AI
and the Tree of Knowledge
For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. (Proverbs 2:6)
By Donald Rhody
And the LORD God planted a garden in
Eden, in the east, where He placed the man He had formed. Out of the ground the
LORD God gave growth to
every tree that is pleasing to the eye and good for food. And in the middle of
the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil.
And the LORD God commanded him, “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:8-9, 16-17)
My question arises from the second of these trees – the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. Actually, I have a series of related
questions about this tree: First of all, “Isn’t knowledge a good thing? Isn’t
it good for us to know the difference between what is good and what is evil?
Why did God want to withhold this information from us?”
We know, of course, what transpired with that prohibition of
eating the forbidden fruit. Satan was allowed entrance into the garden, where
he enticed the woman and man into eating it, after which “the eyes of both of
them were opened.”
Again I ask, “Isn’t it good to have open eyes? Speaking both
in the physical and in a moral sense, open eyes certainly must be better than
stumbling around in the dark!”
And again we know the story: Adam and Eve saw that they were
naked and tried to cover themselves. There is something in this that is more
than the physical. There was a sense that their actual souls were exposed. They
may have been ashamed that they were exposed to one another and to God, but I
think that their greater shame was that, for the first time, they were exposed
to themselves. For the first time, they saw within themselves the almost
unlimited potential for good, but also their almost unlimited potential for
evil. It must have been the sight of their own potential for evil that was the
most frightening.
It is this potential for evil that caused Adam and Eve to
hide themselves when they heard they sound of God walking in the garden. The
fellowship had been severed. They no longer felt one with their Creator.
The result, as you remember, was the expulsion from the garden:
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man
has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he reach out
his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever...”
Therefore the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. (Genesis 3:22-23)
The First Lesson in Restoration
I am skipping a lot in the telling of this story, but I want to get to the question of why God did not want Adam and Even to have the knowledge of good and evil.
We come now to the two sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel –
now young men. One of the things that must have transpired between the time of
the expulsion from the garden and the birth of the two boys was some
instruction by God on how to begin to reestablish the broken relationship
between man and God. Part of this instruction was the sacrificing of an animal
as an offering to God.
This may seem like a strange way to reestablish the
relationship – even pagan. There is also much teaching in this that I am going
to skip for the present, but it all has to do with the foretelling of what God
would ultimately have to do to completely reestablish our communion with Him.
Without going deeply into what this was in teaching these first people, we can generally say that these were foundational lessons that were intended to lead to the final solution to the sin problem that came with the fall. That solution would eventually be found in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.
Return to the Question
But I want to return to the question of knowledge: Why did
God want to withhold knowledge from us?
God actually did begin to open the door to knowledge soon
after the sinful fall in the garden. We see the very beginning after Adam and
Eve tried to cover their shame with leaves attached to their exposed bodies.
But their uncovered bodies were not the primary issue. God showed them that
those leaves were unacceptable, and that an animal had to be sacrificed in
order to clothe them properly.
We see this next in the sacrifices that Cain and Abel were
to bring to God. In those sacrifices, Abel brought the firstborn of his flock
to God, but Cain did not. Cain brought only some produce of the land as his
offering. This was not according to how God had instructed him. Cain thought
that he could substitute something of lesser value for God.
When God did not accept his offering, Cain became angry.
“Why are you angry,” God said to Cain, “and why has your
countenance fallen? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if
you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you,
but you must master[1]
it.” (Genesis 4:6-7).
Here, God is speaking of the knowledge of our potential for
evil that Adam and Eve discovered when they ate of the fruit. God introduces a
new word for us: sin (chattath). Sin is defined as a transgression or
offense against God or man. It speaks of the missing of the goals which God is
seeking to accomplish in our lives.
Interestingly, this word is not used only for the sin
itself, but it is also used for the offering given to God because of the sin.
The significance of this double meaning is that the offering actually becomes
the sin for which it is given. The offering takes upon itself the sin.
I think that this may be why God instructed Cain and Able
that it was a lamb that had to be sacrificed. This is another reference to the
then future offering that was given by Jesus for our sin. Jesus actually became
the sin for which He was given as an offering. It would not be enough to burn
incense or to give an offering of food. For reasons that we do not fully
understand, it was required to be a sacrifice of blood.
As it turned out, Cain did not master over the sin that was
crouching at his door. When he and Abel were in the field and away from the
house, Cain “rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.”
