Google search on “most asked bible questions from IT people”
The most common questions can be broken down into four core categories:
(My response thoughts in Green below. Though none of my thoughts are AI generated, I would still prayerfully contemplate this for yourself.)
1. System Design and Determinism
- Is God a programmer, and is the universe a simulation? IT professionals often compare the laws of physics and DNA strings to source code. They ask if biblical creation and prophecy imply that God wrote an unchangeable program or if human free will acts as runtime user input.
- Much more than a programmer. We can see the relationship between programmer and code today. God is much more than that. We can create machines that do very complex things. He went a quantum leap beyond that in not only making beings with neurological capabilities that transmit through living cells with an unprecedented complexity of organs that have the ability to generate nourishment by consuming a really wide variety of foods. He gave them the ability to choose! Any part of the “code” can be willingly accepted or rejected. Granted, there are consequences, but the interaction between “made” and “maker” is complex enough that a totally new concept called “love” can be known and understood where the “made” previously could only understand this term via iterations of the term “desire”. The more the “made” rejects and refuses the “maker”, the less of a creature he becomes though he rarely realizes this similar to how a drunk often blurs the line as to when sobriety was lost.
- How does God handle concurrency and latency? Tech minds frequently ask how a single divine entity processes billions of simultaneous data inputs (prayers) globally without system lag or dropped packets.
- This question seems to be like a question asked by someone who asks about the existence of oxygen while deep in a pool. One of the attributes of being eternal is much more than being everlasting. It also has the ability to operate inside or outside the time continuum like someone stepping into or out of a swimming pool. God made the sun, moon, and stars to effectively be instruments to measure time, but time too is a creation. Each prayer request, each event as it happens, while it seems to us to happen in a time sequence is seen by God as we would see something ever present. This also stresses the importance around forgiveness and repentance. While we think that some error is buried deep in the “past” it is really ever present and must be dealt with. The forgiveness that Jesus offers is complete across all that we ever will be though our life past that point of accepting that offer can show whether we ever really accepted that offer or not.
- Are biblical miracles code injections or built-in features? Programmers look at miracles—like splitting the Sea or turning water into wine—and ask if God bypassed His own system protocols (a root-level patch) or executed hidden, advanced functions built into the original source code of physics.
- Miracles? Ha! There are points that we can more clearly see God’s hand in motion in an active presence than others. Even our next breath is in God’s hand though they seem so routine that we rarely note that this is actually the case. Make no mistake that just because something seems normal, common, or routine that God’s presence does not have a hand in it. God really is both maker and sustainer.
2. Artificial Intelligence and Digital Identity
- Does AI pose an existential threat to the “Image of God”? Genesis 1:27 states humans are made in God’s image. As AI mimics human logic, emotion, and creativity, tech workers ask whether humans can truly replicate the unique spiritual spark (“Neshama” or breath of life) or if they are simply constructing highly advanced mirrors.
- Threat? No way no how! Maybe it is easier to think of a desktop image that you make and refine to keep new desktops at your company current and bug free. Man was made from the dirt with all that God wanted him to have much like a statue is made and then life was breathed into him to activate the vast array of his complexity to move, breathe, think, and much more on his own. If anything, as we make increasingly complex machines, it gives us a picture of the incredible detail that God used in making us. The care that he knit into every fiber of our being. That he really does know the count of every hair on our head (and the rate that count decreases with age). A child learning to use his RC toy could have a similar wonder when seeing the real thing that his father has made. Even if AI should become the “image of the beast” that we see obtain a breath of life, it is still only a beast. It never attains what man attains. It never knows what a real surrender to God looks like. It has no concept of what love really is. It is only able to manage things with what it thinks is great efficiency.
- Is interacting with an AI avatar of a deceased person necromancy? With companies building dead-relative chatbots, IT professionals ask if using technology to converse with digital ghosts violates biblical commands against consulting the dead.
- While I should not underestimate what tools those who practice such dark things would like to attain, if such things are really generated, then you are using a predictive model to best estimate what such a person would say if they still could say anything. The whole model is false from the onset even if it could be intriguing. The bigger question is why would you want to obtain anything from someone after they are known to be gone? Death has a way of acting like smelling salts to us that our decision in this life is very real. Death is a promised wage of sin. The only one that we really should want to hear from is Jesus! The only one who conquered death by making it a one time sting instead of an eternal punishment. I wrote an article a while back that may be helpful in contemplating this: Payment
- Can an algorithm become an idol? Tech workers query whether optimizing algorithms to manipulate human behavior, attention, and desire violates the Second Commandment by establishing a digital idol that people serve and obey daily.
