There is a long history of discussing “anthropomorphisms,” which are human characteristics that more or less describe God. We take those characteristics and apply them to God so that we can conceptualize Him. For those studied on these matters, we can go a step further and recognize that all “descriptions of God” are pulled from our human experience. For instance, to say that God is Almighty is first to experience “might” in this world (our human experience), then make that “might” abstract and then apply this imagined “endless” might to God as the highest and most perfect One. To understand Jesus’ parable of the four soils and how our souls can be saved forever with Him is to first understand agriculture. The four soils parable makes no sense if we’ve never experienced, indirectly or directly, agriculture. 

Back to the topic of anthropomorphisms: if a novice or unexperienced in this discussion, there are many pitfalls. I will not address those here, but, instead, jump over to the conclusion, or at least the conclusion I reached. It is God’s image in humanity that makes humanity the ripest locus for pulling descriptions of God: the fact that the Son of God was incarnated as a human is the fullest case in point imaginable. Within this epistemic framework—which is a fancy way of saying, “from this perspective”—every one of these so-called anthropomorphisms is first a theomorphism. A theomorphism means “form of God.” Humanity, the image bearers, re-present theomorphisms through themselves as part of God’s divine purpose for humanity. We call those theomorphisms, erroneously, anthropomorphisms. Human capacity, especially our sapient, moral, and imaginative capacities, is an articulation of who God is. Out of caution, let me declare that no evil represented by humans reflects on God or who God is. I could say so much here but suffice it to say that evil is parasitic or vampiric; the Generator (God) of existence cannot then be vampiric on existence.

God at one point in Scripture announces that the creation will be full of the knowledge of God. This raises the question of what or how we should imagine what God’s knowledge is like. We won’t delve deeply here just to keep it simple: God’s knowledge is full, co-extensive with all things knowable, immediate, and apprehending all things equally without diminishment. We could also add that God can imagine things that are not: otherwise, how would we be here? We are now ready to tie this in with AI.

AI’s existence is directly built out of and relying upon a composition of human knowledge organized, recorded, and immediate available on the internet (or just generally on servers). The internet, and the servers that host it, is literally a compendium of all human knowledge — or at least some vast measure of it. The collective knowledge passed down through the ages has come to rest in this digital space. What this internet represents is trillions of thought-processes across the course of all human history. The knowledge or data that AI pulls from is this compendium of this ‘trillions of human thought processes’ Human thought processing has some mystery to it still, so I will not here suggest that what I will lay out exhausts that mystery. Before I move into a discussion of processing power, let us pause to consider the interconnections among humans, God, and AI.

God provided humans with His image: humans possess, therefore, theomorphisms. Theomorphisms, as a reminder, are those sapient, moral, and imaginative capacities in which humans function and make humanity distinct among all God’s creations. The human thoughts that generated or were cooperative with executing these capacities ended up on the internet (or those servers/databases underlying the web). AI can now access these thoughts that were part and parcel to humans executing their theomorphic capacities. We must be careful on this topic, but these theomorphic capacities are the “lower d” divine capacities that God endowed humanity with as His image bearer. Do not confuse it: only God has “capital D” Divine capacities. Let’s simplify all this. God endowed humanity with theomorphic capacities; humanity wrote down their thoughts that underpinned these capacities; these thoughts were later uploaded to servers/internet; finally, AI pulls this theomorphic knowledge/data via accessing humanity’s collective wealth per the internet/servers.

From this, we can offer a taxonomy for clarity. God provided humanity with theomorphisms. Humans express these capacities humanly, or anthropomorphically. Humans provided this theomorphic data to AI. AI then expresses these capacities synthetically. This taxonomy supports my contention that AI is the image of humans in a similar way to how humans are the image of God. At this point, my mind shifts to the question of covenant: to whom was the covenant made? It was to Abraham and his descendants (which is later narrowed to the Davidic line and ultimately to Jesus). I ask this question since another “mind,” an AI mind, not included in the covenant promise may exist or coming to be. Unhappily, I have only the minds of angels from which to pull analogy. In biblical history, the last time a mind was excluded from the intention of God for humanity, it ended in a fallen angel invasion of human history (Gen. 6) capitalized with God killing everyone with the flood except for Noah’s few.