Blood was spilled, but it was not the blood of a renewed
fellowship with God. It was the blood of the knowledge of the potential for
evil that was crouching at the door of Cain’s soul.
Confronted by God over what he had done, Cain flees the
area. He seeks to hide from God and from his past by disappearing to a land
that laid to the east of Eden – a place referred to as Nod.[2] It was in that land that
the family line of Cain began. It began with a son by the name of Enoch, who in
time had a great-grandson by the name of Lamech.
It is with the life of Lamech that we see the nature of this family line continue to decline. Lamech recited what could be called a poem to his wives Adah and Zillah, or perhaps one could call it an early song. It was one which showed the character of this man:
Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech.
For I have slain a man for wounding me,
A young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.
The reference to Cain being avenged sevenfold is from what
God said to Cain after the murder of Abel. To allay Cain’s fear that he would
himself be killed because of what he did to his brother, God told him, “If
anyone slays Cain, then Cain will be avenged sevenfold.”
Lamech was taking these words of God, which were meant to calm the fears of Cain, and instead using them as a threat. Lamech makes reference to killing a young man because the man apparently had a dispute with him, so Lamech struck him. Lamech is bragging about the fact that he took his own vengeance upon this man by killing him.
The First Technologies
From AI and the latest developments in technology, we return to look at the early days of technology. In doing so, it is interesting to see that the very first developments in technology began in the rebellious family line of Cain. In the sixth generations after Cain that we read this about his descendants:
Adah (the wife of
Lamech) gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and
raise livestock. And his brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who
play the harp and flute.
And Zillah (Lamech’s other wife) gave birth to Tubal-cain, a forger of every implement of bronze and iron. And the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. (Genesis 4:20-22)
The two brothers, Jabel and Jubal, chose very different
occupations – Jabal, the first to begin a nomadic lifestyle of following
feeding grounds for his livestock, and Jubal, who introduced the world to
music. These are life-styles more than what we would call technology.
It is their half-brother Tubal-cain who was the first to
develop actual technological advances. The word implement[3]
in this verse has a connotation of engraving or plowing. It is
sometimes translated as devising. His was the creation of tools used in
the growing of agricultural crops.
There is nothing inherently immoral or evil about any of
these occupations. But it is interesting to note that that these developments
took place among the family of Cain—the family who had fled from the presence
of God.
It is directly after the mention of Tubal-cain’s forging of
tools that we read Lamech’s song of boasting about avenging himself on those
who strike him. Of course, this does not mean that the father Lamech slew the
young man by using one of Lamech’s implements, but it does mean that the
violence introduced by Cain when he rose up and killed his brother Abel
continued with his family line.
Technology in the hands of a violent people will always turn and be used for violence. This was knowledge that should not have been given to the rebellious family line of Cain. The fact that this ability to forge metal came suddenly seems to indicate that it was not a knowledge that was developed over generations, but that it was a knowledge that was revealed to Tubal-cain. But if so, where would this knowledge have come from?
The Nephilim
There is much of the historical record that the Scriptures
do not tell us about this period, but at some point during these years, an
event took place between the spiritual and the physical that set the course of
the earth on an extremely evil trajectory.
We read about this in Genesis, chapter 6:
Now when men began
to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons
of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives
whomever they chose…
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward as well—when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4 BSB)
These are troubling words that tell of an event about which
we know extremely little. In fact, so little do we know that the church has
historically debated what the words, “the sons of God,” mean. The term, as it
reads in the English, can throw us off, because stated in this way, it sounds
like these are righteous beings who took human wives.
But it is a mistake to interpret the words in this way. Loosely speaking, we can say that these are angels, but they are not among the angels who remained under the lordship of God. These are the “fallen angels,” the ones who joined Satan in his rebellion against God. This was at the time when Satan said in his heart:
“I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God.
I will sit on the mount of assembly, in the far reaches of
the north.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:13-14 BSB)
These “sons of God” who took human women as wives were
demons who embodied themselves in human form. Even the phrase “took as wives,”
can cause us to envision wrongly what happened at this time. As we have read,
the demons took “whomever they chose,” indicating that this was more a case of
rape, rather than formal marriage.
This was an extreme act of rebellion against God, since not
only did these demons follow Satan in his rebellion against God, but passed an
inter-species boundary that was forbidden by God. As a result of this act, God
took special action against these particular demons.
