The Moloch Machine: Silicon Valley's Decentralized Death Cult
By Brad Ward, Director, Armor of Truth
The Moloch Machine
The 1927 Fritz Lang film Metropolis presents a dystopian future where society is starkly divided. A wealthy elite class lives in opulence and ease while the masses have been reduced to cogs in a great machine that maintains the establishment. It is a cautionary tale depicting the inevitable horrors of pragmatic efficiency when technology is treated as a means to an end and mankind a resource to be managed.
VIDEO: Metropolis (1927)
The monstrous Moloch machine serves as a powerful symbol of dehumanization as the workers are sacrificed to the system they serve, echoing the biblical image of Moloch, an ancient deity to which the people sacrificed their children, representing the darkest aspects of idolatry and moral decay.
The Moloch Machine also symbolizes the idolatry of technological determinism, a worldview embodied by Silicon Valley technocrats who assume technology as the primary factor of human progress and believe all technological progress is necessarily good and will only benefit society. Men like Mark Zuckerberg, Yuval Noah Harari, and Marc Andreessen prophesy a future where scientific advancement will liberate mankind from all human limitations, solve all global crises, and man will finally be “as God.”
What is Techno-Optimism? A new religion | Credit: Percy
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto
Techno-optimists, the Futurists of the 21st Century, presuppose a universally accepted definition of well-being and progress that depends upon more technology. Aloof to the potential for technology to erode social cohesion and undermine the (true) common good, they also fail to acknowledge the spiritual dimension of human existence, neglecting the true source of human agency, dignity, and purpose—a type of efficiency that reduces humanity and the common good to material and utilitarian metrics.
Truly, Silicon Valley technocrats promote and live out the tenets of a new religious movement. Demonstrating a radical rejection of history and tradition, their gospel is pragmatic efficiency, what Jaques Ellul called Technique: optimization and efficiency — ensuring outcomes — the mechanization of life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said of this worldview (Watkin, 2022. p. 187),
“The individual is understood only in terms of usefulness to the whole, and the community only in terms of its use to an all-controlling institution, organization, or idea.” (Ibid. p.187)
The overarching ethic is maximization. You do what you must to get what you want. Everything is to be exploited, maximized, and monetized. According to the scientific-technological elite, Ellul said,
“Efficiency is a fact and justice a slogan.” (Ibid. p.189)
This “technical attitude” has engineered most of the world’s major societies, enslaving humanity to efficiency, rationality, and the pragmatic vision of the common good. Looking around our world today, we see in full what Jaques Ellul saw in part: that, for most, technology is now what “gives meaning and value to life.” (Ibid. p.189)
In the Fall of 2023, Silicon Valley Technocrat and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen channeled the technocrats' newest sacred text, The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, proclaiming,
there is “no material problem that cannot be solved with more technology.” (Andreessen, 2023)
Always advancing and always accelerating, Andreessen writes,
“We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity… We believe in adventure. Undertaking the Hero's Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community… We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.” (Ibid.)
Decentralized: The Shape of Tyranny to Come
The convergence of artificial intelligence, blockchain, and virtual reality has engendered a society increasingly comfortable with digital identities, relegating the physical and spiritual aspects of human existence to secondary concerns. While offering unprecedented connectivity, the digitization of identity risks reducing individuals to mere data points in a global network, stripping them of their God-given uniqueness and dignity.
The gamification of societal interactions transforms complex human experiences into quantifiable, manageable tasks and rewards, coercing a lifestyle where efficiency and productivity are prioritized over depth and meaning. This shift towards seeing life as a game to be won, with humans as players or pawns, reflects humanity's deeper desire, expressed in the Fall (Genesis 3:5), to assert control over chaos and uncertainty.
Techno-optimism is a worldview tantamount to the ambition of the Babelites' who sought to make a name for themselves through technology (Genesis 11:4) — a collective arrogance that seeks to transcend God's design for humanity.
