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Showing posts from January, 2021

When Civility Fails: A Pastor’s Response to Violence, Rage, and the Hard Work of Truth

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  by Bart L. Denny, Ph.D. Introduction — Why I must speak I have been reflecting on recent events in our nation and wrestling with how best to speak into them. As a follower of Jesus Christ and as a pastor, I believe my calling is to shed more light than heat in times of turmoil, and to offer the seasoning of grace in a culture that often tastes bitter. This will not be an exercise in soft-peddling. It will be frank, pastoral, and, where necessary, unflinching. Somewhere, this post will fail to address a consideration that it might have spoken to. I own it, saying in my defense only that space prevents my discussing everything that might be said on a subject and my views on it. Yet undoubtedly, this will cover more ground than most newspaper op-ed articles. Some readers may focus on one thing I say in the post without taking the entirety of what I said here in context. I pray you won't. But I resign myself to the likelihood some will. What I saw this past week I saw a young...

Pastoral Leadership and an Ethic of Artificial Human Intelligence Enhancement

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A paper from a class: Ethics in Christian Ministry Leadership and Education (CLED 815), Liberty University, Rawlings School of Divinity by Bart L. Denny, Th.M. December 14, 2020 You might find this a strange article, but I believe pastoral leaders will soon have to deal with the possibilities explored here not as science fiction, but as a medical reality our people are considering. Cybernetics—the melding of electronic and computer systems with the human nervous system—seems to hold the genuine possibility of healing diseases with a neurological basis.   However, many futurists dream of far more than the restoration of normal functioning; they see a human race on the cusp of forcing its own “evolution,” with the melding of the human mind and artificially intelligent computer systems. The desired result is a cybernetic transhuman, with intelligence far beyond normal human cognition and perhaps even the ability to attain immortality. Such an eventuality smacks of humanity’s desire to...