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I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
Fake ID: How AI and Identity Ideology Are Collapsing Reality with Abdu Murray
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- [00:03]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, if you ask anybody, regardless of their worldview, atheist to Christian, everybody in between, if you were to ask any of those people what's wrong with the world, there is not a person who would say, nothing, everything's fine. We all know deep in our hearts that there's something wrong with this world, that this world is broken and we know there's truth out there. It's self defeating to say there isn't truth. But a lot of us are running from the truth. And if we're ever going to be able to get to the other side and experience not a broken world, but a world as it was meant to be, we're going to have to embrace the truth. And that's something my friend Abdoumairi did does in his ministry. In fact, that's the name of his ministry, Embrace the truth. And we're going to talk about how you can embrace the truth. Know the truth in a world full of deception, in a world full of confusion, in a world that doesn't rejoice in the truth, but often celebrates lies. You know, Jesus famously said, you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. What does that imply? If you don't have truth, you're in bondage. Because if you don't have the truth, you're not set free, you're in bondage. So what we're going to do is get an update from Abdu. Some of you may not know, but there's been so many tragedies in the past couple of years. Abdu experienced one personally. It was back in October of 2024, where his father was murdered in his own home. And. And the trial has already happened. Abdu was writing the book we're going to talk about today as this occurred. So let me just get an update from Abdu. Abdu, I know it's had to have been so difficult over the past year and a half or so. Give us an update as to what happened, how your mom is, what happened with the trial, the defendants. Give us an update.
- [02:12]
B
Yeah, thanks, Frank. I appreciate that. And I know how sensitive you can be to this whole thing because of your, you know, your proximity to physically and, you know, personally with Charlie Kirk and what happened there. And first thing I thought of as I was wrestling with what I'm now calling the scandal of evil. I'm not calling it a problem of evil anymore, because once you're touched by evil in this way, and I know you know this because of the way you've been touched by it, is. It's no longer just an academic problem to address. It's a scandal that an all powerful, all loving, all good God would allow this kind of thing to happen. But the good news is, and as I've wrestled with this whole thing is he deals with it scandalously in a way that is true and beautiful and scandalous in the way that other worldviews just find to be just alien to their worldviews. So I appreciate you asking, essentially. So the story is that. And it made news all over the place. In fact, international people were calling me from other countries. Is that two guys impersonated utility workers and conned their way into my parents home to get money. They were trying to break into a safe or whatever that doesn't even exist by the way. They didn't know that, but they thought there'd be money there. They said that there was a gas leak, they were checking for gas leaks and conned their way down into the basement. They had my father lead them down into the basement and they attacked him from behind and they murdered him. And they ended his life. And he didn't see it coming. And then they went upstairs and assaulted my mom and let her live for whatever reason and then walked out with costume jewelry and a few dollars essentially. Both were caught, both were tried. We had to sit through a trial for five days and have my mom relive the whole thing. It was a pretty horrific experience to do that. In fact, when I found out that this had happened, I was on a flight to Dubai to do some speaking there. And my wife Nicole had to have the task of texting her husband that his dad's been murdered. And I can't imagine what it was like to have to text that. So I flew home immediately. I didn't even go to the speaking event, just the hosts were super gracious. My assistant was excellent in getting me a flight that came right back. And I was on a plane for 16 hours having to sit with that and text various friends to pray for us and pray for family. So it was hard to deal with. And my faith never shook. Never once. In fact, in some ways it was bolstered because of the way I could see God moving in so many lives because of the tragedy, not despite the tragedy and the awfulness of the whole thing. Mom's doing okay. She's physically recovering, you know, emotionally. She'll never recover from it. I'll never recover from it. It'll never, just never recover from it. 100%. Family's doing okay as it stands physically. And that kind of thing. But what I've seen, though, and this is something that I hope people can take out of this, is that sometimes the church isn't always awesome in terms of the way we respond to various things. And sometimes she's absolutely beautiful. And what happened with us. When I landed on that plane, there were people who drove to the airport just to see me get off the plane. They gave me a hug and then drove an hour back to their homes. And then over the next couple of days, the way the body of Christ rallied around me, people who came to the memorial, both at the mosque and at the church where we had a memorial service for the sort of. For my family, because my immediate family, because we're Christians, was just unbelievable. And the love that poured out. I saw the body of Christ at like it should, and it was something else. And it's really shown me God's kindness through all of this and his mercy and his beauty and the way he sustains me. And I've had opportunity since then to speak about this scandal in the way God has dealt with our evil by taking it upon himself, dealing with it so that one day there will be no more death and he will wipe away every tear from their eye. Um, so, you know, we're still healing, and I will probably never fully heal from it, but God has been good through the whole thing. He's given me opportunity to talk about his son in a way that I think I've never been able to talk about him before. Even though I can give the arguments and give the presentations. When you live it, it's something different. And thank God for at least that strength to do it.