The biblical cautionary account of The Tower of Babel illustrates the consequences of human pride, unbridled progress, and the folly of believing that technological or societal advancements can replace divine sovereignty. Just as God confused the languages and scattered the people to prevent the completion of the Tower of Babel, so too might the pursuit of a decentralized new world order lead to division and confusion rather than the unity and progress its advocates envision.
Thirty-five years after Fritz Lang’s Moloch machine and 37 years before the advent of Google, President Dwight Eisenhower advised Americans to wield our potential for ingenuity with great care due to the inevitably profound human cost of unchecked technological progress. Eisenhower said that while we must honor and encourage “scientific research and discovery,” we must also,
“be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” (Eisenhower, 1961)
The president reminded everyone that it would be our vigilant duty to steward all our great gifts,
“new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.” (Ibid. Emphasis mine: there is an ultimate standard to which we are all bound.)
Science and technology are gifts from God and among our greatest tools for securing peace and true well-being. But through spiritual corruption, those tools can be used as weapons against us even in the name of humanity, and the common good, where society sacrifices human dignity and life at the altar of rationalism, efficiency, and progress. God warns His people against precisely this kind of idolatry in The First Commandment and warns against pursuing wealth at the expense of moral values in Matthew 6:24, challenging believers to consider where their ultimate loyalties lie.
Our ability to create beautiful art, life-saving tools, and soul-enriching technology reflects the Imago Dei, the image of God within every human being (Genesis 1:26-27). But the fact of our finiteness and our fallibility makes exploitation and injustice a constant threat (Genesis 3), a stark reminder that our innovations must be guided by ethical stewardship.
The Utopian edict of more technology, whatever the cost, is demonstrably fallacious. As technology has grown in complexity and power, decreased in cost, and become so widely available to almost ubiquity, the state of our world has, at the same time, devolved into more frequent and severe societal divisions and cultural tensions, demonstrating unambiguously that scientific and technological marvels alone cannot heal human brokenness.
In Defense of The Nation State
The nation-state, in its ideal form, serves as a testament to humanity's diversity, offering a framework within which cultural, linguistic, and spiritual identities can flourish under the sovereignty of God's providential design.
Disillusionment with nation-states and centralized authority has led many well-meaning authors and activists to promote decentralized systems as the antidote to the corruption and inefficiency plaguing traditional nation-states. They argue that decentralized governance, distributed across networks rather than concentrated in singular entities, will make greater equity, freedom, and efficiency possible.
These issues are far more complex than activists and libertarian bloggers generally describe. Under God’s command, we are called to be good stewards of His common grace gifts. Knowing that diverse nations are God’s providential design for the good of humanity, we must critically assess decentralization as a threat and a possible repeat of the ancient folly of Babel: prioritizing unity over diversity and human ambition over divine ordinance.
Proponents of decentralization generally underestimate the value of diversity, community, and sovereignty that nation-states provide. The urge to overcorrect risks vaulting humanity from one ditch to the other, from a representative government with a name and address to a faceless, unelected, unaccountable, trans-centralized power structure that spans the globe. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Far from being an outdated or oppressive construct, the concept of the nation-state aligns with the biblical understanding of human society. Scripture affirms the diversity of nations and languages as part of God's providential design (Acts 17:26-27), which promotes a rich tapestry of cultures and communities within the framework of His sovereign will.
Nations serve as a context for developing cultural identities, legal systems, and moral values that reflect the complexity and diversity of the human experience. The tension between rival nations has also motivated technological advancement, greatly benefiting humankind.
Philosophically, the nation-state embodies the principles of subsidiarity and sovereignty, ensuring that governance remains close to the people it serves and respects the unique traditions and values of different communities, fostering a sense of belonging and responsibility among citizens, encouraging stewardship of local resources and accountability to one's neighbors.
Decentralization discounts and dilutes these protective and corrective traditions of community and accountability, placing control not in the hands of the people but in the systems that coordinate life. This is hardly DE-centralized, as history has shown that a devil is always lurking in the details, a dictator lurking in the code.
