Offsite Post: ‘AI and the Image of the Beast at the End of the World’

 

Essays on the evils of AI are a dime a dozen, but this report from BusinessInsider.com (via the Children’s Health Defense web site) seemed to reveal something new:

Billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen — who has long been bullish on the tech — thinks AI is a lifelong "ally" for the children of tomorrow as they both grow up together.

Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast last Wednesday, Andreessen shared how he had introduced his 8-year-old son to the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT as an educational tool.

"The AI that my 8-year-old is gonna have by the time he's 20, it's gonna have had 12 years of experience with him, and so it will have grown up with him. It will know everything he's ever done." Andreessen said. "It'll know what he wants."

The cofounder of namesake VC firm Andreessen Horowitz talked about how AI can serve as a lifelong "ally" for his son and future generations. "They'll have basically a partner whose goal in life will be to make them as happy and satisfied and successful as possible."

This should alarm Orthodox Christians.  Every child, Orthodox or not, receives a Guardian Angel at his conception.  Furthermore, every Orthodox child, at his baptism, receives a Patron Saint.  These holy protectors, Guardian Angels and Patron Saints, are the God-given ‘allies’ with whom Orthodox children ‘grow up together’, who ‘know everything they’ve ever done’, who are their ‘partners’ whose ‘goal in life’ is not to give the children what will make them ‘happy, satisfied, and successful’ in a worldly sense but who will lead them safely through fallen earthly life to the Kingdom of Heaven.

But our Big Tech overlords, per the above, are intent on replacing the heavenly protectors of Orthodox children with an AI simulacrum.  The AI allies are a return to the demonic soothsayers that the Old Testament Law proscribed.  Some words from the Holy Elder Cleopa Ilie of Romania seem to bear this out.  Rather than trusting in God’s will for us as revealed through the revelations of the saints and angels, etc., unbelievers turn to the spirits of the dead (i.e., demons) and mediums in order to know what path to walk in life.  Elder Cleopa writes,

‘The conjurors have the aim and the need to call upon the spirits of the dead (I believe, however, that in fact they are spirits of demons which appear in the form of the spirits of the dead) in order that they may reveal to them certain secrets that relate to the future of the dead or other curiosities forbidden by the law of God.  Listen to what Holy Scripture has to say:  “And when they shall say unto you, seek unto the necromancers and unto the soothsayers, who chirp and who mutter, Shall not a people seek unto their God?  On behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?  To the law and the testimony!  If they speak not according to this word, for them there is no daybreak’ (Isaiah 8:19-20; The Truth of Our Faith, 3^rd edn., Peter Alban Heers translator & editor, London, Ontario, Uncut Mountain Press, 2007, pgs. 234-5).

These words are very apt, for what do our AI chatbots do but ‘chirp and mutter’ revelations to people who are not content with what the All-Holy Trinity has revealed to us?  Elder Cleopa warns us about this:  ‘Indeed, in the Divine Revelation that was given to us with Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition we lack nothing in the way of knowing about our salvation, nor do we have need to seek from the dead – or better, the demons [or even better, AI!—W.G.] – something favourable to our salvation’ (p. 235).

He adds to this the following:

 . . .

The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/ai-and-the-image-of-the-beast-at-the-end-of-the-world/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Why the World Exists’

 

The world has gone mad with dreams of material development.  The modern West led the way with her Industrial Revolution, with its monomaniacal obsession with creating new, bigger, more powerful machines, weapons, etc. – steam engines, hydrocarbon combustion, nuclear explosions. 

But now the Global South is catching this terrible fever.  The BRICS bloc of countries promises a more equitable economic development model for the countries historically exploited by the Western countries for their own selfish gain.

