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  The Apostle Paul told us that in the last days would come Perilous times:

  For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good. (2 Tim. 3:2, 3)

  Those times certainly seem to have arrived, and we are feeling their effect even in our churches. In disregard of the Bible’s admonition against homosexuality (1 Cor. 6:9), many churches ordain gays and lesbians to the ministry. Some versions of our Bible have been rewritten by liberal church authorities to produce a sex-neutral vocabulary in which the terms Lord and Father are missing.

  Meanwhile, some ecumenical church groups in the United States send money and aid to international terrorist and pro-Communist groups abroad, and congregations seem unable or unwilling to put a stop to these outrages. The churches seem morally confused, just as Western society as a whole seems disoriented. Technological expertise has done nothing to increase our faith in moral absolutes.

  THE HIGH-TECH EXPLOSION

  The biblical prophets foresaw that, in the last days, the fast-paced world would see fantastic technological progress. One prophet who predicted this was Daniel: “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” (Dan. 12:4). This prophecy has certainly been borne out, for rapid transportation now enables many to “run to and fro,” and knowledge is increasing at an incredible rate. We are told that 90 percent of all the scientists who ever lived are alive today, and that the educational level of the masses is higher than at any time in human history. If knowledge alone brought happiness, we would be an immensely joyous people. But without God’s wisdom, knowledge is barren. We note that Paul prophesied (2 Tim. 3:7) that in the last days intellectuals and learned men would nevertheless not be imbued with truth and wisdom. Instead, men will be “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

  Alas, increased knowledge does not lead to truth or happiness. In the year 2000, though miracle drugs will make us healthier and computerized homes and working robots may free us from drudgery, mankind will not be happy. In fact, the danger is that technology may lead to enslavement and new barbarism.

  Science has a dark side that must be faced. Many technological advances have tended to dehumanize man and made him prey to evil and corrupt leadership. Elizabeth C. Hirschman, professor at New York University, has said people “are being increasingly socialized to learn from, talk to, and create with machines rather than with other humans.” Further, she observes that people so taught may lack the mental power of analysis and may someday be unable to sufficiently understand the significance of political and social events. “When and if this time arrives,” she says, “[George Orwell’s] 1984 will be here.” 2

  In the digital society, unless he accepts and trusts in God, man is alone. Technology breeds impersonal behavior. We educate ourselves with a machine (the computer), acquire pleasure from a machine (the TV), obtain and spend money by machine (automatic tellers), and machines do our work (robots), rendering many human workers unemployable. The danger is that man himself will become a machine. He will become a waste product, expendable to those in power.

  TECHNOLOGY AND IMMORALITY

  We know that technology can be wrongly used. The same laser that miraculously restores sight to the blind can also be used to blind enemy soldiers in combat by permanently searing their optic nerves (see Chapter 10). The same computer that permits a disabled amputee to productively work at home can also be used to ferret out and destroy innocent men and women who defy the dictates of a future Antichrist.

  Technology in itself is ethically neutral, being neither good nor evil. Used wisely, technology makes our lives easier, helps to free us from debilitating disease, and permits us unparalleled free time. For example, new computer-controlled wheelchairs are a godsend for crippled adults, and advances in biotechnology yield wonderful results to thousands of victims of disease as miracle drugs are formulated using bioengineering techniques. More benefits of technology include the success of the Space Lab, which promises new manufacturing techniques for improved drugs, and the use of surgical lasers in the operating room to heal detached eye retinas, vaporize deadly cancer cells, and blast away obstructions from clogged arteries.

  These technological advances benefit mankind, and we know that God is involved in their fruits. Furthermore. most scientists and technologists hope that their discoveries will be used to bring good to the world. But due to the workings of Satan, these same technologies become tools—evil tools—in the hands of misguided men and women, malevolent world leaders and eventually, the Antichrist. High technology is preparing the way for the Beast.

  Ample evidence shows that overdependencc on science and technology fosters the attitude that God is either unnecessary, unreal, or irrelevant. For example, one writer for a major scientific magazine stated that gene-splicing has put “the whole gene pool of our planet...at our disposal,” adding that “the key to the living kingdom has been put into our hands.” Though such phraseology is perhaps nothing more than hyperbole—words written to make a subject exciting to readers—it does exemplify a certain attitude. This attitude holds that man, not God, is master of creation and that science is at the center of the universe.

  As high technology dramatically transforms our lives, people harden their hearts to God and become dependent on technology and science for fleeting happiness and peace. In the next few decades, we will see an incredible explosion in high-tech discoveries and scientific breakthroughs. But with each step toward progress in science, you can be assured that God will recede in the minds of men and women. The tragedy of our era—the end time—is that Satan has convinced the masses that science proves that the personal God of the Bible does not exist and is not needed by sophisticated worldly men. The future reality, then, is more science and less God, because man’s faith in God is, regrettably, diminished in direct proportion to his progress in science and technology.

