Could a Terminator Reinvent Idolatry?

The fourth installment of the Terminator movie series is scheduled for release this May. Although the storyline of each movie reflects slightly different time-lines, a computer with artificial intelligence that realizes self awareness is central to each plot. This is not the first time men have spun tales about "when good inventions go bad." Frankenstein fits the profile, as does HAL in Space Odyssey, and a host of lesser lights from sci-fi movies screened during the cold war. But the Terminator series (and a TV spin-off, The Sarah Conner Chronicles) has made the possibility of men creating sentient beings seem believable.

Should the believable become real, a key stumbling block to idolatry would be removed. In yesterday's post, Idols are Dumb, we observed that the attraction of idolatry (which is self-worship) is compromised by the fact that an idol can't speak. So, when a man build's an idol to sing his praises, it bites that said idol has nothing to say!

What if a man could construct an image that speaks? And what if that image could declare the praises of his creator? And what if that image could come up with other witty things to say based upon its superior intelligence? An idol that speaks and is smart - what would men do if they beheld and heard such a thing? I am confident that virtually everyone would be totally smitten by the thing.

Comments

[Austin]

I can see how robot worship would be the epitome of self worship, but that'd have to be one sophisticated robot. It'd have to be so sophisticated it could write its own code. Otherwise, we're reduced to worshiping a sock puppet--we're dumb, but I don't think were that dumb. Integrating computer software/hardware with humans, on the other hand, will probably be done within the next 50 years. I could MUCH more easily see humanity worshiping a genetically engineered, robotically enhanced human being--say, maybe the only one to survive gestation and hardware grafts?

But why is a physical figure necessary to create or sustain pervasive idolatry? The more insidious form of it seems to be "stealth" idolatry--i.e. idolatry of ideals without icons. I'll argue that idolatry doesn't need a physical representation to be alive and well. Worshiping values can as easily be self-worship when those values are man's values and not God's.

In the ancient world, for example, Artemus/Venus could easily be characterized as an anthropomorphic icon the Greeks came up with to legitimize a run-away sexual preoccupation that their society already embraced. In other words, she was an icon, a contrivance, to give voice and standing to one of their society's values: profligate sexual gluttony. Tell me that value isn't still alive and well in the U.S.A.

Even where specific modern values differ from ancient ones, the consequences of disavowal haven't changed at all. Athenian citizens weren't above harassing or killing those who threatened their sex culture. And American citizens are just as likely to cobble together a lynch mob in the barrio of public opinion the second anyone challenges the validity of its secular ideals, i.e. environmentalism, gay marriage, or "tolerance." We don't have a physical image for every value our secular society adopts, but we don't need one for the dogmatism to be real.

Just ask Carrie Prejean, "how real is Hollywood pop culture's devotion to gay marriage," and I suspect you'll find out it's comparable to Radical Muslims' fervor for Jihad--irrational, dogmatic, and intractable.

[Austin]

I hate to drone on, but I just thought of something you said in your Daniel series that I think strengthens my value-based argument for idolatry as the more likely of its future manifestations: the AntiChrist will be someone of 1) breathtaking pride who 2) deems "wrong" right.

Don't you think the case can be made that Anti-Christ's pride, and ours, will be manifest to the extent we decide, "God doesn't make the rules--we do." The belief that our values are better than His will be the hallmark of our self-worship.

Gay marriage is a perfect example. God says marriage is one way, secular culture espouses another. Inherent in that rejection of God's way and espousal of man's is a belief that "We know better than God." Sounds like pride and self-worship to me, eh?

If Antichrist is truly going to turn the tables of morality upside down, make every good act a wrong one, that would express pride and self-worship on an unprecedented--dare I say breathtaking--scale, wouldn't you agree?

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