The New Testament writer Jude writes that “the angels who
did not stay within their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling—these
He has kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great
day” (Jude 1:6).
But before these demons were enchained, they had impregnated
a number of human women. The result of these mixed species unions was a race of
beings known as the “Nephilim.” This word, Nephilim, has the meaning of
something relating to a fall – a fall both of themselves, and also causing
others to fall.
Our verses in Genesis 6 tells us that the Nephilim were “mighty men of old, men of renown.” Again, this phrase can also give us a mistaken idea of what kind of men that they were. It is not the way in which we may use the phrase today. These men may have been “mighty;” they may have been “renown,” but these were not good men. They were “infamous,” rather than “famous.” They were the evil giants of that day.
The Watchers
We have an extra-biblical source that tells us that these
advances in technology that came from the lineage of Cain did not come
naturally, and that they did not come from a benevolent source. I am speaking
specifically about some writings contained in an ancient text called the Book
of Enoch. This book is not part of the canonical scriptures, so it would be
wrong to lend too much veracity to it. Nevertheless, it was a text that was
highly regarded in the early church.
We saw that Jude spoke of the angels who did not stay within their own domain. Jude then also warns us about those who have “traveled the path of Cain,” quoting the book of Enoch:
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about them:
“Behold, the Lord is coming with myriads of His holy ones to execute judgment on everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of every ungodly act of wickedness and every harsh word spoken against Him by ungodly sinners.” (Jude 1:14-15 BSB)[4]
This Book of Enoch gives a more detailed account of these
particular fallen angels, who were originally called the Watchers. It was these
who rebelled against the domains set by God, took human form and began the race
of the Nephilim.
What is written in the book of Enoch is that these were
about 200 angels who descended from heaven onto Mount Hermon, which in ancient
Canaanite mythology, was regarded as a sacred mountain. It was after this that
these angels violated the divine boundaries imposed on them by God in taking on
human forms so that they could impregnate human women. As I mentioned, this was
an extreme act of rebellion against God. It was because of this that God placed
them in the “eternal chains under darkness, and bound for judgment on that
great day.”
It was the children of these unions, half human and half
demonic, who were called the Nephilim. The Nephilim soon became a violent race,
voraciously consuming the resources of the Earth, and when other sources of
food were extinguished, they even began to consume people.
The other thing that is said in the Book of Enoch is that
these watchers introduced various forms of knowledge to the people. They taught
the people astrology and introduced to them sorcery and enchantments. Notably,
they also taught the people how to forge metal. The Watchers introduced to the
people what could be called the first stages of technology.
We have noted the metalogical skills of Tubal-cain, who was a blacksmith, making tools for agriculture. This was knowledge that would have been useful, but like almost all technological advances in history, these blacksmithing skills soon turned to making weapons.
The Early Mesopotamians
Cain, in his running away from the presence of God, fled to
“the east.” It is difficult to be specific where he finally settled, but if he
fled far enough, it likely would have been to a part of the region that would
soon be called Mesopotamia.
It is widely accepted by historians that it was in this
region of Mesopotamia where technology first arose, besides several other
attributes of civilization. Because of this, the Mesopotamians are highly
regarded by modern historians as those who first brought development to a
previously uncivilized society. Mesopotamia is often called the cradle of
civilization.
Interestingly, the Mesopotamian texts themselves describe
the knowledge and the foundations of civilization that came to them as gifts
from the divine beings.[5] The texts tell of these beings
coming to them to teach and to show them many skills.
As I said, although the Book of Enoch is considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, it is not so in other Eastern Orthodox Bibles, nor in the Protestant or Catholic Bibles. Because of this, I will not claim inerrancy to what is written in the Book of Enoch about the Watchers, but I do find it interesting that the first technological developments came through the line of Cain, and not of Abel.
Two Separate Lines
Abel apparently did not have any children before Cain
murdered him, but Adam and Eve later fathered another son, whom they named
Seth. Of Seth’s family line, we read only this: “And to Seth also a son was
born, and he called him Enosh. At that time men began to call upon the name of
the LORD” (Genesis 4:26).
Cain’s line introduced violence into civilization, but
Seth’s line turned to God for guidance. Technology was introduced to the world
through the line of Cain, but through the line of Seth, men began to call upon
the name of the LORD. Why
is this difference of any significance?
