Dr. Lennox reminded me that in this time of great anxiety about AI, we're called to what the New Testament calls Sober mindedness. For Dr. Lennox, that involves two things, two things that God always calls his people to, especially in challenging cultural moments. Repeatedly in Scripture, we're told, first, to not be deceived, and second, to not fear. That same exhortation applies to us today as well. Catch the entire conversation with Dr. John Lennox this Friday on a special edition of the Breakpoint Podcast. And you can find the Breakpoint Podcast wherever you download podcasts or by visiting Breakpoint.org for the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet.
- [06:52]
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The 2026 Rooted Educator Worldview Summit is right around the corner, and this year's theme is created and called Biblical Anthropology for Christian Education. We will hear John Stonestreet, Sean McDowell, Michael Craven, Megan Allman, Elizabeth Urbanowitz and more. And you can save $30 when you register by May 31st with the code RO30. Register@colsoneducators.org Rooted. That's colsoneducators.org Rooted.