What is the singularity?

Futurists predict that as technology improves, particularly nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, there will ultimately be a seamless merger of man and machine. Not in the sense of cyborgs with whirring gears and sparking cables, but in a more indistinguishable sense of embedding nano-robots in the human body. They call it The Singularity. This singularity is supposed to usher in an unending era of super intelligence, and undying bodies. It will create humans who can access all knowledge in their own mind and can keep their own bodies alive indefinitely. In reality, these are false, and poorly disguised attempts to offer man omniscience and eternal life.

To reiterate, the two distinguishing features of The Singularity are limitless knowledge and an endless life. Interestingly, when correctly understood and rightly pursued, these are the ultimate destination of the Christian race.

Early hints

Singularity, the true singularity, is not a new idea that man has discovered, I find the first hint at it in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” –  Genesis 3:1-5

We see here the two themes of knowledge and mortality. Satan here for the first time offers man limitless knowledge: “your eyes will be opened”, he promised Eve. For some reason, this desire to know lured man into the arms of mortality.

Importantly, God would not countenance a situation where man in his fallen state would live an endless life. Modern man thinks that we can improve culture and society to the point where we achieve complete peace and prosperity, but that’s fool’s gold. God, knowing full well that we will only produce cycles of disaster until we wipe out our species, decided to prevent the possibility of endless life for fallen man.

Importantly, God would not countenance a situation where man in his fallen state would live an endless life. Modern man thinks that we can improve culture and society to the point where we achieve complete peace and prosperity, but that’s fool’s gold.

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. – Genesis 3:22-23

Why is the singularity so appealing?

Why do we have a compelling desire to know all things and live endlessly? All through human history, the quest for enlightenment and immortality – to know all things and all pleasures, and to know them forever – have been key drivers of how society has evolved.

At Babel for instance, the people said, “let us build a tower that reaches to heaven and make a name for ourselves.” Having seen that man could as yet not achieve the endless life, they sought the proxy: an endless memorial.

Man instinctively thinks himself to be too valuable to be a passing shadow. For the man who believes in evolution, he considers this to be the evolutionary instinct: the desire to perpetuate. For the Christian man however, he rightly understands it to be that longing for home where life never ends.

This instinct is not only man’s, for as we read in the book of Romans:

“We know that the whole creation [of irrational creatures] has been moaning together in the pains of labour until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves too, who have and enjoy the firstfruits of the Holy Spirit [a foretaste of the blissful things to come] groan inwardly as we wait for the redemption of our bodies [from sensuality and the grave, which will reveal] our adoption (our manifestation as God’s sons).” – Romans 8:22-23

Similarly, the instinct to believe that there is more to our existence than this mortal life continues to dog us however strenuously we may try to run away from it.

The reason we care about the singularity and have pursued it all through human history is because God created us to. Just as we have physiological instincts and desires, we have desires that are emotional and spiritual. Now, a man may choose to abstain from food for a while, but the desire remains. Similarly, the instinct to believe that there is more to our existence than this mortal life continues to dog us however strenuously we may try to run away from it.

The true singularity

In a piteous reversal, secular man is strenuously pursuing a false singularity: the merger of man and machine (man’s creation). Ironically, even in this error, we simply reflect God who also pursues a singularity with his creation. The true singularity that we ought to pursue (although it is God who ultimately does the pursuit by working in us both to will and do of his good pleasure) is the merger of man and his maker.

The true singularity that we ought to pursue (although it is God who ultimately does the pursuit by working in us both to will and do of his good pleasure) is the merger of man and his maker.

The true singularity is the merger of man and his maker!

The Christian life is the foretaste of this. We have now in a form eternal life and by the presence of the Holy Spirit, access to all knowledge. The bible speaks in many places of this reality.

Peter wrote for instance that:

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” – 2 Peter 1:3-4

Essentially, he means that by knowing God, we come to share his divine nature, which includes omniscience and immortality. God does not offer us this as an afterthought. From the very foundations of creation, God’s plan has always been this merger of man with his maker – the marriage of the Son to his Church.

 Will man succeed?

Man can but won’t!

Man can succeed in merging with machine; we already have putative examples of this, and as God said at Babel “… Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do: and now nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do” (Genesis 11:6).

But just as man was thwarted in Babel because he chose the wrong route to singularity and just as Adam was barred from the garden “lest he take of the fruit of the tree of life and live forever,” God will thwart every attempt by man to live forever in a fallen state.

There is a way to the true singularity. His name is Jesus. Here is what he said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

There are no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’. You might want to come at Him with intellectual sounding arguments like Nicodemus, but His answer will be just as unequivocal – “you must be born again”.

The first installment of true singularity happens when we become born again and the final installment will take place at rapture, for it is written:

“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” – 1 Corinthians 15: 50-53

By the way, do you have any idea where the false singularity leads?