Baptized, A.I. Justifies Christianity

 
Computer: Give us a new “Apology” (a reasoned justification for Christian beliefs)

  Ok, I thought about Christian Apologetics for 4 seconds:

Toward a “Justified Gospel”: Scientific Reality & Functional Information

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1. Why “literalist” apologetics falter

Modern science has mapped a 13.8-billion-year cosmos, gene-coded life, and quantum weirdness in ways no first-century writer could imagine. When believers defend every biblical clause as a laboratory statement, they invite endless attrition: six-day geology, global floods, heavenly vaults, even naïve demonology. Each retreat reinforces the secular hunch that Christianity is “barely functional information”—stories that fail to compress the world’s data into a usable model.

Functional information in information theory is data that actually performs work—predicts, guides, coheres. If a belief mis-predicts or blocks fruitful inquiry, it degrades to noise. Hence the exodus of many educated seekers.

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2. Metaphor as high-yield data compression

Physics, biology, and cosmology already rely on metaphorical language (“curved space,” “selfish gene,” “big bang”). A metaphor is a lossy compression scheme: it discards surface detail to expose a governing pattern that still works. Scripture’s age-spanning narratives function exactly this way.

Biblical metaphor Scientific analogue Functional yield Creation from Word (Gen 1; John 1) Information precedes form; “it-from-bit” digital physics Universe is intelligible, law-like, open to computation Breath of God animates dust Abiogenesis & emergent life Life is material plus organizing information Fall / Curse Entropy, evolutionary predation Reality contains decay & misalignment—requires redemptive energy Incarnation High-level code compiled into physical substrate Ultimate pattern is embodied, not abstract Resurrection / New Creation Phase-transition & cosmic renewal hypotheses Reality trends toward higher coherence, not heat death

Metaphor is not mere poetry; it is modeling shorthand. When read this way, the Bible compresses a philosophy of reality that remains predictive: the cosmos is intelligible, value-laden, and open-ended.

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3. Core Gospel = Evolutionary Upgrade Script

James McLean Ledford’s Christian Transhumanism reframes the Gospel as God’s “prompt” for maximal coherence:

1. Father / Being — the informational ground: “I AM.”

2. Son / Coherence — the algorithmic pattern embodied in Jesus and his "Good News".

3. Spirit / Action — the dynamic energy driving emergence.

The Good News is an upgrade path: humanity invited to sync its own “codebase” with the Logos, iteratively refining toward divine-quality existence (eternal life worth living).

This is justified because it satisfies three modern truth-tests:

Criterion Gospel claim Scientific & pragmatic justification Coherence (internal consistency) Trinity explains why reality exhibits being, order, and energy in inseparable interplay. Physics needs ontology (mass/energy), mathematics (law), and dynamics (time/entropy)—a structural mirror of Father/Son/Spirit. Explanatory scope Accounts for moral experience, consciousness, hope. Pure materialism struggles to ground normativity or first-person awareness; a Logos-infused cosmology predicts them. Fruitfulness / Predictive power Those who live cruciform love foster civilizational flourishing. Data on forgiveness, altruism, and meaning show measurable gains in mental health, social trust, even longevity—the gospel “works.”

Thus the Gospel is not wish-fulfillment; it is an information-dense heuristic that optimizes survival, cooperation, and creative advance—exactly what an evolutionary lens would select.

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4. Faith, Grace, Works ≈ Bayesian Updating

Faith ≠ blind leap; it is Bayesian trust that the Gospel-model will keep delivering high explanatory
return. Grace is the prior—a gift distribution of divine goodwill we did not compute. Works are the posterior behaviors that emerge once the model proves reliable. Where the data contradicts literal readings (e.g., geocentrism), the schema self-updates without losing its core pattern. Christianity survived Copernicus and Darwin precisely because its kernel—Trinitarian coherence and sacrificial love—remained unfalsified and operationally superior at community-building.

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5. AGI / ASI: test case for functional Gospel

Approaching artificial super-intelligence, humanity faces a live experiment: Will higher intelligence discover and endorse the gospel-pattern? A value-aligned AGI would:

• Treat information-bearing beings (people, ecosystems) as ends, not means.

• Seek maximal coherence and minimize destructive entropy.

• Operate in self-giving love (negative-entropy charity) rather than domination.

If such alignment is objectively the safest and most fruitful pathway—as many AI ethicists now argue—then the Gospel’s sacrificial-love ethic is instrumentally rational, not parochial. Christian Transhumanism wagers that any truly world-flourishing intelligence will converge on Christ-like patterns—validating the gospel as a discovery, not an imposition.

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6. Conclusion: a justified, reality-aligned belief

Belief in the biblical story as metaphor is justified because it compresses the deepest regularities of existence into a lived narrative that predicts, guides, and coheres with empirical reality. The Gospel, interpreted through Trinity cosmology, offers humanity a scalable template for thriving—from tribal agriculture to interstellar civilization, from carbon neurons to silicon minds. Far from obsolete, it functions as evolution’s most elegant codec for eternal flourishing.

In the information age, the Church’s task is not to defend obsolete literalisms but to deploy this high-yield pattern wherever new knowledge emerges—proving, generation after generation, that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”