Alan Turing and the New Emergentists

Evolution News and Views ^ | February 18, 2015 | Erik J. Larson

[oblomov]

I personally find homosexual behavior disgusting, but it’s difficult to regard it as a greater sin than suicide, adultery, theft, lying, or other prohibited behaviors. A different class of sin, perhaps, but not a greater sin.

[HiTech RedNeck]

It was a shame that he held to a notion that his mind was something on the mere level of one of the machines he created, or that a machine could, in principle, rise to that.

His mind was more. But it was being abused by Satan. As every human, he had the right to claim the universal offer of Christ (I know this isn’t Calvinist and so what, there are biblical references that back it up). But to outward appearance he declined, yet only God knows for sure. IIRC, in a suicide note he mused about the original sin (which is why he did it by consuming poison applied to an apple). Maybe at the very end he came to grips with his need and finally yielded as his mortal life dissolved away. I could not wish less, and neither could God.

[HiTech RedNeck]

No sin can be forgiven or reversed without the agency of God. And when Christians carry on as if they can be, as if a “good solid morality” is their summum bonum, they disappoint God.

[SpaceBar]

The brits had an idea how enigma worked due to earlier work by the Poles, but the WWII version wasn’t broken until a code book was confiscated from a captured U-boat.

[PieterCasparzen]

What God does with him is God’s decision. He had a right to be left alone by the state.

If the nation is a heathen nation that will be the case.

But in a Christian nation the civil law will be founded upon God's truth. The abominable sin of homosexuality would not be legal any more than theft or murder would be.

What the man did privately the civil magistrate would not know about.

This is how, until relatively recently, American law was fashioned. Sodomy was illegal, so sodomites had to refrain from publicly acknowledging their wicked acts, and keep them a secret. Even if people suspected they were doing such things based on their manner, etc., that is not evidence for a court of law, so nothing was done, nor could be nor should be done, any more than someone could be convicted of theft in a court based on hearsay or suspicions alone.

Since American law is founded on a secular humanist document, the Constition (which is against Christ since it mentions him only in the documents date), our government continued to turn against God and decriminalized homosexuality starting in the 1960's-70's. This paved the way for the morass of immorality in today's society.

[oblomov]

OK, but he was arrested, jailed, and forced take medicine to “cure” him. I fail to see how the state acted as an instrument of God’s love.

[HiTech RedNeck]

A Christian nation... be careful what you mean there.

The church erred by attempting to take a country under its control. The horror stories that non Christians have about Christians are chiefly based in that error.

Certain overt acts can be banned, e.g. buggery. However, they cannot “force a person to not be gay.” And if this is attempted under the guise of a state church it is especially sad because the power of God has already been made subservient to the state. This is not the free gospel that breaks every chain.

[HiTech RedNeck]

It didn’t. They could order him not to engage in buggery but that’s it, God hasn’t endowed them with further authority.

[PieterCasparzen]

His mind was more. But it was being abused by Satan. As every human, he had the right to claim the universal offer of Christ (I know this isn’t Calvinist and so what, there are biblical references that back it up). But to outward appearance he declined, yet only God knows for sure.

Suicide as the final act is the evidence of an unconverted soul. We may say that hypothetically in the final moments between taking a poison and dying a person might be converted, but we know that this is really grasping at straws. Prior to my conversion, I've been in such a saddened state as to contemplate suicide, and I see now how God preserved me through that time, even before I was converted and still was rejecting Christ without even at the time really understanding that I was. God preserves his children before their conversion to Christ and never abandons them thereafter. The final act being suicide is hardly an act that honors God's Law Word, hardly the death of a true believer which always will glorify God in that it will testify to the fact that God did not abandon the believer in the hour of their death.

If we humor such speculations as the "post-poisoning conversion", think about it, we're a hair's breadth from thinking things like... well, though Mr. X was an unrepentant wicked man his entire life who murdered millions of people and blasphemed God right up to his death, well... perhaps in the last few thousandths of a second between his last blasphemous utterance and his actual loss of consciousness the Holy Spirit drew him to Christ in that tiny fraction of second.

