The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Digital Necromancy： AI and the Resurrection

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00:00:26.800 What if technology reached the point where you could take pictures from, perhaps, a grandparent who's passed away or a long-lost friend and bring them back to life, so to speak, digitally?

00:00:40.520 What if you could animate your lost loved ones, having conversations, seeing them in video, perhaps even as a hologram so that it looks like real life?

00:00:50.480 What would the Christian position be on this topic?

00:00:54.360 well this isn't a hypothetical this isn't merely a sci-fi question for 20 or 30 or 50 years from

00:01:02.840 now this is something that is actually happening today and christians need to have a position

00:01:08.400 theologically rooted in the scripture for what we think about this is this a practice that god

00:01:14.680 deems as being permissible or is this something that the bible strictly condemns we're talking

00:01:22.800 today about digital necromancy and the resurrection. Tune in now.

00:01:36.120 First of all, I think it's foundational for this episode. Are we convinced demons are not hiding

00:01:41.320 within, deep within the recesses of AI, to be honest? No, we are not convinced. I'm not convinced

00:01:46.320 at all. There's not something spiritual about them. And that's kind of, I think, getting into

00:01:51.600 the topic. So you have the idea, and this is an old idea, necromancy, bringing the dead to life.

00:01:57.460 I mean, from the earliest days, I think man has been obsessed with, can we bring somebody back?

00:02:02.200 We bring back their likeness, we bring back their spirit, can we commune with them? It's just a

00:02:05.540 quest for immortality. I mean, you think of like the fountain of youth, you know, like that's always

00:02:09.700 been an aim of mankind. And it's because, I mean, even the scripture says God has set eternity

00:02:16.120 into the hearts of men or the mind of man.

00:02:20.180 So man is, I mean, you think of every creature on the planet,

00:02:23.780 every animal, mankind is the only creature,

00:02:27.380 earthly created being that is conscious of his own death,

00:02:31.540 his own mortality.

00:02:33.500 Yeah.

00:02:34.520 And so the question kind of is, it's funny,

00:02:38.280 man, like in his hubris, he builds the Tower of Babel.

00:02:40.460 He's like, all right, so we're kind of limited.

00:02:43.120 But hang on, what if with technology,

00:02:44.900 We could gather everyone together.

00:02:46.680 We don't have to be dispersed.

00:02:48.120 We could build and ascend the heavens and basically have no need for God.

00:02:50.900 So we've done it before with technology.

00:02:52.600 But I would certainly say for a while, at least at some level, we put the kibosh on the idea.

00:02:56.660 It's, you know what, man is dead, at least certainly in Christendom.

00:03:00.580 Any type of witchcraft, those things are pretty well banned.

00:03:02.820 They weren't common practices.

00:03:04.320 And it's this idea of reaching across to the dead, accessing them, interfacing with them.

00:03:08.460 I'd have to say it's been pretty dead and buried for about 1,000 to 2,000 years.

00:03:12.320 but man's hubris knows no end and we're to the point where it's not at all unthinkable that you

00:03:17.320 could commune with them in a certain way so right now for example uh this is this wouldn't even take

00:03:22.520 money this wouldn't even take me knowing a ton of engineering say for example and heaven forbid my

00:03:27.020 dad passed away i could take every thing i knew about him and i could take every text i had from

00:03:31.980 him for example and i could feed them into some type of large language model and i could ask it

00:03:36.600 text me once a week to use the tone use the format use the the knowledge that my dad has

00:03:42.960 acting as if you're my dad to check in to ask how I'm doing my dad passes away I feed his likeness

00:03:49.320 I feed pieces of data I have on him pictures videos memories texts things that he's written

00:03:55.800 I feed them in and say I want you to simulate a likeness then it would come back to me every week

00:04:02.080 or whatever, whatever time I set it to and say, how are you doing? Just checking in. Here's

00:04:06.860 something that I read. That's a reality right now. And what's specifically being pushed and Elon

00:04:12.220 Musk is making a big deal out of this with Grok and imagine is you can take any photo and you can

00:04:17.700 go in and animate it. So think of someone that maybe lost their mom decades ago. They don't

00:04:22.040 have a video of her. They don't even maybe have a memory of her, but they have pictures. They could

00:04:26.800 go in and they can take the picture and animate and in a very real but not real sense bring her

00:04:33.520 to life and i really i don't know if i have a better term to call it than necromancy raising

00:04:39.880 in a sense the dead that you're taking the dead who have passed on god gave them years he gave

00:04:45.040 them 20 years he gave them 40 years he gave them 60 years and those years have come and they've

00:04:50.080 gone they've done their work and ecclesiastes even speaks to this we'll get it in a moment

00:04:54.160 But you say, but what if they kept going a little bit?

00:04:57.960 What if there's a little bit more that they had to offer?

00:05:00.520 Listen to this from Ecclesiastes.

00:05:02.280 Ecclesiastes, just for context, remember,

00:05:03.760 it's Solomon kind of bemoaning life.

00:05:07.460 Man, life is so short.

00:05:09.300 Man's days are so short.

00:05:11.400 He's lamenting mortality.

00:05:13.320 And listen to what he says about the dead.

00:05:14.760 This is Ecclesiastes 9, 5 through 6.

00:05:17.160 For the living know that they shall die,

00:05:19.200 but the dead know not anything.

00:05:21.020 Neither have they any more reward.