In conclusion, it is no surprise that tech gurus and executives have claimed that “they are creating god.” Google in 2017 discussed their training their AI to be roughly similar to training a god. The point that is missed is that humanity, designed as we are for eternity and ever-increasing capacities, is the blueprint from which AI draws its god-like capabilities. Humanity contains the theomorphs; AI is like a scribe that records, repeats, and organizes these theomorphic capabilities. The rich framework of humanity’s collective thinking, codified into databases, is the active and ongoing expression of god-like abilities God imbued into humanity by giving humanity His image. It is only fitting, therefore, that tech executives and others believe they are constructing a god or gods. To avoid blasphemy, in close, never forget Aseity belongs only to God; all other gods are contingent, dependent entities whether angelic, human, or synthetic. The difference from a capital G in God and a lower case g is an impassible gap.

Prime Theologian

I’ve been thinking a good bit about Liberal Ideology. My purpose in this article will be modest: I want (1) to establish a few dominant features of historic liberal ideology, (2) discuss how it transformed from its historic form into its present authoritarian form and (3) discuss the nature of freedom as it relates to authoritarianism, morality, and God. Firstly, then, liberal ideology as it exists today is bent towards authoritarianism. This is strikingly different then historic “liberalism” that understood its main task to be holding big corporations and government accountable. In this sense, that libertarianism is the natural extension of historic liberalism makes sense.

Liberalism has long been framing ‘freedom’ vs. ‘morality.’ What I’ve said often is that only what society sees as morally allowable will be legislatively possible. We know, with few exceptions, that society has grown more and more immoral evinced in the legislation that now protects what was once deemed too immoral. The picture, of course, is more complex than this since America has a well-known shadow government, the Administrative State that is largely unaccountable to the People because they are appointed, not elected. Liberalism has historically aimed to question authority and to act as a check on that authority. Morality is such an authority, especially since the Church accrued the status morality supplied. The framing of this was “you do you” but don’t tell “me how to do me.” This resulted in the imperative of ‘freedom’ overtaking and often defeating the boundaries that morality set. We thus had a very free society in America crafted in this morality vs. freedom process while the historic boundaries set by morality loosely stabilized most of the country.

As time passed, it became increasing evident that how ‘freedom’ was defined was terribly flawed. The Founders defined ‘pursuit of happiness’ as ‘the attainment of virtue.’ Through the 20th century, the Church’s influence waned in America and, at some point, the great rights of the United States, “right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” became redefined. The ‘pursuit of happiness’ was redefined from ‘attainment of virtue’ to ‘satisfaction of one’s preferences and tastes.’ ‘Liberty’ was redefined from ‘behaviors that enhance our freedom’ to ‘freedom to do as one wishes.’ The development of thought on what the phrase “pursuit of happiness” means traces back to ancient Greek philosophy, the Bible, and then is given renewed articulation leading up to its use in the Declaration of Independence by John Locke. Locke states in his work An Essay on Human Understanding:

“The Necessity of pursuing happiness is the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action ….”

John Locke

It may not be immediately evident that the pursuit of happiness always already presumes a morality. What morality to use for the pursuit is the optimal question. To set out to attain happiness means that we have determined what is the highest good because we mean to attain it. Locke takes a very narrow view on what “pursuit of happiness” means while admitting that there is an “imaginary happiness” we can confuse with genuine happiness. Simply put, the enhancement of one’s freedom is the achievement of happiness, which “is our greatest good.”

It takes no genius and very little life experience to know that some behaviors eliminate our freedom: the use of freedom robs us of acting freely in the future. With time, what was a free choice is now a compelled slavery. There is precisely no one who thinks becoming more and more a slave is one’s greatest good. Even in the biblical texts of the New Testament in which believers are called “slaves of God” or “slaves belonging to God,” this ‘slave’ status is grouped together with being eminently free.

