OPINION:
Oxford University researchers have devised what they say is a new artificial intelligence program that will help predict and possibly prevent religious violence around the world.
It’s based on psychological programming that starts with the premise that all people are naturally peaceful.
And that’s where the software goes wrong.
That’s where it’s doomed to fail.
The premise itself — the idea that “people are a peaceful species by nature,” as the BBC puts it — is false. Can you say original sin?
As Psalm 51:5 states, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” Genesis 8:21 underscores this truth, that “man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Jeremiah 17:9 notes “the heart is deceitful above all things.” Psalm 58:3 speaks of “the wicked” being “estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies.”
Evil exists. That’s how it is. That’s life, that’s how it goes. Failing to recognize that simple truth and pretending that all people, in all ways, in all walks, simply want the same good things for themselves and their families does not change the fact that not all people want the same good things for themselves and their families.
But this is the psychological base from which this A.I. springs — the notion that humans, no matter their cultures, geographies and religious beliefs, are all the same, driven by the same desires. It also elevates psychology to a curious state of importance.
“To use A.I. to study religion or culture,” said researcher Justin Lane, in the BBC, “we have to look at modeling human psychology because psychology is the foundation for religion and culture. The root causes of things like religious violence rest in how our minds process the information that our world presents.”
Psychology is the foundation for religion?
Hardly. At the very least, the major religions might instead say the Bible, the Old Testament, the Koran and so forth are the foundations — that the foundations are based on the printed words contained in the various holy books and papers. More to truth, though, it’s God and His teachings that are the foundations — and therein lies the problem with this research.
Fact is, not all religions teach similarly. Not all religions are based on the same belief — or the same true God — or the same driving motivations and forces in life. This A.I. program not only fails to recognize that truth, but actually shapes its premises from the exact opposite.
Researchers examined the decades-long Northern Ireland Troubles that claimed 3,500 victims and the three-day Gujurat riots in India in 2002 that left 2,000 or so dead, and concluded, somewhat “No duh”-like, that religious violence comes after one group of believers feels their sacred values have become subjected to too-frequent of challenge and attack by another group of believers, and that these feeling and perceptions lead to pushback of a more physical nature. OK; that’s commonsense enough.
“Religious violence is not our default behavior,” said Lane, explaining that violence among religious groups actually only occurs in about 20 percent of the cases where group tensions exist. “In fact, it is pretty rare.”
OK again; seems a bit tough to measure in any kind of quantifiable way — but OK.
It’s the final takeaway that falls flat.
Lane said: “We might be able to trick our psychology into accepting others as part of our group when we’d otherwise be triggered toward more primal fears.”
Come again?
Try selling that psychological trick to say, an “allahu akbar”-shouting Muslim who believes his prophet wants him to slay infidels — defined as anyone outside the Muslim faith — and see where that leads in terms of everybody going along to get along. Let’s at least give a look at the elephant in the room here: Not all religions are equal on ye olde moral scale.
Some, for instance, call for beheadings for nonbelievers and hand-choppings for thieves; others, for sharing of the Gospel and forgiveness. These are not potato-potahtoe moments that can be simply whisked away by psychological retraining — or, by artificially intelligent-fueled programs that pretend all humans come at life from the same peaceful, prosperity-desiring, family-raising viewpoints and can therefore be machine-manufactured moved into embracing calmer religious cultures.
It’d be great if putting a stop to the world’s religious wars were as simple and quick as flicking on an A.I. program. But the problem of religious animosity is not psychology; the challenge is not solvable my machinery. Religious wars are born of good versus evil, of God and of Satan, of truths versus deceptions — not psychology and technology.
Deceiving ourselves will not solve the problem.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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