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  MAN: THE CREATOR OF ROBOT LIFE

  The idea of developing living machines is not new, as I stated in my 1987 book, Robotica:

  The notion of a synthetic man, an artificial life form, or an intelligent machine has occupied the fertile imagination of philosophers, writers, and scientists throughout history. Myth has been piled atop myth and concept atop fantasy, all building on the theme of man exercising a measure of divine power by infusing life into inanimate objects or inorganic materials... The invention of robots both in fact and in fiction seems to be the result of a psychological drive, even a behavioral instinct, in homo sapiens to be a creator. 5.

  In Robotica I granted that the economic desire of employers to construct robotic machines to accomplish heavy industrial work and replace men on assembly lines and elsewhere is also a factor in their invention. But I also noted that “for some humans the yearning to manufacture artificial beings involves a quest to control and master destiny, to emulate God or to demonstrate independence of a supreme being.”

  What man has accomplished so far in designing robot life is nothing short of fantastic. The first electronic computer, ENIAC, developed in 1948, was a monstrosity the size of a barn. Yet it did not have the calculating and mental work power of today’s least expensive home computers. Now, less than four decades later, computers that can process millions of bits of data at scorching speed have proliferated throughout the world, and the brain of these computers is so tiny it can fit into one’s palm. Some computers’ brains (microchips called central processing units) are as small as a corn flake. These small brain units fit easily inside a robot’s physical structure. Thanks to these powerful new microchip brains, the robot is fast becoming a living being, a “near person.”

  The development of fifth-generation, thinking computers is a project pursued vigorously by scientists in Japan and the United States. Both nations are also devoting massive resources to the invention of biochips. Professor Toshihiro Akaike of Tokyo University has already unveiled an experimental biochip, made of living flesh, that performs basic microchip computer functions. So we are only a few years away from an even greater brain for machine life. Meanwhile, at Tsukuba University in Japan, Ohio State University, the University of Rhode Island, and dozens of other research centers, engineers are busy perfecting robotic mechanical systems.

  In the United States, mega-corporations such as General Electric, Westinghouse, and IBM are spending millions on advanced robotic research. In a 1983 report on the future, AT&T predicted that the turn of the century may well see “teleopresence robots,” robots electronically connected with a human’s sensory organs. Such a robot could visit a foreign country, and its remote human owner could view the distant scenes and communicate with the people there from long distance.

  Hans Moravec of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University is one of the world’s foremost robotics researchers. He believes that robots will be “human equivalent” in twenty years. “It is clear to me,” Moravec says, “that we are on the threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition from nonlife to life.”

  Joseph Deken, distinguished former professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin and now program director with the National Science Foundation in Washington, states in his newest book, Silico Sapiens: The Fundamentals and Future of Robotics, that robotics is the “ultimate technology.” “The unthinking development of these power autonomous systems,” cautions Deken, “actually represents humankind’s last effort before progress makes homo sapiens obsolete.” 6

  Technologists working in robotic and biotechnology research do not worry, of course, about man someday becoming obsolete. The possibility that artificial life might someday seize power from human overlords is far too distant. What they are concerned about is the potential for commercial applications of new life-forms. Their immediate aim is to make money; but throughout society, the attitude looms that man is a co-creator with God, or even the only creator in a universe without a personal God.

  One is reminded of Herman Melville’s 1855 tale, “The Bell Tower.” In that story, a great but arrogant mechanical genius named Bannadonna creates an amazingly lifelike automaton to strike a great bell in a majestic tower precisely at prescribed times. But on the day the automaton is scheduled to commence its operation, startled officials find Bannadonna, badly mutilated and lifeless, at the foot of the iron automaton. It seems that while the great mechanician was putting his lifelike creation through a test run, he carelessly obstructed the path of the iron figure which, mistaking him for the bell, struck the hapless Bannadonna with its solid hammer.

  Author Melville suggests that this was no mere accident; tragedy befell the ambitious Bannadonna because of his inflated human pride in desiring to emulate God and exalt himself as a creator. Concludes Melville, “So the blind slave obeyed its blinder lord; but in obedience slew him... And so pride went before the fall.”

  HALF MAN, HALF MACHINE: SACRILEGE OR OPPORTUNITY?

  Joseph Deken and a number of other thoughtful scientists and engineers are especially concerned about the drive to fuse living creatures and artificial systems: robots made of biological material or human beings with computerized implants—the result of the booming new field called bionics.

  “There are,” Deken warns, “fundamental ethical issues raised by robot-biological symbiosis.” He points to the proposal by psychologist B. F. Skinner to implant devices in the brains of livestock to act as electronic lassos. Is such an idea humane, Deken asks, or is it an abuse of technology?