- [07:14]
A
Yeah. Without the resurrection, there is no hope. And that's one thing that has been a comfort with regard to Charlie and of course, a comfort for Erica as well and others around him. And I remember Gary Habermas, who lost his wife, talking about how prior to that, the resurrection was all academic to him. You know, I mean, obviously he had some existential import with regard to the Resurrection. He believed it, but it really became real when his first wife, Debbie, died of cancer. And he spoke about it quite eloquently on video that now he knows the importance of the resurrection, not just academically, but personally.
- [08:06]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I remember reading at the end of the Case for Christ, I think it was Lee Strobel had interviewed Gary about that, and he talked about that story about his wife Debbie, as he was pondering, why is she suffering? And I'm sitting here not suffering, and where are. What's going on he wasn't expressing doubt necessarily, just wondering what's going on. And the resurrection became so salient to him. I remember that deeply and I mentioned that years ago. And that's the very conversation or the very interview I remember thinking about as I wrestled with all this as well. So, yeah, for those of you that.
- [08:42]
A
Don'T know, Abdu grew up in a Muslim home and after nine years of study became a Christian. And not just a Christian, a Christian apologist. And so your dad and your mom were Muslims or your mom is a Muslim. Your dad, was he practicing? ABDU yeah, yeah.
- [08:58]
B
I mean, he was to the extent that so you know, these kind of things are he was very proud and very devoted. But like all, like most Muslims, he's most Muslims, like most Christians, you know, they're very proud of it. They're very committed to it. But practicing is one of those words where you have to like think about what does that mean exactly to everybody. But yeah, he fervently believed it, fervently believed it, knew the Quran, taught us to obey it, taught us to love it, taught us to spread it. So, yeah, he was pretty committed.
- [09:35]
A
Going to have a lot more with my friend Abdou Murray. Embrace the Truth is his ministry. And he's got a brand new book that's going to help us navigate what's going on in our culture today with regard to identity and also artificial intelligence. You're not going to want to miss it. We're going to be back right after the break. You're listening to I Don't have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. With me, Frank Churek on the American Family Radio Network and other stations around the country. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to I Don't have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. My guest today is Abdu Murray of Embrace the Truth. Abdu has written several books. A brand new book that's coming out February 3rd is called Fake ID How AI and Identity Ideology are Collapsing. Remember reality and what you can do about it. And I know that identity is so important in our culture today. Abdu, is that kind of the reason you said I need to talk about identity and also AI artificial intelligence in the same book? Because these two aspects of reality right now, or maybe we should say anti reality to a certain extent, are creating some confusion.
- [10:48]
B
Yeah, yeah. And you really nailed it pretty well there because there's been a lot of books and a lot of talk about identity and gender identity and ideology with regard to that. And there's been a lot of talk and a lot of books about artificial intelligence. What I didn't see was a lot of books talking about the convergence of these two things at this particular cultural moment and how both of these things. What I'm talking about is AI mania, this sort of manic, an unbridled enthusiasm when it comes to embracing and using artificial intelligence for everything and identity ideology coming together at the same time to collapse our view of what's really real. You know, you have biological reality, which is being dismissed, sometimes legally enforced, that dismissal. And then you have artificial intelligence, which is collapsing the idea of what it means to be human. Like, does it. Does it. Does creativity require a soul? Is there something immaterial about us? Or here's this machine that does the things that we do, and is that somehow showing that we're just machines too? We're these, like, sort of biological organisms. But then we have the rise of deep fakes, and they're everywhere. I mean, reality's collapsing in real time right around us. I mean, from everything, from. Without getting into the jot and tittle of what happened with Alex Preddy, right now, what you're seeing is a lot of use of artificial intelligence or technology to blur the lines of reality from msnbc, sort of giving him this, like, tan, bigger jawline, bigger muscles, as if somehow his death isn't a tragedy all by itself. We had to make him better looking, to make it more of a tragedy when he's already made in God's image and whatever happened, happened for whatever reasons it happened. But it's still awful that a person is dead and he had to artificially make it so. And then, of course, Dick Durbin on the floor showed a picture of what looked like three ICE agents executing him. When it was pointed out quite clearly in the picture that Dick Durbin had on a measle, one of the ICE agents was headless, which showed that the photograph was AI. It was deepfake. So if people at our highest forms of government are being taken in by the deepfakes and by the artificiality of everything, how are we not seeing reality collapse right in front of us because of the convergence of these two things. Identity ideology and rampant AI mania?