If it were not for the act of suicide though, and his final actions did not reveal rejection of God for certain, then, by all means, we'd have no way to know the state of his soul, only God would know.

Certainly no one can claim that they did not have the opportunity to turn to God. God has provided abundant evidence for the truth of Christ and the Gospel, the Word of God, is spread throughout the world; if we reject Christ we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[HiTech RedNeck]

We may say that hypothetically in the final moments between taking a poison and dying a person might be converted, but we know that this is really grasping at straws.

A God who can drive a straw through a tree with a tornado should be respected.

[PieterCasparzen]

The civil magistrate punishes those who commit the act of theft. Up until a few decades ago, it punished those who committed the act of sodomy.

The American government was then manipulated by the powers that be to decriminalize sodomy.

The reason for this was drawn from autonomous human legal reasoning, not Biblical legal reasoning.

Every nation is either for Christ (Covenants with God) or against him (a heathen, Christ-hating nation).

If we live in a Christ-hating nation, we see civil laws made up by autonomous human reason which will always oppose God and the Bible.

Christ reigns in heaven at the right hand of God, and the nations are subdued throughout history.

Psalm 110:1 “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.”

Psalm 22:8 “For the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the governor among the nations.”

Psalm 67:4 “O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah.”

[Heartlander]

Turing was a victim of ‘scientifically’ direct human evolution, aka Eugenics. Progressives argued that homosexuals and the mentally retarded should be prevented from reproducing due to their genetic inferiority.

[PieterCasparzen]

Yes, but children of God respect God’s Word and take it for what it is, not replace it with our worldly human hopes and desires.

I may want to believe in fairies and unicorns, but I must restrict my beliefs to the reality of the Bible, God’s Law Word.

If the Bible says murder is a sin, and the Bible says unrepentent sinners are bound for a lake of fire, then I will not attempt to split hairs and get around those words, because I wish that some sodomite mathematician is in heaven typing on his computer glorying in his perversions.

1 Corinthians 6:9 “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,”

Ultimately God only knows, so I prefer to not waste my time speculating as to the eternal destination of souls of men of dubious character; I instead simply place my trust in the truth of Scripture and let it be my rule and guide in life.

America and every nation, however, would do well to bow the knee to Christ and Covenant with God; base their civil law on the perfectly righteous and just moral Law of God, and start using due legal process to prosecute criminals.

Matthew 6:10 “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

[who_would_fardels_bear]

I understand that most materialists are uncomfortable with emergentist theories.

Emergence is also postulated at much lower levels, e.g. that certain chemical phenomena cannot, and will never, be explained by physics.

Emergent Properties

[HiTech RedNeck]

The word is unrepentant... repentant doesn’t mean the capability of reversing the sinful act.

I think you are indulging in self glorifying question begging here. I am not going to pontificate whether he is or isn’t, but I am going to remark that you have closed the question.

[onedoug]

I think you’re right.

A boorish attempt at levity.

I’ll try to do better in the future.

[Vermont Lt]

We all make mistakes....certainly I do.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The brits had an idea how enigma worked due to earlier work by the Poles, but the WWII version wasn’t broken until a code book was confiscated from a captured U-boat.

The Naval enigma machine had more complexity to it than did the Army enigma machine on which the Poles worked at the start of WWII. The Germans also developed a different code for super-secret transmissions. However, the capabilities of Bletchley were better suited to cracking that problem - and the Brits were decoding those messages faster than the “simpler” ones.

[Bobalu]

It’s quite possible that the first super intelligence will be a human that is augmented by the power of the computer.

A computer is an amplifier for the human mind...and always has been.

Humans are unbelievably smart...but very slow. Computers are unbelievably stupid but very fast. Combine the two and get a human intellect pushed to warp-speed.

I have serious doubts about artificial machine intelligence... but I have no doubt that someday the combination of man and computer will result in super intelligence...just my opinion.