Moloch, Deathworks, Negative World, and the Limitations of Decentralized Generative AI

Jim Elliott once said “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose,” thereafter going on to demonstrate what he had said and believed about eternal life, as he died with his friends, a Christian missionary to an otherwise unreached tribe in South America which did not want to hear that message, at that time, so much as they wanted to shoot their bows and arrows and ask questions later.

Who would have believed, back then, that here in the U.S., within a few short decades of the death of Elliott, the very Christian faith he died believing and preaching in a South American jungle would be met with hostility in North America’s public places?

We now inhabit “negative world,” as some are calling it. Whereas in our history, belief in Jesus being acted on and communicated was seen as a net good, thereafter treated with an attempt at neutrality, now that same faith is regarded as inherently offensive and unwelcome. Thus an inheritor of Jim Elliott’s faith may not be stabbed, shot, and clubbed to death here – not just yet, anyway – but he certainly will be told to leave the Mall of America if he doesn’t take off his Christian t-shirt.

Thus we come to debates about generative AI, or the potential for unprecedented decentralization of our monetary and information systems in Web 3.0, almost wholly unmoored from the Christian foundation of Western thought, which made such technological developments possible in the first place.

But then what am I saying? We can’t even tell the true history of where modern science came from anymore, without some yahoo or another complaining about separation of Church and State, even in a seedling of accurate recounting. Forget I said anything.

Frugality is wholly unknown to us, except where toleration for Christians and conservatives is concerned. Then we must be very sparing, since we cannot afford to let the followers of Jesus pipe up and start turning the world upside down again.

Yet just like that, in just that way, and for just these reasons, we should all be very concerned about how problems will be solved, like affordable housing in our states, the miseducation of children in our schools, the prosecution of criminals in our cities, and the only standards being double standards when it comes to the handling of classified government documents by the chief executives in our capital.

Unfortunately, many of the previous eras symbols are now employed to tear down rather than propagate, the former systems of thought and belief, which, as we are told, now stand in the way of “progress.”

Nevertheless, our brightest minds cannot help it, making compelling comparisons to the worst expressions of human nature, on full display daily, as we consider how much or little cryptocurrency should be regulated, for instance. The adherents of the ancient cult of Moloch now come to mind for them, who offered up their own children as sacrifices to that demon, in hopes they would be rewarded with good fortune relative their other aspirations and pursuits.

In other words, something very like what Christians would call our “sin problem” is described. One might even say that something very like what Christians would call our “sinful nature” is outlined. Thereafter, something very like what Christians would call “the Devil” is talked about. But all of the above proceeds apace without appeals being made to the One Christians would call “Jesus Christ,” as we realize our great need for an all-wise, all-powerful, wholly good, and incorruptible Being, to tell us all to sit down, when we otherwise will destroy ourselves, and one another, by keeping on as we have a tendency to, coveting what one another has, in an irrational way, and competing with one another, in a self-destructive manner. But, no. We must not call on Yahweh God, or worship Him. Not at any cost.

If only we could read what Christians would call “the Bible” in search of answers to these things, perhaps we would then get Christ instead of Anti-Christ.

Alas, that was the very first thing many of us sacrificed to Moloch.

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