Brian Dellinger

College professor, Christian, computer scientist, board game enthusiast, husband, father of two. Author of "God and AI." Articles at @amspectator and @iffgcc.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

Just submitted the manuscript for my book "God and AI" to @IFFGCC Faith & Freedom Press. Expected publication is September 2026.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@TheOptimisticC3 @annielcrawford @tylercowen @suzania I would *think* there are connections here to hylomorphic views of the soul, but that's deeper into it than I've gone.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@TheOptimisticC3 @annielcrawford @tylercowen @suzania My sense is this has been a strongly minority position even in Christian circles for >100 years. Which doesn't make it wrong, but I think it's compelling that we have pretty full physical stories of a lot of the things vitalism set out to explain.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@suzania @TheOptimisticC3 @annielcrawford @tylercowen And in that sense, sure, I think stars and other orbital bodies trace irregular ellipsis, with their motion sweeping out regions of equal area in equal time regardless of their position in the orbit.
(Which is just so, so cool.)

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@suzania @TheOptimisticC3 @annielcrawford @tylercowen I take Chesterton to be speaking poetically about planetary motion, weather cycles, etc., in the same sense that I take "strings... of beasts and birds" as poetic description of theories of common descent.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@annielcrawford @TheOptimisticC3 @tylercowen @suzania I stress I'm somewhere in the creationist space, though with some big question marks.

Who do you think makes the best case for vitalism?

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@annielcrawford @TheOptimisticC3 @tylercowen @suzania Not to abuse Lewis quotes all day, but errors on both sides: we must defend proper supernaturalism against both naturalism and improper supernaturalism.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@annielcrawford @TheOptimisticC3 @tylercowen @suzania I'm very concerned to resist the folks like Dawkins who would assign mind to things that don't merit it, like AI; I think it hurts our ability to do so when *we* assign minds to things that don't merit them.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@annielcrawford @TheOptimisticC3 @tylercowen @suzania Not beyond his Wikipedia page.
I think the vitalist hypothesis was rightly abandoned. It could have been true; it turned out not to be as best we can judge from the evidence in hand.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@annielcrawford @TheOptimisticC3 @tylercowen @suzania Hey, I'd love that too. Let me know when you're in town!

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@annielcrawford @TheOptimisticC3 @tylercowen @suzania When you say "a dryad," what do you intend by that? I read that as "something like the creature out of Greek myth, e.g. an intelligent spirit associated with the tree." Is that approximately in the same space?

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@TheOptimisticC3 @annielcrawford @tylercowen @suzania I think that's a deeper wonder than animistic myth, and it saddens me that someone as smart and wise as Lewis saw a growth in understanding past that myth and took it as a diminishment. We are, as someone once said, far too easily pleased.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@TheOptimisticC3 @annielcrawford @tylercowen @suzania I want wonder and meaning, too. But I think the fact God has taken an astounding universe of rules, scaled beyond our imaginings, and picked out creatures of *microscopic dust*, given them minds that defy explanation in all the clockwork exquisiteness of creation, and loved them-

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@TheOptimisticC3 @annielcrawford @tylercowen @suzania It's right and proper to wrong for the world that's better yet, where all the wrongs are made forever right. But gosh sakes, it's just depressing how quickly we favor pagan myth over knowing His actual gifts.

[Brian Dellinger @IrkedIndeed]

@TheOptimisticC3 @annielcrawford @tylercowen @suzania I love imaginary worlds, and I've spent many pleasant hours in Tolkien's or Lewis's. But the one that was made for us is *better*, and our coming to know it more is not tragic even when it reveals that God's designs for it were deeper than ours.