By Elizabeth Prata (and Grok).
SYNOPSIS
This essay explores Elon Musk’s AI called Grok, and its detailed response about when asked about me, Elizabeth Prata. I acknowledge AI’s knowledge and power, I contrast human intelligence and artificial intelligence, and I discuss ethical, theological, and practical implications of AI use within Christian life and media. Included is a link to my own AI Statement.
Continue reading “I asked ‘Grok’ “Who is Elizabeth Prata” and this is what it said-“By Elizabeth Prata
Chip and Joanna Gaines are producing another television show, another reality show. This is the popular Texas couple formerly of Fixer Upper, a home renovation tv show, currently of Magnolia Silos/Bakery/Realty/Journal/Furniture etc. & etc.
They recently were involved in a controversy this past June. Their current TV show on television now is called ‘Back to the Frontier,’ a reality show that tests modern families to live like 1880s homesteaders. It features a homosexual couple with their adopted twin boys obtained from a surrogate woman. This is not a family according to the Bible, and many people told the Gaines this. Chip Gaines replied on social media with all the usual talking points from clueless liberals, such as “love one another”, “stop the hate”, “don’t be judgmental,” and so on.
Vanity Fair-
This time with the new TV show, the situation is worse, because it proves the inclusion of the homosexual couple on Back to the Frontier was not an accident or an oversight. It is a purposeful furthering of the perversion agenda that has successfully made inroads into evangelicalism. The Gaines claim to be Christians, and attend an evangelical church, or, they did.
In this next iteration of their ever-expanding empire, the Gaines’ are producing a show featuring a “queer activist” host, “crossdressing judge,” and an “all-LGBTQ skate team”. More here.
@megbasham opined on Twitter, “Another show that @chipgaines
and Joanna Gaines are producing. This blows apart Chip’s pretense that they are merely trying to be kind and understanding to individuals who identify as LGBTQ. They are clearly using their positions and influence to promote disordered sexuality and gender behavior.“
It is very sad to see people claim Jesus but conform to the world. Romans 12:2 says,
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Chip and Joanna Gaines obviously do not know the will of God.
The wise person’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one and the same fate happens to both of them. (Ecclesiastes 2:14)
That same fate: death. Death apart from Christ is folly. Death in Christ is glory. Gaineses- Repent today and be saved!
I’m excited to hear the next edition of DB Harrison and Virgil Walker’s podcast, Just Thinking, because they will tackle “AI and the Gospel.” If all goes well, it is supposed to be released at the end of August, as stated on August 9th. You can listen to previous episodes such as the most recent one, called “A Biblical Theology of the Social Media”. I listened to it and it’s excellent. I am both fascinated and repelled by the advance of AI, or Artificial Intelligence. I personally increasingly see how it will be uses & abused during the coming Great Tribulation. I need a Gospel centering on this subject, as my mind is all over the map on it. The Just Thinking Podcast will help me in this.
Fred Butler is the Manager of the GTY (Grace To You) volunteers. This is the media arm of John MacArthur’s ministry. GTY volunteers are the ones who package the written material and send it out to the subscriber list, they record, edit, and maintain the broadcasts of MacArthur’s sermons, and so on. Fred wrote this week,
So today marks the end of a significant ministry at GTY and for me. For the last 25-plus years or more, I have had the privilege of helping record the Sunday morning sermons of John MacArthur. Today [Sunday, August 24] is the last day GTY will be officially recording the Sunday messages.
The messages from the Grace Community Church pulpit WILL be recorded, it’s just the end of the era for GTY doing that task. Why? Fred explains,
“The church media team will [record the services], but not GTY. We were exclusively the keepers of John’s voice.”
As I received a book from this month’s GTY mailing and put it on my MacArthur shelf, I realized this is the last book. The man is no longer on this earth to write new material, and I will no longer hear his voice preaching new sermons. It gives a jolt as you continually realize someone you’re used to or rely on has passed away.
Virgil Walker at his Sola Veritas substack, wrote an essay on Women, Emotions, and the Call to Kindness: A Christian Perspective. In these feminist days, now a generation (or two) having grown up under the second wave of feminism rushing through the culture, women are repeatedly told to be bold, daring, loud, unafraid to offer opinions, to brashly sit at the ‘same table as men, and the like.