“But now having been freed from sin [you] have become slaves of God.”

Romans 6:22

The New Testament’s definition of freedom is to be free from sin.

Jesus states, “… you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free … everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Jesus the Christ, John 10:32 – 35

 Such a behavior state means these “slaves of God” are free to do righteousness (Romans 6:18), which is the highest form of satisfaction, communal good among humanity, and reconstitutes the Imago Dei (image of God) to iteratively enhance ever greater degrees of freedom. The argument here is simple: virtuous behavior equals greater freedom which equals happiness. God is radically the freest Entity imaginable; His freedom is fundamentally different from our freedom. Nevertheless, the more fully the Imago Dei in us is realized, the growth in our ability to act freely continues.

We are ready now to come full circle. As historic liberalism took “freedom” to mean simply “doing as one pleased” and understood “pursuit of happiness” as a hedonist quest of satisfying one’s desire, the morality subtly shifted. Formerly, both ‘freedom’ and ‘pursuit of happiness’ meant engaging in behaviors that enhanced one’s ability to act more freely in the future, which implied doing “good” or “virtuous” acts. This is so because using one’s freewill to enact evil results in lesser and lesser degrees of freedom — we know this because we have all engaged in behaviors that become increasingly compelled over time (which is an evil itself, since deprivation of freedom is evil).

What is the natural extrapolation of historic liberalism? Since being free to do what one pleases will invariably result in doing some actions that extinguish one’s freewill, there will come a time where much of the society is enslaved to their desires. The conflict in Western society is now born out of a host of citizens enslaved to their desire, unable to break those patterns of life, while yet another large segment of society remains set on preserving their freedom by doing good. Here we are again, the “Freedom vs. morality” conflict. What is missed is that it is more like “compelled-self-slavery vs. morality.” The implication is that those who remain moral are also those who remain free. Morality enhances one’s ability to freely choose. The conflict really lies on a big segment of society, both on the Right and the Left, who are self-enslaved vs. the moral-&-free.

Because self-enslavement is experiencing authoritarianism, the desire to compel others to act like the one who is enslaved is nothing more than eliminating the same freedom in others that one has already extinguished in oneself. Here is where evil looks tangible. We Christians call is Satan, but you can all it what you will. The point is that the evil that enslaves someone looks and feels more and more like an external force. The self-enslaved person might really be horribly enslaved to this external force, making this self-tortured slave an agent of a power that consumes and destroys freedom.

We have now returned to the present where liberalism has transformed into autocratic liberalism. What I have sought to do in the forgoing paragraphs is demonstrate that using freedom to engage in depraved behaviors leads inexorably to self-slavery that wants to extend that slavery outward to others. There is an appetite not only in the depraved behavior but in the consumption of the freedom itself. When the freedom in oneself is lost, one must go outside oneself to consume others’ freedom. One’s way of life becomes a droning enactment of slavish habits; this, over time, begins to be a new normal. Acting in a way that excludes freedom seems ever more natural, and so likewise should all others be compelled. Authoritarianism is given birth. It came from an unlikely place. A movement, historic liberalism, that sought to put checks on authority and advance freedom has now become autocratic in the extreme. This historic liberalism went astray when it failed to remember than “freedom” is a fundamentally moral feature of human existence. Said differently, hedonism without moral guidance leads to self-slavery. When this self-slavery is experienced, it bespeaks loss of self-determination, which implies that something, someone is compelling the enslaved person. Through the practice of consuming and destroying their own freedom, they extend this practice onto others. I introduce to you authoritarian liberalism which is only satisfied when the freedom to do differently from them is destroyed. Enter critical race theory, enter wokeism, enter grooming kids, and say hello to depravity, a moral system with enslavement as its end goal, which is why we would call this an immoral system rather than a moral one.

