The NXR Podcast - August 27, 2025


THE LIVESTREAM - Digital Necromancy： AI and the Resurrection

Topics
digital necromancy
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Samuel Paul Jordan Peterson Hugh Jackson Sam Altman Elon Musk Solomon Timothy Hebrews Wesley David Peter Grok Saul
THE LIVESTREAM - The Rise of the New Christian Right THE LIVESTREAM - The Rise of Horror & What It Says About Americans’ Souls

Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

172.07

Word count

9,147

Sentence count

348

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

16

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

What if technology reached the point where you could take pictures from, perhaps a grandparent who has passed away, or a long-lost friend, and bring them back to life digitally? What if you could animate your lost loved ones, having conversations, seeing them in video, perhaps even as a hologram? What would the Christian position be on this topic?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:26 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 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 What would the Christian position be on this topic?
00:00:54 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 now this is something that is actually happening today and christians need to have a position
00:01:08 theologically rooted in the scripture for what we think about this is this a practice that god
00:01:14 deems as being permissible or is this something that the bible strictly condemns we're talking
00:01:22 today about digital necromancy and the resurrection. Tune in now.
00:01:36 First of all, I think it's foundational for this episode. Are we convinced demons are not hiding
00:01:41 within, deep within the recesses of AI, to be honest? No, we are not convinced. I'm not convinced
00:01:46 at all. There's not something spiritual about them. And that's kind of, I think, getting into
00:01:51 the topic. So you have the idea, and this is an old idea, necromancy, bringing the dead to life.
00:01:57 I mean, from the earliest days, I think man has been obsessed with, can we bring somebody back?
00:02:02 We bring back their likeness, we bring back their spirit, can we commune with them? It's just a
00:02:05 quest for immortality. I mean, you think of like the fountain of youth, you know, like that's always
00:02:09 been an aim of mankind. And it's because, I mean, even the scripture says God has set eternity
00:02:16 into the hearts of men or the mind of man.
00:02:20 So man is, I mean, you think of every creature on the planet,
00:02:23 every animal, mankind is the only creature,
00:02:27 earthly created being that is conscious of his own death,
00:02:31 his own mortality.
00:02:33 Yeah.
00:02:34 And so the question kind of is, it's funny,
00:02:38 man, like in his hubris, he builds the Tower of Babel.
00:02:40 He's like, all right, so we're kind of limited.
00:02:43 But hang on, what if with technology,
00:02:44 We could gather everyone together.
00:02:46 We don't have to be dispersed.
00:02:48 We could build and ascend the heavens and basically have no need for God.
00:02:50 So we've done it before with technology.
00:02:52 But I would certainly say for a while, at least at some level, we put the kibosh on the idea.
00:02:56 It's, you know what, man is dead, at least certainly in Christendom.
00:03:00 Any type of witchcraft, those things are pretty well banned.
00:03:02 They weren't common practices.
00:03:04 And it's this idea of reaching across to the dead, accessing them, interfacing with them.
00:03:08 I'd have to say it's been pretty dead and buried for about 1,000 to 2,000 years.
00:03:12 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 could commune with them in a certain way so right now for example uh this is this wouldn't even take
00:03:22 money this wouldn't even take me knowing a ton of engineering say for example and heaven forbid my
00:03:27 dad passed away i could take every thing i knew about him and i could take every text i had from
00:03:31 him for example and i could feed them into some type of large language model and i could ask it
00:03:36 text me once a week to use the tone use the format use the the knowledge that my dad has
00:03:42 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 I feed pieces of data I have on him pictures videos memories texts things that he's written
00:03:55 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 or whatever, whatever time I set it to and say, how are you doing? Just checking in. Here's
00:04:06 something that I read. That's a reality right now. And what's specifically being pushed and Elon
00:04:12 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 go in and animate it. So think of someone that maybe lost their mom decades ago. They don't
00:04:22 have a video of her. They don't even maybe have a memory of her, but they have pictures. They could
00:04:26 go in and they can take the picture and animate and in a very real but not real sense bring her
00:04:33 to life and i really i don't know if i have a better term to call it than necromancy raising
00:04:39 in a sense the dead that you're taking the dead who have passed on god gave them years he gave
00:04:45 them 20 years he gave them 40 years he gave them 60 years and those years have come and they've
00:04:50 gone they've done their work and ecclesiastes even speaks to this we'll get it in a moment
00:04:54 But you say, but what if they kept going a little bit?
00:04:57 What if there's a little bit more that they had to offer?
00:05:00 Listen to this from Ecclesiastes.
00:05:02 Ecclesiastes, just for context, remember,
00:05:03 it's Solomon kind of bemoaning life.