  Joseph Weizenbaum, eminent computer science researcher from MIT, also is uneasy about the new developments in bionics, robotics, and other technologies. He cautions that these might be “the penultimate act in the drama separating man from nature.” Weizenbaum expresses fears about the future:

  Man’s senses are to be read only through pointer readings, flashing lights and buzzing sounds produced by instruments attached to him as speedometers are attached to automobiles. The ultimate act of the drama is, of course, the final holocaust that wipes out life altogether. 7

  Weizenbaum is most alarmed about research underway to couple an animal’s visual system and brain to computers. He contends that this “represents an attack on life itself.”

  However, mainstream scientists are not about to refrain from pressing forward in robotics, computer, and bionics research, no matter how scary the implications. At New York University Medical Center, neuroscientists Rudolfo Llamas and Kerry Walton have surgically removed the brains of dozens of guinea pigs and kept them in isolation for up to ten hours in their lab. Their stated purpose: to study the relationship between different parts of the brain, making future research on the human brain possible. Other researchers are attempting brain grafts.

  Scientists hope to find out not only how the human brain works but how they can improve its function. Some believe they will soon be able to insert a biochip inside a human brain which might, say, contain advanced encyclopedic knowledge or have preprogrammed instructions that direct the body to ward off disease, lose fat, or retain memory. They envision the day when man’s intelligence will be amplified to superhuman status by the fusion of computers and biological material and its merger with the human brain.

  G. Harry Stine, an author and technologist widely respected in scientific circles, has said that in only a few more years the first tiny microchip computers will be implanted in the human brain. Progress then will come quickly, Stine believes, culminating in an advanced human-machine system.

  Stine favors such a system, maintaining that when combined with new discoveries in how the brain functions and processes thought, the new hybrid system will enable man to assume mental powers equivalent to those now exercised by Eastern yogis, shamans, and other “holy men:” “The most advanced techniques of yoga and other mental disciplines will be recorded and analyzed using intelligence amplifiers, and computer software will be available that will permit you to achieve whatever level of medi
tative condition you wish.” 8

  A STEP TOWARD GODHOOD FOR MAN?

  The technology of life creation is a potential boon for scientists and laymen who suggest it can help usher in the grand millennium during which man will finally ascend to godhood. The combination human-robot creature and the use of machines to expand man’s consciousness are welcomed with open arms by many secular thinkers. They look with delight on Joseph Deken’s conclusion in Silico Sapiens that “the intelligence of a robot can guide the construction of entirely new sense channels and probes.”

  Author and scientist Arthur C. Clarke views favorably the advent of thinking machines, the extension of the human intellect by electronics, and the coupling of minds to computers. In Profiles of the Future he foresees a far-off cosmic evolutionary future in which strange, super beings gather all knowledge. Clarke sounds almost ecstatic when he remarks, “They will not be like gods, because no gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command.” 9

  Clarke has on a number of occasions denied the existence of the personal, transcendant God described in the Bible. He predicts that true “consciousness expansion” for man—super intelligence—will be achieved by the twenty-first century. Within an additional hundred years, Clarke believes that brain transplants will be successful and also that a “world mind” will come into existence. He confidently predicts that by A.D. 2100 human immortality will be achieved.

  In The Second Genesis: The Coming Control of Life, Albert Rosenfeld suggests that technology presents a vision of nirvana on earth. With computerized brain supplements and the expected discoveries in biotechnology, he says, “every man can be his own Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Newton combined. In fact, what formerly passed for creative genius may seem puny compared to the shining, technological raptures to come.” 10

  Joseph Deken is not nearly as optimistic as Rosenfeld, Clarke, and other enthusiasts. He discusses laboratory experiments in which rats will ignore food and water while devoting all their attention to manipulating an electronically linked brain implant until they collapse:

  It is impossible to view these experiments without a dread that they foretell a tragic human deflection. A technology of addiction is only the natural complement to our addiction to technology. “Drug” addicts of the next century may readily prefer electronic devices to chemical ingestion in their flight from reality. 11

  Deken calls man’s belief that he can rely on machines for pleasure and contentment one of the greatest traps of human delusion. He sees trouble ahead because people have begun to adopt the idea that such robotic prostheses as brain supplement devices will be humankind’s key to expanded physical well-being, scientific perception, and artistic creativity. Deken realizes that the flood tide of technology cannot now, at this late date, be stemmed. He predicts that robots “will ultimately be immortal, a race of individuals who can repair themselves and download their internal essence completely from older mechanisms to new designs.”

  Deken’s prediction may well come true. Frank Tipler, professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, noting the commonly held scientific belief that “intelligent life is ultimately information processing,” recently stated, “The first step is to build hybrids of men and computers. The final step is to get rid of people altogether and transfer the real part of the human—the program—entirely into silicon circuits.” 12

  THE QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY

  Man has always sought to overcome the law of life that ascribes to him only a set number of years in the mortal flesh on this planet. Immortality and indestructibility are still the chief preoccupations of the human race. It is therefore understandable that men might see in robots and artificial life-forms the vehicle for achieving their own immortality. It is being seriously proposed that in the future the totality of a man’s brain—its entire store of knowledge and sensations—be transferred to a biocomputer. That biocomputer could then be installed into the anatomy of a robot. Presto! Immortality!