Don’t believe me? Jen Wilkin struts around a stage telling pastors “what they need to know about women“. Beth Moore calls herself (rightly) obnoxious and publicly complains about brothers in an elevator who fail to pay proper homage to her acknowledge her. These are leading women and younger women see their poor example and copy it.
Mouthiness in women is oft-putting. I know someone from 40 years ago who had a girlfriend and her friends, when they got together, were loud and obnoxious. He used to call this gal group the Deci-Belles.
Here is Virgil Walker’s guest writer Nedelka Medina with some advice for women who are led by their emotions:
In today’s culture, some women interpret rudeness, sharp criticism, or overt assertiveness as signs of empowerment or strength. Social media, pop culture, and certain feminist narratives often celebrate those who speak harshly or dominate conversations as “confident” or “independent.” From a Christian perspective, this is a distorted view of strength. True empowerment is not in asserting dominance or lashing out but in exercising self-control, humility, and love.
Read more at Virgil’s substack here.
Well that wraps it up for today. I hope you find any of these essays or thoughts God-glorifying, edifying, or just plain helpful.
By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
The author criticizes ChatGPT for refusing to generate content that leans right, toward the conservative end, revises queries according to that bias, and makes liberal suggestions instead, particularly regarding homosexuality. The piece argues that the chatbot’s programming shapes responses in a way that aligns with certain cultural values and not others, deems some queries along those lines disrespectful. Users are urged to remember that the world’s tools, including seemingly impartial ones, are not neutral.
Continue reading “ChatGPT is not your friend (if you’re a Christian)”By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS
I share Ken Ham’s insights on the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for pastoral work. Ham argues that using AI diminishes pastors’ theological study and reliance on God’s wisdom. The piece emphasizes the importance of genuine engagement with Scripture rather than easy technological shortcuts in ministry, as well as warnings about technology’s advance and potential for supplanting proper worship of the true Creator.
I respect Ken Ham. I’ve been following his ministry for a long time. I finally got to hear him at a G3 conference. His commitment to creation exposition, to Genesis 1-11 as the foundational belief for our faith, and his persevering and unwavering dedication that built the Creation museum and the Ark Experience is to be praised. He recently wrote a short-ish essay on Facebook about AI becoming a digital god.
I’ve been watching the rise of technology since the 1980s when a lot of things were invented, such as personal computers with graphical user interface (I took a computer elective in 1978 to try and learn coding language FORTRAN…), CDs, VCRs, video games and so much more. My father bought Pong when it first came out in 1972. Our family has always enjoyed the earliest and most advanced tech inventions.
In this era of the 2000s, the rise of sophisticated AI is a concern not only over potential plagiarism issues, laziness issues, or how easily technology controls us (cell phones, anyone?), or how the recent discovery of ‘kill switches’ in Chinese technology sold to the US could wipe us out with one click (Business Today), but because of prophecy.
Revelation 13 discusses how in the future one man and his cronies institute a global world economy and that all who wish to participate in this economy must accept the Mark (of the Beast). From my vantage point of having observed the economy since 1965, I have seen how this prophecy is becoming easier and easier to implement when it arrives on the scene.
In Ken Ham’s recent essay he asked the question, “Should pastors be using AI to write their sermons?”. I am re-posting the essay below in case the link in this paragraph doesn’t work for you, or if you are not on Facebook. He raises some good questions and makes some exhortations to pastors and others who should be wrestling with the scriptures instead of asking an impersonal digital presence to give them instant content.
Answers in Genesis, being a science ministry, also has other great essays pointing to the issues with AI and tech in general. For example, in this essay we read that ,
Google Co-founder Wants to Build AI as a “Digital God”
It’s an interesting notion, how easily we transfer worship to anything other than the only One who should receive it. We’ve seen it over and over in the Bible, and over and over in our own lives. I’ve written before about how prescient EM Forster was in his 1909 novella The Machine Stops, which a 116 years ago predicted this exact moment in technological time. It’s eerie how Forster predicted the loss of original thought, dependence then worship of a machine, and the lack of human contact. Friends and family are on screens only, not real life. You can read Forster’s novella online here.