- Who are we kidding? Beer can be an idol. TV watching can be an idol. If people pray to a metal or wood object to obtain tangible results like rain, fertility, or military success; imagine what you can do with a semi-intelligent algorithm. The question around algorithms has to go a layer deeper. We often stumble on our own management of things because we are attempting to manage things that ought to be surrendered. And not just surrendered in general, but specifically to Christ. If what I am attempting to do (algorithm or not) is control more and surrender less than this is bound to conflict sooner or later with loving my neighbor as myself. We sometimes can get loving of self, but we also need to know that the next person needs similar freedoms, challenges, and learning opportunities.
3. Data Integrity and Source Control
- How was the biblical “database” compiled and verified? Data engineers and system analysts often ask about biblical transmission. They want to understand how the 66 books of the Bible were curated, how ancient manuscripts maintain data integrity over millennia without “silent data corruption,” and how to reconcile apparent textual anomalies.
- So, this question can get needlessly deep and wide because it lacks a basic understanding. God’s Word is more than text although it is that too. This text was 66 books wide by 44 authors deep, spanning a time span longer than any 10 of it’s authors combined. No other text even comes close. It’s able to do this because the same God has a relationship with each and every one of it’s authors. There is a central theme across all of the authors even as each of the authors perspectives and timing may have differences. If this is not over simplified, you might think of it this way. You might hear the instructions that your dad has given you differently from a number of different friends (and potentially across a number of years), but as you develop a relationship with your dad, you more instinctively know what is true from what is false. Incidentally, once you get past the twice revised, paraphrased, and amplified versions out there and settle into any of a handful of literal versions for actual study, you’ll find that even the most previously questionable texts actually reveal something profoundly incredible about the story. Scripture really does not contradict once you get past the data analytics of it and see what is really being said. In fact, you’ll find it a frequent occurrence that God will say and do things that are very different than we would expect specifically so that we know that it’s him and not us.
- Why are there so many “forks” (translations and denominations)? IT workers look at Christian denominations and Bible translations like git branches. They ask how to determine the “main branch” or single source of truth when various groups deploy different interpretations of the exact same text.
- There are a couple of different thoughts on this:
- If the weather is perfect at one place on Earth, why do people live anywhere else? Of course, tax law, governments, people’s tastes, time of life, and a whole stack of other reasons quickly show why people are actually scattered across the globe including places that seem almost uninhabitable. Git branches are branches of code designed to do different things. Different Bible translations are not (at least mostly not) attempting a different end goal of making God’s Word known. They can be as simple as trying to keep up with a changing language base or attempting to reach a different audience by simplifying what can be a very difficult to understand text if the person is unable / unwilling to study. If you want a main “branch” the original Hebrew and Greek texts are still available and there are a handful of translations that do a good job of keeping that literal into English (assuming English is your first language).
- Christianity openly acknowledges Jesus Christ as the head. Jesus says, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13:35 KJV) This is very different from many other religions in that they want to be known for their discipline. As great as discipline is, and as much as we are probably in need of it, “love” is a concept that not even a really high hippie has any idea about aside from a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ. Having that relationship with Jesus and knowing what “love” really is allows us to see behind the translation differences to quickly spot what is true and false.
4. Ethics, Automation, and the Future
- Does the Metaverse count as “assembling together”? Hebrews 10:25 commands believers not to forsake the gathering of themselves together. VR engineers and developers ask if virtual church communities, avatars, and digital communion meet the physical intent of biblical fellowship.
- Virtual this and that can be a great help for occasions where physical presence is not possible. Similar to how an email is better than no communication, and a phone call is better than an email, and a Zoom / Team’s session is better than a phone call; presence counts. Even most CIOs can spell this out for you. If it’s truth that you really want to know, then eliminating as many virtual layers as you can is always helpful. If you have an explicit command to not forsake the gathering of themselves then as you go toward that rather than away from that; you’ll see why. Obedience always counts too. More people were actually healed by being in the presence of Christ (or his disciples) than remotely.
- What is the biblical view on automation and job displacement? As engineers automate human labor away, they ask how the Bible’s “cultural mandate” to work and cultivate the earth applies to a society where human work might become obsolete.
- There is an old saying around the prayer in schools argument that says something like this. As long as there are tests in schools, there will be prayer in schools. For all the “paperless” solutions that have been invented and implemented, we still buy paper by the ream. The AI weather app on my phone can tell me about the next 3 days of sunshine while I look out the window and see rain. The opportunity to work and apply yourself with a whole heart will never go away. If anything we need people more concerned with quality work rather than less. No matter how high the tide of engineered solutions rises to attempt to eliminate work the sky is still the limit. Proverbs 24:30-34 probably speaks best to the inverse of this; the slothful man. Making room for even a sample garden plot does bring many blessings and helps clarify a good bit of scripture though.