- [13:23]
A
One of the problems might be somebody like Dick Durbin is so old, he still uses aol.com you've got mail. You know, I mean, deep fake. I don't. I don't know if you know if he knows what that means.
- [13:34]
B
Yeah, well, he's got staff, that's that. He's got jobs guy somewhere.
- [13:38]
A
He's got to have, like, a 20 year old mentor on AI to help him out.
- [13:42]
B
Right.
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A
But yeah, it is a problem. How do you actually know what's really true anymore? And in our social media world, you're expected to have an opinion and the right opinion in about 30 seconds after the news breaks. And you're supposed to have all the facts and be able to chime in and virtue signal immediately.
- [14:03]
B
Oh yeah.
- [14:04]
A
And quite obviously you can't do that. We're not even built to do that.
- [14:07]
B
No. You know, there's that, that phrase that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has had a chance to put on its shoes. And so we get nervous sometimes that there's lies being spread and we have to respond to these things right now. And so what we end up doing, even with a good intention, is inadvertently propagating things that are either half true or completely false. So whether it's bad motives or good motives, reality tends to collapse because of urgency as well. And it's my belief that hot takes are usually bad takes because you have. Yeah. Half the facts, if you have any of the facts. And now it's getting harder and harder.
- [14:44]
A
Yeah. It, it's been said before. Usually the first report is wrong.
- [14:48]
B
Yeah.
- [14:48]
A
To, for anything. You know, and that happened with Charlie Kirk. When we got to the hospital, I think it was Glenn Beck that came out and said that, you know, Charlie's being transported to somewhere else or something and, and you know, there's hope that. And he was already gone.
- [15:06]
B
Yeah.
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A
And it just was a fault. I don't know where he got it from. But it was just a false report.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so we have to be very careful yet the culture is telling us you got to have an opinion right now. And you've, you've got a virtue signal and you've got to do this and you've got to do that and you're going, wait a minute, I just saw this 30 seconds ago. I don't even know if it's true. I don't know if it's a deep fake or not.
- [15:27]
B
Right. And it's getting worse with the deep fake issue because now you can manufacture a story almost entirely. And either you can have a hot take on a story that is factually wrong or we can ignore them. I remember. Or what was it last year when there was that horrific incident of the woman who was set on fire on a train and because of the reaction of the body, sometimes you can stand up and not yell and scream and all these things and people thought it was AI that It wasn't real, but it was real, and people thought it was fake. So sometimes people think that the real thing is fake, and other times they think that the fake thing is real. And that's the whole point, is that reality is collapsing. And for whatever reason, and I think I have a theory on this, and I think the Bible actually predicts this ahead of time. And that's one of the central theses of this book, is that it's not just that we're having a truth problem, that the Bible actually not only describes the way out of the truth problem, but it predicts the reason we're having the truth problem in the first place. Which means to me that there's a good reason to trust this book. I mean, the syllogism I sort of operate from in the book is if an ancient book describes the human condition pervasively across the centuries with uncanny accuracy, then it is unlikely to be just a human origin. The Bible describes a human condition with uncanny accuracy over the course of centuries. Therefore, the Bible is unlikely to be of human origin. And I think that the Bible describes this and predicts. It not predicts AI specifically in some kind of prophetic way, like and they will create machines kind of a thing, but it predicts the human aspect of why it is our identity, ideologies, and our desire to make machines that outdo us and that make us obsolete and that fool us, why we have that desire in the first place. The Bible predicts it and actually provides a solution.
- [17:23]
A
There's a lot of people out there denying reality and denying truth. I want to play a clip here from Catherine Marr, who used to be the head of Wikimedia, which was the parent company for Wikipedia. And then she went on, and I think she still is now the CEO of npr, which, as you know, is going away. And when she came to testify regarding npr, some of her previous statements went viral. Here's one of the previous statements. It's a little over a minute and a half. She's talking about truths. Let's take a listen.
