{"id":3431,"date":"2008-10-01T13:08:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-01T13:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2008\/10\/looking-for-evil-in-our-robot-offspring\/"},"modified":"2008-10-01T13:08:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-01T13:08:00","slug":"looking-for-evil-in-our-robot-offspring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2008\/10\/looking-for-evil-in-our-robot-offspring.html","title":{"rendered":"Looking for Evil in our Robot Offspring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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This week\u2019s episode<\/a> of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles<\/a><\/em> introduced some new and interesting twists, although perhaps this won\u2019t be enough to improve its ratings<\/a>. Potentially most interesting is the idea that some of the machines want peace. Is that who the mysterious shapeshifting robot from the future represents? Does \u201cher daughter\u201d know that her mother, Catherine Weaver, has been replaced by a machine? We also wonder why a shapeshifter would pretend to be a urinal \u2013 Isn\u2019t that dangerous?! <\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>At any rate, a wonderful line in the show is when Weaver tells agent Ellison that they are going to hunt down a robot and take it apart piece by piece. She says she doesn\u2019t know what they\u2019ll find, but she doubts they\u2019ll find evil<\/em>.<\/div>\n
This is interesting on a number of levels. If the machines seem evil, and yet are for the most part rational and dispassionate, is evil here viewed in rather Augustinian fashion as the absence of goodness? <\/div>\n
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On a different line of thought, if we took a human mass murderer and dissected him \u201cpiece by piece\u201d, would we \u201cfind evil\u201d? The show is forcing us to ask what we mean by \u201cevil\u201d and where one should look for it. The implicit answer seems to be that it is not a substance, but a way of living.<\/div>\n
This series continues to explore the parallels between parenting our human, biological offspring and seeking to instill our artificially intelligent creations with goodness and other values. Perhaps we are witnessing hints that these creations\/offspring of ours will inevitably rebel, but eventually come to desire peace and reconciliation to their creators\/parents.<\/div>\n
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This week\u2019s episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles introduced some new and interesting twists, although perhaps this won\u2019t be enough to improve its ratings. Potentially most interesting is the idea that some of the machines want peace. Is that who the mysterious shapeshifting robot from the future represents? Does \u201cher daughter\u201d know that her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLooking for Evil in our Robot Offspring<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This week's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles introduced some new and interesting twists, although perhaps this won't be enough to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2008\/10\/looking-for-evil-in-our-robot-offspring.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking for Evil in our Robot Offspring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles introduced some new and interesting twists, although perhaps this won't be enough to\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2008\/10\/looking-for-evil-in-our-robot-offspring.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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