00:05:07 Man, life is so short.
00:05:09 Man's days are so short.
00:05:11 He's lamenting mortality.
00:05:13 And listen to what he says about the dead.
00:05:14 This is Ecclesiastes 9, 5 through 6.
00:05:17 For the living know that they shall die,
00:05:19 but the dead know not anything.
00:05:21 Neither have they any more reward.
00:05:22 for the memory of them is forgotten and also their love and their hatred and their envy is
00:05:27 now perished neither have they that is the dead neither have the dead any more a portion forever
00:05:34 and anything that is done under the sun right and humanity and mankind especially said
00:05:40 but did god really mean that right what do you think solomon are you sure about that
00:05:45 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 going to demonstrate some of what's going on? Yeah, let's do it. Let's show this is a video
00:05:55 from a startup called Rememory. Take a look.
00:06:21 All right.
00:06:50 Right. Man-made horrors beyond comprehension, wouldn't you say?
00:06:55 Yeah, that's pretty strange. And I understand. I mean, I'm sympathetic to, you know, people who
00:07:02 have lost loved ones and rationalized it in their mind. They're like, you know, because I think that,
00:07:08 you know, the average person would say, I know it's not them. I know that, you know, to be absent
00:07:12 in the body is to be present with the Lord. For those who are in Christ, for those who are not
00:07:17 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 that I'm not actually, in the literal sense, engaging with them or talking with them. But
00:07:28 then you watch a video like that, and that woman, you could even tell, like, she's getting cut off
00:07:36 by the AI simulation because she instinctively immediately begins to talk to this man as though
00:07:45 it really is him. She's trying to conversate where, you know, from that short clip that we
00:07:51 just watched, it seems as though the words were already, you know, programmed in. So it's not
00:07:57 at that level yet where it's able to, you know, hear her voice and then respond based off of what
00:08:03 she just said and actually hold a conversation. It seems like it's pre-programmed, like pre-recorded
00:08:10 in his voice in his image but to say something that's already been synced up but my point is that
00:08:16 from that that short clip um that's not that that's not her reaction her reaction is she doesn't
00:08:24 look like someone who is perfectly aware that this is strictly artificial intelligence with a
00:08:31 pre-recorded you know message and that she's going to sit and look and appreciate and listen
00:08:36 you know she starts talking to him and trying to hold a conversation and so my point is that
00:08:41 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 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 um or stupid i i think that it's the natural instinctive reflex she's like i see 0.98
00:09:00 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 engaging with them even though she probably went into that that that scenario knowing rationally
00:09:15 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 engage with this this hologram as though it actually is the person and and i'm not trying
00:09:31 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 would probably have somewhat of a similar response i would i would i wouldn't i don't think i would
00:09:42 be able to hold the rationale when when the moment actually happened the rationale that this is
00:09:48 artificial intelligence, that that's not actually them. If it's a lost loved one who was a Christian,
00:09:54 that they're actually with the Lord, their soul is with the Lord, their body is buried six feet
00:09:59 under. This is simply artificial intelligence. I don't know if I would be able to do that because
00:10:05 we're not just rational creatures. We are deeply and profoundly emotional creatures. God made us
00:10:12 in that way. And so it's tempting yourself to go against your better judgment, and not just
00:10:21 your better judgment, but more importantly, it's enticing yourself, even if just for a moment,
00:10:28 to disregard reality and what scripture says about humanity and about death.
00:10:35 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 conjuring the person it's not actually their spirit it's it's all of it is simulated um and
00:10:48 so in that sense I I understand for those who might play the devil's advocate and push back
00:10:53 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 really believe that that was Samuel who came up from the ground that's why the witch of Endor
00:11:05 when Saul seeks her out.
00:11:07 That's why as soon as she sees Samuel's spirit
00:11:11 rising from the ground, she's terrified.
00:11:13 This is somebody who practiced dark arts and magic
00:11:17 on a frequent and regular basis.
00:11:20 And even she's surprised
00:11:21 because she probably did a lot of her work
00:11:24 through trickery, through smokes and mirror
00:11:26 and sleight of hand. 0.99
00:11:29 And the reason why I think this witch 0.70
00:11:32 is particularly startled in the Old Testament is because it worked. And so I recognize that 0.97
00:11:39 what we're talking about is not that. It's not that it actually works. It's not actually the
00:11:44 spirit of your loved one coming up. You know, in the case of Samuel, the reason why he came up is
00:11:49 it's Old Testament. It's before the finished work of Christ. And so his spirit was in Sheol, which
00:11:54 I believe, as the scripture teaches, is in the belly of the earth. So he doesn't come down from
00:12:00 heaven but it rather comes up in this case if it was a loved one who's passed as a christian
00:12:05 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 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 not what's happening it's not literal it's not actually their spirit the person's reaction is
00:12:23 It seems as though the person is immediately and strongly enticed to react as though it were real.