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C
But one of the most significant differences critical for moving from polarization to productivity is that the Wikipedians who write these articles aren't actually focused on finding the truth. They're working for something that's a little bit more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now. And after seven years there, I actually believe that they're onto something that for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth isn't necessarily the best place to start. In fact, I think our reverence for the truth might become, might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done. None of that's to say that the truth isn't important. The truth obviously exists. It's at the core, or the search for the truth is at the core of some of our greatest human achievements. It can animate and inspire us to do, learn and create great things. But I think in our messy human hearts, we also know that the truth is something of a fickle mistress and that the beauty of the truth is actually often in the struggle. It's the reason that we have so many sublime chronicles of the human experience, because there are so many different truths to be explored. And so in this spirit, I know that the truth exists for each of you in this room. It also probably exists for the person sitting next to you. But the thing is, the two of you don't necessarily have the same truths. And this is because for many of us, truth is what we make when we merge facts about the world with our beliefs about the world. Each of us has our own truth, and it's probably a good one.
- [19:43]
A
All right, that was Catherine Marr. There's so much to evaluate there. I probably would have liked to have stopped it every like five seconds. But let's get an overview. Abdu, what is your thought about the lady who once oversaw Wikipedia saying, well, we're not really after truth.
- [20:00]
B
Yeah, well, where does one begin? Oh my goodness. And this is. This goes back to the thing that really smart people, and I'm going to assume her intelligence is pretty high, can say things that are pretty silly. And this is an example of such a thing where someone has said something pretty silly. I mean, I was writing some notes then as I was hearing what you were saying, that the way to reduce polarization, the way to actually deal with polarization is to not worry about finding the truth, but just the search for it and sort of this upending our personal perspectives to it. That's exactly the problem. She has literally diagnosed, the exact problem is that a post truth world that has resulted in polarization happens because we have elevated our preferences and our perspectives above truth. We haven't denied truth. We simply said that if the truth serves my preferences, if the truth serves my feelings, then I'll talk about it. But if it doesn't, well, then I'll call anybody who uses it a bigot or a something, a phobe or some kind of terrible thing. You're backwards. You're Regressive, not progressive. So she's actually diagnosed a problem in the exact opposite direction of a cure. That the reverence for the truth is a distraction from consensus. Why is consensus the goal? Consensus ought not be the goal. Truth ought to be the goal. And if you come to an understanding of how do you find truth, that truth actually exists, then we can actually arrive at a approximation of a consensus, not based on feelings and results, but based on the truth itself. And even this idea of a reverence from the truth is a distraction. Well, as a Christian, the first thing I think of is when Jesus says, I am the truth and I have a reverence for him. Anything that takes me away from a reverence for the truth, that is a distraction.
- [21:53]
A
Well, think about it, though. What she just said there about reverence for the truth is a distraction. As you said, that is a distraction. That's exact. That sounds like Satan talking, doesn't it? I mean, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That's a distraction. That's the real thing over there. Just pay attention to me. Are you gonna believe your lion eyes? You're gonna believe me, right?
- [22:15]
B
And the other statement, too. Truth is fickle. A fickle mistress. Sorry, that's the exact opposite. Truth is not fickle. We are fickle. Our preferences are fickle. I mean, look, you have from 2015 until 2023, you had this skyrocket in identification with things that are not your gender or your sex you were born with. And then suddenly in 2024 and 2025, we see the exact nosedive of that. That's preferences. That's not truth. Truth remained the same. Preferences are fickle. She has it exactly wrong.
- [22:49]
A
We're talking Abdul Murray. The new book is called Fake id and we've got a lot more after the break. And you're going to see some real World Record recommendations out of this show. So don't go anywhere. We're back right after the break. Students across America are more open to.
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- [23:51]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, as you may know, our college tour called Change My Mind is ramped up this spring. It's really the Charlie effect. We've gotten so many more invitations. And despite the fact that it's very tiring to do this, we're going to hit about 15 campuses over the next few months. We're going to start on February 10th at Elon University here in North Carolina. Then we're going to be at NC State, Lord willing, the next night, that's the 11th of February. Then we're going to be at University of Northern Florida, that's down in Jacksonville on the 12th. Couple of weeks later, we're going way, way, way up in Michigan to Michigan Technological University and then Northern Michigan University. That's way up on the peninsula. We'll be at a church, Evangel Community church on the 22nd. That's up there in Houghton. And I'm talking to my friend Abdou Murray right now. He's in like Detroit. It's like an eight hour drive from Detroit to get to the top, top, top area of Michigan. That's where we'll be. Why I agreed to do this in February, I have no idea. But that's going to be the 22nd for this church and then the 23rd and 24th for those two schools. And then we'll have a lot more coming up subsequently to that. Thank you all for donating. As I mentioned before, the new year turned it now costs us about $15,000 with security costs to go to any university. But you guys have stepped up to help us do that. So we're going to be able to do these 15 events this coming semester. Thanks for all that. Let me go back to my guest, Abdul Murray, who has written a brand new great book called Fake id. And Abdu, I want to call up the the thing that Catherine Marr said. Again, we were talking about Catherine Marr, who used to be the CEO of Wikipedia or Wikimedia, which owned Wikipedia. And then she went on to npr, CEO there, and she's pretty much been defunded, as I understand it. I think NBR is going away at the end of this year, maybe the end of next year anyway. In the quote we played before the break or the clip we played, she said this. Perhaps our most, perhaps our most tricky disagreements. Seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done. Unquote. Okay. Perhaps our most tricky Disagreement, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the best place to start. Well, she thinks that's true. I mean, this is a classic self defeating statement that I think it's true that we should not look for the truth. It's basically what she's saying.
