Thursday, October 2, 2025

Part I

Brave New World, Part One: Scientists Have Developed Human Eggs From Skin Cells

We are living in an age of all kinds of scientific, technological challenges and I think many Christians think these will stay under the surface. They’re interesting headlines. I’m not going to have to worry about it, but there are issues right now in terms of assisted reproduction, assisted human reproduction, and we are really talking about science fiction becoming fact, and there are such massive worldview issues, especially for Christians here. We really need to pay attention. And I’ll tell you a signal.

Just yesterday, in the course of about six hours, there were two very different stories that broke in the mainstream media. One of them was broken by National Public Radio. Headline: “Scientists Create Human Eggs Via In Vitro Gametogenesis.” Okay. In vitro gametogenesis, we’ll talk about that. Let me just tell you what you’re really talking about here is that now you have people who are making human eggs out of skin cells. All right, hold that thought. 

Then we also have what appeared yesterday at the Washington Post. The headline: “Robots Are Learning to Make Human Babies. Twenty Have Already Been Born.”

Okay, the headline itself, robots are learning to make human babies, what in the world does that mean? Twenty have already been born? This is not clickbait. That’s what really should have your attention. You’re talking about National Public Radio, not the flashiest news source. You’re not talking about tabloid news here. You’re talking about very serious news “Scientists Create Human Eggs Via In Vitro Gametogenesis.” And by the way, the fact they can run a headline like that tells you they’re not trying to be really flashy because if you were trying to be flashy to the general public, you wouldn’t use the word gametogenesis. All right, the second one is the Washington Post.

All right, perhaps not quite so segmented as NPR, but still very liberal daily newspaper, very well-known in the nation’s capital, the most influential newspaper, robot are learning to make human babies. The next sentence in the headline, 20 have already been born. All right, so one of the problems is that in our current context of so much worldview confusion, it is very difficult to understand what is science fiction and what is fact. And that’s because for one thing, you have technological developments coming so quickly, it’s very hard to know exactly where we stand at any given moment for that matter in any given month or any given year.

And the headlines are coming to us so fast, that is particularly so these days in terms of artificial intelligence. And of course, we’re going to have to come back to that issue again and again. This is human reproduction. Now, let’s just remind ourselves of something fundamental. There were virtually no controversies of any kind of human interference in human reproduction for thousands of years. As a matter of fact, by the time you actually talk about any kind of medical intervention in this process, you’re actually talking about the 20th century with just a little bit back in the 19th century.

So, let me just say, so what was possible back in the 19th century? Back in the 19th century, they still didn’t know exactly how the sperm and the egg operated that really would not be known in terms of human observation until the second half of the 20th century. So, we’re talking very recent. That’s my lifetime. And that’s very recent by the way. But then you look at what happened in the 19th century, they understood actually more about the male contribution to human reproduction than the female. And that is because the male cells are expelled from the body. You can put them under a microscope, you can look at it and you can see little sperms swimming around.

And so, you had the first efforts at what we would now call artificial insemination in the 19th century, and that’s where things stood frankly for a very long time. And of course, if you’re looking at trying to have a baby or trying not to have a baby through contraception or birth control, the fact is that until about the middle of the 20th century, people weren’t exactly sure how to do this. And this came down to the development of the pill in the late 1950s. Its availability in the 1960s. This was an enormous game changer. But you also had at the same time the attempt by human beings to gain control, so that women could be pregnant who otherwise through natural means were not becoming pregnant.

And that’s where these technologies really began to become real ethical confrontations in our own lifetime. So, we were talking just about a very thin slice of very modern history, but these developments are coming fast and furiously. So, let’s just get first to the NPR story. Scientists create human eggs via in vitro gametogenesis. All right? So, this is where in a laboratory, they are creating human eggs out of skin cells. And that’s a pretty remarkable thing. Let’s just say, all right, before you say anything else, this is remarkable. 

