Welcome to Christ the Center, your weekly conversation of Reformed theology. We're now on episode 975. My name is Camden Bucey. As usual, I'm in Libertyville, Illinois, just on the heels of a pastor's scholars fellowship that we hosted here at the office with a bunch of friends and even got out late with a Cubs game after a rain delay. But the few and the committed stayed all the way to the end to see the Cubs defeat the evil White Sox. Sorry. Sorry to Jacob Gerber and to Joe Christman, the White Sox fans that came with us, but they left early and didn't have to see their team defeated. So I'm excited to be back doing a podcast and we're continuing a series on technology and also trying to interface a little bit casually with the Pope, his encyclical. Speaking of White Sox fans, the Pope grew up in Chicago and is a White Sox fan. I even saw someone with a Pope, Leo, number 14 jersey. Another guy was dressed up as the Pope at Wrigley Field. So it's all coming together for us. But we were speaking about the Pope's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas in which he's discussing technology and artificial intelligence, which has compelled me to have several guests on the program to talk about that subject. So I searched for some experts and I've got some wonderful guys. We, of course, have already published episodes with Derek Schuurman, professor at Calvin University with Shawn Ritenour, an economist who's a professor at Grove City College. And today I'm very happy to welcome to the program for the very first time Dr. Jason Thacker, who is assistant professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College and Southern Seminary, also a senior fellow at ERLC. Welcome, Jason. It's so good to meet you. So good to have you on the program today. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Camden.

I'm really excited about this. I've got Jason's book here. We're going to be featuring and spending most of our time speaking on material that's in this book, The Age of AI, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, published by Zondervan Books. I've really enjoyed this. It's not textbooky, but it has a lot of information and helpful connection points. But each chapter kind of starts with a personal story or at least a connection from your family and that sort of stuff. So it really brings home the significance of these lessons. When we're talking about big things like tech and AI and the future of the economy, jobs, human dignity, these are all questions that are not just for Silicon Valley at all, but they're questions not even for the classroom, but for our daily lives. And we're seeing, I think, more so than ever, or at least certainly more so than maybe the late 19th century with the rise of modernism and industrialization, just big, big questions about the world and about what's going to happen and what is not only the Christian's place in that world, but just the human place in that world. And then how should we as Christians go forth in these things? But Jason, I'd love for you to talk about your work, maybe some of the courses that you're teaching, the things you're working on and how you got into this space and digital technology or just technology in general and ethics. I'd love to hear that.

Jason Yeah, I kind of backed my way into it a little bit. I know a lot of people start off and maybe in college, even maybe a master's program and go, I think I want to be a professor. I want to teach or I think I want to write books and things. For me, it was very different. Became a believer when I was 18, finally understood the nature of sin and grace and who Christ was and what he had done for me at 18. Kind of grew up in the church a little bit. Went on to the University of Tennessee, go Vols, maybe for a couple of us around here. Jason Yeah. Jason And I went to Tennessee, felt a call into ministry. Wasn't exactly sure what that meant at the time. Thought that was church planting. Ended up doing a communications degree of all things, which is kind of fun, especially given some of the work I get to do now in sociology and communication theory, especially with technology and media. Went on to came here to Southern Seminary to do my master of divinity, still feeling a call into church planting. But after graduating, ended up working in public policy for now going on about 12 years, but worked at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is essentially an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention that exists to resource churches and to speak on public policy matters and social issues. And even through my work there, it was kind of backing my way into the technology conversation. Grew up surrounded by this stuff. I'm a little old to say that, but my dad worked for a Fortune 500 tech company. So most of my life, I'm just exposed to this stuff. And then I have my faith and those worlds really converge. Right around kind of 2016, 2017, it starts to come together. We actually start, we publish at the ERLC, I lead a project called Artificial Intelligence, an Evangelical Statement of Principles, which is, from my knowledge and understanding, the first faith-based statement directly engaging the questions of AI ethics from a faith perspective. And that was even about six to nine months prior to something like the Rome call for AI ethics that came out later that fall. From there was the book and things like that. And it continued to snowball. The more I read, the more I wrote, the more I spoke. And then it continued, started the PhD because I had some unanswered questions. I wanted to dive a little bit deeper and then kind of fell back my way into teaching and fell in love with the classroom and my students and being able to put together resources to assist the church navigating these type of questions.

Oh, that's great. I mean, we were talking just even before hitting the record button, but if you're willing, I'd love for you to share maybe some of the things you're excited about the classroom coming up. What type of courses do you teach?

So I primarily focus in ethics and philosophy. I mean, that's kind of in my title, but that's what I oversee. I oversee our PPE program here at Boyce for Undergraduates, which is Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. So kind of a well-rounded degree to understand not only what we believe as Christians and why, but also what other people believe and why, and framing that in some larger kind of worldview implications, philosophical implications, even economics. Yeah. Kind of fun backstory, not that we have time to talk about it per se. Even the modern field of economics actually comes from the field of moral philosophy. Quite early on, you have moral philosophers focusing on economic issues because that reveals certain values in cultures and societies. And so it's kind of interesting seeing that. And so I get to oversee our PPE program. I teach classes ranging from an introduction to ethics class, easily my favorite, just introducing students to how to navigate questions of the good life. Get into questions. This semester, I'm teaching a class on AI, transhumanism, and technology to push, especially graduate students, a little bit deeper into the conversation about technology past. How do I use this? Do more of what is it and what is it doing to us? How is it shaping and forming us? And so cultivating some wisdom on that front. Get into questions of transhumanism as that relates to human anthropology, even sexuality, by and large, driven by many of the technological developments of our day. And so classes like that, ethics classes, apologetic seminars, philosophy courses in general, religion in the public square, those type of classes is something I get to teach here at Voice and Southern and really enjoy it.

