What if Communion Passes the Turing Test?  🔗 **Source:** [What if Communion Passes the Turing Test?](https://share.snipd.com/episode/d06c12f7-1bec-43f9-b26e-02d381a8dbe5) ## Highlights - **Why Chris Left Then Returned To Church** - Chris Young left church in his late teens after questioning teachings and later re-engaged following a powerful Easter vigil experience. - His mom arranged one-on-one catechism instruction and later invited him to volunteer-driven events that reconnected him to faith. Transcript: Chris Young Well i want to kind of recap what we talked about last time so uh anyway i'm just to introduce myself i'm 71 years old and uh live on the website of indianapolis i'm right near the speedway So i'm a huge race fan awesome i have a degree in computer science as you mentioned i have a rights-long disability from a type of muscular dystrophy called spinal muscular activity And so uh i couldn't go there i grew up catholic i couldn't go to catholic school because my disability but my mom arranged for me to have a one-on instruction with a priest and he tried To indoctrinate me on this little textbook called the baltimore where you had to memorize questions and answers perfectly. And I had all sorts of questions of my own. We talked about that last time, some funny stories. And I kept questioning until my late teens. And then the question was, why am I going to church when I don't really believe? So I quit. And I immersed myself in volunteer activities, doing disability advocacy. And I was on the board of directors of two different United Way agencies. And as a result of that, I got invited to a special mass at the cathedral with Archbishop O'Meara to celebrate volunteerism. So I went, and afterwards my mom says, what did you think of the Archbishop? I said, well, I really like him. She says, he looks stupid to you. I said, no, he's pretty smart. She says, well, why is he so right about all the things that you believe in, but so wrong about God? I said, I'll get back to you on that one. So then a friend invited me to a special ceremony at the Easter vigil, the night before Easter, where adults who want to join the Catholic Church receive the sacraments of initiation, Baptism, communion, and confirmation. Again, this was a challenge to me because they were saying, I want to be part of this as an adult, where I thought I'd been tricked into it as a kid. I didn't know any about it. So to face that challenge, I went to Bible sharing with my mom the next weekend, and they had a scripture reading with the dad and Thomas. I said, hey, that's me. I expected them to say, well, here's the door here. But they didn't. ([Time 0:02:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/67603444-4dfc-4134-951e-d46f0f69152d)) - **How A Lecture Tape Reopened Chris's Mind** - Chris describes a bout of pneumonia and a priest praying for him, which led to being given a lecture tape that later profoundly impacted him. - At first the tape did nothing, but when he replayed it from the start he says it "blew me away." Transcript: Chris Young Now, before this spiritual experience at the Easter service, I had a bout of pneumonia, which could be pretty serious for me. And my mom asked the priest to come pray for me. She wasn't exactly expecting to give me a rash, rash, right. It wasn't that serious. So he wanted to pray with me. I said, well, you know, I respect your beliefs. I respect my mom's beliefs. I have no problem with the church. I know a lot of people do. I feel bad for them. But that wasn't my experience. I'm just a skeptic. So I said, you can pray. I'm not going to pray with you. So we have a conversation about my skepticism. About a week later, he comes back. He says, I've got this tape of a lecture by a guy named Reverend Terry Foam. Right. I've queued it up to a certain spot. I think it will really speak to you. I played the tape. It didn't do anything for me. Jeremy Steele What was it saying? Chris Young Well, the point of the story is, then after this spiritual experience at Easter, I always say I had an open mind. And I wanted to throw that opening. So I thought, I'll go back to that tape. And I turned it over and rewanted to the beginning. And this time, it blew me away. It was just amazing. ([Time 0:05:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d8761b7e-0f65-4a2e-8b8c-92d0bd527d70)) - **Treating God As A Foundational Axiom** - Reverend's advice convinced Chris to stop trying to prove God's existence and instead take God as a first principle, like an axiom in math. - He compares this to Euclidean axioms and basic numbers: some starting truths are accepted to build a system. Transcript: Chris Young Well, the point of the story is, then after this spiritual experience at Easter, I always say I had an open mind. And I wanted to throw that opening. So I thought, I'll go back to that tape. And I turned it over and rewanted to the beginning. And this time, it blew me away. It was just amazing. And the one thing that Reverend Solomon says, quit trying to prove the existence of God. Just, you know, with all due respect to St. Augustine. Jeremy Steele Right. Chris Young Proof for existence. Bother. He says, take God as a first principle. He says, nowhere in Scripture will you find an argument for the existence of God. It starts out, in the beginning, God. Jeremy Steele Right. It's a giving. Chris Young Just take that and run with