Joel Christensen, Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things (Yale University Press, 2025), 13.
One of the reasons I am interested in how ChatGPT and similar programs work is that it helps us explore the limits of the analogies provided by Natural Language Processing for the way language and narratives function in our embodied minds. Words on a page are nothing without someone to read them and create their meaning. The meaning is not intrinsic to the words themselves and readers or viewers create a meaning based on their own experience. When we read a ChatGPT composition, it has been crafted by an AI system created by human beings to predict human-like articulations, but we create the meaning through our own interpretation. Our embodied experience provides nuance to what we do with texts and what they do to us in turn.
The Amateur Exegete 
Hi Ben:
With all due respect, I might take a break from “Amateur Exegete” for the foreseeable future.
Stuff like the above excerpt on ChatGPT kind of serves as a painful reminder on the seemingly inevitable future: humans being mere slaves to a super artificial intelligence at the head of either a totalitarian government (e.g. China) or billionaires (e.g. U.S. Tech CEOs). And the irony will be that Christians (who prohibit worship of other deities or idolatry) will ultimately have been part of the process that led to the creation of this “God”.
The current administration is adamant about augmenting “our” A.I. capabilities to keep pace with China- no doubt to be used for Trump’s benefit and those of his cronies. It will put the finish touches on a real-life 1984.
Sadly, one benefit of the war in Iran possibly going nuclear is that if the doomsday scenario occurs, we’ll never be slaves to artificial intelligence.
On the other hand though, the other side of the isle has its share of problems (like teaching that certain people are born “oppressors” in a secular version of “original sin”). In their eyes, yeah you had no choice in being born the way you were, but you “inherited” the guilt of your ancestors.
That is the prelude to Communism which is just as bad as fascism.
You and your buddy Tim O’Neil should consider becoming agnostics rather than atheists: the list of horrible agnostics is fairly small compared to horrible atheists (e.g. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Tim O’Neil).
Thanks for providing another reason to feel depressed.
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I came back momentarily to apologize for the choice of words above and sounding harsh.
Often, with everything bad on the news lately (and wondering who will get replaced by A.I. today), it is difficult to be optimistic about events in general.
There’s also times where it seems that Christians use concessions on the part of non-believers only as ammunition for apologetics and to counter secularism.
I also think of how many books promoting Christianity or “cultural Christianity” (such as those featured on History for Atheists) have merely been used by the alt-right (or other politically active Christians) to promote their agenda (Holland’s Dominion is a favorite of certain conservatives).
And it gets tiring to hear of Christian or sympathetic outsiders online talking as if everything “good in the world” belongs to a single historical group and contributions from other civilizations (e.g. Greco-Roman and Egyptian) are “contaminations” that need to be removed.
Apologies once again and I might step away for a while.
Thanks,
J Source
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You’ve got nothing to apologize for! The world is a mess right now and I feel pretty much the same as you do. It all feels so hopeless. But we have no choice but to make a stand and at least do something!
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It really is disconcerting. You would think all those apocalyptic sci-fi movies would be a warning that we are on a knife’s edge that could spell the end of human kind. Instead, the tech bros see them as blueprints for the future.
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