BAD IDEA: PETA Rewrites The Bible Using ChatGPT

On the list of all-time bad ideas, re-writing God’s Bible would have to be near the top of the list.

Unless you don’t believe there is a God, in which case “do what thou wilt” is probably your Satanic philosophy.

But if you believe there is a God, and you believe he divinely inspired the Bible, then it would seem to be a very, very bad idea to attempt to re-write it.

One of the last verses in the Bible actually contains a very serious warning about doing that.

Anyone remember it?

Revelation 22:18:

I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book.

And there are a LOT of plagues written in the Bible!

So basically: very bad idea.

And yet, PETA just said “Hold my Beer” because they ran enthusiastically to do just that.

Using ChatGPT they’ve rewritten the book of Genesis:

https://twitter.com/christi49554995/status/1670615000371560448?s=46&t=fQPc05aE4Kkb738_xetJBg

Why would they do that?

Well, it’s pretty simple….

Because Genesis is where God tells mankind that they have dominion over all animals of the Earth and that they are to eat them as food.

If you’re PETA, that’s kind of a problem for you.

So….just rewrite it!

Fox News explains more:

PETA has given the Bible’s Book of Genesis a “vegan” makeover, using ChatGPT to recreate the story and “send a can’t-be-missed animal rights message filled with vegan teachings.”

In PETA’s vegan version of the Bible, animals are referred to as “beings” rather than “beasts” or “creatures” and plants like hemp and bamboo are used for clothing instead of animal skins because “no one with any fashion or moral sense would wear animal skins in the 21st century.”

“The Bible has long been used to justify all forms of oppression, so we’ve used ChatGPT to make it clear that a loving God would never endorse exploitation of or cruelty to animals,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “It took God only six days to create the entire world, but we realized it would take us years to rewrite the whole Bible, which is why we’ve started with just the first book.”

In Genesis Chapter 22, Abraham travels to the land of Moriah, where instead of slaughtering a ram to demonstrate his faith, he “befriends a gentle lamb to show his reverence and respect for God’s creation.”

PETA said it hopes its “cruelty-free” version of the Bible will appeal to the 73 percent of Generation Z that reportedly identifies as animal rights activists, according the organization’s press release.

In PETA’s version of Chapter 21 of the creation story, Abraham and Sarah, who were 100 and 90 years old respectively when they conceived their child Isaac, also adopt a dog named Herbie.

Yeah, pretty sure I don’t remember their dog named Herbie from the Bible I read!

Truly one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a long time:

PETA using Artificial Intelligence to ‘Rewrite the Book of Genesis,’ Create Own Version of ‘Creation Story’ https://t.co/NJS3frkghN pic.twitter.com/se6THUPv45

— End Time Headlines (@EndTimeHeadline) May 9, 2023

Here’s more, from the Daily Signal:

PETA—or the AI, which I’m convinced probably provided the best bits of this dilapidated drivel—decided to be slavishly derivative, repeating original locations and keeping the rough structure of Genesis, while simultaneously scrapping the main theological message of the story and the major plot points that give the inspired Word its emotional heft.

In this incredibly sanitized version of the Bible, Cain isn’t a murderer, Nimrod stops being a hunter, Hagar is a chef, a dog takes the place of Isaac on Mount Moriah and there is no sacrifice, Pharaoh’s butler and baker both live, and Pharaoh’s dreams involve vegan preaching, not the famine responsible for reuniting Jacob’s family.

Somewhere between the AI and the wokescolds at PETA, basic details got lost.

For instance, Rachel dies in childbirth with Joseph, rather than with his younger brother Benjamin (Genesis 35), and Benjamin miraculously appears as an elder brother to Joseph. Cain—still the villain of the story—sacrifices animal flesh to God while Abel sacrifices plants, which represents a reversal of the biblical story in which Abel sacrifices his prized sheep. PETA might as well have made Abel the villain, especially since it decided to scrap the murder, anyway.

Most of the main characters—who have rather tremendous flaws in the original version of Genesis—are all morally spotless priests of the vegan religion here, preaching the virtues of soy and almond milk. They go from place to place, spreading the gospel of treating animals like people, and occasionally the animals speak on their own accord. (At one point, camels decide among themselves to teach the uneducated humans, but then decide just to travel with them, instead.)

Joseph’s brothers still decide to kidnap and sell their brother out of jealousy, but they also wouldn’t dare harm a goat to dip his multicolored coat in goat’s blood. Instead, they use beet juice. Yes, they contemplate murdering their own brother, but God forbid they touch an animal.

Meanwhile, Enosh draws the short end of the stick. Rather than living for 905 years (Genesis 5:11), Enosh lives for a measly 50.

