Human Nature

Reflections on our times and C.S. Lewis’ “Learning in Wartime.” …”The death of our illusions, then, isn’t meant to paralyze us but to re-shape us into the people who know how to weep and how to groan and how to point to a different sort of kingdom.

“Whether it’s our infatuation with the concept of identity, or the increasing ethical questions surrounding AI (artificial intelligence), many in and outside the church will agree that our own age presents myriad questions about what it means to be human.” - TGC

“Whether or not God could give a sentient machine or a human clone a soul is a different question….The unique description of humans as created in the image of God should lead us to think it highly unlikely that a machine or a clone would receive similar status.” - BPNews

“There are people made in the image of God whose vocational gifts tend toward manual labor and craftsmanship. It is unhealthy to devalue those gifts in comparison to others.” - The Universal Basic Income and the Theology of Work

“Followers active in the movement, like Kurzweil, take an unfathomable number of nutritional supplements each day. Those supplements supposedly slow the aging process, allowing time for science to kick in and enable transhumanists to achieve immortality. Some transhumanists believe their consciousness will be uploaded into a machine or a new body” - Intellectual Takeout

“Deliberately pressing back against the circumstantial disruptors allows us to deliberately re-enter the story—with all of its beauty and wonder—that Jesus is writing within and around us.” - Cary Schmidt

“Whenever the word “culture” is used to describe animal behavior, it is always defined down to mean ‘socially transmitted behaviors,’ such as a group of chimpanzees using a stick to dig up termites or Japanese macaques washing sweet potatoes before eating them.” - Christian Post

“After years of a Christian form of behaviorism, we were ready to fight back. Or, rather, as Paul explains in his letter to the Galatian Christians, sin increases under law.” - A Day in His Court

“Every so many months it happens again: someone crosses the barrier into a zoo animal’s cage or encounters an animal in the wild, expecting it to be friendly and docile, only to be confronted with the fact that they are called wild animals for a reason” - Intellectual Takeout

“Sixteenth-century scholar Richard Hooker saw this problem unfold in his time over a question of governance for the Church of England. In his work, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker explains the kinds of arguments made by his contemporaries in this debate, while shedding light on why bad arguments manage to persuade large numbers of people.” - Intellectual Takeout