Author: Chris Boyd

Q&A with a veteran AI engineer and entrepreneur, Tom Kehler, about the limits of the popular chatbot and the wonders of the human brain.

Tom Kehler has worked in artificial intelligence for more than 40 years, as a coder and a CEO. He grew up a preacher’s kid and got into mathematical linguistics in high school. After earning a PhD in physics, he wanted to do linguistics with Wycliffe Bible Translators, but “God kept closing that door,” he says, and instead he found himself working with natural language processing in computing.

He had a stint in academia before joining Texas Instruments in 1980, where he began working with top AI researchers. He ended up in Silicon Valley, founding and leading several startups involving AI, including IntelliCorp and CrowdSmart.

Developments in AI appear to be speeding along: This week Microsoft announced that it is investing $10 billion in OpenAI, which created the popular chatbot ChatGPT. One of OpenAI’s top researchers described current neural networks as “slightly conscious.” Kehler has his doubts.

What were the questions about AI in the 1980s when you were first working on it?

“Is it going to replace my job?” In many cases, the answer is yes. We need to be thinking about continuous education—you may not be doing the assembly line, but you may be operating the machinery that does the assembly line. The other question that comes up is this notion of the singularity [when AI outstrips humans]. The sentient question comes up. But I think we’re a very long way from that.

Why is there an obsession with sentient AI?

If you are a person of nonbelief, you want to create something that gives you hope in the future. On the AI side, we want something that will cause us to have eternal life—my consciousness is going to go into eternity because it’s in a machine. I think …

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In the wake of Roe’s 50th anniversary, four believing experts discuss the merits and challenges of the Make Birth Free proposal.

Last week marked 50 years since the monumental Roe v. Wade case legalized abortion in our country—and seven months since it was overturned.

Amid the articles discussing implications for the pro-life movement, one argument in Compact Magazine sparked a ripple of related headlines. In it, Catherine Glenn Foster with Americans United for Life and Kristen Day with Democrats for Life of America proposed that to address the financial motives for abortion, giving birth should be made free in the United States.

This proposal isn’t new—Elizabeth Bruenig penned an op-ed with the same title for The Atlantic last year—but the Make Birth Free movement seems to be gaining greater traction in recent days, as people of faith and folks on both sides of the political aisle are lining up to share their thoughts on the subject.

One response for the Institute for Family Studies explains that “making it easier to have a child doesn’t require making birth free”—arguing instead that existing resources should be made easier to access. Another piece for the National Review lists other objections and ultimately argues that the same ends could be achieved through private rather than governmental support.

But what are some other views on the matter? Four pro-life Christian thinkers with a background in politics and family advocacy weigh in on the merits and challenges of the Make Birth Free proposal.

Daniel Bennett, politics professor at John Brown University:

The end of Roe v. Wade was a necessary result for the American pro-life movement, but it was far from sufficient in its fight against abortion. Pro-life Americans—including many Christians—now find themselves in new territory, no longer fighting …

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Amid controversies and threats of defunding, Christian public librarians work for the good of their communities.

In a field in Missouri outside a public library, a few teenagers stood with homemade rockets they’d made alongside a librarian in a white lab coat leading a countdown. It was a warm fall day, with the smell of prairie grass baking in the sunshine. Tyler Clark, a recent physics graduate volunteering for the library’s first rocket launch, was working a bike pump to generate compressed air to shoot the rockets. Clark and Shawnna Thompson, the librarian, had built a launch tube out of PVC pipes and bike valves donated from a local bike shop.

“Everyone run in opposite directions if I yell, ‘Scatter,’” Clark joked.

This Saturday at Nixa Public Library, the teens had learned how to build and launch rockets using just cardboard tubes and compressed air. With paper and tape they made fins and a nose. Clark explained how to make their rockets aerodynamic and fly high. As they set up a launch outside in the field, other kids and library patrons stopped in the parking lot to watch.

“Can I get a countdown?” Thompson said, holding the pipe at launch angle.

“Three hundred seventy-six … seven … one … go,” one of the teenagers said.

With a whoosh, one of the teen’s rockets shot up about 80 feet into the sky, farther than expected. She had designed the nose with more weight as Clark had taught them. The teens launched the rockets over and over, trying to go higher and farther, then went running and slipping and falling in excitement across the field to retrieve their rockets for another launch.

Clark applauded the beginning of the Christian County Space Program and had all the kids sign the PVC launcher for its inauguration. As they packed up, one teenager turned …

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Blocks away from the Monterey Park and Alhambra crime scenes, some Asian American pastors adjusted services and offered prayers to address the tragedy.

Last weekend, pastor Jesse Chang had prepared to gather with his church in Monterey Park, California, for worship and a Lunar New Year potluck. Instead, his wife woke him up early Sunday to tell him a nearby shooting had killed nearly a dozen people.