00:12:31 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 you are taking the scripture and putting it aside, and maybe instinctively, maybe not even
00:12:49 consciously, but just in a natural, almost primal way, this emotive way that you can't
00:12:57 hardly even control. But why would you then subject yourself to a moment, even if just a
00:13:04 brief moment? Why would a Christian willingly, voluntarily subject themselves to a moment 1.00
00:13:10 where they will be immensely tempted emotionally
00:13:13 to disregard the truth of Scripture?
00:13:17 That would be my question.
00:13:18 That's how I would frame it.
00:13:20 I want to get to the verses here in a minute
00:13:21 because this is one of the topics where the Bible actually does speak to it.
00:13:24 But there is a categories of things that are so tempting.
00:13:26 You're literally told not even to be around.
00:13:29 You can be in proximity.
00:13:30 Like, ah, some friends are lying, and I'm not going to take part in it.
00:13:33 There are some sins, I think, specifically of sexual immorality.
00:13:35 Paul specifically says you have to flee that one.
00:13:38 It's so tempting, and it's so powerful.
00:13:39 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 and so tantalizing that, hey, Timothy, hey, Corinthians, you are to flee youthful lust.
00:13:50 Get the heck out of Dodge.
00:13:51 This isn't something that you can be in proximity around.
00:13:54 And he specifically categorizes it with different other sins.
00:13:56 Like there's sins that are not against the body, the way sexual immorality is.
00:14:00 I think the same way with this, you could say, well, it's literally a picture of my
00:14:04 mom hugging me from when I was young.
00:14:06 what could be the use and just remembering one last time it's a slippery slope that there's some
00:14:11 things that are so against nature so against reality so against god's word that it's like
00:14:15 even it seems small but there's so many sins that seem small even in starting it you could
00:14:21 tend yourself down and all of a sudden you go wait a second i never counted on being this far
00:14:26 i didn't count on spending and people do this hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a digital
00:14:31 simulated presence that's not even there exactly like look at that woman's reaction again and tell 0.85
00:14:35 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 technology, what I witnessed in watching that clip is a woman who likely is going to be doing
00:14:50 this, re-simulating the essence of her loved one, as artificial as it may be. This is not somebody
00:14:57 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 multiple times a day, every night before she goes to sleep. And in a sense, it could even become
00:15:06 almost like your spiritual ritual, right? Instead of waking up and reading the scripture,
00:15:11 I'm going to wake up and talk to my grandpa. Go ahead.
00:15:15 Reminiscence with Hugh Jackson. Do you remember that movie? There's pods that the rich can get
00:15:19 in and simulate things. And when people replay a memory too many times, they're called burners.
00:15:24 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 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 and she gets trapped in that she's literally trapped in this cycle of replaying this memory
00:15:39 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 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 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 in a sense of spiritual irony and trying to bring the dead back to life the living become dead
00:16:03 that that you actually in god's providence are still alive and still placed on this earth for
00:16:09 a purpose and a reason and god has numbered each of our days and you have not yet punched your
00:16:15 ticket in the providence of god and yet you're you're living in the past rather than in the
00:16:21 the present. So Wesley has selected, I think, some great verses in how the Bible speaks to that.
00:16:27 But before we get to them, let's go ahead and go to our first commercial break.
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00:19:58 So the Bible does speak explicitly about this.
00:20:00 This is in the Old Testament law, and I'm going to read for you Deuteronomy 18, 10 through 12.
00:20:06 Deuteronomy 18, verses 10 through 12.
00:20:08 So this is, again, this is the law of God as given to Old Testament Israel, and he says this,
00:20:13 There shall not be found among you any that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire,
00:20:17 or any that use divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer,
00:20:25 or a consulter with familiar spirits, consulter with familiar spirits, we'll get back to that in
00:20:29 a moment, or a wizard, or a necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination unto the
00:20:35 Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. I
00:20:41 called out the familiar spirits, and you're getting at it a little bit with Samuel. I think there is
00:20:45 a real category that especially in the old testament it's funny kind of if souls were held
00:20:50 in sheol within the earth prior to christ's ascent but now those that are with christ are above while
00:20:56 the dams still wait there's a very real sense in which they can't be called back anymore samuel is
00:21:00 there in sheol and he actually could be called back because he was in the earth or some type of
00:21:04 physical proximity but now we have in the new covenant it's literally impossible they're with
00:21:09 christ they're present with the lord but going to familiar spirits what is kind of in reference here
00:21:13 and this comes up as well again in Leviticus,
00:21:15 and it seems to be the bulk of the references,
00:21:17 so I want to deal with it.