There's so much to be said. Transhumanism, like when Eldest Huxley, I don't know if he coined the term, but he certainly was one of the first to kind of present that idea. And I just remember reading this stuff. And it was always maybe back in the early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s. And it's just, at that point, just seemed like sci-fi. At best, when I was in college, people were talking about expert systems, which sounded so boring. But that was like an early precursor to neural nets and this kind of stuff. And we didn't really take it too seriously. There were people out there thinking about what could be possible. But the jump between current tech and making a significant dent in the world with that tech was enormous. And we're getting on this convergence now. And Ray Kurzweil forever was talking about the singularity. For people that might not know, it's just the exponential increase in growth that eventually happens so fast because of the nature of exponential growth that it appears to be just vertical growth. It just kind of goes along horizontally and then all of a sudden spikes. It's kind of like in Terminator 2 and they have where the Terminator 1 even kind of the machines become self-aware. And then they can start improving themselves at an infinite rate. So we're living in a world in which this stuff isn't just for people who are reading Philip K. Dick's stories. It's actually like this is real. And technology is affording people to change themselves in ways that were unimaginable. Unimaginable even their gender. Not their gender, but their biology. And people are altering themselves and looking to transcend humanity with tech. It's wild. You mentioned you teach an ethics class. I always thought it would be really fun to teach an ethics class. But if I was an ethics professor, I always would find it tempting to do what might happen in like an 80s sitcom about a class on ethics. Like I would take the final exam and just leave it. Like I'd drop it on the floor somewhere and see if somebody – Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? And then the real lesson is would somebody use it for the final. And then that would be my kind of after-school lunch, after-school lesson for the ethics students. Who knows? It's exciting. So this book, again, we're talking about the age of AI, artificial intelligence, and the future of humanity. So this is really not just talking about tech and AI and society in general, but really deep into anthropology and things that truly matter. You mentioned you're teaching philosophy. Another thing is back in the day in seminary, I'm reading John Locke and the nature of man and what's the nature of consciousness and personal identity. And if a man entirely loses his memory, is he the same? Is he the same person? I mean, there's all these – I think it's the nature of self-understanding or human inquiry or something. There's a key essay there that John Locke wrote at some point. So all of this stuff is coming around and just daily significant as it pops up. So the thesis of this book, Jason, you can correct me or improve my summary, but it's really that AI is not some distant science fiction problem, but it's already ubiquitous. We see AI as a set of tools. I've even heard people brashly say they've never used AI. And I say, well, if you use the computer or the internet, you probably have. You just don't know it. But it's everywhere. And its deepest challenge is really, at the end of the day, anthropological rather than technical. It's not either or, but fundamentally, it's anthropological. And AI really presses the question of what a human being is at root. And so our guest today, his answer is that human dignity rests, as it should, on the image of God, not strictly on different components of what we might ascribe to humanity, like intelligence or capability or even their productivity. We talked to Sean Rittenauer about that. Humans are not valuable because they produce. They're valuable because we're made in the image of God. God. God. And this settles the matter even before we talk about details in tech. But really here, what I love is that the book really presses home this idea that no machine, pure machine, can be elevated to human dignity. But also, no human can be reduced below it. Our status as image bearers is secure. And no technological advance or even some nature of cyborg reality or something will be able to change what it means to be distinct from creation. So it's an exciting book. I hope people would pick it up. It's, I guess, was published in 2020, six years ago. But it's still, you know, I was reading it last night. And it's still applicable at every point because what you're doing is dealing with foundational issues. Not maybe some of the examples might change over the years. But the core meaning there is all sound. So in that six years, Jason, since you wrote the book, published the book, I know you probably wrote it a year and a half before it was published at least. But in that time, what have you found? Have you found that what you were dealing with becomes even more important? Are there some general shifts as the technology has developed and gotten even more advanced? Has that confirmed some of your conclusions? Or are there some things that you're thinking we need to develop a little bit more?

