Imago Hominis Dei and the cosmetic singularity

May God forgive us ....again, and again.

I’m now getting adverts for A.I. companions. Humans are created in the Image of God: Imago Dei. A.I. and robotics are created by humanity which has now taken upon itself the right and responsibility to transform Creation in its own image, guiding evolution, and even the transformation and perfection of human nature itself. Pride and hubris clearly. We’ve been there with the Tower of Babel. Mythology and literature are replete with fables of what happens when it all inevitably goes wrong. We make monsters of our creations (Frankenstein; Hal) or of ourselves. Transhumanism is just an elaboration of the original sin which had Adam and Even ejected from paradise. The underlying sin is always the same. Humanity’s wanting to take the place of God. The difference is that with modernity, this aspiration is construed as a sign of maturity — as with Harari’s recent best seller Homo Deus. From the point of view of transhumanism, if people are now Gods, the A.I. robots are created in the image of men-who-thinks-they’re-God: Imago Hominis Dei.

Anyway, the warped algorithm that feeds me seems to think I'm interested in nubile robots — with implausible figures, shapely hips, generically beautiful faces and perfect cup-shaped breasts.

The generic nature of this ‘beauty’ is kind of funny. Brits have always been a little baffled by the selection of Hollywood beauties that reduces and reproduces all female beauty to a kind of generic symmetry. If you met such a girl on the Metro, you’d certainly be drawn to her. There is an evolutionary reason why we are drawn to facial and bodily symmetry — it’s a pretty good marker of health and evolutionary fitness. In our evolutionary past — Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness as the academics call it — we lived in small bands and came into contact with other groups only intermittently. The dating pool was small. The only ‘images’ were in the mind’s eye. Decisions had to be made quickly. And when boy met girl, they’d have just a short while to weigh each other up. Jennifer Lawrence or Brad Pitt symmetry versus Popeye-d ‘visual interest’ was a no-brainer.

But with plastic surgery and photoshop we now live in a world in which the digital images of women that present themselves to both men and women — thousands every day — are converging towards some strange cosmetic singularity. Everything is surface. Every aspect of what it is to be human is being broken down and separated into ingredients which can be modelled and reassembled. Our physical bodies become construed as modular — composed of bits that can be added, substituted, rebuilt, deleted. And the same approach is then used in relation to personality, soul and intelligence. We are simply the sum of parts that can be swapped out. This is what it means to be all surface; all parts; all details. There is nothing of the ‘whole’ left. This is really an attack on the soul.

Of course the re-making and re-presenting of real women was only the first stage. The laughably awful mass psychosis of transgenderism may seem like a passing fad. It may even seem like it is on the back foot. But the mantra of ‘trans women are women'!’ has done it’s job, dismantling the final linkages between language and material reality. The obvious next step in the abolition of humanity — because that is what it is — is coming down the pipeline right now, with all the early adopters seemingly in Japan and China (as an aside: What on earth is wrong with those societies?)

At the moment, in an ironic twist, most of the pornographic artifices doing the rounds on YouTube are not ‘real’ (which is to say, material) imitations. They are A.I. renditions of what the future of male sexual fantasy might be in ten years…or perhaps just two. Get your head around that. An A.I. virtual simulacrum of a material metal + plastic +AI simulacrum of a human being. The technical theological equation for this hall of mirrors must be something like Imago- [Imaginis-Hominis]—Imaginis Dei.

But the actual robots are definitely on the way — although I find it so difficult to imagine how anyone could ‘desire’ so to speak, this ‘biometric humanoid robot girlfriend.’ But then I guess there are those weirdos who have sex with their cars or get off on their fridges.

It all feels so inexorable. I imagine it was always thus — like Lot living along side the carnival of sin that was Sodom. Photography made porn possible; human nature made it a certainty. The Internet is to the reduction and objectification of God’s creation as urban living is to rats. They are always only a few feet away. And so it is easy to be pessimistic. I can’t see any future in which robot sex dolls and AI porn won’t dominate all of modern culture. But, on the other hand, as we are constantly told, modern civilization is on the verge of collapse — living on borrowed time, like Sodum.

I’m not a particularly virtuous person. I suppose, in a small way, I’m trying to insulate myself and my family from the worst excesses of Sodom — from the dull, bridle and blinkers of modernity and metaphysical materialism. Just because we must live in the City of Man — doesn’t mean that the City of God can’t grow in small corners of our lives. Some of the ‘hard choices’ implied are not so hard — more akin to declining a plate of cat vomit. With respect to A.I. companions, let alone A.I. sex robots — it has to be a hard pass. The language may be archaic, but they are obviously demonic. Nothing could be clearer. Human artifice passing itself as the image of God. These technologies should be scorned and shunned — made the object of shaming and a source of embarrassment. Using an A.I. companion should be as cool as wearing a mullet and leg warmers, or paying for premium content on Meghan Markel’s cooking podcast. In short, don’t be tempted — and use a long spoon in your interactions with those who are. This is about as big an F.U. to our Lord as is possible. Giving the bird to God must be about the most stupid thing one could do. Being created Imago Dei is to be given the gift of life from the well that never dries up. To summon up a technological demon our own image, Imago hominis — makes humanity itself into our own golden calf. We worship ourselves. We attempt to place ourselves at the centre of all being. The entire Old Testament is there to tell us what happens….and still we do it. God forgive us and give us the wisdom of self restraint.