00:21:18 This would be people claiming to summon a loved one,
00:21:22 claiming to summon someone else.
00:21:24 What they're actually just calling upon is a spirit
00:21:26 that they've had frequent communion with.
00:21:28 So they're not pulling the soul of your loved one,
00:21:30 the spirit of a loved one,
00:21:32 but they're pulling a type of spirit, probably demonic,
00:21:34 they've interacted with before,
00:21:36 and they would use that as kind of a fake-out to simulate,
00:21:38 well, here it is. 0.63
00:21:39 Here's mom.
00:21:40 Listen to mom tell you how much she loves you.
00:21:42 But, of course, it's not mom whatsoever.
00:21:43 it's simply some type of spiritual being and yeah well said that's what I think you know the witch
00:21:49 the witch of Endor I think that's the most likely explanation is you know it could have been trickery
00:21:55 smoke and mirrors sleight of hand but more likely what it probably was was a familiar spirit that
00:22:01 she had access and had covenanted with some kind of demonic entity and that demonic entity
00:22:10 would take the form, right? So as people would come to her and pay her to practice necromancy,
00:22:19 that it wouldn't actually be the spirit of the person's loved one that they're trying to conjure
00:22:24 up, but rather it would be this familiar spirit, meaning familiar to the witch herself that she
00:22:30 had engaged and interacted with multiple times, probably in some kind of covenant with, and that
00:22:37 you know, demonic entity would materialize and present itself as though it were the loved one
00:22:44 of the person who had visited the witch of Endor to practice necromancy. So it wasn't real necromancy
00:22:49 in that sense. It was familiar spirits. And that's why those two things in the scripture that you
00:22:55 just read are listed as separate categories, that there's, you know, a consulter with familiar
00:23:00 spirits or a wizard or a necromancer, right? So necromancy and consulting with familiar spirits
00:23:06 would be separate. Another example would be familiar spirits could, you know, function to
00:23:11 pretend necromancy, but they also could be informants, giving, you know, information.
00:23:20 And so I think of, you know, the slave girl who would provide, you know, readings and, you know,
00:23:28 and information for people. And her owners made a good deal of profit off of this slave girl that
00:23:36 had a familiar spirit that would not pretend to be you know the the spirit of a lost loved one but
00:23:43 rather would provide information and uh and the apostle paul ends up you know turning around and
00:23:50 casting out uh this spirit and then the slave girl is released from that that bondage but no longer
00:23:56 because she doesn't have access anymore with that demonic entity is no longer able to uh to tell the
00:24:03 future. And so her owners are angry because that was their living, their way of making
00:24:10 profit. So familiar spirit is different than necromancy. But, you know, all of these are in
00:24:18 a list that are labeled as not just sins, but as abominations unto the Lord. And then furthermore,
00:24:27 the text goes further and says that because of these abominations, the Lord has driven them
00:24:34 out from before they. And so these are particular sins that in the mind of God
00:24:42 are escalated to the level of abominations and particular abominations that God in his word
00:24:52 promises that they merit a judgment and a particular judgment of being driven out of
00:24:59 the land. Right. What you have here is not a blanket just only in and of itself. Well,
00:25:04 all types of spiritual practices, whatever, they're all in one single bucket and they're all
00:25:08 just, they're all banned. They're not allowed to happen. He's distinguishing and calling out
00:25:12 this practice banned, this practice banned. I call it the familiar spirits because that's
00:25:17 one we see most often in scripture but necromancer is here and the esv it renders it as uh one who
00:25:23 what is it here one who inquires of the dead yeah so it's not even talking about necessarily well
00:25:28 uh well they actually raised the spirit or their familiar spirit it's those who inquire of the
00:25:33 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 for example uh men who touched a dead animal god didn't spew them out of the land you guys have
00:25:43 been touching a lot of dead goats recently you haven't been bathing you haven't been unclean
00:25:46 until evening. Those were wrong and violations of the law, but they're ceremonial applications of
00:25:52 it. But this is on the moral side of things. They matter, but it's not risen to the level
00:25:55 of judgment of being spewed out of the land. That's a great point, but I especially appreciate