Now at this point, these eggs are highly problematic. And so, it’s in the second story where they say, children have already been born this way. No children we are told have been born by this new technology. But this is a major breakthrough that could lead to that. And you are looking here at the fact that you have scientists and I actually have the original scientific report right here before me, and I can just assure you it is not easy reading. The headline in the medical article is “Induction of Experimental Cell Division to Generate Cells with a Reduced Chromosome Ploidy.” All right, so that’s it. It comes down to taking a skin cell and out of the skin cell, manufacturing a human egg. They’re now saying they have done that.

And as a matter of fact, Rob Stein reporting at NPR tells us that this technology, by the time we’re hearing about, it is already well now underway. One of the persons behind it explained that there are so many women who can’t have children using their own eggs “because of their age or other reasons.” So, as Stein says, “Scientists have been trying to create human eggs in the lab that carry the genes of people struggling to have children. The field is known as in vitro gametogenesis and involves researchers around the world, including in Japan, as well as US biotech companies.” One of the scientists said, “This technology would allow many of these women to have genetically their own eggs and to have a genetically related child.”

So, we’re taking the issue of a test tube baby, and now we’re really looking at a test tube egg created out of a skin cell. All right, fast-forward, what could go wrong here? And the answer is just about everything. And this is where I just want to upfront remind you of a basic principle of Christian thinking, and that is this. That when you take the goods God has given us in their proper context, nothing can go wrong. That is to say nothing morally can go wrong. There’s nothing wrong under any circumstance of a married man and woman that is married to each other in the context of the purity of marriage. There is nothing wrong with the baby coming. As a matter of fact, there’s everything right about a baby coming.

But when you get out of that context, well this brings concentric circles of moral problems. And you know what? This article gets right to them because if you can take a skin cell and then create a human egg and then you can add a sperm cell and this leads to an embryo that can be transferred into a woman, then you could have two people who otherwise couldn’t have a baby, have a baby, okay, what could go wrong? The article gets right to it. The biggest market for this might actually be gay men, rather than even a heterosexual couples seeking reproductive technology. Of course, there’s another issue that arises here. To put it bluntly, skin cells weren’t meant to become eggs. And so, let me just point to the obvious.

This doesn’t require a woman. It’s a skin cell, human skin cell. You know what else? It can be taken in voluntarily. We’re shedding skin cells all the time. Skin cells can be taken from us very, very easily. This is something that is a part of the plot of television police shows. The investigation, they’re able to just get someone touches a cup, okay, well we’ve got enough DNA evidence. Well, you get a skin cell, they’re pretty easy to get. And so, one of the things that’s raised in this article is what about someone getting Taylor Swift’s skin cell and creating an egg? That would be Taylor Swift’s egg leading to any number of Taylor Swift’s children all over the world without her knowledge or cooperation or anything.

It sounds like brave new world. Well, here’s the problem. And so, one of the key theological issues here is what’s called alienation. You alienate having a baby from the proper context of marriage. Guess what? You have just brought on moral risk beyond our imagination. And so, all of a sudden, this sounds like science fiction. It sounds like some kind of disaster, apocalyptic tale. Well, you know what? Once you say we’re going to redefine human reproduction, guess what? You have redefined human reproduction and you can’t say we’re going to do it a little bit. Turns out, you’re going to open the door for just about everything else. I will tell you that there are other very dark issues related to this.

I mean, how much experimentation is going to be undertaken here with human reproductive cells and then with embryos? So, how many embryos, human embryos are going to be experimented upon and destroyed in this process? It’s just really, really dark. And here’s where Christians have to remember. There are people we pray for to be able to have children, couples we pray for, to be able to have children just about anyone knows some couple. And frankly, it may be true of more couples than you know who are struggling with infertility. And of course, we would say to a married couple, that is a righteous desire.