Yeah, I always laugh, especially with my students when I'll talk about it. So, you know, six years in the technological space is like a lifetime. Yeah, it's eternity. Things have, you know, people will say have completely changed. But one of the reasons I wrote the book was to unnerse some of those what I think are kind of timeless principles, but also timeless questions more so that we've always asked. I don't think technology is causing us to ask new questions as human beings, but really a lot of the age old questions in light of some new opportunities. So, yeah, things shift, whether it's an example or an idea. I mean, the book comes out. I'm writing it in 2018, 2019. It comes out in 2020. This is well before the public release. A lot of the generative AI systems. You think of December of 22 and OpenAI and ChatGPT, that type of stuff. And then we've seen kind of an exponential increase. Really, at the end of the day, I tell my students, I laugh. I largely still agree with myself, which is kind of funny as you think, man, I wrote that six years ago. You know, by and large, I do. There's not a lot that I would change per se, but maybe the way I say it or some of the depth as well. I wrote the book prior to having a PhD, for example. I don't know if that would make a better or worse book now that I could write it. But to think about diving a little bit deeper, especially on things like the image of God. There's a section there, and it really kind of thrusts my thing. But I might even go a little bit deeper on some of those ideas. And there's elements of the technology conversation about what is technology. Is it a tool? Is it something more that I think we could dive into? And even some newer questions, at least challenges that we're facing. Again, getting back to those timeless ideas and principles, those philosophical ideas, just talking about them. And so, by and large, still generally agree with myself. I would probably nuance things a little bit different, even getting into what is the image of God and some of those questions, especially those anthropology questions. But the big takeaway is the same. We often, especially, I think the great aid, the irony of the age of AI is that we tend to humanize our machines. We give the names and faces. We say he and she when we rather should be saying it and that type of thing in terms of a machine. We humanize these machines. At the same turn, we're actually dehumanizing ourselves. When we blur the line between a human and a machine. And I think that lack of blur, if we can keep a really stark difference between that of a machine and a human being, I think we're going to be well on our way to navigating many of these questions with wisdom, specifically biblical wisdom. What does it mean to be human? And how do we navigate the challenges and the opportunities? Because AI is not all bad. It's not like we can stick our head in the sand and act like it doesn't exist or it's a doomsday dystopian future. But to recognize under the sovereignty of God, he's allowed us to create these machines. But let's make sure we keep that distinction between a human and a machine really, really stark. And I think that will be well on our way to wisdom.

Yeah, I was reading a book recently. I picked it up when I was on vacation. I went to this really quaint and wonderful little bookstore in Estes Park, Colorado, and picked up a book by Cory Doctorow. I've been aware of Cory Doctorow for years and years. He's done a lot of work with the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Pretty liberal guy himself, politically speaking. But I think he's very thoughtful on tech and especially on intellectual property, digital ethics, that kind of stuff. Not coming from a Christian perspective, but it's good to read him and understand what he's saying. His book is called – I might be getting a few words wrong, but it was The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life under AI. And he's using this illustration. Of course, the centaur would be a human top and like a horse bottom. But the reverse centaur would be the flip image. And in many ways, technology can be used as a tool to make us better, to amplify us. Like a car can get us places faster. Airplanes can move us around. And it can be used wisely and helpfully there. But he's writing more specifically to some of the downsides of the tech where a reverse centaur is really just a human that's being employed by the machines to do the things that the machine can't do. So you think about Amazon warehouse workers. We have several people at our church that have worked and work in Amazon warehouse and they do their job well and everything, but it's only a matter of time. They're only there because the machines can't do certain things. I mean, Amazon will even tell you that. That's the point. So not to get into any details or specifics there, but my point in bringing up that illustration, Jason, is in – I've noticed that too. There seems to be kind of an averaging between the human and the machine. So even the illustration of the centaur to begin with is kind of blending the two rather than emphasizing the distinction of human dignity and humans being made in the image of God using technology. The idea of a centaur is almost like a post-humanist presupposition to begin with, that there's like a new merging, a cyborg species of sorts. And if we're only thinking that way and not thinking that way just for a case in point to understand a specific application, but if we're really thinking about blending, I think we probably already lost some of our ethical and theological and anthropological questions. We're not going to come up with right answers. The personification is just the beginning of that. I really resonated with Richard Mao forward, and he's even talking about saying thank you to Siri. Like even early on with ChatGPT, I use please and thank you, and I encourage the chatbot all the time. I still do, no matter what I'm using. And I know that some of the leading heads of the Frontier Foundations, like Sam Altman at ChatGPT, says stop saying please and thank you because it just burns extra tokens. But I found for me, I think I get a better answer. Just statistically speaking, if you speak to someone politely, you tend to get a nicer, I think, more helpful answer. So that's my reason there. But the bigger question is, what are we thinking about these machines? They're not machines. We're talking to them. They are, but the way we construct them, the way we interact with them, they're entering our world. And it's only going to be more so when we have humanoid robots that are in stores and warehouses first and going to be at home. And you're going to end up, who knows? Who knows what that's going to look like? Like a Star Wars world where everyone's got a home droid and, you know, if C-3PO gets his arm blown off, you don't just say, well, that machine got broken, needs to be repaired. You feel bad for the guy, like because you think he's like a thing. But there's an ultimate difference. And to come back to the image of God here in the ground of dignity, your book begins not with technology but really kind of with two questions. What does it mean to be human and then what is technology and artificial intelligence? But you lay out the substantive relational and functional views of the image of God. And we can expand on this beyond the book. Take it wherever you'd like to go. But, you know, in some way we need to understand what humans are. We are made in the image of God. But let's expand on that. What does that actually mean? And what is so fundamental about us as really body-soul unities rather than just a collection of bioelectrical impulses?