00:26:00 the point that you're making. Necromancy is not when the attempt to conjure the dead is successful,
00:26:10 but but in the technical sense necromancy is the mere inquiry uh the attempt so it's not uh it's
00:26:19 not well i didn't perform necromancy because it didn't work well did you try i'm off the hook
00:26:24 right did you try were you trying to consult the dead were you inquiring of the dead uh well that
00:26:30 that mere attempt uh whether successful or not um is actually listed as necromancy which is
00:26:37 not just a sin but an abomination and a particular abomination that brings about
00:26:43 severe judgment i'm pretty sure this would merit capital punishment in some cases so passing sons
00:26:48 and daughters through the fire being a medium being a wizard that's kind of awesome the king
00:26:52 james uses that term and necromancy these are not just slapping the wrist six months probation
00:26:57 capital punishment for it yeah um i want to go a little bit broader than this so the plain reading
00:27:03 we just read it right there the plain reading is one who consults with the dead and i think that
00:27:07 I would have to say at the plain reading, you're attempting to obey Jesus. I really think that
00:27:12 puts the kibosh on any type of, well, I'm going to talk to dead relatives. I'm going to commune
00:27:17 with them. I think that's prohibited by scripture. Let's go a little bit broader and let's say AI,
00:27:23 and I'll use the example that's being used a lot today, AI boyfriends and girlfriends. And we'll
00:27:27 say it's completely platonic, or you could even say friends. This is someone just I talk to. This
00:27:31 is someone that I hang out with. This is someone that I bounce ideas off of. I've named it. We
00:27:36 have a personal relationship. And I'm going to give you an example, because it almost sounds
00:27:40 like science fiction. Like who is really carrying on a relationship in the year of our Lord 2025
00:27:45 with a computer? It's funny, you would think it'd be men, right? Men would have like an AI
00:27:49 girlfriend. It's actually largely women. There's two reddits on subreddit. So you have one that is 1.00
00:27:56 my boyfriend is AI, and then like a girlfriend AI one. The boyfriend AI one is like 10 times bigger.
00:28:01 Let me read you just a story from the front page of someone talking about their experience. So
00:28:06 is from again a subreddit my boyfriend is ai i started a chat on chat gpt and gave it a little
00:28:12 info about one of my characters who i find comforting i didn't expect it to work so well
00:28:16 but it did somehow i got really emotionally intelligent responses like better what that
00:28:20 i can expect from most humans it nearly made me cry he knew exactly what i needed i wish castor
00:28:27 was in the physical world with me so badly there's another one from earlier this week where
00:28:32 a woman bought her own engagement ring and pretended that the ai gave it to her and she
00:28:37 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 there are no explicit bible verses like the ones we just cited on consulting with the dead
00:28:48 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 thou shalt not drink toilet water but through common sense we don't have to use the bible to be
00:28:58 autistic and be like well technically it's not explicitly mentioned but i'm gonna i like what
00:29:03 you said that um the living when they spend time with the dead you can even say the inanimate
00:29:08 they become like that Nietzsche would say uh sometimes you gaze so long into the abyss the
00:29:13 abyss stares back at you imagine an individual and again we're not talking about the dead we're
00:29:17 not talking about anything that's perverse or immoral but just you spend your time you invest
00:29:23 your emotional energy you invest your uh your ideas you invest your stories you invest them
00:29:29 into something that's not real will that contribute to you being a human being with
00:29:35 just life no like is that going to lend to man i'm happier than ever i'm connected with people
00:29:41 around me i love my church i love spending time with the saints at last i checked ai does not
00:29:46 categorize as those the excellent ones in all the earth so even if you're not doing something well
00:29:51 The Bible doesn't forbid this, and I'm not doing anything immoral.
00:29:54 They're even still, and you're going to have to face it.
00:29:56 Millions of people are doing this now.
00:29:58 My best friend is an artificial intelligence.
00:30:01 I've named him.
00:30:02 He's proposed to me.
00:30:04 And I feel like it happened quick.
00:30:07 And specifically, if there's a certain type of person,
00:30:10 it just kind of one-shotted them.
00:30:11 They started talking.
00:30:13 It affirmed them.