- [26:41]
B
Yeah, which defeats itself.
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A
It's like saying, I can't speak a word in English. How did these brilliant people not miss these self defeating, self contradictory statements?
- [26:51]
B
Yeah, and I do think this goes back to the sort of spirit of the Age in 2016 when the word of the year was post truth. And you get to that definition, it really comes down to what do you want to say at the end of the day? I mean, she said something that is self contradictory. She has to know that that's self contradictory at some point. Maybe she didn't realize it while she was saying. But I think really the reason that happened, Frank, in this particular quote is toward the end where she talked about everybody. Who she was talking to is you have your truths. And it's this desire to affirm everybody's perspective. When you say things like, oh, that's my truth, I get to finally speak my truths. Now I understand what's going on there. You're trying to say, I'm going to give you my perspective. And while it's true that you have that perspective or you're trying to give an account of the experience you had and you say, well, I've finally been able to speak my truths and that's okay in the sense that we're saying I finally get to give you an account of what happened and hopefully you're telling the truth. But when we use words like my truth, we're allowing people to have a sovereign ownership of a particular perspective that cannot be challenged by counterfacts. And the reason why people miss this, this goes right to the heart of it, is that ultimately the post truth culture, which I think has given birth, it's the seaquake which has given birth to the twin tsunamis of the identity ideology and the AI mania that's causing reality to collapse. That seaquake of the post truth world is not based on a search for the truth, it's based on a search for autonomy, for a divine autonomy that only God himself can have. So when you. We don't look, we're not looking for freedom, we're looking for autonomy. And autonomy comes from the true Greek root words, autosom meaning self and na mas meaning law. So when you're autonomous, you're not free, you are a law unto yourself. And so you do have a lock on the truth because your feelings and your preferences matter more. The problem is someone else's feelings and preferences matter more than the truth. And when those two things collide, when they clash, the person who wins won't be the person with truth on their side. Because we've subordinated truth. It's not important anymore. The person who wins is the one with the loudest microphones, the most followers, or the most power. And the irony here is that her statement that we need to sort of abandon this reverence for the truth so that we can all have our own truths inform the conversation. Someone is going to have a counter view and it's going to be suppressed and they're not going to be free. They're going to be enslaved in some form or fashion or canceled. So the irony is, in the quest for ultimate autonomy, someone ends up in shackles.
- [29:42]
A
Yeah, you can either govern by principle or power. And if you avoid principle or deny principle or deny truth, what else is left? It's just all power. I don't care if you're right. I'm going to use as much power as I can to either cancel you or overwhelm you. You remember there was a time, I don't know, four or five years ago, there's a guy at Google that put out a statement that Google was trying to get apparently more people, more women to be in engineering. And this guy came out and said, well, it might be because that has nothing to do with discrimination. It's just women aren't as interested in engineering on average as men are. And he was fired at Google and nobody looked into whether or not his statement was really true. It was just for some offensive. So if the truth is offensive, I'll use power to shut you up and fire you. It was the same thing that happened to me in 2011. I got fired for writing a book. Correct. Not politically correct. Nobody read the book. Nobody evaluated whether the arguments were good or not. It was just a book that offended some people, apparently, because I was not a supporter of same sex marriage. Okay. I'm not a supporter of same sex marriage. Okay, you are. Okay, let's, let's, let's have a discussion.
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B
Oh, no.
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A
No discussion. You're canceled. You're out. In the name of inclusion, tolerance and diversity, you won't be included. You won't be tolerated for having diverse views.