Yeah, you've already really hit a nail on the head in the sense that we're human beings. There's something unique and distinct. I love the German theologian Helmut Tillicke who says, God doesn't love us because we're so valuable. We're valuable because God loves us. He has set us apart. We are unique in creation in many ways. And I think I would argue that we see the image manifested in particular ways, whether it's substantively. Think of our intellect and reason and language capacities. Think of our relational capacities, the way we interact with one another. I think that is showing something about what it means to be human. We also see that in the functional ways in terms of the ways we represent, we steward, we take dominion. I don't think we can reduce the image down to some of those views. But all of those views have a lot to contribute. They're very biblical ideas. Then I would argue the way we see that image of God being manifested because we are human beings. We are set apart. We are different. Just right out of the outset, we see that creator-creature distinction that's so key to reformed theology even is that God is our creator and we are his creatures. There's something fundamentally distinct about a God creating us ex nihilo from nothing. He created the whole world. He created us in his very image. We are his creatures. So starting with that reality of him as our creator, we as his creatures, he's also given us the ability to create, to make, to take dominion, to steward the world and its resources. And I think in many ways, a lot of the technological developments of our day bring delight to our father. He sees his image bearers doing what he's called them to do. But we also have the prevalence of sin and the reality of that, the things we make. We are finite creatures. Yes, he is infinite. We are finite. But we're also fallible. We are broken. Outside of Christ, we are sinful. We are broken. We are the old self, Paul tells us in Colossians 3. And so we recognize that even the things we make, even as Christians, the things we make are not perfect. They are broken as well. So you see that fallibility even going into the things we make, including technology. And so just understanding a little bit of the fundamental difference between God and man and then man and machine, I really think helps us to start navigate some of these questions because we don't want to blur that line. Our value, our dignity and worth as human beings isn't rooted in the things we do. It's not rooted in the sense of how we perform, not only in terms of productivity, how we function, the relationships we have or don't have, or even our intellect and our communication abilities. While these machines mimic and imitate, I don't think they're actually truly reasoning the way that we reason as human beings. But nevertheless, they're mimicking, they're imitating these things that causes us to blur that line a little bit, to have questions about what these things are and what they're becoming. There's a German Catholic philosopher named Robert Spayman. If I was to write that book over again, he would be featured prominently. And he has the best subtitle of any book that I've ever read. And it's called, the book title is called Persons. The subtitle is the difference between someone and something.

Yeah.

And I absolutely love it because we as human beings are some ones. We are subjects. These machines are objects. It's to our downfall that we blur that line between a human and a machine, a subject and an object. And I think that comes from how we anthropomorphize and use language like he and she and give these machines names and interact with them as if they're human. But also that devalues sometimes the way we think about what it means to be human and say, well, you are just simply a product. You're a sum of your parts. Or you are simply the, your value rests in the things you do and how you perform and what you accomplish rather than who you are. And recognizing that difference, I think will actually bring a significant change to how we interact and navigate some of these questions of technology today. Because we do see these machines mimicking and imitating a lot of the language that these corporations are using. I think is extremely unhelpful in terms of, well, let's just the reasoning feature. And it has a little light bulb, which is always really funny too, because you're like, I've said to my students, and you may have said this even in times in the church and with friends, I saw the lights come on. When we're speaking to a human being as if they're kind of a machine. No, they're not. They don't have the lights coming on. The gears aren't turning in a human being because they're not gears in the first place. What we, what we mean, there's kind of this mechanizing type of language. What we mean to say is I saw the aha moment. I saw you finally getting it and understanding and comprehending. Well, that's very different. So it's just fascinating to me the way companies use the language. But we everyday human beings using these tools also blur that distinction between a human and a machine in pretty profound ways.

Yeah. We not only personify the machines, we objectify humans going both ways. You know, on that point, you have some really thoughtful treatment here. I think around page 51 in my notes here. You comment on Judith Shulovitz as she tells her Google assistant, I'm lonely. I remember there was a little running thread in this USA show called Mr. Robot, in which one of the main characters was just having some sort of like an emotional support relationship with her Alexa device. But what's interesting about this is that this is something she would not say to even to her therapist or sadly her husband. But she felt, you know, able to say it to machine maybe because it wasn't a human and could do that. Nevertheless, using it and treating it in type of kind of human ways. So to your credit, you take that seriously rather than just mocking it. There's something significant we should discuss and something we should get to the bottom of there and not just say, well, how silly is that? And then just move on. But what would you want readers and even listeners and viewers to this conversation to hear in that story? And, you know, what does it ask of us as parents, as teachers, leaders in our community, but even for those who might be listening who are pastors or counselors? How should we think about these things?