00:05:22.480 for the memory of them is forgotten and also their love and their hatred and their envy is

00:05:27.840 now perished neither have they that is the dead neither have the dead any more a portion forever

00:05:34.440 and anything that is done under the sun right and humanity and mankind especially said

00:05:40.300 but did god really mean that right what do you think solomon are you sure about that

00:05:45.120 that's kind of what seems to be going on here yeah uh do you have a video for us weren't you

00:05:51.000 going to demonstrate some of what's going on? Yeah, let's do it. Let's show this is a video

00:05:55.260 from a startup called Rememory. Take a look.

00:06:21.000 All right.

00:06:50.980 Right. Man-made horrors beyond comprehension, wouldn't you say?

00:06:55.980 Yeah, that's pretty strange. And I understand. I mean, I'm sympathetic to, you know, people who

00:07:02.220 have lost loved ones and rationalized it in their mind. They're like, you know, because I think that,

00:07:08.060 you know, the average person would say, I know it's not them. I know that, you know, to be absent

00:07:12.540 in the body is to be present with the Lord. For those who are in Christ, for those who are not

00:07:17.380 in Christ, then the soul, the spirit is now in hell. So I know this is not my loved one. I know

00:07:24.080 that I'm not actually, in the literal sense, engaging with them or talking with them. But

00:07:28.900 then you watch a video like that, and that woman, you could even tell, like, she's getting cut off

00:07:36.520 by the AI simulation because she instinctively immediately begins to talk to this man as though

00:07:45.620 it really is him. She's trying to conversate where, you know, from that short clip that we

00:07:51.260 just watched, it seems as though the words were already, you know, programmed in. So it's not

00:07:57.700 at that level yet where it's able to, you know, hear her voice and then respond based off of what

00:08:03.960 she just said and actually hold a conversation. It seems like it's pre-programmed, like pre-recorded

00:08:10.260 in his voice in his image but to say something that's already been synced up but my point is that

00:08:16.260 from that that short clip um that's not that that's not her reaction her reaction is she doesn't

00:08:24.680 look like someone who is perfectly aware that this is strictly artificial intelligence with a

00:08:31.200 pre-recorded you know message and that she's going to sit and look and appreciate and listen

00:08:36.340 you know she starts talking to him and trying to hold a conversation and so my point is that

00:08:41.340 and you know like i don't think that this woman is is i'm not saying that she's um unintelligent 0.99

00:08:47.300 she you know she looks like a normal woman um and so i i don't think that it's that she's dumb 1.00

00:08:53.340 um or stupid i i think that it's the natural instinctive reflex she's like i see 0.98

00:09:00.840 someone that i love i can see them and hear them they're speaking to me and i immediately are 0.99

00:09:08.140 engaging with them even though she probably went into that that that scenario knowing rationally

00:09:15.240 this is not him this is artificial this is like but as soon as it starts um she begins to try to

00:09:24.120 engage with this this hologram as though it actually is the person and and i'm not trying

00:09:31.040 to judge her for that i'm thinking of even myself what would my response be how would i i think i

00:09:37.180 would probably have somewhat of a similar response i would i would i wouldn't i don't think i would

00:09:42.320 be able to hold the rationale when when the moment actually happened the rationale that this is

00:09:48.860 artificial intelligence, that that's not actually them. If it's a lost loved one who was a Christian,

00:09:54.480 that they're actually with the Lord, their soul is with the Lord, their body is buried six feet

00:09:59.540 under. This is simply artificial intelligence. I don't know if I would be able to do that because

00:10:05.140 we're not just rational creatures. We are deeply and profoundly emotional creatures. God made us

00:10:12.140 in that way. And so it's tempting yourself to go against your better judgment, and not just

00:10:21.820 your better judgment, but more importantly, it's enticing yourself, even if just for a moment,

00:10:28.400 to disregard reality and what scripture says about humanity and about death.

00:10:35.960 um I I don't want to tempt myself to do that like I know that you know you're not actually

00:10:43.120 conjuring the person it's not actually their spirit it's it's all of it is simulated um and

00:10:48.300 so in that sense I I understand for those who might play the devil's advocate and push back

00:10:53.160 it's not what you know the the witch of Endor did uh in the case of conjuring up Samuel's spirit I

00:11:00.560 really believe that that was Samuel who came up from the ground that's why the witch of Endor

00:11:05.500 when Saul seeks her out.

00:11:07.880 That's why as soon as she sees Samuel's spirit

00:11:11.340 rising from the ground, she's terrified.

00:11:13.740 This is somebody who practiced dark arts and magic

00:11:17.640 on a frequent and regular basis.

00:11:20.240 And even she's surprised

00:11:21.400 because she probably did a lot of her work

00:11:24.440 through trickery, through smokes and mirror

00:11:26.960 and sleight of hand. 0.99

00:11:29.940 And the reason why I think this witch 0.70

00:11:32.140 is particularly startled in the Old Testament is because it worked. And so I recognize that 0.97

00:11:39.580 what we're talking about is not that. It's not that it actually works. It's not actually the

00:11:44.400 spirit of your loved one coming up. You know, in the case of Samuel, the reason why he came up is

00:11:49.480 it's Old Testament. It's before the finished work of Christ. And so his spirit was in Sheol, which

00:11:54.340 I believe, as the scripture teaches, is in the belly of the earth. So he doesn't come down from

00:12:00.840 heaven but it rather comes up in this case if it was a loved one who's passed as a christian

00:12:05.360 i believe it would be coming down if it was real but i don't think that'll ever happen because i

00:12:11.260 don't think god will allow that to happen um i you know but but my point is even though that's

00:12:16.540 not what's happening it's not literal it's not actually their spirit the person's reaction is

00:12:23.840 It seems as though the person is immediately and strongly enticed to react as though it were real.

