Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: srchtec!johnb@gatech.edu (John Baldwin) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Who will teach morals to computers? Message-ID: Date: 25 Oct 90 06:45:14 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: search technology, inc. Lines: 75 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article arm@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Alexander d Macalalad) writes: >Is morality simple enough that we can encode >it, legislate it, prescribe it? The obvious and simple answer to this is NO. This was the faulty thesis used by the Pharisees when they began developing the verbal tradition... they sought to remain holy by simply encoding moral decisions in a sufficiently-complex set of verbal laws, which, when followed, would "guarrantee" the nonviolation of the written Law (i.e. God's law, which is the one that *really* mattered). In doing this, they lost sight of the whole reason Jehovah gave us the Law to begin with: if there was some way to encode "holiness" in a set of "programmed" commands, wouldn't God be able to do that? No, the purpose of the Law (as has been oft-stated before, ad infinitum) is to SHOW mankind, by vivid illustration, how we fall short of the Glory of the Almighty God. As one poster put it, it was "a ministry of death." Back to the original discussion thread [re: AI and Christianity], I, too, find it more important to be concerned with people, today, instead of technology tomorrow. By the way, my work heavily involves AI, and I think one of the reasons God has me here is to ensure that there is present an element of properly-focussed concern. Incidentally, go back to the last chapter of the book of Matthew; you'll notice that Jesus didn't leave us with the command to "make sure everybody is moral." He commanded us to "make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you..." While observing Jesus' commands certainly implies morality, it was the state of each person's RELATIONSHIP with Him that was the crucial idea. Thus, we "make disciples." Not (just) believers, or "moral people," but *disciples*... DAILY FOLLOWERS in a personal relationship with the Son of God. I realise this is somewhat of a circumlocutious (!) way to make the point. I apologize for that; much of the above posting is to make the whole thing a little more understandable for the new Christians (and perhaps the non-Christians) who may be reading the newsgroup. Readers' Digest Version: worry about making disciples and telling people about your Boss and Best Friend (my boss is a Jewish Carpenter!), worry less about what will happen with the future of technology. Satan will seek to twist this (as well as everything else) to his own warped purposes, anyway, and to get us focused on *anything* but what's really important. -- John T. Baldwin | "Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!" Search Technology, Inc. | (A plague on those who said our good johnb%srchtec.uucp@mathcs.emory.edu | things before we did!) [I fear that your characterization of the Pharisees fails to do justice to what they were really trying to do. I realize that making careful historical judgements of a 1st Cent. group is not the primary purpose of your message, but I hate to see them get the sort of continual bad press that the Christian tradition has tended to give them. I follow Paul in rejecting the Law for myself as a primary way of responding to God. But it should be possible for Chritians to adopt our approach without misrepresenting the alternatives. There were no doubt people for whom the Law had become primarily a burden and a "ministry of death." Christianity itself has become that in some times for some people. But for many Jews, following the Law was a way of expressing their dedication to God, a way of seeing to it that this dedication is shown in everything they do. It was not seen as an imposition, but as a gift. --clh]