Yeah, I mean, back in 2020, writing that or at least publishing that, it is easier for many to say, well, that's just silly. Like, why in the world? It's funny, though, today, how often we are tempted to that or especially you notice there's an epidemic among young people in terms of chatbots. But this isn't just a young person problem. And that's something I tried to do in the book and communicate. This is an everybody problem. Parents, grandparents, bosses, workers, teachers, professors and students and young people and kids are all facing a world for which we don't have a playbook. We don't know exactly how to navigate some of the questions. That's why it's going to take a cultivation of wisdom. But to recognize that back in 2020, having a, quote, relationship with an AI seemed really far fetched and kind of sci-fi and kind of just weird. Today, it's a little bit more, I don't want to say it's good by any means, but it's a little bit more understandable in some ways when you have a, you know, an LLM where you can have a, quote, conversation using natural language. And it's this machine's responding to you and you're interacting. But it comes back to me for it to the key question of what is technology? We started talking about what is a human being. Well, what is technology? Technology is a tool that God has given us the ability to create, but these tools also shape us and form us. It's not just simply how we use them. You know, do you use them for good or for evil, but also they're shifting us. They're shaping us. They're discipling us if you want to use that language. Think of Romans 12, 2, where Paul says, not be conformed to the patterns and habits of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind so that you can discern. The question isn't, are we being discipled? The question is how we are being discipled, either according to Christ or according to the world. The question is, how are we being discipled and to what end and for what purpose? As Christians, we have to step back and say, no, we are to be disciples of Christ. We are to become more like Christ, but we easily are being shaped and formed to the patterns of this world. And arguably, technology is one of the primary ways we are being discipled, not just social media. AI does the same thing as it applies to the relational context. It's fascinating. All technology. This is something I wish I would have done even more in the book. I've done it in subsequent works, unpacking what is technology. It's end goal of every form of technology, pre-digital, digital technologies, emerging technologies. Every form of technology from the wheel to today is essentially has one end goal, which is efficiency and convenience and speed. It's always about more, better, faster, stronger. That's not a bad kind of temporal goal. I don't, you know, being more efficient in a task isn't a bad thing. Yeah. But it is a really bad end goal or telos kind of point or an end in that sense. So it's fascinating. You think of, well, what's happening with these, quote, relational connections? Well, one, they're not actual relationships because you don't have a relationship with a non-being, a non-entity. I don't think you can have a relationship with an AI. It doesn't understand you because it doesn't understand anything. It's responding. It's very much kind of that parrot, just kind of parroting back things to you. And it makes you, it gives you the semblance of a relationship without all the friction. But that's not what real relationships are about. It's not about efficiency and convenience because arguably machines are much better at that. Real relationships are hard. Anybody who's been alive for more than a few minutes understands relationships are difficult. They're time consuming. They're messy. You often give a lot more than you get and receive. It's not about what I receive, which can be, you know, quote, comfort, care. Someone finally understands me and listens to me confessing these things. Well, because it's not a two-way street. It's a one-way street. It's about what I'm doing. This machine's responding, but doesn't really understand me. It's not a real relationship. And again, there's that blurring to say, well, this is, this machine is like me. No, it's not. It's fundamentally different. And it cannot be in real. You can't be in a relationship with it because relationships are necessarily two-sided. And so one of the things I come back to in the nature of Christian ethics in general is that as Carl F.H. Henry, the evangelical Baptist theologian and ethicist would say, love of another. Love of another is the whole sum of the Christian ethic. Arguably the whole sum of the Christian life. Love of another. Think Matthew 22. To love God, Jesus says, and to love your neighbor as yourself. There's an other orientation. Well, that other orientation is completely lost if you think of something like AI. There's not an other there.

Yeah.

So it's very one-sided. It's about me, myself, and I, what I receive rather than what I'm giving. And that's where true happiness is found in this other-oriented life, ultimately oriented around the glory of God and enjoying forever, Westminster Shorter Catechism, but also of loving others as ourselves, that relational component. And so I think that's a really key thing that especially now we see back in 2020, you start to see some kind of fringe examples of that blurring. Now we're seeing very prominent examples and even becoming more of kind of an epidemic in many ways in society where the relational connectivity is completely lost because it's traded for efficiency, speed, and convenience, making me feel better rather than actually going upon a journey. Where sometimes that best friend's not going to agree with you, kind of like every AI system you've ever asked. You push it. It's like, oh yeah, you're right. No, I'm not. Sometimes I'm just wrong and I need somebody to tell me I'm wrong in that relational love. And so that's where I think we're seeing that blurring really much more prominent than we even did when I wrote the book.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, those are really important points and well said. It's certainly a lot easier to see how so many of the people on the frontier labs and in the technology space, you think of all the robotics at Tesla or X and all these things, SpaceX, where at the root, if you're already a materialist, so you're thinking humans are just strictly material. And the things, the higher level capacities that we have, the reasoning capacities, the emotional capacities, if you believe all those at the end of the day are just complex summations of atoms, then you can see how you would be a lot more optimistic on the idea that a machine might become self-aware. Or you could have a genuine relationship with another subject if humans are already materialist. But that's a false premise to begin with, part of the argument here of this book and what we're discussing today. We're much more than the material. And that's something that comes forward really strongly and personally, certainly for you and for your father in the chapter on medicine and then speaking about the body and then the limits of the creature. If you're willing, I'd love for you to share about the example of your father had some health issues and had a lower leg amputated. So it's kind of amazing and sounds like your father's a wonderful guy. And even as he was going through this, had a good sense of humor about it, which sounded like it shocked even the nurses and the hospital staff. But how did working through that issue of him quite literally after a surgery being different? Like there's a physical component that's no longer there. So if you're a materialist purely, then you could argue one way or another, I suppose. I guess we could get into the, I can't even remember the name, Thusias or something. I don't know, the name of the ship, right? Where it's like there's a mental exercise, a philosophical conundrum people will pose. So imagine that there's a ship at a museum and overnight somebody steals a little chunk of wood out of it and replaces it with another piece of wood. And they do that over the course of a year such that a year later, the ship is 100% different materially than it was a year ago. And he's constructed the real, supposed real ship from original parts in a warehouse. Which one's the real one? It's an interesting question of identity and materiality. But not to reduce your father to such an example or to a ship, but there's a significant part of them that's different.

Yeah.

And how are we to think about that? And what did that personal, familial example kind of illustrate to you or help you how to think through these issues of what a human is? Yeah.

