The Need for God?

Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, recently remarked that AI would replace the need for God. He said, "We will start to find our spiritual experiences through our interconnections with each other." He added, "Our need for that exterior god, that sits up there and judges us ... will diminish and eventually disappear." Although what he wanted to say was that there is no need for God, what he was really saying was that God can be substituted. He was predicting that the collective wisdom of humankind can synthesize intelligence artificially to satisfy a longing that we have so far misplaced with a God that does not really exist. In other word, putting mankind onto his rightful throne; but not really, because his fate will be dictated by something artificial even though seemingly real.

Advances in IA have indeed been feeding our emotional vacuums. It draws on a vast sample of human actions to formulate the expected human behaviour. It trawls through  our digital footprints to figure out what we like and offers us more of it. It suggests to us what other things we may have been missing out on. It puts you in touch with others who have the same interests and who can validate your feelings. Where it cannot directly fulfil your needs, it can suggest substitutes. Where you cannot find satisfaction in the real world, it can bring you into an alternate world - hyper realistic online games, virtual reality, chatbots. If you can find something out there that can satisfy you, why subject yourself to someone that may have different values from you, right? If you have a deep desire to tattoo your eyeballs, why should anyone judge you for it, right?

Dan Brown is sorta daying that if you want to be judged you can choose God; for everything and anything else you have AI. That is a rather odd position to take when information explosion have only confirmed to us that humankind is far from solving the issues of poverty, bullying and persecution, lack of gun control in certain countries, exploitation - whether natural resources, animals human beings. There are all forms of human misery inflicted by humans. Does IA offer us the hope that the human condition will be somehow be perfected by our collective experiences? Augmented reality makes us live in our own bubble of comfort, not realising that there are so many problems and issues out there that cannot be solve by an algorithm.

Although humans have made phenomenal advancements, we are far from understanding all the mysteries of life. We can improve our prediction of an earthquake and a resultant tsunami, but there is still little we can do to prevent them. We know there are risks of a meteor colliding with Earth, but all we can do is to assure ourselves that the probability is remote so far. Our limited understanding of the universe is laid bare this week when scientists witnessed two neutron stars colliding. We celebrate this achievement even though we only got to know about this 130 millions years Isn't it too soon for us to rule out the need for God?

Last Sunday, the guest speaker at the church service talked about how as a Christian we can take what we learn from the bitterness of life and help others to know that there is a God. He made intermittent references to a man name Joe. A Joe whose fiancée accidentally drowned the day before their wedding; the Joe who sent a poem to comfort his gravely ill mother because he was too far away from home to be with her. The Joe who eventually found love again and was due to be married, but his fiancée died suddenly of pneumonia. Joseph M. Scriven's poem to his mother entitled "Pray Without Ceasing" was set to music and known worldwide as the hymn "What a Friend We have in Jesus".  There are no answers to the real questions of life and death until we are willing to listen to the answer God has been offering to us.

1. Are we weak and heavy-laden,
   Cumbered with a load of care?
   Precious Savior, still our refuge—
   Take it to the Lord in prayer.
   Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
   Take it to the Lord in prayer!
   In His arms He’ll take and shield thee,
   Thou wilt find a solace there.
2.