AiG’s scientist Patricia Engler is an expert in AI, transhumanism, and other technological ethical issues. She recently spoke at the AiG for women conference in April on the issue of transhumanism. Others term the issue “human enhancement”. Engler explains in this 2023 article Thinking Biblically About Transhumanist Technologies at AiG,
The term “human enhancement” can mean anything from moderately improving someone’s natural abilities to radically modifying humankind.
I remember the splash the television show The Six Million Dollar Man made in 1973 when it debuted. He was an “enhanced human.” Wikipedia has a summary, which I excerpt- “a former astronaut, USAF Colonel Steve Austin, portrayed by Lee Majors… After being seriously injured in a NASA test flight crash, Austin is rebuilt (at considerable expense, hence the title of the series) with bionic implants. His right arm, both legs and left eye are replaced with “bionic” implants that enhance his strength, speed and vision far above human norms.”
Viewers including me, marveled at the thought that robotic implants could enhance human capabilities. Of course, 50 years later we are used to hip replacements, knee replacements, organ transplants, hearing aids for the deaf, and the like. We are also used to terms like cyborg, droids, clones, bot, algorithm…
Personally, it is my opinion we have passed a threshold with technology where its grip is on humankind is so tight we can never escape until we are called home. I hear of issues in colleges, high schools, and even younger of plagiarism in using ChatGPT, video games consuming minds for double digit hours on end, parents who prefer their phones to their children, critical thinking abandoned by the wayside in using Grok. Ask Google a question and at least it will yield links that the questioner must sort through and decide for herself if they are credible or not. Grok just tells you. I view AI-generated art as plain creepy. I hate to see it all, I just hate it. I pray the Lord comes for us soon.
As for Grok, the artificial intelligence Elon Musk has built, the name comes from Robert Heinlein’s 1961 science fiction novel, “Stranger in a Strange Land“. I read that book in the 1990s when a hippie friend gushed about its supposed deep truths and wise philosophy. I found it unintelligible. Though the title is taken from Exodus 2:22 KJV, the religion the book espoused is far from anything reasonable. But by secular standards, it seems wise and deep.
We must always remember that God is Creator. Our bodies are a machine on a level that no human creator could ever imagine when building a robot or an artificial intelligence. The sturdy delicacy of our bodies’ systems is amazing to behold. The brain is still a mystery. The Creator is worthy of praise for this and for all living things He has created.
Here is Ken Ham’s essay on AI (artificial intelligence). Though it’s aimed at pastors, anyone who studies, researches, writes on theological topics should be convicted by it. The link to his Facebook page where the essay originated is above.
Should pastors be using AI to write their sermons? I recently saw a website for a company that advertises itself as “Your AI-Powered Sermon Assistant” designed to help pastors “create better sermons in less time” using artificial intelligence.
A video on the website claims you can just type a word (like “forgiveness”) into the sermon builder tool and “instantly have a sermon ready to preach” and if you like the sermon “copy it, paste it, you’re ready to preach.” In other words, as a pastor you don’t even need to go to the Bible yourself to prep for your sermon—AI will do it all for you.
There are many good uses for AI—this is certainly not one of them! Yes, perhaps AI could be useful in pulling some cross-references, finding related passages, or pulling quotes to consider from church fathers (although resources to do all of these things already exist). But using AI to write sermons strips away a pastor’s wrestling with and studying of God’s Word. When a member of such a pastor’s flock comes to him for wisdom, counsel, and shepherding, he won’t know God’s Word to apply it properly!
And pastors surely should be praying (as any teaching pastor should do) for God’s guidance and wisdom as they build sermons. Be assured, AI doesn’t pray for any wisdom from God!
Contrast “copy, paste, preach” with these commands to pastors from God’s Word:
“Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. (1 Timothy 5:17)
Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. (2 Timothy 4:2)
He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (Titus 1:9)
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)”
The work of pastoring isn’t meant to be easy—it’s laboring; it’s having patience; it’s training to be ready. It’s a hard calling, but a worthy one for those who are willing to be trained by the Word of God.
If you’re a pastor, don’t take the easy way out. Labor in your preaching and teaching as God has commanded you to. Don’t outsource one of the most important aspects of your job—opening the Word for your flock—to a robot!
— Ken Ham
FURTHER READING
Owen Strachan had some thoughts about digital media, here on Facebook
Tony Reinke wrote the book called God, Technology, and the Christian Life, you can download a 32 page sample here
By Elizabeth Prata
There have always been technological advances in history. The printing press in 1448 comes to mind. The 1978 British TV show Connections “demonstrated how inventions and historical events are interconnected is Connections. Created by science historian James Burke, the series explores how seemingly isolated events and inventions influence the development of others, shaping the modern world”.