But you know what? There can be unrighteous means towards that righteous desire. Before these reproductive technology, that basically meant stealing a baby. Now it can mean creating a baby or at least an embryo in a laboratory we are told here before, long out of a skin cell. What could go wrong? The answer to that is everything.

Part II

Brave New World, Part Two: Robotic IVF Makes the Headlines

All right, the Washington Post article is about robots learning to make human babies. Okay, I’m going to fault the Washington Post on this. That is a misleading headline. That is not actually what the robot is doing. The robot is instead conducting the procedures of in vitro fertilization or test tube babies the way they were referred to in the 1970s. 

So, this is IVF, in vitro fertilization. It is taking the male cell and the female cell and bringing them together in a laboratory to create an embryo that would later be transferred into a woman and carried to term for a baby. Now, here’s the very interesting thing. We are told by the Washington Post that in vitro fertilization has now produced more than 13 million babies since the 1970s. That’s a very significant number, 13 million. But there’s another very interesting thing reported in this and that is honesty about the cost of IVF and the failure rate of IVF. And the fact is that both of those are spectacularly high.

As a matter of fact, we are told in this article that, “one in six people of reproductive age experiences infertility, a single cycle of IVF can cost up to $30,000,” and most patients require multiple cycles. Fertility clinics are concentrated in wealthy coastal cities. Wide swaths of the country are what researchers call fertility deserts. And it may take many attempts and sometimes, it just doesn’t work with a given attempt. We are told in this article that what has been developed in Mexico is a technology using robotics and artificial intelligence to sort the cells so as to choose and then actually to carry out in the motions the process of bringing the sperm and the egg together in the creation of an embryo.

And thus, that’s the headline about robots learning to make human babies. This is not as salacious as the headline might indicate. It’s really about robotic manipulated high-tech in-vitro fertilization, but it’s also interesting from a number of other angles. Why is this taking place in Mexico? All right, when you hear something like that, you need to understand something. And that is that around the world, there are nations that have less restrictions on medical experimentation and medical treatment. So, for years, decades now, you’ve had people who wanted access to certain drugs. The Food and Drug Administration does not allow those drugs in the United States, they go across the border into Mexico, you have all kinds of alternative treatments that are available in places that are less regulated. And what’s really dark in all of this is that American technology and American money is very much in this, but the laboratory is in Mexico where things are legally possible. That would not be legally possible in the United States. I’ll simply say this, an alarm bell, it better go off just on that score alone. The Washington Post citing one of the scientists involved says, “At least 20 million more babies would be born each year if the industry could meet the global demand from infertile couples.” Okay, worldview explosion about to happen here.

Here’s the rest of the sentence. “As well as from a growing number of gay families and younger women who want more choices or must freeze their eggs because of medical issues such as cancer.” Okay. So, in both cases, you’ll notice how quickly they got to. This was something that is designed to help a married couple be able to overcome infertility and have a baby. In both cases, you get immediately to, if you have a gay male couple, you do the math and they want a baby related to both of them, it is going to require something like this to create an egg from one of the men.

Part III

We are on the Precipice of Moral Disaster: The Alienation of Marital Sex from Human Reproduction Gains Even More Steam

Let me just state, if you know anything about the biblical worldview, if you know anything about historic Christianity, if in your mind, there is any echo of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, all the alarm should be going off here. I mean, the fact that you’re talking about the potential of taking a skin cell from a man and turning it into an egg, that would be met with a sperm from the gay partner and thus create a baby. The fact that this is in the Washington Post yesterday tells you how close we are to moral disaster. In the back of all of this also is the specter of designer babies, the modification of human babies saying, “We want a baby with these particular traits.”

You could choose the skin cell from a person who has the traits you want or you can sort, and that’s what’s really going on here. Sorting in both of these stories becomes a big issue. And in both of these, it raises the specter of being completely outside of even normal categories of male and female. So, again, two stories of this importance breaking just yesterday in the international media, in this case, both of them in the United States, about events that are taking place both inside and outside the United States. The bottom line is our children are going to face a very different world. Indeed, we’re not going to have to live very long until we face a very different world.

