Thank God it’s Friday RedState!  Here’s hoping that your weekend includes some rest and relaxation.  Like tomatoes from my home garden, here are a few offerings at the Water Cooler from my home to yours.  Take as many as you like, and remember, the Water Cooler is always an Open Thread!

Don’t Use This to Justify that Weird Behavior You’ve Been Contemplating

This is what he says:

“I have had quite a few accidents”, Ludwin said, recalling he once ended up in a London hospital’s intensive care unit for three days following an overdose.

“It’s a very very dangerous thing to do, I don’t encourage people to do it”.

This  is what he does:

Over the years Ludwin has injected the venom of some of the world’s most dangerous snakes, including the black mamba and cobras.

Exposed on Yahoo, Steve Ludwin has spent almost 30 years doing this.  He claims that it has strengthened his immune system to the degree that he has not had a cold in 15 years.

Now scientists are hoping to develop an lower-cost, human-based antivenin based on the antibodies in his system.  Just don’t accidentally isolate whatever made him do that and put it in anyone else.

Which Creator do you Trust More?

Exhibit A – The Creator.  He is omniscient, and has a plan that he can see clear through to the end of Earth as we know it, and beyond into eternity.  In all of that, God saw creation of light/dark; waters/land; vegetation; the heavens with sun, moon, stars; and all of the creatures on the earth, in the waters, and in the sky – all of these he saw as “good”.  When he created mankind and added them to the creation is when the bible uses the superlative – this is “very good”.  Look here in Genesis 1:1-31; culminating in 1:31:

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

This God did not simply create “mankind” and move on.  This God imagined and fashioned each and every one of us uniquely.  You are a unique and intentional creation that God sees as “very good”, made in his image.  He made each of us while knowing exactly how every piece in us and around us fits together* – including the ones we will NEVER understand, no matter how incredibly smart we or our artificially intelligent minions ever get.  Psalm 139:13-16:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Exhibit B – a “rando”.

We, being made in the image of The Creator, like to create.  We also have an inherent rebellious streak^.  We don’t think we need to consult the one who knows how everything works when we embark on our grandiose creation plans.  Here’s a good illustration.  Contrast this picture back to exhibit A:

“CRISPR is this amazing technology because CRISPR allows you to directly target any sequence in somebody’s genome, in their genes, that you want and make whatever change you want,” according to Josiah.

The article is worth the time.  Apparently any yahoo can dive into editing DNA.  What could go wrong?

In my lifetime, we went from “The Bomb” to “Weapons of Mass Destruction” to a place where at least three times this week I find us imagining so much worse.  AI passing a singularity whence it no longer needs or wants us.  A rogue programmer taking us all out.  The naive Biohacker editing us or an essential part of our ecosystem out of the equation.  The problem is not the GUN, the BOMB, the ROBOTS, the CODE, or CRISPR.  The problem is not outside us, it is in us.  It is when we choose to use the beautiful freewill that God has given us without his guidance.  Whether in anger, hubris, or ignorance we create and fan the sparks of pain and destruction.

I will put my faith in The Creator, not the rando.

* Importantly, but beyond the scope of this article, as a further complication to predict the operation of this clock – God gave us freewill!  This is the beautiful and terrible ability that on the downside allows us to intentionally harm others, creating all manner of wreckage that people mistakenly then blame God for.  God doesn’t do these things – people with freewill do these things.

^ Otherwise and more formally known as “original sin”