To a degree this is admirable; justice (giving to each what is proper) is a cardinal virtue, after all.  But will they be able to stop the downward cycle into hedonism and decadence that prosperity brings, the downward cycle from which the West has been unable to break free for centuries now?  We have some doubts about that, because, as we said at the outset, everyone in the world seems overly focused simply on material development, and not spiritual development.  And according to the words of the ever-memorable Archbishop Averky Taushev of Jordanville, New York (+1976), this bodes ill for everyone:

 

‘What to say about those who not only do not think about the possible proximity of the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ, as many signs indicate to us, but believe in some doubtful progress of mankind in the coming of general welfare and prosperity, although all modern life with its complete decay of true faith and morality, with terrible destructive, murderous inventions for man, simply cries against it – such are alien to true Christianity, even though they wear high titles and titles of Christian clergy.

 

‘We must know and remember that this earthly “progress”, this imaginary welfare and prosperity of people on earth, promises to give people the enemy of Christ, the Antichrist. These are his servants, preparing his enthronement in the world, and are trying beforehand to confuse people accordingly, shouting and preaching everywhere about this supposedly awaiting people “paradise on earth.”

 

‘And all those who strive for this earthly “progress” forgetting the words of Christ: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt. 6:33), who run away from carrying their cross, according to the commandment of Christ, and think only about how to get along better and more comfortable, richer and more comfortable on earth, enjoying all the earthly blessings and pleasures, are in one camp with the servants of the coming Antichrist, working consciously or unconsciously for his soonest appearance and enthronement in the world.

 

‘Such are not Christ’s, but anti-Christ’s!

 

‘And we, if we are only true Christians, and not just falsely and hypocritically bearing the name of Christians, must constantly look to the Cross of Christ, this saving sign of God’s love for us, the sign of our salvation, and draw from it inexhaustible graces, “for life and godliness;” to bear our cross, as the Lord has commanded us, and to look upon this temporary life on earth only as a sojourn in the hospice, from which we must return home – to those “heavenly abodes” which the Lord has prepared for us by His suffering on the cross (Jn. 14:2-3).’

The world does not exist that we may satisfy our material desires alone.  The world exists so we may encounter God through it, particularly through the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church.  The Holy Martyr-Bishop Seraphim Zvezdenski (+1937) gives a particularly beautiful explanation of this truth in one of his homilies: 

 

‘This moment of the Divine Liturgy is the very foundation of all life on earth, it is the axis upon which the wheel of life turns. As a wheel cannot effectively move and will eventually fall over without an axis, so it is with our world – passion filled, sinful, all rotten from impurity and lawlessness – it would perish, disintegrate, and be destroyed if the great, mystical, and dread revelation of the Divine Redeemer was not consecrated in the temple on the altar. In that moment⁵ the altar is sanctified, and the temple, and the worshippers, and the grounds around the church, and all the homes of this parish and those living in them together with all their belongings, labors, and the fruit of their labors; the earth is sanctified and gives bread and wine for the Divine Sacrifice, and even the very air is sanctified. Nature serves a person and gives what is needed for living only because for him the Holy Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ, is present on the diskos and in the chalice under the form of bread and wine.

 

‘How fearful is this moment – the whole existence of a person, all his feelings, thoughts, and all his being must prostrate before this manifestation of the Redeemer’s love and mercy for mankind. And our sinful and lawless world will continue to exist, and the earth will bring forth harvests of food for both people and animals, and the sun, moon, and stars will give light as long as the Divine Liturgy is offered on the face of the earth. But when, with the coming of the Antichrist, believers will be forced to go underground – there to offer the Divine Liturgy, there to lift up the Bloodless Sacrifice – at that time our world will perish; the heavenly lights will fade and fall, the springs of water will dry up, the the earth will wither and cease giving forth its fruit. Then that terrible time will come of which it is said that people will cry out for the mountains and hills to “fall on them.”⁶ But as long as the Most Pure Body is present in the temple, as long as people worship Him, let us not fear any woe or any adversity of this life. Death is not fearful because gazing on Jesus Christ present (on the altar) we may boldly hope for deliverance. The Lord, Who gives His very Self cannot but hear us when we cry to Him at the moment of His manifestation on the Holy Altar.’

