Language is a gift. We often take for granted the ability to communicate with our family and neighbors. Language unites us, but it also divides. We live in a culture of identity politics, where varying languages and cultures are on full display. Diversity is one of the great pillars of modern liberalism. While modernity tries to unite all peoples, we are apt to remember where our diversified languages originate from: the Tower of Babel. In this passage from the Book of Genesis, we find a curious link between transhumanism and language.
Noah’s Ark is one of the most famous accounts from the Old Testament. It’s one of the earliest stories taught in Sunday School and several pagan religions have a similar account of their own. God sent the flood which consumed all that was outside of the Ark. We may assume that the descendants of Noah would have always remembered the provision and might of their God, but that’s not what happened. What we find instead in Genesis chapter eleven is perhaps the earliest account of transhumanism–the attempt to surpass human limits–the tower of Babel. The tower would be colossal: reach Heaven and garner glory for the builders. Eschatological scholar, Meredith Kline, discusses this in his book God, Heaven, and Har Magedon:
“Babel was an attempt to reverse the divine judgment of dispersion by achieving an ecumenicity of humanity in defiance of deity.”
Their motto, writes Kline, was “Made-by-man.” Babel attempted to elevate humanity to the Kingdom of God by means of their craftsmanship. That’s textbook transhumanism.
When Moses begins recounting this endeavor, he begins by saying, “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” This ties directly to the consequence of man’s transhumanist undertaking. God saw that man had abused their common language. Thus, as written in verses seven and eight, God rendered man “scattered” and “confounded.” The Tower of Babel provoked God’s wrath because it was fundamentally a manmade attempt to ascend to the Kingdom of God. As we survey the modern world, we can find a dangerously similar effort in our pursuit of Artificial Intelligence.
As with all technology, the danger of AI is not whether or not it can perform its function. This isn’t a theoretical statement of, “It’s dangerous if it works.” It does work. It works quite well. Anyone with any “smart” device can attest to the functionality of AI. Our lives are simpler and more efficient because of this quasi-indescribable being we dub “AI.” Indeed, AI has become a formless entity that molds itself to our computers, cellphones, TVs, cars, and even our houses. It can have a voice, a name, and in some instances, even an image, acting as an aid in our daily affairs. Meanwhile, AI also works in the background of far more of our tasks than we realize or remember (spellcheck, for instance).
The danger with AI is that in true demonic fashion it attempts to usurp God and ascend to His kingdom. It crosses the threshold from tool to transhumanism. From the atheistic paradigm, this is really rather intuitive. If God does not exist, then man is most powerful if he knows all that is to be known empirically. After all, man is mightiest when he is omniscient. Artificial Intelligence is the vehicle to pursue this knowledge. It is man’s tool to transcend the limitations of understanding that have prevented such omniscience for millennia. It used to be that you’d be specialized in your field, ignorant to other professions. I could be a great doctor and you a great farmer, and we’d both be content in our ignorance. It’d be impossible to know everything. Not anymore. Now, we are god. Indeed, some have not only accepted these allegations of godlessness but embraced them full-bore. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that there are cults and false churches dedicated to the worship of Artificial Intelligence.
As a recent article from Vox points out, the founder of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has stated that he is attempting to craft a “magical intelligence in the sky.” Man may achieve transcendence from a device that fits comfortably in his pocket. The great irony of this godless pursuit is that because they refuse to believe in any Divine or unseen reality, they’ll be left with an incomplete and false–or rather artificial–omniscience. They’re missing more than half the picture, because they refuse to believe it exists. Its godlessness reveals its transhumanist paganism. Unfortunately, AI is so universally accepted as a household tool that any opposition, especially on religious grounds, seems absurd and extremist.
The modern AI movement, increasingly centered on language, harkens back to Babel. The classic response to our ignorance is, “Ask Google.” Converse with the all-knowing robot; she is the oracle of our materialistic age. Still, the demonic underpinnings of artificial intelligence are further revealed in the effort for instantaneous language translation. Such an effort is the technological attempt to transcend our limitations. Not simply by learning several languages, but by instantly knowing all of them. Google Translate and Google Lens are just two examples of this. Google markets its translation technology by arguing that it helps you “understand your world and communicate across languages.” It says further that man may now “communicate…without language barriers.” One world, where all may speak the same language.
Given that such technology is formless, we’ve also incorporated it into our glasses. Solos is an up-and-coming manufacturer of “smart” glasses, equipped with automatic language translation. These glasses can translate both oral and written languages instantly. It’s no longer mere symbolism to state that modern man sees the world through the lens of technology. Both these efforts, and those by Google and other companies, are an attempt to reverse God’s scattering.
None of this is to suggest that being bilingual is demonic. Certainly, it is proper for us to study various languages and speak them (after all that’s how we have the Bible in the first place). Quite the opposite. At Pentecost, we are given a glimpse of utopia. We can communicate in varying languages and worship the Most High God. But at Pentecost, the focus was on Christ. Today, the focus is on ourselves. The concern lies when we seek total language translation solely to achieve global unity. All labor is taken out of the act. We used to devote our time to learn language, and now we can sit back, grow fat, and let AI labor for us. “Translate away, robot, and unite me with my neighbor.” Any unity comes only by the machine. Whenever we seek universal unity by our own glorious transhumanist means, we act as the people at Babel. As a recent blog from Altman makes clear, unity and global prosperity are the goal.
True human unity and prosperity, however, is found in the Church. The Church is the physical body of Christ Jesus, offering an eternal vision of what it means to be truly human: to find your identity in our Lord. Your worth and identity is not who you are as an individual, but rather in your relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” His unity was manifest at Pentecost, again in the form of language. Chapter two of the Book of Acts describes the glory of Pentecost when the apostles were gathered to worship Christ. Then, as in Babel, God came down to be with them. Yet here, He blessed their endeavor. The Holy Ghost empowered them to speak instantaneously in every language to the multitudes that were before them. In a direct parallel to Babel, those who were there, according to verse six, were confounded–not by scattering, but by unity.
The distinction between Babel and Pentecost is clear: Babel labored to ascend to God’s Kingdom of their own doing, whereas Pentecost welcomed the ascent brought by God’s doing. Kline explains that Babel was an “idolization of man, a refashioning of the city of man into the cult of man.” Pentecost turns that entire structure on its head. Consider the Apostle’s Creed:
“I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended to hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”
Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit, therefore, is the only means by which man may ascend to the Kingdom of God the Father. This is the beauty of the Christian faith. Not that man is some intergalactic being, able to climb his way to God in pride and glory. But rather, that man is but a sorrowful child. God is our Father who bends down to love us and pick us back up. It’s a matter of taking versus receiving. Babel seeks to take the kingdom by force. Pentecost receives it with gratitude. Therefore, in the postmodern humanism that scourges the West, we have begun the construction of a new Tower. AI is a pagan movement to unify humanity with a tool of our own creation, thereby elevating us past the differences imposed on mankind at Babel. Those who were scattered and confounded made me brought together and enlightened. To pursue AI is to climb the Tower of Babel. Algorithm by algorithm, brick by brick, man slowly feebly gropes at Heaven. Transhumanism rejects the Church, and thus the Church ought to reject transhumanism. Rush to Holy Pentecost. Abandon the new Babel.
