A warning about how artificial intelligence will negatively affect our approach to the faith once delivered in particular, but ultimately all subjects of study.
AI and the Faith
We’re wrapping up a year of doing the Torah studies at our assembly. This is something the first century Christians did without a doubt. Yeshua even participated in this early in His ministry by reading Isaiah in the synagogue. In Acts 15, the apostles understood the Gentiles who accepted Yeshua would attend synagogue and hear Moses every Shabbat. So, every few years we go through the Torah portions because it’s a good thing to do, it copies the early church, and it helps us to refresh and relearn. Sometimes we even unlearn things along the way. Bear with me as a debunk a doctrine and the show just how powerful bad teachings are, especially with AI right around the corner.
One of these unlearned things is a quirky doctrine that circulates our movement pretty regularly.
Slide 2 “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man’s wife, and if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled; for that is an abomination before the LORD, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance. (Deu 24:1-4)
This is a mitzvot, which is a commandment or directive, that states if a guy divorces his wife and she marries another guy, she can’t come back to the first guy if the second guy dies. That’s all this is saying. It doesn’t mean she can’t go to a third guy if the second one dies, she just can’t ever go back to the first. Somewhere in the Hebrewverse, somebody read this backwards and turned it into a doctrine that goes something like “because Yahweh divorced Israel, Yeshua had to die, so Israel could go back to Yahweh.” Brothers and sisters, there’s no way to get that out of these verses.
When we interpret scripture, we must remember that at no point can a verse be interpreted to not mean what it means in the literal. The NT references the OT a ton and in each case, the verses are explained, used as analogies, used as metaphors, used as prophesies, etc. But the interpretation never make the original usage of the verse null or contradict it. A big one of these is how we keep Shabbat. The Sabbath has to remain the Sabbath, even though rest is used in different contexts. Another is the diet. People say Yeshua made anything food and then they use Peter’s vision in Acts 10 to say that we can eat whatever today. Well, Peter said he had never eaten anything unclean. In those passages, Yahweh is using Leviticus 11, the laws of clean and unclean food, to tell Peter that the Gentiles are not inherently unclean. Yahweh was preparing Peter to witness Gentiles getting the Holy Spirit. The vision didn’t mean anything about food at all and Peter had never considered violating Torah. So Leviticus 11 stands and we understand the Gentiles (us) are now OK to draw near to Yahweh through the shed blood of Yeshua, which cleanses us.
Slide 3 And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?” Yeshua answered them, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. (Mat 13:10-13)
Yeshua spoke in parables so we are supposed to have to look for meaning. The bible is written with the intention of interpretation. For instance, we’re allowed to use the divorce commandment as analogies, metpahors, and the like. And the bible has sarcasm, idioms, and even humor. We need to interpret the bible, but we also need to be disciplined in that and understand it’s normal literature. Sometimes things are meant to be interpreted and re-applied, sometimes not.
When Yahweh says He divorces Israel and Judah in Jeremiah 3, for instance, He’s not being literal. In these cases Israel and Judah were allowed to return to Him, which in Deut 24 is not possible for a literally divorced woman to return to her original husband. So Yahweh is using divorce and adultery as an analogy and metaphor for their behavior. Israel and Judah were not literally divorced. These verses were never intended to be taken literally!
So the doctrine that circulates our movement about Yeshua divorcing isn’t true. Great, Chris, you’ve corrected another silly doctrine. So what does this have to do with Artificial Intelligence?
Slide 4 Confusion
It has to do with AI because this doctrine is popular. It has to be refuted because it won’t go away. The way the internet has worked since search engines came out is based on popularity. There is a logical fallacy from days of old called the ad populum logical fallacy, which means that just because a lot of people believe something, that doesn’t mean it is true or good. In fact, a lot of bad and wrong things get a ton of attention. Think about fail videos, which are videos of people failing dramatically at odd things, like wrecking a motorcycle or falling down stairs. Our news has been saturated with murder and horrific stories for decades because, well, that draws people’s attention. Seriously, have you ever seen traffic not slow down when passing a wreck on the highway?
My daughters and I discovered our flat screen TV has a ton of channels for free if the TV is plugged into the internet. As we were cruising through the channels, we came across one that is trying to show evidence of alien life on earth through ancient historical sites and religious practices. This was a well-produced “documentary” in air quotes and the “scientists” in air quotes were being dead serious. We checked out when they tied the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation/communion to being some kind of ancient alien beckoning device. It was absurd to the extreme. But guess what? We watched it. We watched it because it was absurd.
Did you know that computers can’t tell the difference between a highly watched absurd video and a highly watched sermon? The computer only knows to prioritize things that are highly watched or engaged in. The ad populum logical fallacy.
You see, no matter how intelligent a computer appears to be, it can’t reason. It can only compare. And the comparisons are based on precedents: what similar thing happened before? We already have a preview of what AI is going to do to our faith through YouTube. YouTube uses the popularity algorithm to associate video content and recommend things to people that prior viewers watched. YouTube, and Google in general, keep track of everything their users do – even while off their websites, and then find similar people and then recommend content to everyone to do what? Keep people engaged on their platforms. Our faith has been permanently associated with many conspiracy theories and just strange stuff because of Google, and this is why the Yeshua dying divorce thing keeps coming up – because it was popular among Torah followers. It’s an incorrect popular doctrine, so people refute it, which generates debates and traffic, so it gets more and more popular. And then algorithms kick in and make it even more popular.
Let’s take this to the next level with AI. AI isn’t really intelligence, it’s just super computers being able to scour all the available information on the internet at the speed of light. Guess what? Most of the popular stuff on the internet is wrong and only popular because it was sensational. What’s that going to do to our common faith? What’s that going to do with just about any topic? It’s just going to push the worst and most absurd info more and more into the mainstream and people aren’t going to be able to determine truth from fiction. Computers don’t know interpretation, sarcasm, nuance, and tone of voice. They just compare. And algorithms just show us the most popular stuff. This is why we already deal with crazy doctrines and many try to come up with sensational stuff knowing it will get a foothold. Now we’re adding AI into this mix and finding the boring old truth is going to be a very difficult task.
Slide 5 But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil. (1Th 5:21-22)
The remedy for this is to do what we are finishing up at our assembly: study the Bible. And follow teachers who teach the Bible from the Bible and from accredited sources, like old school printed books or bible software, concordances, dictionaries, and the like. The old adage that a lie travels around the world before the truth can get its shoes on is very much in play. We have to study to show ourselves approved and that means putting in the work and restricting ourselves to sober teachers and teachings.
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