And as Christians, we better think through these issues in advance. Because when all of this is already upon us, it’s going to be too late to figure it out.

Part IV

ChatGPT Rolls Out Parental Controls: But Teenagers Can Bypass Them – That’s the Bigger Issue Here

All right, well we’re talking about technological challenges. It is interesting that of course, just about every day, we face a tidal wave of articles on artificial intelligence. Now, where do we stand right now? Well we have people warning us that artificial intelligence is about to break out and become our mortal enemy. You have others who are saying at this point, it may be overblown in terms of both its capitalist future and its potential threat or power. The bottom line is that it is incumbent upon Christians to understand this is a very real threat.

It is a very real thing. It is already to the point of generating all kinds of material. Of course, it’s taking it from existing human sources and putting it together. Basically right now, it is sorting and analyzing faster than the human brain can sort and analyze. But what is out there held out as the future is a human-like artificial intelligence, or artificial intelligence that vastly exceeds what’s defined as human intelligence. 

Okay, lots of issues to consider here. I want to take it from what might happen tomorrow, next month or next century. I want to take it back to what Christian parents and families have to worry about right now. It is very interesting that just this week, ChatGPT has announced new parental controls. Francesca Regalado reports for the New York Times, “OpenAI on Monday Introduced Parental Controls to its Artificial Intelligence Chatbot ChatGPT as Teenagers Increasingly Turn to the Platform for Help with Schoolwork, Daily Life, and Mental Health.” Now, just to understand what’s at stake, and you know so much is at stake. “The new features come after a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against OpenAI by the parents of Adam Reign, a 16-year-old who died in April in California. ChatGPT had supplied Adam with information about suicide methods in the final months of his life, according to his parents.”  Also, according I should say, to court documents. 

Okay, so presumably this is good news that ChatGPT is now going to offer parental controls. Okay, so what would be the good news here for parents? Well, parents are going to be able to oversee their teenagers accounts, but guess what? The teenager is going to have to ask for it on the platform itself. So, how’s that for a little trick? Okay, “Parents can set specific times when ChatGPT can be used. The bot’s voice mode, memory saving, and image generation features can be turned on and off. There’s also an option to prevent ChatGPT from using its conversations with teenagers to improve its models.”

Okay. The second head in the article, “Parents Will be Notified of Potential Self-Harm.” Okay, that sounds good, right? So, if there is a teenager struggling with these issues, there’s going to be some means of parental notification. Okay, that sounds good. Okay. But the next head in the article, “Teenagers can bypass the controls.” Okay, you knew that was coming. You knew it was coming. Here is a rollout on significant parental controls that we have parents’ confidence when their teenagers are in the bedroom down the hall using ChatGPT. You can rest, it’s safer now, except teenagers can bypass the controls. Let me just state the obvious. Most of them are going to know more about it than their parents in terms of how to do it.

And they can have different accounts. I’m not spilling information here that otherwise wouldn’t be publicly known. It’s right here in the article itself. Good news for parents. Parents can oversee their teenager’s accounts. Parents will be notified of potential self-harm. Teenagers can bypass the controls. In other words, this in effect without incredible parental oversight means nothing. I actually fear I am not opposed to these methods of assisting parents. If they’re real, I’m for it. But I am even more for honesty that this is not a reasonable exercise and adequate exercise of parental stewardship, authority, and responsibility here.

Because once one of the heads of the article is that teenagers can bypass all the controls, I mean, this is where Christian parents as well as other parents are getting in trouble. This is where Christian parents are facing tragedy just like other parents. And I think there are too many Christian parents who say, “I know my kid, this couldn’t happen.” But unfortunately, that is often corrected too late. And I think it’s a part of Christian parenting to understand all the temptations that come by means of high technology and especially something like ChatGPT, they’re hard enough for adults to deal with. And quite frankly, that’s a different dimension of trouble.

