Man or Machine?

Last night's TV news featured a Japan-made anime-styled girl robot, with smooth non-metallic complexion, eye-lids that blinked and shoulder length hair that swayed with each stiff movement of the limbs. The robot introduced itself as "cybernetic human HRP-4C" as reported in a Yahoo news story. While this robort can move and talk, it is a far cry from Issac Asimov's Bicentennial Man.

In Asimov's story, written more than 30 years ago in 1976, the Bicentennial Man was transformed over time from a metallic, thinking ("positronic") robot which won its right to freedom (from "slavery") to an organic android (robot with outward appearance of humans and able to "eat and breathe") which eventually attained its ultimate aspiration to be declared legally as a "man". The cost to the robot of attaining "humanity"? An operation to create mortality in a positronic brain which could otherwise last for centuries. In short, the robot chose to let his positronic brain "die" to be human.

Can a robot indeed become a human? Asimov's robot argues that he has "the shape of a human being and organs equivalent to those of a human being"; that his organs are "identical to some of those in a prosthetized human being'; and that he has "contributed artistically, literarily, and scientifically to human culture". If "no number of artifacts in the human body causes it to be cease being a human body", what then is the difference between a prosthetized human being and a robot with the same artifacts?

The Bible states very clearly that God made man in His image. Since God is Spirit, the image does not refer to a body of flesh and bones. Rather, man is created to have a mind, emotions and a will in the image of God.

- Man is given a mind to know God.
- Man is given emotions to love God.
- Man is given a will to choose to obey God.

"26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

(Genesis 1 : 26 - 27)

The psalmist asks, "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8 : 4) Man is the epitome of God's creation, made to rule over all the earth. God makes man a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned with glory and honour (Psalm 8 : 5). God's loving care of man is manifested in the Lord Jesus Christ who descended from his heavenly throne to dwell among man and to die for man, that man may ascend to God's kingdom through faith in Him.