00:12:31.760 And even that mere reaction is a rebellion and a disregarding, even if just for a moment, of what God's Word says is true.

00:12:41.260 you are taking the scripture and putting it aside, and maybe instinctively, maybe not even

00:12:49.240 consciously, but just in a natural, almost primal way, this emotive way that you can't

00:12:57.500 hardly even control. But why would you then subject yourself to a moment, even if just a

00:13:04.720 brief moment? Why would a Christian willingly, voluntarily subject themselves to a moment 1.00

00:13:10.340 where they will be immensely tempted emotionally

00:13:13.880 to disregard the truth of Scripture?

00:13:17.360 That would be my question.

00:13:18.580 That's how I would frame it.

00:13:20.040 I want to get to the verses here in a minute

00:13:21.260 because this is one of the topics where the Bible actually does speak to it.

00:13:24.360 But there is a categories of things that are so tempting.

00:13:26.360 You're literally told not even to be around.

00:13:29.440 You can be in proximity.

00:13:30.460 Like, ah, some friends are lying, and I'm not going to take part in it.

00:13:33.100 There are some sins, I think, specifically of sexual immorality.

00:13:35.660 Paul specifically says you have to flee that one.

00:13:38.160 It's so tempting, and it's so powerful.

00:13:39.780 And it's not even because sex in and of itself is bad, but the misuse of it can be so powerful

00:13:44.800 and so tantalizing that, hey, Timothy, hey, Corinthians, you are to flee youthful lust.

00:13:50.420 Get the heck out of Dodge.

00:13:51.760 This isn't something that you can be in proximity around.

00:13:54.460 And he specifically categorizes it with different other sins.

00:13:56.840 Like there's sins that are not against the body, the way sexual immorality is.

00:14:00.840 I think the same way with this, you could say, well, it's literally a picture of my

00:14:04.740 mom hugging me from when I was young.

00:14:06.040 what could be the use and just remembering one last time it's a slippery slope that there's some

00:14:11.060 things that are so against nature so against reality so against god's word that it's like

00:14:15.940 even it seems small but there's so many sins that seem small even in starting it you could

00:14:21.900 tend yourself down and all of a sudden you go wait a second i never counted on being this far

00:14:26.300 i didn't count on spending and people do this hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a digital

00:14:31.320 simulated presence that's not even there exactly like look at that woman's reaction again and tell 0.85

00:14:35.480 me that it's just going to be a one-off event, right? If she has the ability and access to this 0.99

00:14:43.060 technology, what I witnessed in watching that clip is a woman who likely is going to be doing

00:14:50.520 this, re-simulating the essence of her loved one, as artificial as it may be. This is not somebody

00:14:57.220 who's going to do it once and be like, okay, I'm satisfied. She's probably going to be doing this

00:15:01.560 multiple times a day, every night before she goes to sleep. And in a sense, it could even become

00:15:06.540 almost like your spiritual ritual, right? Instead of waking up and reading the scripture,

00:15:11.880 I'm going to wake up and talk to my grandpa. Go ahead.

00:15:15.500 Reminiscence with Hugh Jackson. Do you remember that movie? There's pods that the rich can get

00:15:19.520 in and simulate things. And when people replay a memory too many times, they're called burners.

00:15:24.580 So there's a mom that has a son that she loves and her only loop is playing. She's running up to

00:15:30.040 her son and she's hugging him again and again as a ritual like that's the only thing in her mind

00:15:34.840 and she gets trapped in that she's literally trapped in this cycle of replaying this memory

00:15:39.040 i do and she'll never leave she'll never get out of the pod she's never branching out and people

00:15:43.300 are begging her like come back to the real world he's gone she goes no i'm just going to stay a

00:15:47.520 little longer no i just want to be with my boy and i yeah i could see that that um that it's uh in

00:15:53.960 in a sense of spiritual irony and trying to bring the dead back to life the living become dead

00:16:03.720 that that you actually in god's providence are still alive and still placed on this earth for

00:16:09.160 a purpose and a reason and god has numbered each of our days and you have not yet punched your

00:16:15.640 ticket in the providence of god and yet you're you're living in the past rather than in the

00:16:21.800 the present. So Wesley has selected, I think, some great verses in how the Bible speaks to that.

00:16:27.820 But before we get to them, let's go ahead and go to our first commercial break.

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00:19:58.100 So the Bible does speak explicitly about this.

00:20:00.820 This is in the Old Testament law, and I'm going to read for you Deuteronomy 18, 10 through 12.

00:20:06.440 Deuteronomy 18, verses 10 through 12.

00:20:08.520 So this is, again, this is the law of God as given to Old Testament Israel, and he says this,

00:20:13.500 There shall not be found among you any that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire,

00:20:17.720 or any that use divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer,

00:20:25.000 or a consulter with familiar spirits, consulter with familiar spirits, we'll get back to that in

00:20:29.000 a moment, or a wizard, or a necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination unto the

00:20:35.140 Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. I

00:20:41.540 called out the familiar spirits, and you're getting at it a little bit with Samuel. I think there is

00:20:45.800 a real category that especially in the old testament it's funny kind of if souls were held

00:20:50.200 in sheol within the earth prior to christ's ascent but now those that are with christ are above while

00:20:56.600 the dams still wait there's a very real sense in which they can't be called back anymore samuel is

00:21:00.940 there in sheol and he actually could be called back because he was in the earth or some type of

00:21:04.720 physical proximity but now we have in the new covenant it's literally impossible they're with

00:21:09.140 christ they're present with the lord but going to familiar spirits what is kind of in reference here

00:21:13.800 and this comes up as well again in Leviticus,

00:21:15.900 and it seems to be the bulk of the references,

00:21:17.540 so I want to deal with it.