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B
Yeah, so, yeah, well, that goes right to the heart of. When I look at the two forces, the, the one tsunami, which I call Bioclasm in the book, it's just my term for essentially the gender identity ideology, which is bioclastic. What I mean by that is you have this word iconoclasm. And iconoclasts are those who, like, take the images and the pillars of tradition and then they destroy them in favor of some new paradigm. Sometimes that's a good thing. Jesus was iconoclastic in many ways, but sometimes it's just rampant. You want change for change's sake, so you become an iconoclast. Well, the bioclasts take the givenness of biology and they destroy the givenness and the obviousness of biology in favor of this autonomy that I want to be and say and think and even define my reality as I want it to be. And there's a lot of eggs that get broken in that omelet, but we're going to do it anyway. And so what ends up happening is you get this cancellation where if someone disagrees with that, if someone in some way says, hey, maybe men shouldn't play in women's sports, and maybe women are being completely trod upon in the name of this autonomy, well, you have to be canceled. You have to be, you know, Riley Gaines, sort of like shoved into a room and threatened. You can't come out of there and you're shunned. And whatever it might be in the middle of these situations, that, to me is a form of reality collapse. You're trying to curate a narrative, usually through social coercion and force. And if it was so obvious, if it was such a good thing for us to be bioclastic, to take given this a biology and say, well, it's malleable to our preferences. If it was such a good thing, if it was such a true thing, if it's such a noble thing, it shouldn't take this much negative reinforcement to get people to believe it. It's like when in 1984, two plus two equals five. And as long as Winston wasn't saying it was five, O' Brien kept torturing him until he would say it was five. It's very similar to that. So bioclasm gets us to deny reality, to collapse reality with the Orwellian stick. It sort of prods us on the opposite side of that. What you have is an AI mania. Where. And again, I'm not against AI. I think AI can be a very, very useful tool. I think it's useful in lots of ways. It's not the AI that I'm worried about. It's the humans using The AI that.
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A
I'm worried about, that's always the case.
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B
Yeah, it isn't.
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A
The technology is amoral, it's what you do with it that makes it moral or immoral.
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B
Exactly. It's just like that one bumper sticker. Science flies you to the moon, but religion flies you into buildings. Well, science doesn't do anything. Scientists do things.
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A
Right. That's right.
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B
And you're famous for having said plenty of times, well, in this sense it's not the silicon, it's the soul behind it that does these things. And so whereas bioclasm forces us to not believe our own eyes right in front of us and then fund experiments that hurt children and cause damage to people like Chloe Cole and Kyla Gillespie and Laura Perry and I can give many, many other examples of this where that uses the Orwellian stick to prod people into this sort of collapsed reality. The AI mania uses like the progressive carrot. You know, we're going somewhere, we're evolving, we're becoming something new and we've created this genius thing, this artificial intelligence to get us there. So they both have different methodologies, but they're both getting us to collapse reality completely with regard. But what's interesting, too frank for me is the connection I saw was that they're both trying to answer the same cultural contradiction that we've been told for a long time. And that contradiction is one. You are a machine. That's all you are. You and I are just biochemical machines that respond to external stimuli. You look at Sam Harris, you look at all these guys who basically say that, right? Daniel Dennett, we don't have a consciousness. We have the illusion of a consciousness, but we just are clockwork. But then we also have the other claim, which is we can't also be true at the same time, which is you are the God of your own world, is that your preferences matter more than anything else. And so you have to be affirmed in your sovereign divinity. So you're a machine and you're God, but you can't be both. And so our.
- [35:44]
A
Now if you're a machine, you don't have free will. So you don't.
- [35:47]
B
Exactly.
- [35:48]
A
Yeah, you can't. And you're right about that in the book.
- [35:50]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And that's what I write about, is that what both bioclasm, the ideology you're trying to reach to and the AI mania is trying to do is solve the contradiction, but in two different ways from the AI mania aspect of it with the transhumanists. So the transhumanists without getting too complicated about it. But the transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil and Martine Rossblatt and Nick Bostrom, and these guys are trying to elevate humanity using machines, become godlike for bioplasm. That's the opposite. We can talk about that more.
- [36:27]
A
Yeah, we'll talk about it after the break. We'll also talk about what you can do about all this, if anything. And you want to get the book Fake id. This is a book that's going to help you see through the irreality right into reality. And that's necessary if we're going to find Flourish. And we'll talk more about it with Abdul Murray right after the break. Don't go anywhere. What is your identity? Do you have a true identity or are you harboring a fake identity? Jesus said you should know the truth and the truth will set you free. If you don't have the truth, you're in bondage. But is there really truth out there or is everything relative? We're talking to my friend, friend Abdu Murray, who has this brilliant new book, came out of well, comes out February 3rd. If you're listening to this, it. It'd be good if you're interested in the book and you should be, to go to Amazon and pre order it. That helps other people see the book and drives it up the charge. So if you would check out Fake ID by my friend Abdu Murray. The subtitle is How AI and Identity Ideology are Collapsing Reality and what to Do About It. And Abdu, you have a great quote in the book that I want to highlight right now. Because when people say, well, when you say reality, what are you talking about? And this is a quote you have. You say reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Right. Doesn't matter what you believe about reality. In other words, reality is what it is, whether you align with it or not.