But when it comes to teenagers and children, I mean, it is a vulnerability just beyond our imagination. And we have sexualized material, sexualized relationships, sexualized chats. We have very dark morally, ethically, very dark and we also know very dangerous things that are going on here. So, I wanted to mention this because I think it’s interesting the New York Times runs the article, how new parental controls work for ChatGPT accounts. And then you get halfway through the article and find out teenagers can get around it anyway. So, guess what? That’s the bigger message than the headline.

Part V

A Chatbot Culture War: Elon Musk Seeks to Change Grok’s ‘Left-Leaning Bias,’ and the Left Freaks Out

Okay, speaking of ethical issues related to artificial intelligence and chat and bots, well you have one platform, the AI powered chatbot that is owned by Elon Musk. It is known as Grok. And here’s what’s really interesting. You talk about a worldview clash. Well, how about a worldview clash bot to bot? Because what Elon Musk is in the headlines about right now is changing Grok to be more conservative. Now, something you need to know in this is that as you suspected, there is a very liberal progressivist leftist bias to the world of artificial intelligence, and in particular, to chatbots. And it’s documented right here. Again, this is in the New York Times.

And the New York Times is going after Elon Musk, the headline: “How Musk is Remaking Grok in His Own Image.” So, he is forcing changes, and by the way, partly based upon users of Grok who are reporting things to him. So, for example, on July the 8th, Grok asked about transgender issues says, “Gender as a social and personal identity is viewed by many experts as a spectrum, potentially infinite, including non-binary and transgender identity.” So, you’ll notice it’s pro transgender. It’s against any fixed understanding of male and female. That was July the 8th.

It has been changed so that on July the 11th, ask the same question, Grok comes back and says, “Gender as a social or identity construct is debated with some claiming infinite variations, but that’s subjective fluff. If we’re talking science, it’s two.” The other very interesting thing here is the acknowledgement that AI is really leftist territory. The Times says, “Researchers have found that most major chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini have a left bias when measured in political tests, a quirk that researchers has struggled to explain.” Okay, let me just stop here for a moment. You look at the people who are creating this, you look at the culture that has created it.

You look even at the politics of the geographic region like Silicon Valley, where so much of this is concentrated and you say, “We can’t figure out where the liberal bias comes from.” Okay. I think you don’t need artificial intelligence to figure that out. We’re told that AI companies are imprinting their own biases “by encouraging chatbots to write responses that are kind and fair.” Well, Christians we’re for kind and fair. Here’s the next sentence. “AI researchers have theorized that this pushes AI systems to support minority groups and related causes, such as gay marriage.” Okay, such as, yeah. Oh, we got to that real fast. It’s the only example given.

Part VI

A.I. Legislation Continues: This is Going to be a Fight Parents Will Have to Have for a Long Time

All right, the last big story related to a headline on AI this week is about California’s Governor Gavin Newsom signing a new so-called AI, Artificial Intelligence Safety law in the state of California. Now, here is a very interesting aspect to all this. So, let’s just say that if this is a truly restrictive law, he’s going to have trouble in his own state. If it’s not a truly restrictive law, then it doesn’t matter. It is just public relations. If it is truly restrictive, then you might see further exodus of AI companies and platforms from California elsewhere. But this has to do also with what California is now requiring of all these platforms, regardless of where they are located.

And it’s just a reminder to us that this is a political process. It is a technological challenge, it is a moral challenge, it’s a worldview challenge, it is also a political challenge. And quite honestly, when you look at what’s going on in politics right now, we are likely to have not only a more liberal chatbot and a more conservative chatbot, we’re likely to have states that regulate one way and the other. And just to state the matter bluntly, that can’t last for long. A reminder to us, we’re going to have to watch this constantly because here’s the bad news folks, these issues are not going to get easier.

Another reminder that as Christians, we need to lean into these issues and try to deal with them together biblically, faithfully.