it. Oh, no. You just shouldn't have put it that way. See, I believe in math and logic and those kinds of things. Jeremy Steele Hence the computer science major, right? Yeah, yeah. Chris Young And, you know, I took geometry in high school, Euclidean geometry. And Euclid had these things called axioms. They were things that you couldn't prove, but you just knew they were truth. Right. Or even in math. You know, you start out with this concept of the number one. And then you say, well, what if I got another one? Now you've invented addition. So two is what you do when you add one, one. And then you add one more, you get three, and you do that for infinity. Right. So, you know, even math and geometry and logic, there are certain things you just take as a given. You know, you can't prove them. You just take them as an axiom. So I thought, okay, God is an axiom. ([Time 0:07:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/060589df-3944-4400-9779-3b3c1b70b8c2)) - **Catechism As A Logical Roadmap To Practice** - Chris maps Catholic catechism's first four questions into a logical roadmap: who made me, who is God, why made me, and what to do to share eternal life. - He reads them as theology-building axioms leading to know, love, and serve God. Transcript: Chris Young Okay, question number one. Who made me? And this is theology, not biology. So the answer is God made me. Okay? Pretty straightforward. Do you want to guess what? Question two is... Jeremy Steele And that's the... These are the... So explain, if somebody doesn't understand what catechism means, like, what is a catechism? Chris Young It's basically a textbook or a statement, a teaching of the basic beliefs of the church. And for this one, it was all in question and answers. Right. Jeremy Steele And this is for the Roman Catholic Church. Some streams of Christianity, like Presbyterians, also have catechisms. And then there are some streams like the one that What is a I'm part of, Methodism, that actually don't have those. They take a different approach. Chris Young Yeah. So question one, who made you, God made me. Question two, straightforward, who is all right that's the next logical question answer god is a supreme being who made all things so god made me he made everything and i'm connected To everything. Jeremy Steele Right. And I think one of the things also to note about catechisms in general is they generally take this same logical approach, this logical construction that goes from and, and builds on That, which, you know, when you're in a, a freshman philosophy course, um, when you, you do these sort of logical systems, you know, the, any freshmen can say, can, you know, completely Deconstruct them by saying, well, I just don't agree that God made me right.? Or whatever, by denying one of the principles or one of the things that is said to sort of logically progress from that. But this is the Catholic system, right? Chris Young Yeah. And so, you know, the idea that I'm connected to everything in the universe, you know, astrophysicist, Norton Bass Tyson, calls that the cosmic perspective. You know, the atoms in our body were forged in the explosion of the supernova billions of years ago. So we're intimately connected to the universe because God made his post. So then the next question is... I got to tell you a quick joke. Pause for humor. Yeah. There was a nun who was very new teaching the catechism. And she would ask these questions to the kids, always in the same order. So, you know, who made you? God made me. The next kid, who was God? God's premium. He made everything. Well, one day, the first kid was absent. She asked the next kid, who made you? He goes, I don't know. Jeremy Steele Made you i don't know finally one little boy says sister the little boy that got me isn't here today yeah and you know one of the things that i think uh for people uh who didn't grow up uh catholic Is hearing some of these can be really helpful to understand when you are engaging with people who come from this Roman Catholic stream, a sense of what they were taught in this logical System about God, because that can sometimes I think help you understand why they come to some of the conclusions they do or why they apply their faith in the way that they do. Chris Young Yeah. So anyway, question three. Now we're getting down to the brass tacks. Why did God make me? A two-part answer god made me to show forth his goodness and to share his everlasting life his everlasting what everlasting life life okay yeah so that's pretty profound. I mean, it's saying that I am an expression of the goodness of God. Jeremy Steele Right. Chris Young I'm a manifestation of God's love, which is pretty awesome. Jeremy Steele Right. Chris Young And plan A is eternal life. Mm-hmm. Now, you know, sin enters the world. We have to go to plan B. But in our essence, it's not like we were created broken and needed reconciliation immediately. You know, that was only later. So finally, now you said, okay, you can share in God's everlasting life. What do you have to do to get there? Question four, what must I do to share in God's everlasting life? And it ([Time 0:09:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c9957fc5-3198-4294-ae3c-45f4438a34c5)) - **From RCIA Student To Thirty Years Teaching Scripture** - Chris attended RCIA inquiry classes and learned modern scripture analysis, then taught parish classes