- [38:04]
B
Yeah, Yeah. I once heard somebody else say that reality is that which hurts when you bump into it. Okay.
- [38:11]
A
Yeah.
- [38:11]
B
Okay. Sometimes it hurts, but sometimes it's actually comforting. And I think that's an important aspect of this too. We're not just trying to say we're against something, we're actually for something. Reality, I think, can re anchor us in the midst of our identity crisis about what does it mean to be human? And that's where I think the solution ultimately results in, is that while there's this contradiction, we're being told, you know, we're machines, but we're also God, and we can't be both. The Bible doesn't say we're either. The Bible says we're something different, we're something right in the middle. We're these wonderful creatures made in God's image. And I think that that's actually provable. That isn't just a nice sentiment that helps us deal with the identity issues. It is true that it is helpful, but it's not helpful and therefore makes it true. It's true and therefore it becomes helpful. So contra to Ms. Marr's statement that the search for truth is more helpful than the actual truth, I beg to differ. The actual truth is super helpful.
- [39:17]
A
What other aspects of reality? You call it reality collapse, which is just a way. Not that reality is actually collapsing, just our view of it is right. What are other than ideology and AI? Are there other aspects of the world out there that we are not perceiving correctly?
- [39:36]
B
Well, I think that a number of things is. What does it mean to be human in and of itself is now being under threat because of this contradiction of being God and being human. Sorry, being a machine is that. You take a look at the AI world, for example, and what it does is it helps us to collapse reality because of the way it does things for us. So here's an example of this is when we look at what it means to be human, we take a look at creativity, we look at art, we look at music, we look at all these inspiration and all these things, and then we look at the people who are winning art contests. In fact, I got interested in this in the first place when I saw a headline that a guy named Jason Allen had won an art contest by submitting a piece that was in fact actually quite beautiful. He won first prize in the art contest. And then it was determined later on that he used Midjourney, which is a generative software, to create the image. He didn't put a digital pen to a screen to make digital art. He didn't put an actual brush to a canvas. He just typed a bunch of stuff in. And he said at the end of the dust up. And when the artists got really angry at him, he. This is his words coming from an artist. He said, art is dead. This is over. AI won. Humans lost. He was bragging about it. And I thought to myself, what a strange thing to boast about. Why are you bragging about technology that seems to make us obsolete and then renders us either machine like ourselves? Because if human creativity and intelligence and inspiration is what makes us unique and sets Us apart from other animals and somehow indicative of a soul. This machine comes along and it acts just like us or even better than us, and it's winning prizes. And what does that say about us? Does that say that we're soulless? Maybe the people who say we're machines are right because this machine does what I do sometimes even better. And therefore maybe I'm not even really an ensouled person. So I think that that is part of the collapse, is that we're seeing a collapse in what does it mean to be human? Not just from the, you know, practical aspects of these things, making images and music and these kind of things, but even from the personal aspects. You have people who are, this is in Christian circles who are using ChatGPT as a prayer partner, who are using the LLMs to write their sermons for them.
- [42:06]
A
Oh yeah, I know.
- [42:07]
B
And it's just, it's, it's pretty bad.
- [42:10]
A
But Abdul, go back to that artist for a second who said that AI won. Doesn't he realize that the creator of AI are human beings?
- [42:22]
B
I mean, yeah.
- [42:24]
A
Doesn't he see the self referential problem, that there would be no artificial intelligence unless there was natural intelligence, intelligence from human beings which are derived from God. And by the way, ladies and gentlemen, that's one big problem with atheism. They have no ultimate cause for all this. There has to be an uncaused first cause. There has to be a pre existing intelligence. Which is why Philip Johnson famously said that our mind is made in the image of the great mind. You don't get minds from just the four fundamental forces of nature. In fact, the four fundamental forces of nature were created and sustained themselves. Are they're being sustained themselves. So even if we, using all our intelligence, create this AI platform that is actually a tribute to human intelligence, not artificial intelligence.