  It is strange that this should be the case, for the all-knowing God is the creator and shaper of nature. Science and technology should be recognized by men as the very essence of God’s majesty and the proof of his existence. Many critics of Christianity claim that Christians oppose science, that God’s church works to hold back technological progress. But this isn’t the case; at least, it isn’t true of mainstream Christians. What most Christians oppose is not science, but the perversion of science and the use of technology for evil purposes: war, murder, persecution. Christians are saddened when science is used to demean God and scientists use so-called knowledge to deny God’s existence or the power of His Works. Historically, Satan has always worked to warp the true meaning of science and use it to divert man’s attention from the things of God.

  We note, for example, that even in the days of the early church, Satan labored to use science for his own purposes. In I Timothy 6:20, Paul encourages Timothy to hold to God’s Word in the face of opposition from science: “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.” Here we see Paul’s understanding that any science which denies the truth of God is “profane,” consists of “vain babblings,” and is not empirical, true science at all.

  IS AN AGE OF BARBARISM JUST AHEAD?

  It is important to note that many of the world’s greatest scientists are Christians. Even among those who do not believe are a number who fear that science and technological progress will lead to widespread abuse and damage to humanity.

  The New Age and Hindu doctrine that all is “God,” and that “God” is simply an energy force—a universal consciousness—will fuel the coming age of barbarism. 3 In this New Age philosophy, human beings are of no more value than a tree, a rock, or a weed. All things are “God” and are divine. This warped view of developed human worth is setting us up for an era of bloodshed and chaos.

  Many scientis
ts concur with this analysis. In his excellent book Future Life, 4 Michel Salomon, a noted French doctor and science editor, interviewed eighteen renowned scientists, six of whom were Nobel Prize winners. Salomon asked each their views of the future and where science might be taking mankind. Their answers were startling. Said Erwin Chargaff, called the “Father of Bioengineering:”

  I see the beginnings of a new barbarism…which tomorrow will be called a “new culture.”... Naziism was a primitive, brutal, and absurd expression of it. But it was a first draft of the so-called scientific or pre-scientific morality that is being prepared for us in the radiant future.

  Chargaff’s frightening conclusion was that the world is on the edge of catastrophe, brought about by the abuse of science. “Before every catastrophe,” he warned, “as before an earthquake, there are signs of what is to come.”

  The “new culture” that Chargaff warned about is already fast taking shape. And just as Chargaff envisioned, the new barbarism comes cloaked with respectability, cleverly disguised as the only rational religion for twenty-first-century scientific man.

  Another Nobel Prize-winning scientist interviewed by Dr. Salomon was Belgium’s Christian deDuve. Echoing Chargaff’s fears, deDuve solemnly remarked:

  I am convinced that the future is going to find man face to face with some very grave tests—tests that in one way or another will be linked with the abuse of certain kinds of scientific and technical progress... For it not to happen, humanity would have to acquire, very rapidly, a heavy dose of wisdom. And today’s world would not seem to warrant this happening.

  Perhaps the most revealing statement was that of Gabriel Nahaus, world-famous biochemist and researcher:

  I believe that twentieth-century man is intoxicated by all the technological conquests that have been made, in particular the conquest of space and the moon landing.

  Intoxication! Is Nahaus correct? Does scientific progress make man drunk with pride and obliterate any and all thoughts of God in his heart? The evidence seems to indicate that it does. Indeed, the evidence tells us that man is beginning to believe in his own omnipotence. Man is coming to believe that he is God. This is exactly what Satan wants mankind to believe.

  In the following chapters we will look at how man, drunk with pride, has pushed earth to the very brink of destruction. In examining the potential hazards of technological abuse, I am not trying to be an alarmist. A state of panic accomplishes nothing and it is not appropriate for Christians, who ultimately must trust in Almighty God. However, we do need to be aware of how technology is developing and how close we may be to unprecedented worldwide mayhem. If it is foolish to yield to despair and panic, it is also foolish to assume that science and technology will correct its own mistakes and lead mankind to global bliss. Such naivete ignores man’s past—and fails to recognize the dangers in the current abuses of science and technology.

  CHAPTER TWO: MAN THE CREATOR: ROBOTICS AND BIOENGINEERING

  The technologies of bioengineering and robotics are destined to make fantastic changes in our material world. In the science of bioengineering—often called genetic engineering—more than two hundred companies in the United States alone are working to splice genes and invent new life-forms. Meanwhile, robots have already replaced hundreds of thousands of workers on factory assembly lines. The government’s Office of Technology Assessment predicts that as many as one-third of all industrial workers may, by the year 2000, find themselves unemployed—victims of robots and automation. In Japan we get a glimpse into the future. There, in the city of Fanue, industrial robots toil seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, building new robots.

  Experts in robotics and artificial intelligence are working hard to perfect life-like robots with silicon chip brains that can think, make independent judgments, and take actions without the assistance of humans. By the year 2000 or shortly thereafter, biological engineering—which has already created bacterial life forms in the lab—will wed its knowledge to that of the roboticists. “Biological chips”—fleshly substances—will be used to construct the brains of robots. Several companies are already working on this project.