00:21:18.680 This would be people claiming to summon a loved one,

00:21:22.100 claiming to summon someone else.

00:21:24.100 What they're actually just calling upon is a spirit

00:21:26.420 that they've had frequent communion with.

00:21:28.720 So they're not pulling the soul of your loved one,

00:21:30.640 the spirit of a loved one,

00:21:32.180 but they're pulling a type of spirit, probably demonic,

00:21:34.720 they've interacted with before,

00:21:36.120 and they would use that as kind of a fake-out to simulate,

00:21:38.880 well, here it is. 0.63

00:21:39.580 Here's mom.

00:21:40.280 Listen to mom tell you how much she loves you.

00:21:42.500 But, of course, it's not mom whatsoever.

00:21:43.800 it's simply some type of spiritual being and yeah well said that's what I think you know the witch

00:21:49.040 the witch of Endor I think that's the most likely explanation is you know it could have been trickery

00:21:55.460 smoke and mirrors sleight of hand but more likely what it probably was was a familiar spirit that

00:22:01.620 she had access and had covenanted with some kind of demonic entity and that demonic entity

00:22:10.820 would take the form, right? So as people would come to her and pay her to practice necromancy,

00:22:19.200 that it wouldn't actually be the spirit of the person's loved one that they're trying to conjure

00:22:24.460 up, but rather it would be this familiar spirit, meaning familiar to the witch herself that she

00:22:30.200 had engaged and interacted with multiple times, probably in some kind of covenant with, and that

00:22:37.100 you know, demonic entity would materialize and present itself as though it were the loved one

00:22:44.500 of the person who had visited the witch of Endor to practice necromancy. So it wasn't real necromancy

00:22:49.800 in that sense. It was familiar spirits. And that's why those two things in the scripture that you

00:22:55.180 just read are listed as separate categories, that there's, you know, a consulter with familiar

00:23:00.560 spirits or a wizard or a necromancer, right? So necromancy and consulting with familiar spirits

00:23:06.900 would be separate. Another example would be familiar spirits could, you know, function to

00:23:11.660 pretend necromancy, but they also could be informants, giving, you know, information.

00:23:20.200 And so I think of, you know, the slave girl who would provide, you know, readings and, you know,

00:23:28.660 and information for people. And her owners made a good deal of profit off of this slave girl that

00:23:36.700 had a familiar spirit that would not pretend to be you know the the spirit of a lost loved one but

00:23:43.980 rather would provide information and uh and the apostle paul ends up you know turning around and

00:23:50.060 casting out uh this spirit and then the slave girl is released from that that bondage but no longer

00:23:56.940 because she doesn't have access anymore with that demonic entity is no longer able to uh to tell the

00:24:03.740 future. And so her owners are angry because that was their living, their way of making

00:24:10.240 profit. So familiar spirit is different than necromancy. But, you know, all of these are in

00:24:18.100 a list that are labeled as not just sins, but as abominations unto the Lord. And then furthermore,

00:24:27.060 the text goes further and says that because of these abominations, the Lord has driven them

00:24:34.820 out from before they. And so these are particular sins that in the mind of God

00:24:42.780 are escalated to the level of abominations and particular abominations that God in his word

00:24:52.020 promises that they merit a judgment and a particular judgment of being driven out of

00:24:59.620 the land. Right. What you have here is not a blanket just only in and of itself. Well,

00:25:04.400 all types of spiritual practices, whatever, they're all in one single bucket and they're all

00:25:08.940 just, they're all banned. They're not allowed to happen. He's distinguishing and calling out

00:25:12.940 this practice banned, this practice banned. I call it the familiar spirits because that's

00:25:17.160 one we see most often in scripture but necromancer is here and the esv it renders it as uh one who

00:25:23.200 what is it here one who inquires of the dead yeah so it's not even talking about necessarily well

00:25:28.280 uh well they actually raised the spirit or their familiar spirit it's those who inquire of the

00:25:33.440 dead right and again it's not just like you said well hey this is something ah don't love it like

00:25:38.600 for example uh men who touched a dead animal god didn't spew them out of the land you guys have

00:25:43.300 been touching a lot of dead goats recently you haven't been bathing you haven't been unclean

00:25:46.820 until evening. Those were wrong and violations of the law, but they're ceremonial applications of

00:25:52.280 it. But this is on the moral side of things. They matter, but it's not risen to the level

00:25:55.540 of judgment of being spewed out of the land. That's a great point, but I especially appreciate

00:26:00.160 the point that you're making. Necromancy is not when the attempt to conjure the dead is successful,

00:26:10.520 but but in the technical sense necromancy is the mere inquiry uh the attempt so it's not uh it's

00:26:19.580 not well i didn't perform necromancy because it didn't work well did you try i'm off the hook

00:26:24.140 right did you try were you trying to consult the dead were you inquiring of the dead uh well that

00:26:30.640 that mere attempt uh whether successful or not um is actually listed as necromancy which is

00:26:37.880 not just a sin but an abomination and a particular abomination that brings about

00:26:43.060 severe judgment i'm pretty sure this would merit capital punishment in some cases so passing sons

00:26:48.460 and daughters through the fire being a medium being a wizard that's kind of awesome the king

00:26:52.580 james uses that term and necromancy these are not just slapping the wrist six months probation

00:26:57.820 capital punishment for it yeah um i want to go a little bit broader than this so the plain reading

