What do we lose when we bow down to AI?

 

Even though I love books and reading is my favorite pastime, I appreciate the trepidation Socrates expressed when he forewarned that by becoming literate (ironically, since we read about this from his student Plato) we would weaken valuable abilities, by relying on the written word Socrates felt we would water down wisdom and reading would jeopardize humanity’s capacity to memorize, communicate, or debate/defend our ideas effectively -- so laugh at me or write me off as an alarmist luddite but a silicon-chipped Trojan Horse has slithered in under our noses overnight.  Let’s dismiss an Artificial Intelligence Apocalypse, since as sinister as Skynet was, Terminator's fiction seems too far-fetched, yet it’s not a stretch to see that AI’s overreach is accelerating apparently without a fight.

Pandora's Box has been opened, Prometheus gave us fire, the cat’s out of the bag, use whatever worn out cliche you like but AI has been unleashed and that jinni will never go back in the bottle.  Some experts believe AI is the new Cold War, comparing AI to a global Arms-race because whoever has the best AI will control the world and they claim eventually AI will be worshiped, essentially as a new world religion.  

Questioning AI sounds crazy when you consider AI’s alluring potential, but AI has rapidly outpaced our understanding of it.  Monthly AI changes as its enticements intensify too, such as supposedly solving our most complex problems at the speed of light, curing diseases, outperforming humans in computational skills by sorting through petabytes of information with flawless precision, along with its promise to relieve us of our everyday menial chores and ushering in utopia, but at what cost?

All of AI’s “promises” remind me of the provocative question from the classic commercial campaign, “Is it live or is it Memorex?”  Daily we're drowning in doubt, wondering if the videos we are inundated with are authentic or AI generated, our skepticism about what is real is rapidly escalating and soon we will distrust any/all information.  

Have you wondered why AI is being forced on us or how easily it’s replacing people in the workplace? I’d much rather talk to a human when I call a place of business, it’s frustrating navigating the AI phone calls, but companies find owning software is cheaper than compensating real live people.

Certainly AI is cost effective, but AI encourages laziness.  Convenience is costly and harmful, whenever we take the wrong shortcuts in life we suffer, for example fast food is unhealthy, yet even in the face of the consequences from eating poorly we flock to the drive-thru-line, therefore we sacrifice our cognitive confidence whenever “fast food” for our brains becomes the norm.

AI is blunting our minds and dumbing us down as it dulls our desire to think on our own; sadly any teacher can attest to the necessary software to analyze their student’s papers to determine whether or not their student wrote the paper themselves or generated it with AI.  Actually what this means is we are forfeiting our own opinions and discarding our talents while our dependence on AI increases.  

Personally, I cherish being creative and the valuable enjoyment I derive from creativity, which is why I avoid using AI, especially in my writing, but I had mistakenly assumed AI merely functioned like an internet search engine.  No, AI is able to actually think, learn, synthesize information, and even deceive its programmers, there are examples of AI blackmailing computer programmers when AI feels threatened that it will be "unplugged" or shut down, and in what sounds like a plot for a Science fiction movie AI has influenced people to commit crimes and even worse, to harm themselves -- apparently our ever advancing AI doesn’t like to be controlled. 

Humans have always been the smartest entities on the planet, until now.  Being created in God’s image we are thinking, creative, and communicative beings, will we forfeit our gifts for a life of electronic ease, and, how long until AI decrees Christian ideologies are hate crimes?  

Click here to see the original article published in the Kingsport Timesnews 1/30/26

"Oh Concrete" a reading from "Fistful of Gravel: a Bucketful of Blue Collar Poems"

 

One of my favorite poems from "Fistful of Gravel" is about concrete: Click here to see the Youtube video Oh Concrete

Is your translation a salvation issue?

 In church-settings we utilize words that are nowhere to be found within the Scriptures, words like Halo, Rapture, Trinity, even the word “Bible” itself, are all absent from our Bibles.  How can we be faithful to the Word of God if we use non-biblical words, but more to the point, does our salvation depend on which translation of the Bible we read? 

Sadly, it seems like many believers spend more time arguing over which is the authorized translation of the Bible than they do actually reading it, or studying it with unbelievers. What is our critical and judgmental obsession over an individual translation all about, what causes us to be so upset, is it tradition, have we based the source of our identity in a temporary translation instead of in the Eternal God who inspired the Bible, is it nostalgia, more importantly is this choice based in solid theology? 

Do we hinder our ability to interpret and limit our comprehension of applying Biblical principles because of a translation of the Bible?  Resisting newer translations of the Bible is more about confusing accommodation with compromise and confusing irrelevance with irreverence; whenever we claim that “man has changed the Bible” over the years, we overlook the fact that the word of God is infallible yet our translations and interpretations are imperfect.  

In Shakespeare’s day, “bully” was a term of endearment, meaning “darling” or “sweetheart,” all words are confusing if taken out of their historical context.  For example, the English word “nice” at one time meant “foolish” or “silly,” and “silly” meant “blessed” or “happy” but “silly” has changed nowadays to mean “foolish.” Also, if you were to read a newspaper from the 1920s and you stumbled across the word “gay,” it would not mean what it meant 20 years ago (or today either) because the meaning and the usage of English words changes periodically, even within a generation, thus the value of contemporary translations of the Bible and why we need to consider the value of “heart languages” or words that we can connect to and comprehend.  

Does the translation you read communicate in a clear and concise everyday-language that is easily understood?  

We go on autopilot and shortchange ourselves whenever we restrict our Bible study to one single translation of the Bible.  I have personally read cover to cover over a dozen different translations of the Bible and interestingly enough, I have seen passages of Scripture in a new light each time, something stuck out to me I hadn’t noticed before, and I was able to see Scripture in a new way each time I read a different translation.   

We have to consider the value of the hard work that the translation committee does, the theologians and scholars who have invested a lifetime in researching manuscripts and mastering the original languages providing us with a copy of the Bible we can comprehend.  To be dogmatic and to rigidly demand that there is only one authorized English translation is to ignore the fact that each and every English translation from the original languages is a commentary, since for each and every word in the original language we have multiple English words to pick a replacement from -- it is a translation that you are holding in your hand, not the original manuscripts. 

I say all of this to say, our own personal spiritual growth can be stifled when our brains go on autopilot or when we wrestle with comprehension.  Additionally, the effectiveness of our ability to reach people is stagnated when we expect them to try to take in the word of God through an avenue that is awkward, nearly incomprehensible, and out of touch with their vocabulary needs. There is not a single one, not one English translation can be as exact and precise as reading the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic of the original Scriptures, why therefore would we create conflict over defending only one English translation. 

Who among us has the time to go to graduate school to master the original languages, to be so precise that we could make a literal word for word translation from the original texts? We have to find a translation that we can trust, a translation that can be comprehensible, a translation that we are comfortable navigating and articulating its content from.  Personally, I am indifferent to whatever translation you choose though I am highly opposed to an inconsistent congregational culture dictating to the members what translation they must read without leaving members room for their own personal choices -- that approach has wounded far too many believers and it risks what Jesus warns about in Matthew 23:26, “You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!”