I mean, you hit the nail on the head in the sense that we are material beings, but we're not merely material beings. The Bible speaks in the fact that we are created. We're creating the image of God as embodied beings. Our bodies are central, despite some claims throughout Christian tradition that we are not just merely spiritual beings that happen to contain or contained in a body for a kind of a temporary state. You think of even the value of not only God creating us as embodied beings, the goodness of the created order in our bodies and our biology that's so central to the debate over sexuality and gender today. But coming back to that embodied nature of how we've been made, but how our bodies, it's interesting, also shift and change over time. But the I remains consistent. We are now this is where there's good debate. Actually, I just edited a book not too long ago called Moral Apologetics, in which two authors debate the nature and this idea of human identity. There's lots of differing ideas. But broadly speaking, even across differing emphasis, there are certain kind of telltale signs of a Christian understanding of what it means to be humans, that we're embodied souls or in soul bodies or kind of a body soul unity. In some sense, we are both spiritual and material. For me, it hit me very viscerally and very emotionally when my dad was going through health issues. He's going through these health issues. He has to have a lower leg amputated when he lost part of himself. That was part of his body, who he was. But also, my dad continues to live on by the grace of God. So while he loses part of himself, it's not like he is just mere summation of his parts. The cringe joke, and this is kind of classic, my dad would make jokes like this. He would always say, you know, I'm a foot shorter now. And what he meant was, I literally don't have that foot anymore. The nurses didn't think that was the funniest joke in the world. I'm cackle laughing in the corner because my dad kind of has a little bit of a dark sense of humor at times. I thought it was funny, but it also hit me as to say, look, our bodies matter. They're central to who we are. But how does the fact that when I'm a baby, that's me, Jason Thacker. Well, now I'm a 39-year-old man. The eye is the same, but my body is substantively different. Not only bigger, taller, all of those things. But also every cell has been. Yeah. Yeah, everything's different. At what point did I cease to be Jason or will I cease and went part? Did I become Jason? All of those. It's interesting, especially from a purely kind of quote materialist mindset. Everything is matter. There's nothing spiritual. There's nothing transcendent. That's all. So you have to, it actually takes quite a bit of faith, by the way, to be a committed, strict materialist. Because you have to say things like love and emotions, consciousness, awareness, subjectivity are what are known as emergent properties. They must emerge from the merely material things, given the complexity of a system. That takes a significant amount of faith where I'll go to my friends who are committed materialists. And look, it takes, to me, less faith in some sense to believe that there's a creator God because that what you're selling me here, that's a pretty bold claim. Which I think the Christian worldview makes better sense of the fact of what it means to be human than a strict materialist sense. And those emergent properties to say, well, the complexity, given enough complexity, consciousness will emerge. I don't think that that's actually a thing.

Yeah.

We see that as we're creating the image of God. He's made us. He's endowed us with those things. And that's part of who we are, that we continue to exist, even though our body is materially different, but it's also us. So at what point am I no longer me? Well, that's a really interesting question. And we can spill lots of ink on that in philosophical ways. But you are your body and your body is you. That's part of who you are. You are also a spiritual being. You have a soul. And so navigating those realities, I think, will help us to start to have more constructive conversations as we engage worldviews that are wholly different from our own, but are nevertheless still part of the mainstream conversation about AI and the future of humanity.

Yeah. We need to certainly also bring in not only those aspects of having a spiritual identity, but just to connect the dots for folks. As we're talking about us being made in the image of God, we should not forget that that means we have a permanent and covenantal relation to God. So it's also that the Lord, the creator and sustainer of all things, is the one who determines who we are and our identity. And that persists despite the change of material. Even if you don't have an amputation, as you mentioned, as you grow, you become different. But I don't know if this is scientifically true, but I've heard that, generally speaking, after every seven years, every one of your cells is different, just in the natural course of the way that the human biology works. And that at the foundation level of it, our identity, our persistence has to pertain to our soul, but pertain specifically to our relation to our creator who sustains us. You know, that's something that can't be eradicated. The image of God, you read Romans 1. There's this, we have a conscience, but as humans, we also know our creator, even if we want to suppress that or seek to suppress that truth in unrighteousness and sin. We try to hold it down, but the heavens declare the glory of God and the earth is his handiwork. And we are the crown of creation, so to speak. The high achievement of what God has made is he made us in his own image. So how much more so would it be difficult to suppress that truth, though we try? But you write in the book that deep down, each one of us knows that our bodies and our minds are not ultimate, that there's something beyond us, maybe something lacking within us if we don't have a right relationship to the Lord. And that if we belong to God, there is nothing lacking in us, page 70. So I guess the question for me on this point with people who would reject this idea is, is a transhumanist, somebody who's wanting to use technology to transcend the limitations of humanity, are they longing for a counterfeit of something that's real? Or maybe a different question would be, are they longing for, do they have a genuine desire that's just aimed at the wrong object? How would you categorize or understand what it is within them that wants something more? Some of them I suppose is just longevity and a form of immortality because they're afraid of death. But others, is there some misplaced, there's a hole within them and they're trying to fill it with tech? Yeah.