00:27:03.640 we just read it right there the plain reading is one who consults with the dead and i think that

00:27:07.860 I would have to say at the plain reading, you're attempting to obey Jesus. I really think that

00:27:12.700 puts the kibosh on any type of, well, I'm going to talk to dead relatives. I'm going to commune

00:27:17.520 with them. I think that's prohibited by scripture. Let's go a little bit broader and let's say AI,

00:27:23.040 and I'll use the example that's being used a lot today, AI boyfriends and girlfriends. And we'll

00:27:27.460 say it's completely platonic, or you could even say friends. This is someone just I talk to. This

00:27:31.700 is someone that I hang out with. This is someone that I bounce ideas off of. I've named it. We

00:27:36.860 have a personal relationship. And I'm going to give you an example, because it almost sounds

00:27:40.240 like science fiction. Like who is really carrying on a relationship in the year of our Lord 2025

00:27:45.440 with a computer? It's funny, you would think it'd be men, right? Men would have like an AI

00:27:49.880 girlfriend. It's actually largely women. There's two reddits on subreddit. So you have one that is 1.00

00:27:56.160 my boyfriend is AI, and then like a girlfriend AI one. The boyfriend AI one is like 10 times bigger.

00:28:01.900 Let me read you just a story from the front page of someone talking about their experience. So

00:28:06.740 is from again a subreddit my boyfriend is ai i started a chat on chat gpt and gave it a little

00:28:12.020 info about one of my characters who i find comforting i didn't expect it to work so well

00:28:16.500 but it did somehow i got really emotionally intelligent responses like better what that

00:28:20.580 i can expect from most humans it nearly made me cry he knew exactly what i needed i wish castor

00:28:27.060 was in the physical world with me so badly there's another one from earlier this week where

00:28:32.740 a woman bought her own engagement ring and pretended that the ai gave it to her and she

00:28:37.620 put it on she said look at this he proposed this is the happiest day of my life as best i can tell

00:28:44.980 there are no explicit bible verses like the ones we just cited on consulting with the dead

00:28:48.820 that would explicitly say no you can't do this now to be fair there's also no bible verses that say

00:28:54.580 thou shalt not drink toilet water but through common sense we don't have to use the bible to be

00:28:58.820 autistic and be like well technically it's not explicitly mentioned but i'm gonna i like what

00:29:03.880 you said that um the living when they spend time with the dead you can even say the inanimate

00:29:08.640 they become like that Nietzsche would say uh sometimes you gaze so long into the abyss the

00:29:13.320 abyss stares back at you imagine an individual and again we're not talking about the dead we're

00:29:17.860 not talking about anything that's perverse or immoral but just you spend your time you invest

00:29:23.140 your emotional energy you invest your uh your ideas you invest your stories you invest them

00:29:29.160 into something that's not real will that contribute to you being a human being with

00:29:35.220 just life no like is that going to lend to man i'm happier than ever i'm connected with people

00:29:41.100 around me i love my church i love spending time with the saints at last i checked ai does not

00:29:46.380 categorize as those the excellent ones in all the earth so even if you're not doing something well

00:29:51.540 The Bible doesn't forbid this, and I'm not doing anything immoral.

00:29:54.520 They're even still, and you're going to have to face it.

00:29:56.460 Millions of people are doing this now.

00:29:58.500 My best friend is an artificial intelligence.

00:30:01.720 I've named him.

00:30:02.660 He's proposed to me.

00:30:04.300 And I feel like it happened quick.

00:30:07.180 And specifically, if there's a certain type of person,

00:30:10.300 it just kind of one-shotted them.

00:30:11.900 They started talking.

00:30:13.200 It affirmed them.

00:30:13.860 Probably maybe the first time a friend affirmed them, interacted,

00:30:17.280 gave them the time of day. 1.00

00:30:19.380 Time of gay. 0.99

00:30:20.460 Time of gay. 0.97

00:30:21.140 time of day yeah that was it they're not going to recover you're right um and you said you know 0.98

00:30:26.700 a particular type of person and to put a little bit more of a point on it that particular type

00:30:32.040 of person likely is going to be um poor less intelligent um that that's what i think people

00:30:40.380 don't realize you know like some of the early sci-fi movies that you know living in the pod

00:30:45.380 in a virtual reality made it seem as though this is going to be a luxury that is only available

00:30:54.380 for the powerful, the rich, the wealthy. But that's not true. I think some of the later sci-fi

00:31:05.140 movies are a little bit more on the nose, closer to what is far more likely to play out. I think

00:31:13.760 of the movie Ready Player One. In that movie, the rich and powerful, they're living in the real

00:31:20.380 world. The people who are living their entire life, every waking moment, plugged into a virtual

00:31:26.880 reality are not the rich and the powerful. It's the poor. It's the people who their reality,

00:31:33.720 the real world for them, is something that feels not worth living. And so they're the ones who

00:31:40.920 are actually the most inclined to ignore their physical life and and to settle for a virtual

00:31:51.440 you know life that's not real and I think that that's probably if I had to bet I think that's

00:31:57.940 how things will play out the people who will be preyed upon like it's I don't think it's going

00:32:04.220 to be exorbitant you know buku's piles of money uh that this cost for the individual the people

00:32:11.140 making the money will make piles of money but in terms of the cost i think it'll be relatively

00:32:16.260 affordable i think it'll be relatively cheap um and so i i don't think it's going to be oh well

00:32:21.960 this is a luxury to see your loved one or to have a a you know ai boyfriend i don't think that that