But I am glad I’ve been alive at this time in the world’s history, because I’ve seen incredible advances in technology. I remember seeing the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was produced between 1965 and 1968 and released in ’68. The scene where the astronaut puts a credit card in the machine and presses numbers on a keyboard, and the screen lights up with a live video conference with his daughter, drew audible gasps and not a few scoffing laughs. Never in 1968 had the general populace imagined a live video call. I mean, in 1968 push button phones had barely been invented and were not widely used until the late 1970s. And now in 2025, a video conference across vast distances is common.
Credit cards were new then, too. The Diner’s Club card was invented in 1950. General credit cards for any kind of purchase, not just restaurants, were not commonplace in 1968. In fact, when 2001 A Space Odyssey began production in 1965, Mastercard was not even on the scene yet. It was invented in 1966 and was called Interbank. In 1969 it was rebranded as Mastercard.
Since the year of my birth I’ve seen satellites, space travel, the internet, streaming, optical fibers, digital cameras, cell phones, personal computing, sonograms, heart transplants, insulin production, cloning, limb reattachment… and so much more.
And now, artificial intelligence.
AI can make ‘art’ (it’ll be a while before I consider a digitally produced picture ‘art’, hence the scare quotes). It can answer questions. Automate tasks. Generate content. Even make predictions. Someone on social media had warned about Grok, Elon Musk’s AI as opposed to Google, the research engine. Google presents the researcher with links for further research, leaving it to the live brain intelligent person to make decisions about the quality of and value in the links presented, while Grok simply gives the answer.
A couple of years ago, I read a novella called “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster. I’ve written about it before, it made a big impression on me. It’s a science fiction story written in 1909. The Edwardian era had its own breathtaking advances as well. As we read in this essay about the time period when the novella The Machine Stops was written,
automobiles were becoming common; Louis Blériot successfully flew across the English channel in his prototype aircraft; Ernest Henry Shackleton’s expedition reached the South Magnetic Pole; London’s Science Museum was established as an independent institution; physicists Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger, and Ernest Marsden carried out their famous Gold Foil experiments, which proved an atom had dense nucleus with a positive charged mass. Edwardian society was modernizing industrially, scientifically, and technologically at an exponential pace.
The novella serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-reliance on technology and the dehumanizing effects of unchecked technological advancement. It seems to predict the very moment in which we find ourselves today, 116 years later.
If you’re interested in prescient science-fiction, this essay describes why The Machine Stops is so eerie, and it’s well-written too.
With all this happening in our world, and trust me, an old lady, it is moving faster and faster, I turned to Answers in Genesis for help on how to think about Artificial Intelligence. We know there are smart, unsaved people, sure, but without gaining knowledge from THE Source, Jesus, it is worthless. Wisdom from the world gains us nothing. In fact, most unsaved people descend into such sinfulness that their thinking becomes futile. (Romans 1:21-22).
The title of the 33-second video is AI Is NOT as Reliable as People Think, the synopsis states:
Multiple researchers have shown how people can easily use publicly available AI to intentionally create false but persuasive information, which is why we must not trust AI as our final authority for truth. God’s Word has to be our final authority in EVERY area.
It is worth watching. As I said, it is only 33 seconds long. We need to be mindful of where wisdom comes from and the final authority of that wisdom. The AiG video is a good exhortation.
For a longer treatment of the subject of AI, Patricia Engler, the local AI expert at AiG, wrote a two part essay, is titled
Part 1- AI: Useful Tool or Existential Threat?
What is AI, and how should Christians engage with it?
Part 2- The Effects of Artificial Intelligence
Only God is all-knowing, infallible, and the ultimate Truth. His Word, not the outputs of AI, must be our final authority. (Source).
AI is handy. It’s convenient. It’s not neutral though. Or is it? Did Grok achieve political neutrality? Is inherent bias completely absent in its algorithms? Time will tell. Meanwhile, we can consult the Bible for most of life’s conundrums. For the nitty gritty not addressed in the Bible, if you use AI, employ common sense and be wise.
the-end-time.org 