  In his fascinating book, The Intimate Machine: Close Encounters with Computers and Robots, 1 Englishman Neil Frude says that soon we shall have robots as companions and even as sex partners. This will be made possible by new achievements in robotics technology looming on the horizon, achievements which include the use of materials similar to human flesh and the manufacture of organic “brains,” or biological computer units. This is not science fiction malarkey. It is reality.

  Gorham International, a highly regarded technology research and development firm in Gorham, Maine, says that a billion dollar biochip industry is rapidly developing. According to the firm, the biochip will be a stupendous technological advance drawing on “quantum engineering” that will eventually produce the ultimate molecular computer: “The biochip revolution has indeed begun. Scores of technologists in public and private laboratories around the world are joining in a research effort that will occupy the talents of tens of thousands in the 1990s.” 2

  Stanley Wellborn, in U.S. News and World Report (Dec. 31, 1984), reported on the biochip revolution, which he called “the race to create a living computer:”

  Man-made organic computers might be able to detect their own internal design flaws and even repair and replicate themselves. Miniscule computers implanted in the brain could monitor body chemistry and correct imbalances. They could connect with the human nervous system, serving as artificial eyes, ears, and voice boxes.

  In High Technology magazine (February 1984), editor Jonathan Tucker stated that a prototype “biochip” may be developed within the next decade, and he reported that a great deal of money has already been spent on biochip research by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Small Business Administration. And in 1984 in Santa Monica, California, the National Science Foundation, supported by government funding, conducted a conference attended by thirty-five prominent scientists and engineers to explore the potential uses of biochips. At that conference, one UCLA scientist stated: “The National Science Foundation told us this was the most controversial meeting it has ever supported, and one of the most exciting.”

  Robotics is a science that offers wonderful benefits for mankind. But progress in this field and in bioengineering does have potential for harm due to the perversion of Satan. Arthur C. Clarke, world-famous author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and numerous other futuristic books, believes that the statement “God made man in his own image” is ticking away like a time bomb at the foundations of Christianity.

  Clarke made his remark when asked what would be the effect on civilization if man found extraterrestrial life on other planets. But what of life created by man here on earth? The introduction of intelligent robots and manmade biological life in the laboratory is already tearing away at the foundations of Christianity. In the thinking of many people, man is divine, mankind is a creator, and God is therefore either nonexistent, irrelevant, impotent, or at best no more than the equal of man.

  THE NEW SPECIES: LIVING MACHINES

  In a thorough analysis of what robots will mean to humanity, Geoff Simons of the National Computer Center in Manchester, England, found “there is overwhelming evidence that we are now witnessing the birth of a new family of living species on earth—and this must be seen as one of the momentous events in the history of life.”

  Simons proposes that the emergence of artificial life is happening in societies—such as America and Great Britain—where religious creeds are in decline.

  In his book Are Computers Alive? Simons states that a new family of living species “must inevitably tend to strengthen the idea that supernatural components are redundant in any adequate definition of life.” In other words, once man has himself created life, then God’s creation will be discredited. Frightening, too, is Simons’s remark that “perhaps a new generation of theologians will worry endlessly about whether a soul inhabits the silico
n chip.” 3

  The ultimate goal of a number of distinguished scientists is to develop robots—called self-replicating robots—so intelligent that they can, in turn, independently create other robots. Physicist Robert Freitas, Jr., recently presented to a NASA conference the idea of using these kinds of robots for space exploration. In an article for Omni magazine, Freitas said that the robots will reproduce themselves using only sunlight and the earth materials at hand. In other words, the new robot would mimic God’s creation by creating life from the dust of the earth. Furthermore, Freitas stated that the creator robot could be built in the next twenty years, remarking that “much of the preparatory work toward this dream has already been done.” 4

  George von Tiesenhausen, formerly assistant director of the Advanced Systems Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and now a vice-president of General Motors, agrees that a robot-creator system can become operational within twenty years. Space authority Robert Frosch, former NASA administrator, was quoted in the Omni article as saying that the necessary development “could be accomplished in a decade or so.”

  Significantly, Frosch, one of America’s most respected research scientists and engineers, has said (Astronautics and Aeronautics, July/August 1983) that “robotics and artificial intelligence confer on us Hindu godlike extensions of ‘self.’” Accordingly, Frosch believes the new hybrid man-machine systems “raise important new questions of engineering ethics.”

  Scientists Freitas, Frosch, and von Tiesenhausen are honorable men, and I am sure their intention is not to build or promote a robot system that might result in man’s alienation from God. Their goal is undoubtedly to better mankind’s existence. It is not science we must disparage and criticize, but Satan. Satan takes the worthwhile achievements of science and uses them to diminish God in the eyes of a public that, as Gabriel Nahaus so aptly observed, is intoxicated with technological sophistication.