Automaton

An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. The Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this - the food was collected in one inner container, and the feces being 'produced' from a second, so that no actual digestion took place - Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed. To date, no such robot has been invented. Voltaire wrote that "without [...] the duck of Vaucanson, you have nothing to remind you of the glory of France."

Since we're talking about Voltaire, the object of affection and of many quotes from one of my French professors, more has been written about his religious beliefs than anything else in his biography. Perhaps it can all be summed up as follows, “Voltaire, though often mistaken for an atheist, did in fact take part in religious activities and even erected a chapel on his estate at Ferney. The chief source for the misconception is a line from one of his poems (called "Epistle to the author of the book, The Three Impostors") that translates to: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." The full body of the work, however, reveals his criticism was more focused towards the actions of organized religion, rather than on the concept of religion itself. “

God did not design us to be automatons. The greatest blessing of living is 'free will'. The cow has no feelings for the bull, the sow has no feelings for the boar, but the maternal instinct of any animal is very obvious. Only in genus homo do we find a female member of a species who will kill her child. Unlike the lower animals, man has the ability to think and reason, chosen of God, made in his image, with 'free will' for faith, hope and love.

The desire for knowledge is the beginning of knowledge. It is only in a police state, communist system of government, where you do not find church steeples, that man has been degraded, to acting and reacting like bridled lower animals. We find, and true blindness isn't necessary (as this writer is), that we can even walk and become servants of God by faith alone. (Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1) Paul wrote this letter to a group of Hebrews who were still trying to keep the law, though Christian, the 613 laws in the Old Testament were observed religiously, automatons, God's chosen race, seeking to please him now and for eternity. How they could skip over marvelous assurance in Proverbs is incomprehensible. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6) OR “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

Thanks be to God, Christ came to deliver us and redeem us from law keeping. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17) After 400 years of slavery in Egypt, 40 years of 'basic training' wandering around in a desert was necessary in order to prove to these rebellious people that God loved them. It is wonderful to know, in our present day rebellion, when it would be convenient to act as automatons that God loves us more than we love him.

I said to a great theologian one time, “I simply cannot understand all the killing in the Old Testament.” He said, “and every time God told them to kill, and they did not, they lived to regret it. Most people do not understand that most of the Bible, is a history of one people, Jews. From Abraham, the first Jew, called from his people in Ur, near present day Baghdad, to travel six hundred miles north to Canaan, land promised him by God. His father Terah, worshiper of idols, who died on the way just outside of Damascus, his nephew Lot, his wife Sarah, the long story of God giving the land to Abraham and his descendents, telling him that everywhere he walked was his. (Just imagine one man walking, saying “mine, mine, mine”) Abraham and his two sons Isaac and Ishmael, from then until now, racial forces determining the history of the world. And then there were the twin sons of Isaac, and of course, the twelve sons of Jacob (twelve tribes of Israel). A type of Christ, Joesph, the slavery in Egypt, the redemption, Moses, Jesse, David, right on to God giving the world, in a tent of flesh, His only Son, Jesus Christ, to live among us, show the example of Godly living, the atonement, death burial and resurrection of Jesus, His words, His sacrifice, then the apostle Paul and the church, the letter to the Hebrews by Paul showing the transition from Law to grace. I do not understand and have found few who do understand God's relationship with man before the flood, even after the flood to the cross. I do understand on this side of the cross, but the inhabitants of Canaan, before the children of Israel moved in, Balak-Balaam and others, gentiles and their relationship with God. Jesus, his disciples, the prophets, the early church, all Jews. Gentiles, the rest of us, enter the divine plan only in relationship to the Jews. The Old Testament, the Gospels all preliminary to the church, it is the greatest story every told (Fulton Oursler), we do not need anything else except God's Word as we seek his sovereignty, known the truth of sin's ruin and Christ's redemption. He gave us the plan, and even though complex at times, we do not need Mary Baker Eddy, Joesph Smith, or any other books of archeology, psychiatry, etc. to get us to our final destination