Just when I thought I heard it all . . .
“Sex with robots” . . . Yes, you read that correctly. It is not a misprint. In her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, author Sherry Turkle talks about how “relationships with robots are ramping up” while “relationships with people are ramping down.”
“Relationships with robots are not as risky.” Though robots are less moody and more predictable than women and though robots are less distracted and more present than men, are we sure we humans are ready for such a trade-off?
Turkle speaks of the “robotic moment” as the time when we humans find ourselves ready to make “our robots not only pets, but potential friends, confidants, and even romantic partners.” Believe it or not, there are some who have gone as far as the “proposal and defense of marriage to robots.”
David Levy, a British-born entrepreneur and computer scientist, sees robots as performing a therapeutic role on humans in the future and being able to to substitute where people fail. Levy argues that robots will teach us to be better friends and lovers because we will be able to practice on them. No cheating. No heartbreak. “The machine will be preferable for any number of reasons—to what we currently experience in the sometimes messy, often frustrating, and always complex world of people.”
What do I make of all this talk? Is it even plausible? As I peer into the future, I think Turkle is right. It’s not only possible; it’s highly probable.
This is where it will become imperative that we have a theology of robots. Does all this sound too far-fetched, too out-there? I don’t think so. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. I havn’t fallen out of of my rocker, yet. I never thought our world would change as fast as it did in 2020, but along came Covid-19, political overreach into every aspect of society, and a soft totalitarianism that is steadily rising in our dare I say, democratic nation (for more information, read my last post). Thus, sex with robots may not be as distant as you might think.
I will let someone else write the theology and ethics handbook on how to view and relate to robots. For now, all I will say is that humans are made in the imago dei and robots are not. We may soon make robots into our image, but that does not change the written Word. In the future, man may own many robots, but I see no biblical basis for marrying them or . . . his robots.