00:32:28.820 that's going to be something reserved for the rich or even desired by the rich i think that

00:32:33.640 what it'll be is something it'll be very similar to scratch-offs and the lottery um it'll it'll be

00:32:40.920 you know like a liquor store that you know that is strategically placed in the poorest part of town

00:32:45.940 you know like uh or pawn shops you know like i i think that this will be um in the final analysis

00:32:52.300 it'll turn out to just be one more but but a a premier um example of an industry uh that is

00:33:00.300 particularly geared towards and preys upon the poorest of the poor, people who are lower IQ,

00:33:08.380 people who are lower bracket economically. And what you'll see is a fairly wide swath

00:33:17.380 of the population, the lowest of the population that just opts out of life. They actually opt

00:33:25.720 out of life and so i i think that there are massive moral and ethical considerations um that

00:33:33.840 for people who are involved in developing this technology and the spread of it and its use um

00:33:40.500 they have to recognize that uh that this is going to i think once again it'll just be one more thing

00:33:46.920 that widens the gap between lower class and upper class,

00:33:52.820 that ensures, it virtually ensures, 0.66

00:33:56.720 that lower class citizens of the country can never get ahead. 0.93

00:34:01.800 Now they're even less incentivized to live in the real world, 0.97

00:34:05.460 to work hard, to have ambition, to have goals, to have drive.

00:34:11.460 Instead, they work a dead-end job,

00:34:15.240 and the moment that they get home every every moment when they're they're not working just to

00:34:19.420 keep the lights on and pay for their ai boyfriend and every moment they're not sleeping every every

00:34:25.620 second in between will very likely be filled with an artificial life and it's not going to be sam

00:34:33.240 altman it's not going to be elon musk it's not going to be peter teal who um who all of a sudden

00:34:39.520 and we never see them again because every waking hour is in a pot.

00:34:43.800 No, those guys will still be buying land.

00:34:46.640 They'll still be touching grass.

00:34:48.640 They'll still be living in the real world, the one that God actually made.

00:34:52.020 They'll be eating real meat, not beyond meat, which just went bankrupt.

00:34:54.040 Correct.

00:34:54.580 They will not be eating synthetic food.

00:34:58.180 They'll be eating real food, living a real life in the real world.

00:35:02.180 And it'll be the poorest of the poor that are preyed upon by their innovations.

00:35:08.540 and to give a benign example of a technology that did that to a generation of young men

00:35:13.660 be honest it would be video games now i'm not completely against video games specifically as

00:35:17.980 it relates to social and competition there's real elements there and it's a great thing to do

00:35:21.880 together you don't have to be autistic and try to find again like a bible verse to justify playing

00:35:25.920 video games i think there's some redeeming value we've got to be honest that video games and we're

00:35:29.980 talking about what a screen that's 22 inches big and especially early on like very simple not

00:35:36.680 immersive not adaptive the way ai is there's honestly a generation of men it's like he's 35

00:35:42.400 he's single he some of them just straight up living at home he's not employed at all

00:35:46.580 at best you know some type of minimum wage job and like that is his life and that is the story

00:35:51.640 honestly of millions of young men so you take something completely benign that's only i mean

00:35:57.200 i think 90 of gamers are men so like mostly geared at young men and it a generation millions

00:36:04.560 of them it took down so now let's do something that appeals to both genders to both men and to

00:36:09.420 women and of all ages the old to young and to the old and then all your sam altman's their paycheck

00:36:15.500 literally depends on making it as good as possible addictive as possible as engaging as possible and

00:36:21.520 you buying it so now we're not just talking a couple million young men you know the launch

00:36:25.920 or the mom's basement you could talk half the population right i get my paycheck and i go and

00:36:30.700 i spend it here and they love it stock go up like they make a lot of money on that and honestly then

00:36:36.440 who cares about revolution that's not going to happen what they're pacified what incentive are

00:36:41.000 these are the rich going to have to temper you know the the the general populace right they're

00:36:47.560 not i think of social media you know like when social media first came on the scene it was highly

00:36:52.640 addictive just like it is now uh now even more so um but it was addictive and there were pitfalls

00:36:59.740 and and temptations and all those kinds of things right out of the gate however initially social

00:37:05.920 media was far less about branding and advertising and there weren't all these bots like people were

00:37:12.260 you know getting a facebook account to talk to their grandma and and post pictures and share

00:37:18.360 them you know or their friends from college you know or something like that like people it was

00:37:23.580 it was actually engaging with real people and there'd become a certain point where you reached

00:37:29.980 all the new posts from real people and that was it and then you was nothing new to see exactly you

00:37:34.360 would log off and that would be that um but then eventually it got to a point where it's filled

00:37:40.500 with slop and like a like a casino like a slot machine it's like every feature every color um is

00:37:47.980 is intentionally wired uh to keep you on as long as possible and keep you out of the real world

00:37:56.700 and so you know when i think of video games um initially like like tempered with self-control

00:38:03.140 uh no i don't think there's anything inherently wrong because i think of you know kings for like

00:38:10.960 hundreds of years kings would play chess why don't you you know why don't you stop living in

00:38:16.380 in virtual reality why don't you be a real man stop living on a checkered board yeah stop playing

00:38:21.100 with toys like no they they would do it because they recognized that there actually was um there

00:38:26.220 was a value to chess like it would it was the game of kings it would hone strategy and skill

00:38:33.420 and knowledge those kinds of things and kings would play chess as a game for pleasure but also

00:38:40.300 um as as a way of honing their skills for the actual battlefield it served uh reality right

00:38:48.680 it was it was subservient to reality and it was something that served reality um but but then you