- [43:16]
B
Yeah, and that's actually where I go with in the book, is that from that statement, AI won. Humans lost. It's like, did he forget that he was a human and that this AI beat him somehow? But really it occurred to me, just what you said, it occurred to me the reason he's boasting is not because he won first prize in an art contest. That's not why he's boasting. He's boasting because he is looking at Eden, at Eden's mistake, Eden's failure. And he's saying we finally did it. We finally built something that allows us to rise to a godlike state. Because here we are. And the transhumanists are all about merging with the Technology, they're talking about it all the time. The leaders of AI development are all talking about the singularity when AI becomes human level intelligent, and then when it becomes human level intelligent, it will, in a recursive loop, begin to become more and more intelligent, and then it will merge with it because our consciousness is nothing more than data. And then we can download our data or upload our data to these mechanisms and therefore be free of our bodies, and there'll be no more suffering and no more death. It's actually eschatological in that sense. In fact, John Horgan of Scientific American called the transhumanists with their AI sort of mentality. He called this singularity the rapture of the nerds, because it's this way to escape a world of suffering. So what is going on with a guy bragging like this is that he's basically saying we finally did it. Where in Eden, Adam and Eve failed because they ate of the fruit hoping to become like God. They realized that that's impossible and so they failed. The transhumanists, the AI maniacs would say, I would say is that they're saying Eden's failure was not that it was immoral. Eden's failure is that it was premature. We've now created this intelligence that can do all these things and we can merge with it, so to speak. But the thing that I thought was important, and you mentioned it, is that artificial intelligence presupposes natural intelligence. Whenever we see intelligence in the world, we see intelligibility. Sorry, whenever we see intelligibility in the world, we see intelligence that precedes it. Well, if AI takes all this effort and all this money and all of these failures and successes to create something that, by the way, is not on par with us. Alison Gopnik once said that until we solve the paradox of human learning the way we learn, AI doesn't learn the way we learn, it's not even close. It won't even compete with the average 4 year old. So it took all of our money and all of our effort and all of our time and all of our talent to create something that doesn't even compete with a four year old when it comes to learning. And yet we think that somehow our minds, which are far superior to the artificial intelligence that we designed, somehow our minds are not designed. Of course they're designed. If we have to design a simulacrum of intelligence, how much more vast is the intelligence that created our minds in the first place? And then someone might say, Alla Dawkins, you know, well, then what created that mind? Well, that's the whole point. There is a necessary being that has to start it all, an uncaused cause, an intelligence that all creation hangs on and it finds its grounding in. And that, by definition, is God. And just as I pointed out in the book, it is just really important, I think, to make mention of this. One of the chief apologetic arguments in the book is that artificial intelligence implies design and that therefore implies our design. But there's not an infinite regress. You have to stop. Somewhere Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz talked about that is that you have to have a stopping point, or a beginningless beginning, so to speak, and that's God. So in other words, he's got to be a necessary being, a being who can't not exist. He has to always exist. And that, by definition would be God. I think that's a solid, sound argument. What I love about the Scriptures and why I think we can trust them for a number of reasons. But on this particular issue is that when Moses asks God, who shall I say has sent me, what is your name? God says, I am. Tell them I am. That I am. Has sent me. That is interesting to me because the God of the Bible takes Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's argument, this one that was developed hundreds and thousands of years later by some of our brightest minds, and he takes that entire argument and he summarizes it in his name. That, to me, is an efficiency of words that bespeaks the genius of the one who not only gives us the word of God, but who is the word made flesh. And that, to me, is a poetry that speaks to the beauty and the trustworthiness of the Bible on these issues. So our highest philosophers have to take many, many words to describe a truth that the Bible uses a name for.
- [48:22]
A
Yeah, that's the word or the name that God gave to Moses. Who should I tell you? Who should I tell the Israelites you are? Tell them I am. Send you. I am. That's not even good English. No, it's basically I. I always was, I always will be. I am the uncaused first cause. We've got to get to some more application and we're going to have Abdu back for the midweek podcast on Tuesday. The book you need to get is fake id. How AI and identity ideology are collapsing reality and what you can do about it. The what you can do about it part will be in the next show, so join us there. Thank you so much for being with us, Abdul. And check him out at Embrace the truth. Is it.org.org embrace the truth. All right, see you here next time, folks. God bless. Dr. Frank Turek is bringing powerful evidence.
- [49:08]
C
For God to campuses like UC Berkeley, the University of Georgia and Ohio State.
- [49:13]
A
Reaching thousands in person and millions online.
- [49:17]
B
But each event now requires costly security.
- [49:20]
C
Your gift helps the light of truth pierce the darkness. Give today@crossexamined.org.