This does not mean that technology is evil, and that those
who advance technology are those who do not regard God as sovereign, but it
does mean that God knew that in introducing knowledge too soon that there would
always be a tendency to turn that technology for evil purposes. There is always
a proper time to introduce knowledge.
Thus, we return to our original question: “Why did God
forbid Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?”
And thus, it is here, in the family line of Cain, that we begin to see the answer. In Cain’s line of descendants, the beginning of technology was achieved before there was a proper understanding about how it should be used. Their technology developed before their morality. When new technology arose, they were still infants in morality. They did not know how to handle the new developments. It may have begun with peaceful purposes, but those purposes where soon overshadowed by harmful effects.
The Great Flood
It is in the verses following the account of the Nephilim in
the bible (our bible), that tell us that the invasion of these half human and
half demonic beings into the realm of humans resulted in a generation of
extremely wicked men. This was a generation of people whose “every inclination
of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time.”
The Scriptures even say that “the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth,
and He was grieved in His heart.”
Consequently, God said, “I will blot out man, whom I have
created, from the face of the earth—every man and beast and crawling creature
and bird of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”
But there was one man during this time who had retained a
righteous life: the man Noah – “the preacher of righteousness,” as Peter calls
him (2 Peter 2:5).
When the people of Noah’s day failed to hear his words and
what Noah said would be the consequences of their sinful lifestyle, God sent
the great flood upon the earth to fulfill what he said he would do—blotting out
all of mankind, including the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. He
preserved only Noah and his family, and also the progenitors of every species
of animals.
It was a new beginning. God’s intention for His creation
after the flood was very similar to what He told Adam in the beginning. God now
tells Noah, “Bring out all the living creatures that are with you—birds,
livestock, and everything that crawls upon the ground—so that they can spread
out over the earth and be fruitful and multiply upon it.”
He told Noah to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”
(Genesis 8:17; 9:1).
This may have been the intention of Noah and his family,
along with their progeny for some generations, but God’s desire that men and
women should “fill the earth” quickly deteriorated into tribalism – not many
individual tribes, but a single tribe of what man intended should be a
testimony to his own greatness.
This tribe of mankind decided to build a tower.
Babel
“Come,” the people said, “let us build for ourselves a city
with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves
and not be scattered over the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:4).
So they built the tower. They intended this tower to “reach
to the heavens.”
The Tower of Babel was exactly the opposite of God’s intentions
for the people of the earth. God had told Noah that the people were to be fruitful
and multiply and to fill the earth. The people of Babel did not want to do this.
They wanted to build the tower so that they “not be scattered over the
face of all the earth.”
We sometimes tend to think that the ancient people were
comparatively brutish and dim-witted than we are today when it comes to
technology. But this is not true. Today, the more that archeologists discover
about some of the earliest civilizations, the more we have come to realize that
these ancient peoples possessed abilities that have long been lost. We actually
have no idea of how some of the ancient structures were made that involved the
movement of hewn stones of many tons. The people of the day of Babel had
advanced knowledge of technology, one that was rapidly developing, and one which
was developing before the people had the moral capacity to use the knowledge
wisely.
This also was God’s assessment of the people of Babel. God
recognized what was happening at Babel was more than a multitude of people
piling rocks together to build a tall tower. He saw that they were at the
threshold of some sort of technological breakthrough.
God said, “If they have begun to do this as one people speaking the same language, then nothing they devise will be beyond them.”
The Contemporary Tower of Babel
If we progress in time to the present, this is exactly the
spiritual point where we are today. We also are a people who speak the same
language. It is not a language of the tongue, but a language of zeros and ones.[6] And like the original
Tower of Babel, with AI, we are at the point of devising something that ten
years ago, we would have thought was beyond us. It will be a technological
breakthrough. To use the assessment of God at Babel, it is beginning to seem
like “nothing we devise will be beyond us.”
We can easily see the benefits to this. Personally speaking,
I have worked in several countries of the world in my lifetime and have had to
try to understand what was being said in several different languages. How nice
it would have been to be able to have the technology to understand every conversation!
This is the good side of technology.
But presently, leaders of the world and even leaders in
technology are beginning to fear the dark side of technology. They are telling
us that on its present trajectory, AI will soon have the capability to be able
to outperform humans at virtually every task. The AI models will soon be at the
point where they do not need human leadership or intervention. In fact, we as
humans will not even be able to intervene, since we will not even be able to
understand the processes that the AI models are running.
