The Last Sitcom

  • If the Medium Is the Message, What is the Message of AI?

    If the Medium Is the Message, What is the Message of AI?

    “The medium is the message.” These are the words of Marshall McLuhan, a pioneer in the field of media studies. They’re misunderstood almost as often as they’re quoted. If we want to know what a medium is “saying,” we must look at the way it alters every element of our lives. What would Marshall McLuhan…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • Is Artificial Intelligence A Digital Demiurge?

    Is Artificial Intelligence A Digital Demiurge?

    Some provocative thinkers have compared AI to the demiurge of Gnosticism. The demiurge is a kind of false god, whom many Gnostic scriptures describe as incompetent or malicious or both. In these texts, it is the demiurge who made this material world, a flawed realm subject to pain, decay, and death. While the analogy isn’t…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • The Gnostic view of Jesus

    The Gnostic view of Jesus

    What was the Gnostic view of Jesus? We might more appropriately discuss Gnostic “views.” The term “Gnosticism,” as I’ve written previously, can be applied to a diverse (and often contradictory) body of teachings and texts. Nonetheless, we can (cautiously) draw some general conclusions about so-called Gnostic Christianity. Christian orthodoxy sees Jesus as the Second Person…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • The Gnostic View of Adam and Eve

    The Gnostic View of Adam and Eve

    The Gnostic view of Adam and Eve is very different than what Christian orthodoxy holds. In traditional Christian teaching, our first parents were placed in paradise, and given the privilege of communing openly with God. If you were raised in church, you might have been told that when Eve ate the apple, this act initiated…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • The Gnostic View of God

    The Gnostic View of God

    Gnosticism radically reimagines the Abrahamic God, the creation he authored, and our relationship to both. Many Gnostic texts don’t see the God of Genesis as divine at all. He is a creature inhabiting our lower, material realm, often malicious or incompetent. The world he made is an abomination, and he inflicted a wound on the…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • What does “the medium is the message” mean? Marshall McLuhan Explained

    What does “the medium is the message” mean? Marshall McLuhan Explained

    “The medium is the message.” Marshall McLuhan’s words are as often repeated as they are misunderstood. He’s not talking about the power of an influential news program, a popular website, and so forth. No, what he’s saying is that media themselves—television, the internet, the printed word—speak to us and shape us far more profoundly than…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • The Tower of Babel: Genesis 11:1-9

    The Tower of Babel: Genesis 11:1-9

    What is the meaning of the story of the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11:1-9? It is such a strange tale, and so much happens in just a few verses. Is it historical? Is it an allegory designed to teach us to live in accordance with God’s laws? Maybe the Tower of Babel story…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • The Mock Human Sacrifice at CERN

    The Mock Human Sacrifice at CERN

    In 2016, a video of an mock human sacrifice at CERN went viral. It’s fake, but whoever made it wants you to think it’s real. A human sacrifice is shocking enough, but the fact that it took place at CERN, in front of a statue of the Hindu god Shiva, and that CERN employees were…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • Politics and the English Language By George Orwell

    Politics and the English Language By George Orwell

    “Politics and the English Language” is a warning from George Orwell about the political dangers of bad writing. It is as urgent now as the day it was written. George Orwell (1903-1950), born Eric Arthur Blair, was one of the foremost political writers of the 20th century. Most famous for his novels 1984 and Animal…

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    Jacob Michael King

  • The Apocryphon of John Explained: Yaldabaoth, Sophia, and The Gnostic Creation Myth

    The Apocryphon of John Explained: Yaldabaoth, Sophia, and The Gnostic Creation Myth

    The Secret Book of John, also known as The Apocryphon of John, is a second-century Gnostic text that claims to contain hidden teachings of Jesus about the creation of the world, the origin of evil, and the destiny of human souls. It is part of the Gnostic tradition, an aberrant form of Christianity condemned by…

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    Jacob Michael King

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