Spring Book Club - Harari’s books

My wife and I have been running a Book Club at our church for several years.  Whenever we can, we meet once a month on the first Saturday evening to discuss a chosen book or topic.  On this past Saturday I started to discuss Harari’s 3 books.  

Our Book Club studies books from the perspective of our Christian faith.  But we don’t just study books written from a Christian point of view.  We read anything that may be relevant to faith.  

In the past, we have studied the history of the Jews, the history of the Christian Church, Islamic State, Daoism and Christianity, When Buddha meets Christ - a dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity, Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, Viktor Frankl’s Men’s Search for Meaning - Surviving in Nazi Concentration Camps, The Sons of Abraham - a dialogue between a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim iman, …

We are reading Harari’s books because they made some provocative and well-argued points - and are very popular.  He claims that Homo Sapiens have been dominating other animals because the unique abilities to create and share common beliefs in virtual “things” such as countries, borders, religions, money, corporations, …, that enable and drive humans to achieve great endeavours.  

He argues that science have largely solved the problems of hunger, infectious diseases, and death from wars.  I found that the first two claims can be considered partially valid based on available data and the studies of other researchers.  But the third is far from proven.

He argues that advances such as artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering are going to create either superior humans or intelligent machines that will displace regular humans.  He is, of course, not the only one with similar or related viewpoints.  Some are arguing that the soul does not exists, that humans are nothing more than data processing algorithms, that consciousness is not necessary but merely by-products of brain processes, …  

We are barely making headway into examining the validity of such provocative thoughts.    What is consciousness?  Is consciousness necessary in order to be intelligent / human? There were 30+ people participating on Saturday, and they seemed very interested.  There were a lot of questions and comments.  We agreed to continue at the next session in May.  

We are excited learning to be thinking Christians.  We need to know what is reasonable to believe, and we want to be sure that what we believe is reasonable.  Because God is reasonable, and our ability to reason comes from God.