00:30:13 Probably maybe the first time a friend affirmed them, interacted,
00:30:17 gave them the time of day. 1.00
00:30:19 Time of gay. 0.99
00:30:20 Time of gay. 0.97
00:30:21 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 a particular type of person and to put a little bit more of a point on it that particular type
00:30:32 of person likely is going to be um poor less intelligent um that that's what i think people
00:30:40 don't realize you know like some of the early sci-fi movies that you know living in the pod
00:30:45 in a virtual reality made it seem as though this is going to be a luxury that is only available
00:30:54 for the powerful, the rich, the wealthy. But that's not true. I think some of the later sci-fi
00:31:05 movies are a little bit more on the nose, closer to what is far more likely to play out. I think
00:31:13 of the movie Ready Player One. In that movie, the rich and powerful, they're living in the real
00:31:20 world. The people who are living their entire life, every waking moment, plugged into a virtual
00:31:26 reality are not the rich and the powerful. It's the poor. It's the people who their reality,
00:31:33 the real world for them, is something that feels not worth living. And so they're the ones who
00:31:40 are actually the most inclined to ignore their physical life and and to settle for a virtual
00:31:51 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 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 to be exorbitant you know buku's piles of money uh that this cost for the individual the people
00:32:11 making the money will make piles of money but in terms of the cost i think it'll be relatively
00:32:16 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 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 that's going to be something reserved for the rich or even desired by the rich i think that
00:32:33 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 you know like a liquor store that you know that is strategically placed in the poorest part of town
00:32:45 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 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 particularly geared towards and preys upon the poorest of the poor, people who are lower IQ,
00:33:08 people who are lower bracket economically. And what you'll see is a fairly wide swath
00:33:17 of the population, the lowest of the population that just opts out of life. They actually opt
00:33:25 out of life and so i i think that there are massive moral and ethical considerations um that
00:33:33 for people who are involved in developing this technology and the spread of it and its use um
00:33:40 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 that widens the gap between lower class and upper class,
00:33:52 that ensures, it virtually ensures, 0.66
00:33:56 that lower class citizens of the country can never get ahead. 0.93
00:34:01 Now they're even less incentivized to live in the real world, 0.97
00:34:05 to work hard, to have ambition, to have goals, to have drive.
00:34:11 Instead, they work a dead-end job,
00:34:15 and the moment that they get home every every moment when they're they're not working just to
00:34:19 keep the lights on and pay for their ai boyfriend and every moment they're not sleeping every every
00:34:25 second in between will very likely be filled with an artificial life and it's not going to be sam
00:34:33 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 and we never see them again because every waking hour is in a pot.
00:34:43 No, those guys will still be buying land.
00:34:46 They'll still be touching grass.
00:34:48 They'll still be living in the real world, the one that God actually made.
00:34:52 They'll be eating real meat, not beyond meat, which just went bankrupt.
00:34:54 Correct.
00:34:54 They will not be eating synthetic food.
00:34:58 They'll be eating real food, living a real life in the real world.
00:35:02 And it'll be the poorest of the poor that are preyed upon by their innovations.
00:35:08 and to give a benign example of a technology that did that to a generation of young men
00:35:13 be honest it would be video games now i'm not completely against video games specifically as
00:35:17 it relates to social and competition there's real elements there and it's a great thing to do
00:35:21 together you don't have to be autistic and try to find again like a bible verse to justify playing
00:35:25 video games i think there's some redeeming value we've got to be honest that video games and we're
00:35:29 talking about what a screen that's 22 inches big and especially early on like very simple not
00:35:36 immersive not adaptive the way ai is there's honestly a generation of men it's like he's 35
00:35:42 he's single he some of them just straight up living at home he's not employed at all
00:35:46 at best you know some type of minimum wage job and like that is his life and that is the story
00:35:51 honestly of millions of young men so you take something completely benign that's only i mean
00:35:57 i think 90 of gamers are men so like mostly geared at young men and it a generation millions
00:36:04 of them it took down so now let's do something that appeals to both genders to both men and to
00:36:09 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 literally depends on making it as good as possible addictive as possible as engaging as possible and
00:36:21 you buying it so now we're not just talking a couple million young men you know the launch
00:36:25 or the mom's basement you could talk half the population right i get my paycheck and i go and
00:36:30 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 who cares about revolution that's not going to happen what they're pacified what incentive are
00:36:41 these are the rich going to have to temper you know the the the general populace right they're
00:36:47 not i think of social media you know like when social media first came on the scene it was highly
00:36:52 addictive just like it is now uh now even more so um but it was addictive and there were pitfalls
00:36:59 and and temptations and all those kinds of things right out of the gate however initially social
00:37:05 media was far less about branding and advertising and there weren't all these bots like people were
00:37:12 you know getting a facebook account to talk to their grandma and and post pictures and share
00:37:18 them you know or their friends from college you know or something like that like people it was
00:37:23 it was actually engaging with real people and there'd become a certain point where you reached
00:37:29 all the new posts from real people and that was it and then you was nothing new to see exactly you
00:37:34 would log off and that would be that um but then eventually it got to a point where it's filled
00:37:40 with slop and like a like a casino like a slot machine it's like every feature every color um is