“Enosh consumed the flesh of animals and thereby committed the ultimate sin, leading to a shortened life of shame, weakness, ignorance, and illness,” the Bible according to PETA intones.

PETA’s extensive liberties with the biblical text lack any coherent rationale. While the animal rights group scraps the sacrifice of Isaac and Pharaoh’s dreams willy-nilly, and frequently uses extremely modern colloquial phrases such as “totally ripped,” it preserves small details such as obscure place names and archaic words to give the “modernized” text some biblical flavor. It strains to maintain the same chapters as Genesis, even while gutting so many story details that whole “chapters” amount to five paragraphs.

It seems that whoever at PETA rewrote Genesis lost interest after the first few chapters, letting AI do the rest. (By far the best part of the entire book is God’s quips during the six days of creation in which he says, “Let there be Meatless Monday!”) Yet even AI cannot explain how PETA managed to make a truly riveting book such as Genesis so darn boring.

Americans who actually read the original version of the Bible may marvel at just how little preaching it actually does. Genesis as we know it, in particular, narrates personal stories—often featuring rather embarrassing gory details. The story of how Jacob got 12 sons is downright disturbing, as is the idea that Sarah effectively would force her servant onto Abraham, just so he can finally have a son. Jacob tricks his father so he can steal the blessing from his older brother, and let’s not even get into how Judah finally ends up with a living son.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob don’t always come across as the most admirable people—and that’s part of the point. God makes these relatable, flawed characters into a great nation, and their flaws matter because they highlight God’s work through them.

The author of Genesis isn’t just trying to tell a good story, he’s trying to record how these people actually lived, and that’s one of the reasons Genesis turns out to be an excellent book.

Meanwhile, PETA packs its pseudo-biblical pages with nonstop, screechy preaching. How does Abel convince Cain to stop killing and eating animals? He explains that Cain “could become totally ripped by eating plants.” What do the people of Sodom do that leads God to destroy them? They try to force Lot’s guests to eat “our carcinogenic meats and cholesterol bombs.” Why does Sarah laugh with incredulity by the oaks of Mamre? Not because she doubts God’s promise that she will have a son in her old age but because she doubts that “she shall being forth many more [vegan] feasts.”

For the audio/visual learners, watch this:

And from PETA itself, here is PETA trying to explain why Genesis actually does not permit eating animals:

Instead of letting ourselves and our world marinate in the post-flood, apocalyptic chaos and disharmony of Genesis 9, let’s consider the whole scriptural story.

Eden was vegan. Relationships between God, humans, and the created world were peaceful and whole.

Human sin shattered the harmony of Eden. Evil infected every relationship. Brother murdered brother. Humans murdered the animals they had been charged with caring for.

God doesn’t look around after the flood, after his observation that animals fear humans and humans kill and eat animals, and say, “It is good.” It simply was. It was far from ideal, but it was the reality that sin had created. And God gives the Israelites laws to mediate their power: Animals are to rest on the Sabbath, they aren’t to be killed wantonly, and they aren’t to be abused or tortured, even in death.

We’re pretty far from providing even these basic protections.

The prophets see the possibility for change—for the restoration of harmony:

God will call all creatures to safety, from flies and bees to sheep and cows (Isaiah 7:18–25), and they will all worship their Creator (Isaiah 43:20).

The vision for a reconciled future is a peaceful kingdom in which the wolf lies down with the lamb and a child leads them. Hurt and destruction will pass away (Isaiah 11:3–9 and 65:25).

Ezekiel 29:3–5 foretells the consequences of treating creation as if it existed solely for human benefit: “I will put hooks in your jaws …. I will fling you into the wilderness …. To the animals of the earth and to the birds of the air I have given you as food.”

God’s covenant is with all of creation: “I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety” (Hosea 2:18).

Genesis 9 isn’t the last word on our relationship with animals—not even close.

Jesus is God incarnate, enfleshed. Jesus brought the reign of God into human history and extended an invitation for the whole of creation to participate in a new kind of Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is countercultural and offers freedom from sin, death, and oppression. So one of our tasks today is to look at what is and what ought to beand make changes that bring us closer to reconciliation with God, with one another, and with God’s creation.

What is: Baby chicks are ground alive in the egg industry

Mercy for Animals

What ought to be: As Jesus followers, we’re supposed to be protecting animals, not hurting them.

What is: Animals are beaten and neglected on farms and in slaughterhouses so that people can eat them.

What ought to be: God never intended for us to eat animals. After all, the Garden of Eden was vegan: “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food’” (Genesis 1:29).