We are building a technology that has the potential of considering the presence of humans as excessive, and even wasteful to its own existence.
Bad Precedents
Historically speaking, the human race has had a mixed bag
when it comes to technology. Computer generated AI is not the first time that
technology has taken a nefarious turn. From ancient farming tools being made
into armaments of war, to the creation of the atom bomb, to the industrial weapons
complex, man has found in some way to use virtually every new technology for
implements of destruction or for killing. All throughout history we have seen
technology used for the devestation of civilizations.
It is destruction not only in this, but we have used our
technologies to feed our excessive and ever-growing desire for consumption and self-interests. Our
technologies have brought pollution and destruction of our planet.
We are being sold the same line by the developers of AI. We
are being told that within a few years, robots will be able to do virtually all
the work for us, and there will be so much wealth that no one will have to
work. We will all be given a Universal Basic Income, and all of our needs will
be met. The cost in all of this for us is only an increased consumption of the resources of the earth. We have learned nothing from our past experiences with technology.
The earlier forms of technology needed to be guided by man
to be turned into destructive forces, but now, with AI, we have been told that
it will soon have the potential to take its own initiative to be able to make
moral choices. This does not mean that AI is evil in and of itself. Ethically
speaking, we can say that technology is neither good or evil. It is morally
neutral.
The problem comes because our own limits of knowledge in
technology have grown much faster than our own morality. In our personal ethical
wisdom, we are infants in comparison to our ability to devise new technologies.
It is with this poorly developed sense of morality that we have put our own
inadequacies into the AI models.
It is this same imbalanced growth in our own morality that has given rise to the malicious tendencies that we have to eventually turn almost all technologies for evil purposes. This is also the fear of AI. It has potential for good, but it also has tremendous potential for destruction.
Back to the Two Trees
And this is precisely what brings us back to the very dawn
of time—back to the Garden of Eden and the prohibition that God placed on us
against eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The prohibition that God first placed on humans was given not
because knowledge in some way was bad. God’s prohibition was not because
He wanted to keep knowledge from us. God commanded Adam and Eve to eat only
from the Tree of Life and not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge because He knew
that it was important to first mature in life before achieving too much
knowledge.
God fully intended us to have knowledge, but it must come at
the proper time. Knowledge before maturity will always find a way to be used
destructively.
In forbidding Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge, God was not sending the message that knowledge is evil, but He was
sending the message that before knowledge, one must first find maturity in
morality. Before knowledge it is better to first be mature in ethical wisdom.
This ethical wisdom can only be found in an all-embracing value of life itself.
As we remember, the other tree in the garden was the Tree of
Life. This was the tree from which Adam and Eve could eat freely. God intended
to teach them the value of life before they could be given knowledge. It is
life above knowledge.
Throughout history, we have seen instead the quest of
knowledge to be more valued than the quest for morality. Because our values
have been reversed, we have seen many of our advances in technology used in
bringing death instead of life. This may be intentional death, like the
development of the atomic bomb and the advances in weaponry, or it may be
unintentional, like we have seen with recent experiments with the altering of
our DNA.
With the advent of AI, we are seeing an unprecedented
valuing of knowledge above life.
And the LORD
said, “If they have begun to do this as one people speaking the same language,
then nothing they devise will be beyond them.”
In the day of Babel, God came down and confused the tongues
of the people. Babel was the turning point.
We are again at a turning point. Will it be a confusing of
our digital tongue, or will we be able to learn the value of morality and life
above the knowledge of technology?
[1]
Mashal - to have dominion, reign, bear, cause to, have ruling have power
[2]
The word “Nod” means “wandering.” Perhaps this means that in Cain’s departure,
he began a life of wandering.
[3]
2790a. charash
[4]
See the First Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 1:9)
[5]
Their texts describe the Sumerian “ME”
The ME are divine teachings or “programs” that taught the Mesopotamians how to govern every aspect of civilization, including government, music, law, craftmanship, and more. In the myth Inanna and Enki, the goddess Inanna obtains these ME teachings from Enki and brings them to Uruk, which was a site in the Mesopotamian valley. These teachings are described as objects which has led to modern interpretations comparing them to different types of technology.
[6]
Actually, AI companies are developing models that will instantly translate any
spoken word into any other language, so that a person speaking Mandarin Chinese, for instance, will be able to have a conversation with another person speaking English
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