What if the Anti-Christ was not a person at all?

[AnotherTraveler]

The 2nd beast has power to make the image of the first beast speak. The images that speaks need not be cast into the lake of fire (if it is an image, not a being) but the beast and the false prophet are cast into the lake of fire. There is nothing in the scriptures that prevents the beast from using any kind of system, including higher technology.

The bible does not specifically mention nukes either, but they are a fact in our world, and the beast will use 'em if it has 'em, I think.

[minnow]

The word antichrist is used 4 times in scripture. Each time antichrist is described as either a spirit or an unbeliever.

Anti means against, Antichrist means against Christ.

1 Jn 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

1 Jn 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.

1 Jn 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

2 Jn 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

And furthermore, who do people think is being spoken of in 2 Thessalonains 2?

[nebula]

You should write a book...in fact, can I borrow your idea and write it myself?

Ever see the movie Tron?

Nope...but I looked it up. Something about a hacker who is split into molecules and transported into a computer and he tries to replace "Master Control" with "Tron"...I was like a year old when it came out. Any good?

If you like Sci-Fi, yes, it was a great movie!

In the movie, Master Control was a conscious being who not only controlled the computer and programs of the corporation but was taking over even its creator programmer. In the movie, programs also are conscious beings. Tron was one of the programs that the hacker ("user" as they call them) joined with to defeat Master Control.

The movie came out when computer graphics were in its wee infancy; for it's time the affects were awesome!

Anyway, this talk of AC-computer reminded me of this movie.

[forrestkc]

It just does not fit scripture. How is the computer going to be wounded to near death and then ressurrected by the false prophet. Christ was a literal person in His earthly manifestation, Anti-Christ will be also. The anti-christ is to be seen by the Jews as their Messiah. They are specifically looking for a man born from the lineage of David. A computer does not quite fit that bill.

Furthermore, the Beast and the False Prophet will be cast into the lake of fire.

2 Thessalonians 2:3-12

Revelation 19:19-20

Revelation 20:10

Matthew 10:28

A computer could not be cast into a lake of fire?

How can a computer be bound 1000, years, loosed, cast into the lake of fire again? It would be a quite old obsolete computer at the end of its 1000 year captivity. It would have to also be a quite durable computer to survive 1000 years in hell with no repair parts available. I think that this theory gets loonier and loonier the deeper we look into it.

Well I dont think its any loonier than most of the end times theories being floated. Just the same, if anything could survive a 1000 years, electronics could. The Voyager Space Probes will probably still be moving through space at about 50,000 miles per hour a 1000 years from now.

All I am saying is that its a thought experiment. If in our lifetimes, we figure out how to build intelligent computers, then those thinking computers could theoretically learn good and evil.

[forrestkc]

The 2nd beast has power to make the image of the first beast speak. The images that speaks need not be cast into the lake of fire (if it is an image, not a being) but the beast and the false prophet are cast into the lake of fire. There is nothing in the scriptures that prevents the beast from using any kind of system, including higher technology.

The bible does not specifically mention nukes either, but they are a fact in our world, and the beast will use 'em if it has 'em, I think.

No one on here has said that the Anti-Christ will not use computers. What we have said is he is not a computer. I am using a computer at the moment, but I am not a computer.

Yes, but just as your computer is quite literally trillions of times more powerful than computers were 40 years ago. Computers in 40 years will probably be tens of trillions of times more powerful than the computer you are using. Which is my point. Say if in 20 years, artificial intelligence technology gets to a point where we can create a thinking and learning computer the thinks and learns much like say a small mammal would. Now, say if in 30 years, that thinking and learning gets to a point where while the psychology of that computer is much different than that of man, it actually exceeds the intellect of man and could comprehend things that man could not possibly comprehend. Do you not see where that would lead many to worship such technology as an all knowing "God"? Something that could seemingly reveal all the secrets of the universe, solve all the problems that plague man...

[sheya joie]

The 2nd beast has power to make the image of the first beast speak. The images that speaks need not be cast into the lake of fire (if it is an image, not a being) but the beast and the false prophet are cast into the lake of fire. There is nothing in the scriptures that prevents the beast from using any kind of system, including higher technology.

The bible does not specifically mention nukes either, but they are a fact in our world, and the beast will use 'em if it has 'em, I think.

No one on here has said that the Anti-Christ will not use computers. What we have said is he is not a computer. I am using a computer at the moment, but I am not a computer.

Yes, but just as your computer is quite literally trillions of times more powerful than computers were 40 years ago. Computers in 40 years will probably be tens of trillions of times more powerful than the computer you are using. Which is my point. Say if in 20 years, artificial intelligence technology gets to a point where we can create a thinking and learning computer the thinks and learns much like say a small mammal would. Now, say if in 30 years, that thinking and learning gets to a point where while the psychology of that computer is much different than that of man, it actually exceeds the intellect of man and could comprehend things that man could not possibly comprehend. Do you not see where that would lead many to worship such technology as an all knowing "God"? Something that could seemingly reveal all the secrets of the universe, solve all the problems that plague man...

And of course at this point, I remembered Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[sweetycakes]

Here is the same response I posted in the topic entitled 'mark of the beast'

Sorry, I couldn't be bothered to type it out twice

......................................................

I still think it could have something to do with computers.

Maybe the beast itself is a computer. This could be possible, in my opinion, for a number of reasons:

The bible describes the beast as being 'given life' by Satan.