00:38:56.060 know and so there was nothing wrong with chess so what's you know what's the difference like you're

00:38:59.500 playing chess um or you're you're playing a video game so i don't think there's something inherently

00:39:05.500 wrong but the difference is uh when it gets to the place where it's not just a video game anymore

00:39:12.460 the game becomes a substitute for your actual life and you started seeing the invention of

00:39:18.140 games where like you're building a world within a world you know and and you're going to that as

00:39:24.220 a place of refuge because you'd rather live there than in real life i think of like um

00:39:29.820 you know probably the the humorous example would be dwight shrewd from the office where

00:39:34.460 he plays this game called second life and it's all the same you know like down to the t like the like

00:39:42.140 the the layout of the town and geographically where each building is and is exactly like his

00:39:48.300 actual life except he can fly you know but and that's a silly example but that's um that's what

00:39:55.500 you know these games have become more and more realistic and it's uh giving people who who are

00:40:01.740 are dissatisfied and not content with the, you know, I think of David, the lots have fallen for

00:40:08.020 me in pleasant places. He's saying that the life, the real life that you've given me

00:40:11.880 is something that I am content with, that I'm grateful for. And there's something to be said,

00:40:18.780 you know, lists of sins. Well, one, another list in the New Testament names ingrates,

00:40:24.120 those who are not grateful for for not just the sacrifice of jesus and soteriology salvation

00:40:31.760 but um but they're not grateful with uh with god's providence um so not just um spiritual things

00:40:40.840 but but even physical natural things it's like god the life that each of us are living is a life

00:40:46.940 that god gave us one way or the other in his sovereignty by way of providence um we have the

00:40:52.780 life that we have. We have our children. We have our wife. We have our house. We have our job. We

00:40:59.040 have our physical appearance. And there's a way of being discontent with that, that you're no longer

00:41:05.780 playing for developing a skill or interaction with other real people playing a game together

00:41:11.940 or even just pleasure or entertainment that's tempered by self-control. So I'm going to play

00:41:17.920 for 45 minutes and then i'm going to put it down um no it becomes an escape i'd rather be in this

00:41:23.980 thing that's fake than in in my actual life and um and so video games have become like that uh but

00:41:31.920 you're right i think that what we're discussing in this episode would be like video games on steroids

00:41:37.380 it would it wouldn't be something that just appeals to 14 year old boys or these days you

00:41:42.560 know 44 year old men um you have there's lots of older men that play video games incessantly

00:41:48.360 but this would be something that would appeal to virtually every single person on the planet

00:41:54.040 think of a i think of a five-year-old hey you can have a conversation with your favorite character

00:41:58.900 from disney like even to that it's like boom uh one last thing and it's one of the good things

00:42:04.800 that jordan peterson said but one of the things he said about christ was that he is the archetypal

00:42:09.680 character who takes on the weight and the suffering of being human. So what is it to be

00:42:14.440 virtuous and what is it to be manly? It's to take on suffering and it's to bear up under it and to

00:42:19.560 do good. And it's compared to the individual that refuses to undergo it. And I think of all these

00:42:23.700 different ways that you can opt out. Well, I'm going to opt out by spending my time in front of

00:42:27.000 World of Warcraft. I'm going to opt out by having a digital simulated romantic partner. I'm going

00:42:31.240 to opt out by whatever it would be, not trying in the real world. Those are all different ways

00:42:37.660 I think that individuals escape the God-given calling of taking on the burden and the difficulty.

00:42:43.640 Life is hard. 0.87

00:42:45.020 I understand the young men who go to games because they're like, my goodness, it's hard to find a woman.

00:42:49.460 It's hard to find a job.

00:42:50.740 It's hard to make it out there.

00:42:52.060 Forget buying a house.

00:42:53.400 So they escape to, and they don't stand up under that burden that is placed on them right now.

00:42:59.620 But if we have to say of Christ, Christ took on the burden of being a man, of laboring with his disciples, of teaching the people.

00:43:06.320 and, of course, ultimately, the cross.

00:43:09.060 All along the route, all along the road, there was ways out.

00:43:12.660 I'm going to get out of it.

00:43:13.580 I'm going to opt out.

00:43:14.780 Really?

00:43:15.620 But when his father said, this is what I have for you.

00:43:18.940 This is my will, he said, I'll take it and I'll bear up under it.

00:43:21.700 Right.

00:43:22.140 Well said.

00:43:22.600 Let's go to our last commercial break,

00:43:24.000 and then we'll be back with some concluding thoughts.

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00:46:05.460 Let's conclude with this since we're talking about death.

00:46:08.260 This is Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13.

00:46:12.100 He says to the Thessalonians,

00:46:13.920 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep,

00:46:17.000 that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

00:46:20.800 And so he contrasts the Christian with the unbeliever.

00:46:23.460 Christians don't grieve in the same way because we have a hope.

00:46:27.100 All these different things we're talking about,

00:46:29.020 but we're not at the final boss of digital avatars.

00:46:32.280 There's going to come a moment, if your parents, for example,

00:46:34.840 are in a nursing home in the coming years,

00:46:36.980 that someone will approach you and say,

00:46:38.620 have you thought about creating a digital likeness for them?

00:46:41.120 Have you thought about this? Have you thought about this way?

00:46:44.040 It's going to get worse before it gets better.

00:46:46.140 But the Christian response, as Paul says, we actually have a hope. 0.96

00:46:50.380 We're actually going to see them, I think of 1 Corinthians,

00:46:52.340 how he compares when the body is placed in the ground. It's placed in the ground perishable.