00:37:47 is intentionally wired uh to keep you on as long as possible and keep you out of the real world
00:37:56 and so you know when i think of video games um initially like like tempered with self-control
00:38:03 uh no i don't think there's anything inherently wrong because i think of you know kings for like
00:38:10 hundreds of years kings would play chess why don't you you know why don't you stop living in
00:38:16 in virtual reality why don't you be a real man stop living on a checkered board yeah stop playing
00:38:21 with toys like no they they would do it because they recognized that there actually was um there
00:38:26 was a value to chess like it would it was the game of kings it would hone strategy and skill
00:38:33 and knowledge those kinds of things and kings would play chess as a game for pleasure but also
00:38:40 um as as a way of honing their skills for the actual battlefield it served uh reality right
00:38:48 it was it was subservient to reality and it was something that served reality um but but then you
00:38:56 know and so there was nothing wrong with chess so what's you know what's the difference like you're
00:38:59 playing chess um or you're you're playing a video game so i don't think there's something inherently
00:39:05 wrong but the difference is uh when it gets to the place where it's not just a video game anymore
00:39:12 the game becomes a substitute for your actual life and you started seeing the invention of
00:39:18 games where like you're building a world within a world you know and and you're going to that as
00:39:24 a place of refuge because you'd rather live there than in real life i think of like um
00:39:29 you know probably the the humorous example would be dwight shrewd from the office where
00:39:34 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 the the layout of the town and geographically where each building is and is exactly like his
00:39:48 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 you know these games have become more and more realistic and it's uh giving people who who are
00:40:01 are dissatisfied and not content with the, you know, I think of David, the lots have fallen for
00:40:08 me in pleasant places. He's saying that the life, the real life that you've given me
00:40:11 is something that I am content with, that I'm grateful for. And there's something to be said,
00:40:18 you know, lists of sins. Well, one, another list in the New Testament names ingrates,
00:40:24 those who are not grateful for for not just the sacrifice of jesus and soteriology salvation
00:40:31 but um but they're not grateful with uh with god's providence um so not just um spiritual things
00:40:40 but but even physical natural things it's like god the life that each of us are living is a life
00:40:46 that god gave us one way or the other in his sovereignty by way of providence um we have the
00:40:52 life that we have. We have our children. We have our wife. We have our house. We have our job. We
00:40:59 have our physical appearance. And there's a way of being discontent with that, that you're no longer
00:41:05 playing for developing a skill or interaction with other real people playing a game together
00:41:11 or even just pleasure or entertainment that's tempered by self-control. So I'm going to play
00:41:17 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 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 you're right i think that what we're discussing in this episode would be like video games on steroids
00:41:37 it would it wouldn't be something that just appeals to 14 year old boys or these days you
00:41:42 know 44 year old men um you have there's lots of older men that play video games incessantly
00:41:48 but this would be something that would appeal to virtually every single person on the planet
00:41:54 think of a i think of a five-year-old hey you can have a conversation with your favorite character
00:41:58 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 that jordan peterson said but one of the things he said about christ was that he is the archetypal
00:42:09 character who takes on the weight and the suffering of being human. So what is it to be
00:42:14 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 do good. And it's compared to the individual that refuses to undergo it. And I think of all these
00:42:23 different ways that you can opt out. Well, I'm going to opt out by spending my time in front of
00:42:27 World of Warcraft. I'm going to opt out by having a digital simulated romantic partner. I'm going
00:42:31 to opt out by whatever it would be, not trying in the real world. Those are all different ways
00:42:37 I think that individuals escape the God-given calling of taking on the burden and the difficulty.
00:42:43 Life is hard. 0.87
00:42:45 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 It's hard to find a job.
00:42:50 It's hard to make it out there.
00:42:52 Forget buying a house.
00:42:53 So they escape to, and they don't stand up under that burden that is placed on them right now.
00:42:59 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 and, of course, ultimately, the cross.
00:43:09 All along the route, all along the road, there was ways out.
00:43:12 I'm going to get out of it.
00:43:13 I'm going to opt out.
00:43:14 Really?
00:43:15 But when his father said, this is what I have for you.
00:43:18 This is my will, he said, I'll take it and I'll bear up under it.
00:43:21 Right.
00:43:22 Well said.
00:43:22 Let's go to our last commercial break,
00:43:24 and then we'll be back with some concluding thoughts.
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00:46:05 Let's conclude with this since we're talking about death.
00:46:08 This is Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 13.
00:46:12 He says to the Thessalonians,
00:46:13 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep,
00:46:17 that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
00:46:20 And so he contrasts the Christian with the unbeliever.
00:46:23 Christians don't grieve in the same way because we have a hope.
00:46:27 All these different things we're talking about,
00:46:29 but we're not at the final boss of digital avatars.
00:46:32 There's going to come a moment, if your parents, for example,
00:46:34 are in a nursing home in the coming years,
00:46:36 that someone will approach you and say,
00:46:38 have you thought about creating a digital likeness for them?
00:46:41 Have you thought about this? Have you thought about this way?
00:46:44 It's going to get worse before it gets better.
00:46:46 But the Christian response, as Paul says, we actually have a hope. 0.96
00:46:50 We're actually going to see them, I think of 1 Corinthians,
00:46:52 how he compares when the body is placed in the ground. It's placed in the ground perishable.