You've got a little of that, especially with Augustine, the idea that there's something about us that we know there's a God. You think of Romans 1 and 2, just as you said, we know deep down there is a God. We are created things. God is our creator. We are our bodies matter. All of those so much. So even coming back to the last conversation as well is that God, the son, Jesus Christ became incarnate. He took on flesh so much to remind us even of the value of our body in that sense. And he is forever incarnate as the incarnate son of God resurrected from the dead. His body matters and ours will too. That's one of the reasons we take care of our bodies or we ought to take care of our bodies. They're central to who we are. But especially as you start to kind of pull that into this kind of transhumanist question, first, I think we need to be honest and charitable in the sense of, well, what do we mean by transhumanism? There are lots of different understandings of transhumanism. There are even many who claim to be Christian and transhumanist, which I think is kind of a misnomer. I don't really categorize. I get the point of what they're saying to use technology to help ameliorate the effects of sin and brokenness in our world. I don't think that's actually transhumanism. Sometimes that label is adopted. I don't think it's a helpful label to adopt from a Christian perspective. But yeah, I do think many who would self-identify as transhumanists, especially from a purely materialistic standpoint, it kind of makes a lot of sense. And I think it's a right desire in that sense to, quote, live forever because we were created that sense to live in a relationship with God forever. But sin, brokenness, death. And so you see that as there's a kernel of element of truth there, but it's completely directed and being manifested in ways that are very contrary to our createdness. And so sometimes people will use the language of transhumanism as playing God. I think we can kind of technically, quote, play with that language as well. But that idea of acting as if we're like gods. And I think that's kind of the underlying premise of much of transhumanism is not so much that we transcend ourselves, but we also think too highly of ourselves. It always reminds me of Isaiah, kind of Isaiah 40-ish, where you see the craftsman take some wood. It's kind of the stark difference of what Isaiah is saying here. He says, take some of the wood and he crafts, he makes a fire and he cooks some food and then he takes other elements of the wood and he crafts an idol and he says, oh, my God, save me. And so the irony is what the author is trying to say is, look, this is the same wood. Some of it he's using to care for himself and sustain himself and others he's using to bow down as if it's a thinking often. That's that theme of idolatry that runs throughout the scripture is thinking in the sense of we're like gods. And so I think at the same time that there's a denial that God exists, there's also a subtle recognition that we're kind of like him, that we can make things, we can transcend ourselves and our bodies, we can upgrade ourselves as if we're not really good enough. And then you go back to, well, something is broken about us. And so you have the Christian worldview that I actually think is a better explanation of the challenges we face than many of the, quote, secular counterparts or especially materialistic counterparts, even though some of those presuppositions are correct. There is something wrong. What's our problem? Often we'll ask in worldview studies at times. Well, we answer that question differently based on our philosophical and theological commitments. Yeah. So that's where I do see with transhumanism. There's an excellent volume for a listener's sake. It's called Transhumanism in the Image of God by Jacob Schatzer. Yes. And Schatzer really unpacks that to say, look, what is transhumanism? What's driving that conversation? The worldview kind of presuppositions also part of that conversation. And to recognize that, yeah, sometimes we think too highly of ourselves. Ironically, at the same time, we dehumanize ourselves all in the same turn. And I would argue that transhumanism as a movement is wholly different and kind of the antithesis of a Christian worldview is that we can't overcome these kind of brokenness. We can't usher in this next stage of human evolution because that's how God created us. He made us in that sense. We can't improve upon what has been made perfect.

Yeah, precisely. There's so much. The time is flying, brother. This is such a good conversation, but I want to respect our commitment here. And I know you've got things to do. So a few more questions, though. Perhaps we can pick back up with a round two down the road. But I really want the listeners here to know, to pick up this book, because there's a long and important section on pornography, virtual reality, and AI tech. You know, in that space, there's important things we need to think about, the dignity of the human and the nature and the role and the proper context for the expression of human sexuality. There's a long and extended treatment and really thoughtful commentary on work, vocation, and adaptability. We talked a bit about some of that with Derek Schuurman, but especially with Shawn Ritenour as well. War and justice. We talked with Derek Schuurman a little bit about responsibility and autonomous weapons. And you got interesting and scary at the same time. And even data privacy in the church as a community of openness. And the Pope's encyclical really touches on some of that, too. But I wanted to at least get your general thoughts or comments, if you have. I know you're going to be treating this more and looking at taking more of a deep dive on Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical. But just in general, I mean, where do we think we are? What do you think the Catholic Church's treatment of this and response is? I personally, I don't want to lead the witness, I personally found quite a bit of his diagnosis good and sound and addressing the nature of the issues well. My own PhD studies were in historical and theological studies, and I did kind of a polemical work on Karl Rahner, a very significant Vatican II era Roman Catholic theologian. So that led me into a lot of more modern Roman Catholic talk. So a bit of, not a bit, but a good amount of Pope Leo XIV's solutions were maybe not sufficient to me. Because you start to see even how they define humanity differently, the nature of ecclesiology. There's no discussion, very little discussion of personal sin. There's talks of structures of sin, but not actual sin and the need to be penal substitutionary atonement or forgiveness and all this. And again, I'm injecting my own thoughts way too much. But I'm curious about just your thoughts on the big picture about Christianity as broadly considered as we might make it. But specifically, if you've had any time to consider what the Roman Catholic Church has done on this. And if you have any encouragements for how we might think more clearly and biblically in addressing some of these things in the future.

