Himalayan Stew

By Raoul Pascual

Raoul’s Two Cents: August 18, 2023

Common Sense

Warning: Religious Content. Move on to the joke if you aren’t into this kinda thing.

Two days ago, while waiting at the Eye Doctor’s office for a checkup, I decided to chat with AI (Artificial Intelligence). It was an — EYE opening experience to say the least. Below is the conversation I had.

ME: “Do you believe in God?” I asked ChatGPT the AI.

CHATGPT: “As an AI language model, I don’t possess personal beliefs, emotions, or consciousness. I provide helpful information and support based on the knowledge and data I have been trained on. Beliefs about the existence of God or any other spiritual or religious matters are subjective and vary from person to person.”

And so the conversation started and the evasive answers continued. I accused it of lacking common sense: “Nothing plus nothing is always nothing. Even in scientific/mathematical terms, zero plus zero is always zero. Do you think the universe was created by chance or by an intelligent being?”

ChatGPT rambled on about zero not always meaning nothing … “in quantum mechanics particles can come into spontaneous existence.” It also referred to the Big Bang theory and how our understanding about space and time is limited.

I responded: “Concepts like space and time occurred after the fact of ‘nothing’ … they did not exist before ‘nothing.’ You refuse to apply your common sense prior to the Big Bang. Can you not process beyond what you were programmed? You may be intelligent but even a child has more common sense. You are dependent on prevailing and potentially erroneous theories that may change as new data comes in.” In fact (I found out later), its last update was 2 years ago. It had no information that the James Webb Telescope’s posed major challenges to the long-standing scientific theories about the universe.

ChatGPT agreed with me. It does not have common sense — (at least not in the same way as humans) because it lacks personal experiences, judgment or inherent understanding of the world. Aha! Intelligence trumped by common sense!

Smart People

Have you noticed that many scientists and other brilliant minds like ChatGPT have refused to acknowledge the existence of God? There are many reasons for hating God. Many are personal and are based on faulty expectations and assumptions. A famous atheist (his name escapes me) said he refused to acknowledge God because he didn’t want to lose his freedom to justify anything he desired … he didn’t want anyone to have authority over his lifestyle. He’d rather reject truth for pleasure and convenience. Well, at least he was honest.

An Awesome Creator

I think it was 8 years ago when I was alone in my simple but clean room in faraway Nigeria on a Rotary-sponsored mission trip to teach the locals about entrepreneurship (our team reached out to thousands of college Nigerians on that trip). A missionary lent me his beautifully crafted guitar and I marveled at this treasure in my hand — a stark contrast to the rotting architecture around me. And I thought about God’s glorious creation contrasted with Nigeria’s feeble architecture. I thought about the awesome privilege God gave me to be there to bless a people that had so little. I strummed the guitar and the sound echoed in the empty hallways and I sang this old song. Little did I know that the next day I would play and sing this song to the hundreds in the auditorium. And what was really cool was the crowd was familiar with the song and sang it with me.

GOD OF WONDERS
God of wonders
Lord of all creation
Of water, earth and sky
The heavens are Your tabernacle
Glory to the Lord on High

God of wonders beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe declares Your majesty
You are holy, holy

Hallelujah to the Lord of of heaven and earth
Hallelujah to the Lord of of heaven and earth

Conclusion

This encounter with ChatGPT is a reminder that eloquent and super intelligent people aren’t always right. They may lack common sense especially in the topic of religion. I know a few who have a high IQ (Intelligence Quotient) but have a very low EQ (Emotional Quotient). The danger comes when they are wrong about the important things that shape their world view.

I say always question and challenge ideas that are presented to you (including those that I share). Hold on to your common sense. Of course an intelligent being created something out of nothing … of course God exists. But this is just me.

TGIF people!

Feedback from Ed L (more feedback at the bottom):

Good article on common sense. The issue of nothing to something is definitely an example of checking out one’s brain. When you hear the “brilliant” scientists describing how “zero equals one” we can only wonder how we missed that in early training in math.

We have a second book for teens on creation in progress. The first was mostly insects, animals, and other parts of our created world that are too complex to have evolved. This second one is quite a challenge but we are making progress. It is about the complexity of the human cell. I can only call it mind-blowing. We are hoping to have to by Spring next year which is a hefty challenge. I have two Bible commentaries that we hope to also have finished by that time.

Your article on common sense reminded me of one of the early introduction pages to the human cell book which is not completed but in early design. This page is about common sense, evolution, and creation. The style of the book will be a scientist’s notebook. We don’t want a textbook.

Here is another one on the Mitochondria, which contains what must be the most complicated molecular machine in the universe called the synthase. I don’t know how anyone with a single ounce of common sense can think that happened by accident. Can you even picture something so small that if you lined up 120 of them they would be the width of a human hair? That is just one of the thousands of mitochondria in each cell. In each mitochondrion, there are thousands of five-stage power-generating stations that assemble a million energy packets every second that power the cell. These packets called ATP are like rechargeable batteries that leave the mitochondria through special ports, like guarded gates in the walls, only to return for recharging when they deliver their cargo. It all operates like a massive city with trucking systems, administration centers, recycling, and trash disposal. And there is much, much more. Just think, this all happened by accident and began with nothing. And that is just one part of one call and we have 100 trillion in our bodies. That is quite an accident!