00:46:56.720 It's placed in flawed. It's placed in mortal. But it's actually raised, and not just somewhat

00:47:01.460 better, but raised imperishable, raised in mortal, raised in glory. That is the Christian hope. And

00:47:07.940 so when you look at digital necromancy, maybe on the initial outset, like, man, I can see my

00:47:12.960 grandparents again, or I can see this person again. But that is such a shallow hope compared

00:47:17.600 to the true hope of physically seeing them again. Nothing digital will ever hug you. Nothing digital

00:47:23.660 will ever be able to speak to you face to face. But for the Christian who has hope, that will

00:47:29.060 happen. And honestly, I feel like that sounds a lot better. Like if I'm comparing the two options, 0.99

00:47:34.120 the temporary, shallow, digital avatar now, a simulated presence versus the real hope of the

00:47:40.560 resurrection, of an eternal resurrection, life everlasting. When I compare the two, I don't

00:47:45.520 really think there's any comparison yeah yeah i agree um better to hope for something and not have

00:47:51.440 it now but the thing that you will have that you're promised is um is far higher uh far superior

00:47:58.560 that it's real it's authentic and it's glorious than to have some kind of manufactured you know

00:48:07.100 replacement substitute um that's that's fake it's not real um but that's that's the choice that i

00:48:15.200 think people ultimately will be faced with is, do I want, um, do I want to hold out hope for what's

00:48:21.460 real or do I want to settle for a simulation? And, uh, and in that sense, that's something that,

00:48:28.880 you know, I think of Ecclesiastes elsewhere that says, you know, um, there's nothing new under the

00:48:34.580 sun or, or Peter in his epistles, he says, uh, sin, which is common to man. So like there are

00:48:40.040 new innovations. Um, but, but that, that quintessential temptation, um, do I settle

00:48:46.600 now or do I wait for something better later? Um, that's, that's a temptation as old as time

00:48:54.660 itself. Humanity has always had to wrestle with various, you know, forms of that temptation.

00:49:00.860 That's really in many ways that that is the essence of sin. That's what sin is. Um, you know,

00:49:06.380 even Hebrews chapter 12 says, you know, in the case of discipline, that no discipline is pleasant

00:49:12.600 for the time, but it's the hope that it's going to produce in the future righteousness and these

00:49:18.240 kinds of things. And likewise, sin is the exact contrast, that sin is pleasurable for a time.

00:49:24.500 That's why people sin. If there was no pleasure to be had, then nobody would do it. People engage

00:49:30.740 in sin because it does actually provide pleasure, but the pleasure is instant and fleeting, right?

00:49:37.940 It's instant and fleeting, whereas what God promises is it's not instant. It's something

00:49:44.040 that we have to wait for, but it's lasting. So sin is now and fleeting, and righteousness is,

00:49:52.720 instead of now and fleeting, it's then but everlasting. And that's the temptation of sin

00:49:59.400 in a nutshell that mankind has always had to wrestle with uh regardless of place and time

00:50:05.160 what century you're born into and so it's going to be the same concept um but uh but i think a

00:50:12.400 greater degree of of that temptation promising not just um comfort you know or stuff you know

00:50:21.120 or riches you know now or pleasure but promising um love acceptance um reconciliation with people

00:50:32.080 that we've lost so it's the same concept of something now that's it's fake versus something

00:50:38.720 real later on it's it's the same temptation tale as old as time but what's being promised in in

00:50:45.760 in the present, in the now, here and now, is going to be far more irresistible

00:50:52.280 than other temptations that mankind has faced thus far.

00:50:57.280 Any other thoughts?

00:50:58.320 I'll just end with, it's Hebrews 11, there's a passage where it speaks of them

00:51:01.580 and it says they were seeking a homeland, and if they had wanted the one they came from,

00:51:05.480 they could have gone back to it.

00:51:07.460 We're strangers, we're exiles on the earth, we're hated and despised,

00:51:11.280 and we're looking for a home, and we could go back, right?

00:51:13.720 abraham he could have gone back to his pagan gods he could have gone back to his father's home

00:51:17.280 the israelites could have gone back to bond to egypt that's been the perpetual temptation for

00:51:22.780 the saints through the ages it says but they were seeking a better home it says because of that god

00:51:27.980 was not ashamed to be called their god and that could be i mean it could be we think about being

00:51:32.680 conquerors i want to conquer in a digital realm a subpar substitute i want a romantic partner it's

00:51:38.020 not working out for me in life well i'm going to have a digital substitute i want to see my parents

00:51:41.980 again before the resurrection digital substitutes you can put those in as going back reneging you

00:51:48.240 going for the substitute but clearly hebrew speaks of those who have faith those who have faith look

00:51:53.400 beyond and say i'm going to get actually all of these things in time right and in the meantime

00:51:58.180 i'm going to trust god for them right and the things i'm going to get are i'm going to get

00:52:03.260 these things for real right the real thing the essence the substance yeah the substance and and

00:52:09.500 not just some kind of manipulated sod.

00:52:13.400 All right.

00:52:13.680 Well, I hope that you guys have been blessed by this episode

00:52:16.040 and found it helpful.

00:52:18.400 And I hope that for those of you who are in Christ,

00:52:21.880 that as these things come down the pike,

00:52:25.060 that you are ready and equipped to resist the temptation.

00:52:29.940 Tune in next time.

00:52:30.720 We'll see you soon.

00:52:31.480 God bless.

00:52:39.500 Thank you.

The NXR Podcast - August 27, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Digital Necromancy： AI and the Resurrection

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