Yeah, I think first and foremost, you're right to acknowledge there are some substantive differences. I mean, I'm Protestant after all. I'm very proudly Baptist. So there's going to be some significant theological challenges. But even especially in terms of ethical issues, many Protestants agree with our Catholic friends. We may differ on a lot of substantive theological issues when it comes to some of the ethical outcomes and applications of those things. We tend to have some significant overlap, maybe not exactly the same. So much of what I appreciate about the encyclical, I mean, focus one, he's raising the conversation and awareness around AI. Yeah. He's bringing a very thorough, a very substantive engagement with these questions that often was missing. I mean, I remember five, six years ago, many of my friends even, and they're good friends and I love them to death. We'd be like, that's really cute that you're working on kind of those AI issues and questions. And now like two or three years later, they're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this is the only thing anybody wants to talk about. So I think what the Pope's encyclical raises awareness to say, look, not only are there significant philosophical issues here, there's also significant theological issues here and people of faith need to be stepping in. And so whether you agree or disagree with the Pope on a lot of different things, you can at least acknowledge with appreciation, the raising of the awareness, the making sure we recognize that people of faith not only deserve a seat at the table, but also need to earn a seat at these tables to sit in these conversations because we're dealing with philosophical and theological issues. No matter if the company thinks they are or not, that's essentially what they're doing. And so we need to be able to do that. So I can appreciate that. The emphasis on a human being, as you said, we may define it a little bit different, but nevertheless, the dignity of the human person in an age of machines. Again, that's a point that we need to continue to just harp on and push on. That doesn't mean that we neglect our stewardship and how we take dominion and that we recognize, you know, it's not that all technology is evil per se. And I appreciated a lot of that. Some of the, especially like the philosophy of technology, this parts that I have really dug into, you know, there's a lot to appreciate. There's a sense that these technologies are forming and shaping us. I sometimes think, and the others have said this, so it's not unique to me, that it feels at times the Pope is trying to almost have his cake and eat it too. And not able to completely, you know, focus. It's not merely kind of just a tool that we use. It's also not the kind of this deterministic autonomous. It's kind of set, you know, we don't have any power or control, but how we articulate the technological environment. Technology isn't just a set of gadgets and tools and widgets, but it's more, there's an environmental aspect. And this is something that I really appreciate about somebody like a Neil Postman. Yes. Who's not a person of faith by any means. Nevertheless, he spoke to a lot of pastors and ministers at times to recognize that as Postman says, we don't have an additive change with technology. It's not like you have the United States of America plus the internet or is Postman actually says, you don't have old Europe plus a printing press, that additive type of change. He says you have an ecological change. And I think that at times I wish the encyclical kind of focused a little bit more on those ecological changes where there's, it's not just a mere additive. It's not like just mere machines, but these larger worldviews, this larger understanding of kind of technique to use Jacques Ellul's phrase. That's more than just the technology. There's something more going on there in terms of the environment that's been created. So Postman uses the illustration. Some listeners may connect like a bowl of water. You take a bowl of water, maybe like a Pyrex bowl. And he says, you drop a couple drops of food coloring in it. You don't have a bowl of water with some food coloring. You have a new, you have a pink bowl of water, for example. And you can't really easily separate those things, the water from the food coloring anymore, because there's an ecological change. Technologies like that. We are in some sense in a new age, in a new era. It's not like we can go back to the way things, quote, used to be. We can't put the rabbit back in the hat. It's changed things. And we need to be recognizing that. But here's the good news. The encouragement is that God's word is still more than sufficient to navigate any challenge of the day. Think of 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17. All scripture is God-breathed that's useful for teaching, rebuke, correcting, and training in righteousness so that we may be complete and equipped for every good work. That really speaks to the substance of the sufficient nature of God's word to navigate these challenges. Yeah, you can't do a Bible word search or, you know, concordance lookup of AI. Don't do that. It leads you in some weird paths if you try to find AI. But you nevertheless have principles. Yeah. You have principles that apply to any day. And God's word is more than sufficient. It's not like these challenges are surprising the Lord. And he's like, oh my gosh, what did they create? I can't believe they did this. What do we need to do? That's not how this works. He knows these things. And he's given us all we need to be complete and equipped for those good works. To navigate the challenge of our day. To have hope in the midst of a lot of the fear and anxiety of our day. To recognize that Jesus is alive. He is a resurrected Savior sitting at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. And he's doing just fine. And we long for the day when he comes back. And so there's that sense of an eschatological hope that I think we really need to cultivate as the people of God engaging in the pressing questions of AI and emerging technologies today.

That's a good charge for us to move forward and to think wisely about that. Of course, today we've been speaking about this book, The Age of AI, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity, by our wonderful guest today, Jason Thacker. Thank you so much, Jason. It's been a pleasure to speak with you again. This is blue. I feel like we just started. And when I'm looking at the clock thinking, Oh, man, I haven't gotten through half of my questions. Part of that's my fault. Talking way too much. But it's been a pleasure, a true joy. And I'd love to speak with you again. Thanks for joining me today.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Camden. Thank you.

Yeah, we'll put the links in the episode description for people to follow up. Of course, get a copy of the book. There's more books to come. And other books as well. We'll have links to those for people to click and to check out. I encourage you to be wise and to persist in learning about these things and thinking critically about our place in this world and technology and not just its place in the world, but its effect upon us. These are really important questions that we need to be answering as Christians. You can find out all the information if you're subscribing through Apple Podcasts or watching on YouTube. Make sure you head over to the website as well, reformedforum.org. There you'll find information, everything in the episode description there. But you can also find other information about upcoming events, other publications, and all of our online courses, which are available for free. More than 40 courses now at our Reformed Academy. So check that out. But I do want to thank everybody for watching and for listening. And we hope you join us again next time on Christ the Center.