  Apart from robotic technology, science is coming up with other astonishing discoveries that might point the way toward immortality. Synthetic body parts have become commonplace, ranging from mechanical hearts to bionic substitutes for bones. An artificial ear is restoring the gift of sound to some persons who were once profoundly deaf, while an artificial larynx has miraculously allowed people whose speech faculties were damaged to once again speak. Scientists in Britain have even constructed a bionic nose that can distinguish between dozens of flower smells.

  In other medical research, scientists have been able to regenerate damaged skin, and the prospect is that entire body limbs and organs will soon be grown in laboratories from single cells extracted in advance from the recipient’s own body. In 1986, researchers at MIT produced living artificial blood vessels, and a research team at Harvard University Medical School announced the successful cloning of a molecule which triggers the growth of body cells. “Generation of organs has been the stuff of scientific dreams for decades,” says Professor Bert L. Vallee, head of Harvard’s seven-member team of researchers. “It is now a reality.”

  Biotechnologists have also been successful in another realm: They have now, for the first time, been able to retard aging. At Hebrew University in Jerusalem, researchers manipulated DNA chemicals to change aged mouse cells back into young cells. They found that rejuvenated fourteen-day-old cells began to behave like four-day-old cells. The work done so far is primitive and cannot be directly applied to humans, but it does represent significant progress. Much other biotechnological research is being accomplished on the aging process. We evidently are only a few decades away from astonishing discoveries in this field.

  Courtesy of technology, immortality—the fountain of youth—is several decades off at best, if it ever can be achieved, and if God permits it to happen. But the concept is being considered as a viable future possibility. Jesus promises us eternal life if we trust in His Word and invite the Holy Spirit into our lives. Rejecting this promise, we are off on a desperate quest to guarantee eternal security for ourselves.

  IS MAN A TRUE CREATOR?

  Science has successfully dispelled the notion that man cannot be a creator. He can, indeed, be a creator; but man is not the Creator. The great “I Am” of the Bible set the universe in its moorings by the use of intelligence so infinite and so powerful we can scarcely imagine its existence.

  Man, the creature who can create, has long sought to create an environment in which slaves would do his bidding. When human slaves fell out of favor, he turned to machines and other technological devices. Now he has begun to produce intelligent robots—actually androids—that take on a human dimension. And he has, through biotechnology, infused life into rudimentary organisms that are designed to perform assigned tasks. Yet, man’s technological creation is a derivative of God’s original creation. Man is not a deity but a semiskilled craftsman whose creative knowledge is puny compared to the Master Craftsman.

  Robotic and bioengineered life prove a Supreme Intelligence (God) created man. If intelligent man can now, without evolution, create a being with consciousness—a being that exists external to himself—this is persuasive, almost definitive evidence that man himself was created by an external Intelligence. Diehard evolutionists, who claim man evolved over millions of years through natural selection, from inert chemical elements, one-celled creatures, and finally mammals must now admit that evolution is not an immutable law of nature. Humbly, they should attest that creation by a Supreme Creator is not only possible, it is a certainty. If the scientist who now rejects the Book of Genesis as the story of creation was truly objective, he would understand that man’s science has affirmed his own divine creation by a more powerful transcendent God.

  MAN’S GOD-GIVEN SOUL

  Those who equate man-made and God-made life fail to understand the one vital difference between the two: the creation of God possesses a soul that has been invited by God to accept his Holy Spirit. Humans are spiritual in nature. A human is
more than a composition of biological parts. Christ emphasized this when he said to Nicodemus:

  Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:5,6)

  The robot and the lab-created life-form are, indeed, scientific marvels, but the theory that man-made life either disproves God’s creation or makes it redundant is one of Satan’s most disingenuous frauds.

  LIFE MADE TO ORDER: REDESIGNING NATURE

  It’s known as bioengineering, molecular biology, genetic engineering, gene-splicing, cloning, or simply biotechnology. These are some of the terms used to describe the science of producing new life-forms and reshaping or improving existing ones. Biotechnologists seek to discover how a cell’s genes are constructed. DNA is the substance in the gene whose composition determines the form an organism—including the human body—will take and its physical characteristics such as height, hair and eye color, intelligence, and other features. DNA is the code, or blueprint, for life.

  Science has discovered that the DNA genetic code is the basis for all plant and animal life. Techniques such as gene-splicing and cloning have been mastered; these enable scientists to design (or redesign) life-forms. This is the essence of genetic, or biological, engineering. New bacteria species have been created, including a sea-based bacterium that literally eats petroleum. This new life-form will soon be used to clean up oil spills. Nutrasweet (aspartame) artificial sweetener is also an example of a bioengineered product. New biotechnologically produced drugs are being designed that offer the hope of curing previously incurable diseases such as cancer and diabetes and preventing mental illness and birth defects.