He quickly realized everything about the service would need to change. His predominantly Asian and Latino congregation, River of Life, meets in a building just four blocks from the crime scene.

With a 65 percent Asian American population, Monterey Park in Los Angeles County is considered the nation’s first “suburban Chinatown.” The shooting occurred Saturday night inside the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, just an hour after the conclusion of the city’s Lunar New Year festival blocks away.

The suspected gunman, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, then entered a second dance studio in the nearby city of Alhambra and was disarmed before fleeing the scene. Tran was found later the following day in a white van in nearby Torrance where he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The mass shooting was the first of two to take place in California this week. At least 7 people were killed in two related shootings on Monday in Northern California’s Half Moon Bay. The suspect, 67-year-old Chunli Zhao, was apprehended shortly afterward by police.

But on Sunday morning, many details about the Monterey Park shooter’s whereabouts and motivations were still unknown, placing Chang in a difficult position.

“They hadn’t found the shooter yet and because where we meet is so close to the event, we asked whether we should even meet because people might be fearful of coming down,” he said.

The young church, planted in 2020, was forced to gather online and cancel Lunar …

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Christians must find ways to adapt to impacts of climate change, experts say.

South Africa is reeling from the shocking death of 15 people, including a three-month-old baby, during a river baptism that went wrong last month.

The victims were swept away December 3 by floodwaters in the Jukskei River, which flows through a number of suburbs in Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city. The pastor conducting the baptism ceremony, identified by local press as Kind Kupe from neighboring Zimbabwe, was rescued by other members of his church.

The church is part of the Johane Masowe group, started by an indigenous, itinerant preacher in 1930s Zimbabwe. Adherents are known for their prominent white robes and preference for outdoor worship.

Some in South Africa are blaming church leaders for the tragedy.

“I know that baptism is something that has been happening for a very long time, but for someone to be baptized at a river with that heavy flow of water is dangerous,” a resident of Alexandria told the News24 website.

Nomusa Bandile, who lost her teenage daughter in the flood, labeled the pastor a “cruel fraudster.”

Some academics, however, are pointing to the tragedy as an example of how humans have trouble adapting to climate change.

“Without proper information filtering to the grassroots on climate change, we are likely to see more tragedies,” said Sibusiso Masondo, an associate professor in the school of religion, philosophy, and classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

He said traditionally in South Africa, lakes, rivers, and the ocean were seen as significant in both cleansing and healing rituals.

Indigenous churches connect this tradition with the Christian ritual of baptism, centering much of their faith and worship on outdoor immersion ceremonies.

“African religion …

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At their biblical best, American evangelical Christians affirm the intrinsic value of all human life.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

This Sunday marks 50 years since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in the United States.

It’s also the first year in which that date—marked every year by a March for Life in the nation’s capital—falls after Roe was repudiated by the Supreme Court in last summer’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

That means the focus this year—for those of us with pro-life commitments—will be invariably fixed on the next 50 years. This may be especially true for those of us who are also evangelical Christians.

And it’s true not just with what we say and do but also with how we say it.

In letters to his son, who is also a pastor, the late Eugene Peterson noticed that our evangelical movements and ministries are often missing “ways and means.” We must be attentive, he argued, to the how as well as to the what.

“When the missional ‘how’ is severed from the worship ‘who and what,’ the missional life no longer is controlled and shaped by Scripture and the Spirit,” he wrote. “And so mission becomes shrill, dependent on constant ‘strategies’ and promotional schemes.”

This is difficult, he wrote, in an American context in which “doing the right thing in the wrong way” is seen as less important than the “success” of whatever project is undertaken.

“But if we are going to live the Jesus life,” he argued, “we simply have to do it the Jesus way—he is, after all, the Way as well as the Truth and Life.”

Peterson was addressing local church ministry, but for …

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It’s not wrong to celebrate our blessings. But Asian theologians and pastors advise how to do so in biblical, godly ways amid the festival’s red envelopes and best wishes.

Every Lunar New Year, Calvin Qin’s children receive hongbaos, or red envelopes, at church. In Chinese culture, hongbaos symbolize good luck and blessings. But the Qin family’s don’t hold crisp new banknotes, which most children typically receive. Instead, the red packets hold Bible verses printed on slips of paper.

“If they memorize the Bible verses correctly, they get prizes like candy or chocolate coins from their Sunday school teacher,” said Qin, who moved from China to the United States eight years ago and currently pastors the Chinese Community Church of Indianapolis Northwest in Indiana.

Until now, Qin’s children have been (blissfully) unaware that the kind of red envelopes they receive are the exception, not the norm. But their ignorance has an expiration date.

The Lunar New Year, which begins on January 22 this year, comes with many traditions and customs that articulate a desire for prosperity in the form of greater affluence and material abundance. (Different versions of the holiday are celebrated across Asia: It is known as chun jie or Spring Festival among the Chinese diaspora, Tết in Vietnam, and Seollal in South Korea.)

