I have a new car. It is loaded with the newest automobile technology. On a highway, it could basically drive itself. I just have to keep a finger on the wheel. I like it. Many of us also depend on, practically live on, our phones and the newest apps. I can also see new technology that we need to develop: better, smaller batteries, advanced solar, better recycling methods, more advanced medicine, nuclear fusion as an energy source, etc. That said, are we as a species arriving or have arrived at a point in our technological development that is dangerous?
The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 used to really bother me. It sounds so mythy, if I may coin a word. It reads like a backward ancient story to explain why we have so many different languages. Then I got new insight into it. It is not so much a story about languages as it is a story about technology. Language confusion was God’s answer to the problem. The problem was that human technology was progressing too rapidly. God was not threatened by a tower reaching to God. God saw danger in human technology development.
6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Genesis 11:6 (ESV)
Are only ignorant people afraid of technological advancement? I used to be an engineer in nuclear power. The use of releasing energy from Uranium and Plutonium has a useful propose. But we know what else it can do. For decades, now, we have possessed the ability to wipe out human life and render the planet unlivable. Now we have weekly threats from Russia, North Korea, and Belarus about using “tactical” nuclear weapons. Such a phrase is an oxymoron. It is like surgical shotgun.
I am not against the development of nuclear fusion. In fact, I think society depends on it. We already have thermo-nuclear weapons (that use fusion), that genie is already out of the bottle.
If these two things were not what God was concerned about, then we have several other candidates. Genetic modification is meddling with a form of God’s Word by which He created life. We don’t always understand the language nor what we are creating. Will we create a super-disease (did we already) that could wipe us out? Will we create other rogue life forms that we cannot control?
Then there is AI. Ironically, this blog on Word Press uses AI for the picture at the top and for the summary under the picture. I know AI can do many good things. There has been serious calls for regulation, as if regulation will stop a bad actor. The problem in the end is not technology, it is the sinful nature of the creators and users of technology. Perhaps, in our genius and ignorance, we create a form of AI that goes rogue. All sense of truth is lost. We become the manipulated rather that the manipulator.
Things like these are the problem. Perhaps it was what God was delaying at the Tower of Babel.
I know of no way to stop the advance of technology or control it. Only God can rein us in. The only peace I have is that God is able and will only let the world conclude in the way that He wants. There might be a rough ride to that point.
Giving Christ 