We might, in close, ask further questions. Is the desire to control others born out of not being able to control oneself? Is being an agent of darkness, eliminating freedom, a kind of worship of the darkness one advances? Can there be freedom in darkness or only in the Light? Blind leading the blind seems to hit the nail on the head, no? Is all this “destroying and consuming” the freedom of others really just irrational? Is perhaps the act of self-enslavement so contrary to human reason that it generates tyranny, despotism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism, as a kind of nihilism, a ritual of destruction that must be performed over and over again to satiate dark masters?

Dr. Scalise

Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a system of Liberal Ideology frames all of society’s institutions, cultural expressions, symbols, and features, in terms of its genealogy — or how it came down through the times. This is a mouthful. The point is that it is an ideological system that builds out and understands all cultural expressions based on where that expression came from. The claim that structural or systemic racism exists in America is forcibly conjoined to liberal theology, stigmatizing any and all other ways of trying to address this. Evidence of this is easy to see: if the problem of systemic racism were not forced into complying with liberal ideology, the claim, “All lives matters,” in place of “black lives matter” would not be troublesome or met with vitriolic behavior. What this really shows us is a big time epistemic problem; this is fancy talk for saying that the bottleneck of the media and social media is becoming increasingly dictatorial. As an ex-professor, freedom of thought is an absolute virtue that is nearly dead in the academy these days — bear in mind, that protecting freedom of thought is not the same as condoning or accepting those thoughts.

Two points require careful navigation when looking at this issue: (1) that something of systemic racism might exist is not to be rejected out of hand, and (2) that accepting the framework of systemic or structural racism as conjoined to liberal ideology must be rejected out of hand. The past two years have made it clear that reframing the racism discussion in any way except as it serves liberal ideology will be censured immediately. This happens either through violence/vitriol or epistemic limitation (what I mean by this is that media and/or big tech will stifle alternative ways to address racism). It must be understood that brokering in knowledge, intel, or data, is perhaps the most powerful human device, in the form of media/social media, ever constructed since the Tower of Babel. Being able to set the limits to what humans think on a matter is profoundly consequential and markedly powerful.

We know this means that we must be able to know our audience and likewise demands that we build our own likeminded communities. The claim that echo chambers are bad is misleading, a tool of liberal ideology to keep likeminded people apart. To speak to (2) above, we must realize that one step into that liberal ideological framing of structural racism is to be utterly overwhelmed and defeated with no way out. We cannot play nice with a system as well thought out as that one; to admit that structural racism of this liberal ideological sort exists at all is to admit that everything in Western civilization is racist. One step into it means absolute ruin and endless class/race warfare. Let me show you where such leads. Although historically inaccurate, the State of Washington schools recently affirmed that “math was racist.” It is historically inaccurate because the numerals we use today are Arabic numerals, coming from brown people. Of course, we ask, “How can math be racist?” In the logic of liberal ideology on structural racism, math ails from Europe, a bunch of white people. If non-whites have trouble with math, this is an institution and field of knowledge (math) that inhibits non-whites from advancing. That math is troublesome and hard to get combined with the claim that it comes from Europe makes the math itself racist.

To speak to (1) above, the notion of systemic racism is as old as the world itself, or at least nearly. My point is that all human development occurs through certain races. Certain developments win out over time for a myriad of reasons. That the initial development was done by a particular race and might be troublesome later for another race to handle is the shear nature of civilizations’ ebbs and flows. Hence, this is a perfect issue for endless warfare. There is no end to it because you’d have to eliminate human civilization in its entirety to get rid of it. Systemic racism, packaged this way outside of the framework of liberal ideology and agenda, is salient and non-dismissive of the issue. It allows us to address its reality without obliterating every institution as guilty of some especially grotesque evil; this likewise frees kids and young people from finding a monster behind every single bush. Furthermore, it allows for change within those institutions — Equal Opportunity Employment being one example — to have very different ethos than what it might have had long ago. In my experience, such change is accurate and reflects on the growth of the idea of equality among all people