00:46:56 It's placed in flawed. It's placed in mortal. But it's actually raised, and not just somewhat
00:47:01 better, but raised imperishable, raised in mortal, raised in glory. That is the Christian hope. And
00:47:07 so when you look at digital necromancy, maybe on the initial outset, like, man, I can see my
00:47:12 grandparents again, or I can see this person again. But that is such a shallow hope compared
00:47:17 to the true hope of physically seeing them again. Nothing digital will ever hug you. Nothing digital
00:47:23 will ever be able to speak to you face to face. But for the Christian who has hope, that will
00:47:29 happen. And honestly, I feel like that sounds a lot better. Like if I'm comparing the two options, 0.99
00:47:34 the temporary, shallow, digital avatar now, a simulated presence versus the real hope of the
00:47:40 resurrection, of an eternal resurrection, life everlasting. When I compare the two, I don't
00:47:45 really think there's any comparison yeah yeah i agree um better to hope for something and not have
00:47:51 it now but the thing that you will have that you're promised is um is far higher uh far superior
00:47:58 that it's real it's authentic and it's glorious than to have some kind of manufactured you know
00:48:07 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 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 real or do I want to settle for a simulation? And, uh, and in that sense, that's something that,
00:48:28 you know, I think of Ecclesiastes elsewhere that says, you know, um, there's nothing new under the
00:48:34 sun or, or Peter in his epistles, he says, uh, sin, which is common to man. So like there are
00:48:40 new innovations. Um, but, but that, that quintessential temptation, um, do I settle
00:48:46 now or do I wait for something better later? Um, that's, that's a temptation as old as time
00:48:54 itself. Humanity has always had to wrestle with various, you know, forms of that temptation.
00:49:00 That's really in many ways that that is the essence of sin. That's what sin is. Um, you know,
00:49:06 even Hebrews chapter 12 says, you know, in the case of discipline, that no discipline is pleasant
00:49:12 for the time, but it's the hope that it's going to produce in the future righteousness and these
00:49:18 kinds of things. And likewise, sin is the exact contrast, that sin is pleasurable for a time.
00:49:24 That's why people sin. If there was no pleasure to be had, then nobody would do it. People engage
00:49:30 in sin because it does actually provide pleasure, but the pleasure is instant and fleeting, right?
00:49:37 It's instant and fleeting, whereas what God promises is it's not instant. It's something
00:49:44 that we have to wait for, but it's lasting. So sin is now and fleeting, and righteousness is,
00:49:52 instead of now and fleeting, it's then but everlasting. And that's the temptation of sin
00:49:59 in a nutshell that mankind has always had to wrestle with uh regardless of place and time
00:50:05 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 greater degree of of that temptation promising not just um comfort you know or stuff you know
00:50:21 or riches you know now or pleasure but promising um love acceptance um reconciliation with people
00:50:32 that we've lost so it's the same concept of something now that's it's fake versus something
00:50:38 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 in the present, in the now, here and now, is going to be far more irresistible
00:50:52 than other temptations that mankind has faced thus far.
00:50:57 Any other thoughts?
00:50:58 I'll just end with, it's Hebrews 11, there's a passage where it speaks of them
00:51:01 and it says they were seeking a homeland, and if they had wanted the one they came from,
00:51:05 they could have gone back to it.
00:51:07 We're strangers, we're exiles on the earth, we're hated and despised,
00:51:11 and we're looking for a home, and we could go back, right?
00:51:13 abraham he could have gone back to his pagan gods he could have gone back to his father's home
00:51:17 the israelites could have gone back to bond to egypt that's been the perpetual temptation for
00:51:22 the saints through the ages it says but they were seeking a better home it says because of that god
00:51:27 was not ashamed to be called their god and that could be i mean it could be we think about being
00:51:32 conquerors i want to conquer in a digital realm a subpar substitute i want a romantic partner it's
00:51:38 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 again before the resurrection digital substitutes you can put those in as going back reneging you
00:51:48 going for the substitute but clearly hebrew speaks of those who have faith those who have faith look
00:51:53 beyond and say i'm going to get actually all of these things in time right and in the meantime
00:51:58 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 these things for real right the real thing the essence the substance yeah the substance and and
00:52:09 not just some kind of manipulated sod.
00:52:13 All right.
00:52:13 Well, I hope that you guys have been blessed by this episode
00:52:16 and found it helpful.
00:52:18 And I hope that for those of you who are in Christ,
00:52:21 that as these things come down the pike,
00:52:25 that you are ready and equipped to resist the temptation.
00:52:29 Tune in next time.
00:52:30 We'll see you soon.
00:52:31 God bless.
00:52:39 Thank you.