I’ll give you fair warning before you read this column: I am about to get all religious and preach up and down the block and speak in tongues and raise hell and raise Cain and call down the fire and the brimstone.
If this is the sort of thing that personally offends you I have set up a special website where you can directly send me your hate mail: https://hatemail.spamrider.net.
Ahem.
Now that we’ve gotten rid of THOSE people let’s get on with the show!
According to the Bible and the movie, while Moses was busy farting around with God up on top of the mountain the rest of the Jews got tired of waiting on him and built themselves a Golden Calf just so they would have something to bow down to and worship in the meantime.
Just think about that.
I believe this story says a lot about human nature.
It’s almost as if we have a built in need to subject ourselves to someone, or something, a so-called “God” if you were, and if we don’t feel like we’re getting one, or more often if we don’t like the one we got, then we tend to go constructing our own and start treating it as if it were the real thing.
I mean, can you imagine building something and then bowing down to it?
And yet the truth is that we do that very thing all the time without even realizing that is what we are doing.
For in this world there are many Golden Calves.
The whole reason I even got to thinking about all this was because of a comment I read on the internet. Some guy was writing about AI, and he was saying for the ones making it and the ones selling it it’s like a religion, and what they are doing is trying to create their own God.
And do you know what? I think that dude was exactly right.
What they are trying to create is something that (according to them) will solve all our problems for us. It will take over all our jobs, but then we won’t have to work anymore. It will babysit and educate and care for our kids and our aging parents and grandparents. It will drive or fly us anywhere we want to go anytime we want to go there. It will do our shopping, arrange our deliveries, and eliminate every tedious chore. It will write for us, edit for us, make pictures and movies and music for us. It will diagnose our diseases, decide our eligibility for medical procedures, and settle our insurance claims. It will fight our wars for us. It will be your friendly customer service agent who will never let you talk to a real person no matter how many times you scream “REAL PERSON!!!” at it because there are no real people left anymore. All the real people are off living the high life off their “AI Dividend” checks. Right now AI will take a picture of anybody you want and make them look naked. You can even make pictures and videos of people doing anything you want. Dirty politicians are doing it all the time now for their campaign ads.
Hell, one of these days, AI might even be able to fold our laundry.
Some of that sounds nice, I guess, but that’s one hell of a lot of personal autonomy to be giving up. And we’ve already given up so much. Way more than anybody realizes. Even more than I realize, and I think about these things.
And the other thing is the way they’re trying to force it on all of us (and succeeding). It really is like a sort of religious zealousness. They won’t ever come right out and say they’re trying to create their own ultra-wise, all-knowing, all-powerful God, but that is exactly what they are doing.
Whether something like can ever be done and how far they have gotten and how far they will ever get is another matter entirely.
I just hope for their sake they get our money’s worth, because at this point they have banked the entire future of our nation’s prosperity on their Cash Cow. And meanwhile they are building their data centers and driving up our electricity rates and squandering our nation’s already-dwindling and increasingly-precious freshwater supply. And they’re only getting started.
There is another story in a completely different part of the Bible where Jesus tells this woman he’s hanging out with around a well that God does not desire sacrifice, but that God is Spirit and seeks those who will worship in spirit and in truth.
In spirit and in truth.
But what does that even mean?
To me “Spirit” means something that is incorporeal and is not tied to a certain time or place. So no Golden Calves.
And to live “in truth” basically means to do and act in honesty in everything you say and do.
So essentially, according to my interpretation anyway, Jesus was telling the woman if you want to worship and please God then you should just live and think and act and speak honestly with yourself and everyone else around you.
To the best of your ability of course.
Ain’t no God could ask for more than that.
And it seems to me whether you believe in “God” or Jesus or the Bible or not that’s sensible advice for good living.
But on the other hand, that’s also a mighty tall order, and in this world that’s asking for an awful lot.
An awful lot. Way more than the vast majority of us are ever able or willing to give.
And so we build our Golden Calves and sacrifice everything we can to them like the crazy sad pathetic little lost sheep schmucks that we are.
Hallelujah.
Spamrider of the Apocalypse is posted each Sunday.
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