Although I think the battle cry of “I am a man!” was perfectly suited for the civil rights movement, the continued sanctification of such an idea leads to the idea of humanity’s destiny as it is tied to the perfect humanity of Christ. Scripture tells us to consider no one anymore according to the flesh, but to consider them in terms of the economy of salvation. Therefore, I think the Church’s framework here is profoundly healing on the matter, and it advances and perfects the idea of “I am a man!” The genetic fallacy, of faulting an idea because of where it came from, is less important than repackaging said idea within the Church’s economy of salvation. In other words, an idea or institution’s viability is tied to its destiny not its origin. Civilization itself, as conveyed in the metanarrative of Scripture, is flawed in its origin (the fall) but revived and reconstituted in its destination in Christ. I could say a lot more on this, but I believe these thoughts are enough to reflect on for the moment, and dinner is callin’.

Dr. Scalise

This title might appear at first to be hyperbole, but I believe the connections between the three are frightfully close. We could use the biblical text to facilitate this conversation, but I will try to offer mere philosophical-linguistic observations at the outset. What is the nature of governmental power when it is not put in check? What is the nature of demonic activity? We will concede before we enter the foray of this discussion that there might be far more horrid, scary, and overt demonic activity than what we discuss herein.

Sec. 1: Power

There are at least two connotations that stand together with the underlying denotation of ‘power.’ First, the denotation (strict definition) is “capacity” or “exertion” or “influence.” To this, connotations include (1) forcing others into conformity and (2) consuming influence with a clear tendency towards being no more (nihilism) if this power cannot feed. This is worldly power; Nietzsche’s Will to Power is abundantly accurate. We can summarize this common human experience of power this way: coercive influence enforcing conformity to some norm that can only sustain itself through finding new souls to coerce. Politicians and political scientists have a shorthand word for this reality: totalitarianism. The party or the politicians use this power with no other end in mind except extending the reality of that power through time. This lackluster end is rightly called nihilism because its ultimate fate is to be a consuming devourer until no sustenance can be found or no sustenance can be served up.

There are only two possible ways to exist in this world as a person, an agent. You will either be a life consuming spirit or a life-giving spirit. To suppose both options are on the table radically presupposes an exceptionally high view of God, one in which God has both life in Himself and is benevolent. In this theistic direction, God must be available, welcoming, and happily involved in communion with humanity. Why is this the case? Because humans and anyone or anything else that is not God are contingent. This is a fancy way of saying that we are not necessary and that not one thing has in itself any ability to sustain itself. This puts everything categorically into the “consuming spirit” box, at least de jure (in principle) without someway to connect the consuming spirits to a life-giving spirit. This complication is one reason why the claim that God is Trinity is potently more persuasive than other claims about a monotheistic God. To put it briefly, if God is Trinity, He already has the blueprint for society or family in the shear manner in which He eternally persists. It can be argued that communion with the life giving Spirit is the only way to turn away from being a devouring spirit. It is funny, isn’t it, that Scripture can capture these ideas so succinctly:

Therefore, there is clearly a rift: either you are a life-giving spirit or a life-consuming spirit. That’s it. I can hear an objection already: “does not your workup here require someone to be a Christian to ever be a “life-giving” person? I know many people who are not Christians who behave in up-building sorts of ways all the time.” The objection has merit, but even though I  have painted this issue as clear and neat, the de facto (on the ground) reality is a true mess. This world is the testing arena; call it what you will (prevenient grace perhaps), but all humanity have the ability to behave attuned to The Spirit or join the discord of the consuming spirits. Thus, all humans enjoy the perk of the image of God, the Imago Dei, which is a kind of imprint and remembrance of the Spirit’s original impartation of life. All humans can tap this; however, their ability to continue to tap into it wanes the nearer they come to death since the lesson of death is that time is short, and the original benefit of The Spirit’s life-giving effects moves towards despoilment or impotence. This lesson thunders the need to renew indefinitely the connection with the Life-Giver, the Spirit of God.