The biblical narrative teaches us that progress toward that which is true, good, and beautiful does not come from erasing the boundaries that define us but embracing them within the context of the higher-order design and purpose established by God. Thus, the call for humanity is not to dissolve the nation-state in pursuit of a borderless digital identity but to reaffirm and celebrate the rich tapestry of national identities as a gift from God.
That said, it is self-evident that nation-states are not immune from corruption. Conservative estimates record that communist regimes in the 20th century were directly responsible for over 100 million deaths. Dictators in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, North Korea, Africa, and Eastern Europe murdered their own citizens through executions, man-made famines, labor camps, forced relocations, and forced Collectivism. However, the source of the corruption is not the system but the heart of those running it.
Mao Zedong didn’t brutally dispatch 45 million of his own people because he was a Communist, like Stalin, Pol Pot, and the rest; they were philosophical atheists committed to the principles of pragmatic efficiency, the premier of which is Collectivism, which prioritizes the group, community, or society over the individual under the auspices of Utopia. This system is very similar to the so-called Web of Trust proposed by Techno-Optimists, where governance is a “decentralized” system of universal policy by statistics — pragmatic and efficient. Rather than an argument against the nation-state, this bloody era of world history argues for liberal democracy, nation-states that honor the inherent dignity of all men and women, emphasizing the moral worth of the individual and the importance of individual rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to private property.
Defending the nation-state does not mean endorsing the imperfections and injustices that can exist within it but instead working towards its redemption and alignment with Kingdom values of justice, peace, and love. Common grace gifts of God that all people can enjoy when God’s design is honored.
While there is no lasting reunion, unity, healing of division, or redemption from wrath to be found anywhere within creation, the creation does testify, generally, of the Creator. That testimony leads one to the Word, in which the Holy Spirit has explicitly testified that the root of our division is sin. The only redemption and peace to be found in the universe is the redemption and peace God has made available through Christ Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:13-16).
The Future Need Not Be Dystopian
If we harness the power of the universe to create technology for any other reason, it is all vanity, striving at the wind (Ecclesiastes 1:12-18), a fool’s errand. But when we harness the power of nature and direct it into technologies for the glory of Him, who made and “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3), we labor for the true common good. If that is our purpose, then our technology and science will transcend material prosperity; whatever we make and do in His name and for His glory will reverberate throughout eternity; the results won’t be pragmatic efficiency; the results will be transcendent permanency.
“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.” (Hebrews 1:10-12)
As we stand together at the crossroads of history, facing many possibilities, we are reminded of the timeless truth that God's designs are for our good and His glory. As a divine institution, the nation-state offers a framework for justice, order, and human flourishing amidst the challenges of a world corrupted by sin. By grounding our understanding of society, governance, and identity in biblical principles, we can navigate the future with wisdom, ensuring that we remain firmly rooted in the divine order that has guided humanity from the beginning.
Let us, therefore, embrace the nation-state not as an end in itself but as a means through which we can fulfill God's command to steward the earth, love our neighbors, and pursue justice, recognizing the diversity of God's creation and the potential for reflecting His glory in every corner of the earth.
The future need not be a dystopia. We can foster genuine community and form technologies that bridge societal divides and heal human brokenness by leading lost sheep back to their Shepherd — lost and broken children back to their Father.
Rather than a message of personal autonomy and efficiency for the sake of progress that undermines the common good and human dignity by reducing individuals to cogs in the Moloch machine, we know that technology is not the ultimate answer but a temporal tool and that our stewardship can only be ethical when it honors and magnifies the will and design of the God who created us, sustains us, and redeems us.
"And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ." (Colossians 3:23-24) (NKJV)
Armor of Truth LIVE is written & produced by Brad & Summer
Sources and Links:
Andreessen, M. (2023, October 17). The Techno-Optimist Manifesto. Andreessen Horowitz. Retrieved March 23, 2024, from https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961) | National Archives. (1961, January 17). National Archives. Retrieved March 23, 2024, from https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address
Watkin, C. (2022). Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture. Zondervan Academic.
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