Likewise, the renowned priest-abbot Fr. Athanasios Mitilinaios (+2006) helps us understand that the earthly bread that everyone is scrambling for (and which is making so many obese because they are trying to satisfy an infinite spiritual hunger with the pleasures of food) is merely a symbol that points us to Christ, the true Bread of Life:

 . . .

The rest is at

https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/why-world-exists

And also at

https://katehon.com/en/article/why-world-exists

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Poverty Is Not the Problem’

 

There is a mantra in Louisiana politics in the literal sense of that word – ‘a word or sound that is believed to have a special spiritual power’.  It typically goes something like this:  ‘Poverty is the cause of all evil in our State; education and jobs will eradicate poverty, which will eradicate evil.’

Hunter Lundy, one of the candidates for governor, put his own spin on The Mantra in an interview:

“We can have all of the economic opportunity, and yet we still only have a mean income of $43,000 in Louisiana. Why? It’s because of generational poverty,” he said. “Sixty percent of our children go to public school just to get a meal. This has to be addressed. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room.” 

 

Poverty can be fixed through education, he said. 

 

“I want to move to the community school system where we bring education down to the lowest level possible,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of our parishes and our people in this state have common sense and a good moral compass. We have leadership that can lead. We do not need to run education out of Baton Rouge.”

Louisianans and their politicians will, with little doubt, repeat The Mantra ad nauseum this election season, but there is a problem: 

It isn’t true.

Poverty isn’t the root of all our problems.  The decline of Christianity is.  I will try to illustrate this from two different angles.

First, consider my Pa-Paw.  He grew up dirt poor in southern Arkansas.  That is not an exaggeration.  He plowed the fields behind a mule in his bare feet and attended a one-room school house during the years of the Great Depression.  And yet, amazingly, after WWII (in which he fought), he was somehow able to overcome the hindrances of his dreaded early poverty and start a successful business in north Louisiana that continues today, long after he passed away.  Many other Southern boys have/had similar stories.

According to The Mantra, however, this should have been impossible without a college educated, professional teacher squawking at him inside a shiny, brand-new school building with all the latest technology.

Second, think about Christian monasteries, where the monks and nuns live in voluntary poverty.  According to The Mantra (poverty leads inevitably to evil), these places should be the amongst the vilest dens of criminality.  But history shows us over and over again the exact opposite:  that the monasteries are actually amongst the best places in the world to live, attracting pilgrims from the ends of the earth to experience the other-worldly hospitality, love, joy, etc., that exist there.

How can these things be?

In my Pa-Paw’s case, he had a loving, intact family that raised him according to Christian ways.

In the case of the monasteries, it is similar:  The Gospel is the law that reigns over all matters.

Poverty is irrelevant.  The state of the soul is what matters for the well-being of people.  Handing a welfare check to someone who is irreligious, or sitting him in a vo-tech class, won’t do him a lick of good in the long run because he feels no responsibility toward God or man to live in a decent manner.

Our politicians have to publicly recognize this; they must cease to be politicians and become instead Christian statesmen, who will make the promotion of Christianity a major part of their ‘agendas’ to be implemented after being elected.  Instead of The Mantra, they need to repeat the basics of the Christian Faith and formulate policies in accord with them:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2023/08/garlington-poverty-is-not-the-problem/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘The Tyrants of Strong, Arkansas’

 

When her stomach is unsettled,

Momma must stay at home.

When Summer issues his stern command,

Then we will swelter in hot weather.

When one grandson arrives,

He must walk the boundaries

Of the property of the camp,

Greeting the young trees

And mourning the ones that have fallen.

When feet approach the pond,

Then a fishing pole will be in the hand.

When the call to bless the food and family comes,

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/the-tyrants-of-strong-arkansas-poetry.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!