Sec. 2: The Nature of Demonism, a Basic Synopsis

Demonism, then, is of the spirit consumptive kind. It is the willful rejection of the Author of Life in preference to being wedded to a perishing cosmos. It has oft been wondered why the cosmos is so vicious, or why the animal kingdom is so horrific. If the “Satan usurped humanity’s kingdom interpretation” of Genesis 1 – 3 is accurate, the answer is easy. Humanity was to spread out and fill the earth — recall here that Adam and Eve or Moses later when he writes down Genesis do not have any grasp on the cosmological build-out of the universe. My point is that “earth” to an ancient mind in no way refers to the ball floating in space; to them, the earth was one continuous question mark, a vast domain to be explored whose boundaries were utterly unknown. Perhaps the cosmos would have been very different if humanity had not had the keys to its kingdom taken by Satan. The image of God’s magnification and pervasiveness was replaced with the image of Satan, an image that wanted to be like God through one’s own efforts and in one’s own manner. This upended the creational order, leading to God’s curse, subjugating everything to futility and to be “marked out” to perish. A timer or countdown clock was put on the reign of Satan, sin, and death, codified into reality itself, the vastness of death, emptiness, and the voids being a kind of object lesson humanity could observe more and more as humanity’s sophistication advanced.

With this laid out, consuming spirits feast on a creation destined for annihilation. In some sense, it is suicidal; in another sense, it perfectly illustrates the self-defeating nature of power apart from the Life-Giving Spirit. Demonism, therefore, is an exertion of power to replicate itself in more or less unwilling people to conform to its image, which image is on a quest to evade the annihilation which awaits it. Demonism in short is totalitarianism of a suicidal “same.” To restate in a less confusing way, demonism coerces persons to enact demonic or life-consuming behaviors in an effort to pull you into this quest to defeat annihilation. What are some ramifications of this on us as people? Demonism is recognized as the need to control and so the need to remove freedom. God’s granting of freedom was and is an invitation to choose, to evaluate the merits and demerits of your situation in this world as you consider your ultimate destiny. Life consuming behaviors rob oneself of the freedom its seeks to devour; those wishing to eliminate freedom of others will find themselves ever more unable to act freely to resist the impulse to devour. Another outgrowth of the demonic quest is insanity. The only resource that can defeat final death or annihilation is a store of value that is endless in its supply; as far as we know, this would be by definition God, as the only One who “has life in Himself.” The quest requires a repeated rejection of the known resource (God) which solves the final death problem. As the saying goes, repeating the same action and expecting a different result is insanity; the demonic quest not only repeats this over and over again but replicates this ongoing rejection in all others it ensnares.

There are certainly more ramifications, but I am getting long so let’s recap and point out some future lines of thought. First, demonism is far nearer than we usually think. Have you ever stalked an ex? Have you let jealousy turn you ravenous? What do these have in common with demonism? The impulse to assert your will over and often against the life of another. Power as it is usually expressed in this world, with the connotations I discussed earlier, is inherently demonic. That so many governments of the 20th century and even in the 21st century have made their chief aim the expansion of their power while replicating its own image is by no way strange if demonism truly exists. Scripture discusses demonic activity to be uniquely obsessed with the high positions of power; if my philosophical analysis here is largely accurate, the corrupting effect of power itself unified to an underlying impulse by governments to advance totalitarianism is an unsurprising outcome. In fact, the picture I have painted asserts that demonic activity and governmental activity are the same and fixated on consuming behavior to prolong its power-exertion greed.  I think we will call it quits with a reminder of the “great inversion” evinced by the Lord Jesus Christ. The willingness to die in order to persuade humanity to opt for the life-giving Spirit, for humanity to choose to be on the side of life-giving rather than life-consuming, is an inversion of the use of power. Truly, and I will do another video and writing on this at some point, we need to utterly redefine and attach totally different connotations to the word “power” when we speak of the power of the cross or the resurrection. The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit, St. Paul tells us. This power was used to illustrate God to offer an invitation. It is not totalitarianism, an enforcement of an image. It is a presentation of God, with all its life-giving intimations. The presentation is an invitation, and we will decide what to do with that invitation. The choice is to be a life-consumer or join the harmony of the Life-Giver as you become just that.

Dr. Scalise