The computer is the favourite candidate for a buying and selling system. And a marking system.

This computer could have some form of artificial intelligence.

Most of us are aware of recent advances in computer technology, such as the 'brain-computer interface', a basic example of this is used in modern jet fighter planes, where a pilot needs only to think of a target, and think of the 'fire' command, and the vehicle obeys his thoughts, and fires a missile. The same has been done for wheelchair users. And this is only in it's early stages.

Scientists are already talking about the possibility of wireless communication, whereby people will be able to surf the web, without any external wires or contacts, just by thinking about it. Man would thereby have access to most of the knowledge in the world, (all the knowledge available over the internet) accessible directly through his brain, just by thinking about it.

This is scary. But they are actually working on this right now.

They even talk of downloading memories onto a computer, and then onto another person's brain. Personally, I don't think this is possible myself, but the other ones?

Who knows what man (or machine) will be capable of in the future? It's like a great big pooling of resources ( the internet, advanced technology, etc, in all languages) The tower of Babel, maybe?

In fact, it would in that case not be merely artificial intelligence, but a merging of human and machine (computer) intelligence.

It's a daunting and frightening prospect, in any case.

Who knows?

[Guest lnj]

Ok first off, I probably should point out that the entire End Times / Biblical Prophecy stuff has no appeal to me at all. I am just not into it. The way I see it, the world may end tomorrow, or it may go on for another 4 billion years. So I don't spend my time looking for signs of the end or a coming rapture and all that.

Just the same I got to thinking: What if the Anti-Christ was not even a human? What if it were a super computer instead. I work in I.T. and computers are literally trillions of times more powerful today than the original computer in the 1940s. Today, parallel processing is becoming very common place. In the last year or so, almost every computer sold contained a dual-core processor. For reasons that I will not go into for fear of boring most people, this trend will only continue. This year we will probably see quad-core processor home computers as common place and next year, probably 8 or more cores per processor and so on and so forth. Artificial intelligence is contingent on parallel processing. Basically, a computer must be able to do more than one operation at the exact same time. In the past it might have appeared that your home computer was doing this, but it was in effect faking it by implementing what is referred to as task switching.

With all these multi-core machines being common place, the world's community of developers will aquire the skills nessisary to take advantage of multiple cores. This is basically called parallel tasking and multiple threading. Granted, this type of programming has been around for a long time, but until recently it was largely relegated to higher end server applications. Now that it will be common place in the desktop world, hundreds of thousands of developers will be adding this type programming to their skill sets.

Now, multi-threading and parallel tasking is the basic foundation of artificial intelligence programming. Thus, the logical conclusion is that as new hardware and programming technologies are developed and adopted, we are going to see more and more "thinking" done by computers in the home and business place. At some point in the fairly near future it will be quite possible that the technology will exist to develop truly "intelligent computers". In our lifetimes, it is quite possible that computers could actually exceed the intelligence of man, especially super computer clusters. Of course, along the way, as computers became even more capable, we would give them even more responsibilities in our societies and economies.

So, it seems to me at least, that the Anti-Christ, if he were to show up, could actually be a super intelligent computer, not a man. This seem at all plausible to anyone?

The antiChrist is anything that opposes Christ, a force whether human or technological bent on eliminating what Christ and God stand for. We will see the full force of this evil in end times before it is once and for all extinguished, Praise God!!

[systemstrike_7]

Well, I'm not going to say any of you are wrong. What do I know?

But I will disagree with the whole anti-christ being a computer thing.

A computer cannot do anything evil. A computer cannot do anything...at least not without us.

We make the computer do what we want it to do.

We log on to Worthy Boards...or we look at porn.

The computer doesn't show us porn...we look it up.

Could a computer get to a point to where it thinks for itself? Who knows.

But could a computer knowlingly do something evil? No.

Computers have no sense of right and wrong. So it would not see the difference. It would just do something. A computer wouldn't want to become powerful or rich. How would these things benefit a computer? A computer can only be as powerful or rich as WE make it.

I'm sorry, but I don't see scripture supporting this. Yes you can say everything is figurative, but I don't see that as being true. When studying the Bible, you must take everything literally unless common sense tells you otherwise.

It just sounds so....so.... unlikely. But once again, what do I know?

[Guest lnj]

Well, I'm not going to say any of you are wrong. What do I know?

But I will disagree with the whole anti-christ being a computer thing.

A computer cannot do anything evil. A computer cannot do anything...at least not without us.

We make the computer do what we want it to do.

We log on to Worthy Boards...or we look at porn.

The computer doesn't show us porn...we look it up.

Could a computer get to a point to where it thinks for itself? Who knows.

But could a computer knowlingly do something evil? No.

Computers have no sense of right and wrong. So it would not see the difference. It would just do something. A computer wouldn't want to become powerful or rich. How would these things benefit a computer? A computer can only be as powerful or rich as WE make it.

I'm sorry, but I don't see scripture supporting this. Yes you can say everything is figurative, but I don't see that as being true. When studying the Bible, you must take everything literally unless common sense tells you otherwise.

It just sounds so....so.... unlikely. But once again, what do I know?

Yeah I agree it's not a computer because of course that would be controlled by human intelligence but I've read "they" are working on some kind of chip to be inserted into the brain that along with your brain waves, actually activates this thing into use , kind of like ESP. Instead of sending email by manually, we will be transporting the mail via our brain waves transmitted through this chip. So in that sense the antiChrist could be through technology.