But to equate prosperity with monetary gain or to regard it solely in terms of increasing one’s material possessions both diminishes and corrupts its full meaning as revealed in Scripture, Asian theologians and pastors told CT. They believe that this festive period offers a propitious time for deeper theological reflection on what the Bible says about true prosperity.

Semantic linkages in Scripture

The Chinese character for prosperity, pronounced in Mandarin as fu (福), abounds in Chinese translations of Scripture, including the popular Chinese Union Version …

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Americans can now independently resettle those fleeing war and persecution. Christian resettlement agencies are largely on board.

Last year, Mark and Jackie Sawyer cosigned a lease for a couple they’d known for a short time—because the couple had recently arrived from a refugee camp overseas.

The Sawyers didn’t realize the headaches and the friendship that would come with joining a group of friends from their Washington, DC, church to sponsor the resettlement of Afghan refugees. They ended up raising $30,000 for the couple, who were expecting their first baby, and staying in relationship with them beyond the initial three-month resettlement period.

This week the pilot program the Sawyers took part in has officially launched through the US State Department, allowing individuals—rather than resettlement agencies alone—to commit to sponsor a refugee for resettlement.

Through Welcome Corps, groups of at least five Americans can apply to sponsor a refugee together and commit to raising at least $2,275 per refugee. For 90 days they would help refugees transition by securing housing, finding jobs, and enrolling children in school.

“You don’t have to have it all figured out,” said Sawyer. “It’s certainly not easy, but it’s probably more doable than you think.”

Refugee resettlement typically goes through nine nonprofit resettlement agencies. These groups, mostly faith-based organizations such as the evangelical agency World Relief, contract with the government to assist and support refugees through their first months in the United States—then often extend the help longer term through the groups’ own funding.

The agencies have been hit by the steep decline in refugee admittances to the US over the past severalyears, but they have decades of experience in this work and are preparing …

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Just like being “born again,” the symbol of baptism is a way of life, not a repetitive ritual.

Since I was baptized at the age of eight by my pastor father, I haven’t really lingered on the meaning of baptism as part of my devotional life.

It was a one-time event that marked a spiritual milestone in my life, and over time, I’ve lost some connection to that moment. I considered the significance of baptism as a church ordinance or sacrament only much later when watching other people get baptized.

As a pastor in a faith tradition that practices baptism for believers, I am having an increased number of conversations with people who wonder about their baptisms. I am not alone. The uncertainty of COVID-19 seems to have only multiplied these questions. In their confusion, many sincere believers feel the need to get baptized again to recapture the feeling of being cleansed through the work of Christ.

If we couple the cultural moment with the beginning of a new year when people are considering a deeper commitment to God, this longing increases.

I have talked with many who share this angst. It can lead to some real confusion. Many wonder whether these feelings undermine the legitimacy of their baptism experiences or even their salvation.

In reality, the amount of time since you were baptized doesn’t diminish its significance, and there is no biblical evidence that any genuine believer needs to get baptized more than once. In my own Southern Baptist tradition, a “rededication” of faith does not warrant rebaptism.

However, as a symbol of new birth into eternal life with Christ, I believe the significance of baptism should play a more prominent role in our devotional lives. We can recall the feeling of being baptized without returning to the water by embracing the spiritual exercise of ongoing submersion. …

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Latest report on Christian persecution finds Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa the epicenter of jihadist violence, while China leads effort to redefine religious rights.

More than 5,600 Christians were killed for their faith last year. More than 2,100 churches were attacked or closed.

More than 124,000 Christians were forcibly displaced from their homes because of their faith, and almost 15,000 became refugees.

Sub-Saharan Africa—the epicenter of global Christianity—is now also the epicenter of violence against Christians, as Islamist extremism has spread well beyond Nigeria.

And North Korea is back at No. 1, according to the 2023 World Watch List (WWL), the latest annual accounting from Open Doors of the top 50 countries where it is most dangerous and difficult to be a Christian.

The concerning tallies of martyrdoms and church attacks are actually lower than in last year’s report. But Open Doors emphasizes they are “an absolute minimum figure,” and is quick to note the data decline does not suggest real improvements in religious freedom.

For example, the reduction in church closures was “due in large part” to Chinese officials having closed almost 7,000 churches over the prior two years. And the drop of Afghanistan from No. 1 last year to No. 9 this year “offers little cheer” because it’s driven by how most Afghan Christians “went deep into hiding or fled overseas” after the Taliban’s takeover.

Overall, and same as last year, 360 million Christians live in nations with high levels of persecution or discrimination. That’s 1 in 7 Christians worldwide, including 1 in 5 believers in Africa, 2 in 5 in Asia, and 1 in 15 in Latin America.

And for only the third time in three decades of tracking, all 50 nations scored high enough to register “very high” persecution levels on Open Doors’ matrix of more …

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