{"id":65755,"date":"2017-11-27T19:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-11-28T00:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=65755"},"modified":"2017-11-27T18:58:34","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T23:58:34","slug":"1st-things-wesley-smith-an-ai-thanksgiving-proclamation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=65755","title":{"rendered":"(1st Things) Wesley Smith&#8211;An AI Thanksgiving Proclamation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We live in metaphysically desolate times. An increasing number of us\u2014particularly among the millennial generation\u2014now reject Christianity and other non-materialistic faiths as superstitious relics, vestiges of a time before science uncovered the truth about existence. The less polite even mock traditional religious believers by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.venganza.org\/\"><span class=\"s2\">pretending to worship<\/span><\/a>\u00a0a faux-god, the great flying spaghetti monster.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">Scorn faith as they will, moderns can\u2019t escape the yearning of their own hearts for something more profound than news, weather, sports, and carbon molecules\u2014demonstrating that human beings are congenitally incapable of believing in nothing. We crave meaning. We yearn for purpose. As Dylan put it, \u201cYa gotta serve somebody.\u201d It is hardly surprising that, having rejected God and believing that the only reality is that which can be scientifically demonstrated, some \u201cnon-believers\u201d are turning to technology as their focus of worship.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"s1\">Take the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wayofthefuture.church\/\"><span class=\"s2\">Way of the Future<\/span><\/a>,\u201d a registered non-profit religious organization founded by Silicon Valley mega-millionaire\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s3\">Anthony Levandowski<\/span><span class=\"s1\">. The Way of the Future\u2014perhaps borrowing from Christianity\u2019s early identification as \u201cThe Way\u201d\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/anthony-levandowski-artificial-intelligence-religion\/\"><span class=\"s2\">describes its purpose<\/span><\/a>as proselytizing \u201cthe realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.\u201d In other words, Levandowski intends that we view artificial intelligence\u2014very sophisticated computers capable of self-programming\u2014as a materialist god. Rather than worshipping their Creator, creators would worship their creations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/web-exclusives\/2017\/11\/an-ai-thanksgiving-proclamation\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We live in metaphysically desolate times. An increasing number of us\u2014particularly among the millennial generation\u2014now reject Christianity and other non-materialistic faiths as superstitious relics, vestiges of a time before science uncovered the truth about existence. The less polite even mock<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=65755\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,95,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-culture","category-science-technology","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65755"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65758,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65755\/revisions\/65758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}