for 30 years after improving the pastor's lesson. - He embraced the ascending view: communities craft oral traditions later written as Scripture. Transcript: Chris Young Those ones that inspired me to go on this journey. Jeremy Steele What are the inquiry classes? Chris Young Okay, it's a once-a class from September through a few weeks after Easter. It's called RCIA, Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults. And it's just a faith formation program to prepare you to the church. And lifelong Catholics attend as well because they want to update their faith. So I went to those classes, and I started reading the Bible. Of course, I only got to start Genesis 2 by the way that the rest, you know, vocality and inerrancy. But that wasn't so bad. Jeremy Steele Right, so tell people what you mean by univocality and inerrancy. Chris Young Well, most people think that everything in the Bible is 100% self-consistent. Jeremy Steele Well, I'll tell you, I don't think that. And biblical scholars don't, yeah. But a lot of people do, for sure. Yeah. Chris Young So, anyway, I went to this lecture series in my parish. A guy named Jim Walter came in. He basically was introducing people to modern scripture analysis. You know, historical, critical methods. He said there's two ways to look at scripture, the descending view and the ascending view. Jeremy Steele Okay, interesting. Chris Young The descending view is God handed down scripture, and the sacred authors wrote exactly the words that God wanted written. Right. Almost like divine dictation. You know, I can imagine John sitting around one day. God speaks to me. Hey, John, pick up a quilt and some parchment. Start writing. You know, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, the Word was God. And John said, stay wrought. What's that? Just write it down. You'll figure it out later. Jim said no. He said, instead, people of faith experience God in their lives. And the lives of their community, and their history. And so they created oral traditions. They handed it down for generations. And then someone said, let's write that down. And so that's how Scripture gets written. And essentially, you offer it up to God, saying, this is what you revealed to me. Did I get it right? That's the ascending view. And that made sense. Then if you short scripture chronologically in the order it was written, not necessarily in the order it's in the Bible. You start to see this progression, this deepening of understanding. So, you know, in the Old Testament, we have a very angry and vengeful God who's, you shall not this, you shall not that. In the New Testament, we see the love and the reconciliation and the mercy of Jesus, who say, blessed are you who do this. Blessed are you who do that. So, anyway, after attending that series, when my pastor taught the lesson on Scripture scholarship, I hate to say this, he didn't do a very good job. So I said to him, hey, Father, can I do that lesson next year? You know, you can sit in and make sure I don't preach any heresy. And I said, okay. So afterwards, I taught the lesson. He says, wow, you do that better than I do. Jeremy Steele Of course, because you've thought deeply and academically about it. Chris Young Yeah. And I wanted to say, yeah, that's why I have volunteers. But I was more gracious. I said, well, I'm just regurgitating what Jim Walter said. Jeremy Steele Right. Chris Young So I ended up teaching those classes for 30 years. So that was a real important ministry for me. ([Time 0:16:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3f077fbf-2272-4354-86a2-a1b02e5a8609)) - **Ascending View Explains Scriptural Development** - The ascending view of Scripture emphasizes lived experience and oral tradition handed down before being written, explaining theological progression across texts. - Chris uses chronological writing order to show Old Testament lawyering evolving into New Testament mercy. Transcript: Chris Young The descending view is God handed down scripture, and the sacred authors wrote exactly the words that God wanted written. Right. Almost like divine dictation. You know, I can imagine John sitting around one day. God speaks to me. Hey, John, pick up a quilt and some parchment. Start writing. You know, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, the Word was God. And John said, stay wrought. What's that? Just write it down. You'll figure it out later. Jim said no. He said, instead, people of faith experience God in their lives. And the lives of their community, and their history. And so they created oral traditions. They handed it down for generations. And then someone said, let's write that down. And so that's how Scripture gets written. And essentially, you offer it up to God, saying, this is what you revealed to me. Did I get it right? That's the ascending view. And that made sense. Then if you short scripture chronologically in the order it was written, not necessarily in the order it's in the Bible. You start to see this progression, this deepening of understanding. ([Time 0:18:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5e3a9825-57d9-4697-b72e-b9b7197c791b)) - **Feeling God Through The Body Of Christ** - Chris experiences God's love primarily through community, invoking the Catholic doctrine of the mystical body of Christ from 1 Corinthians 12. - He ties his disability to the metaphor: each person's contribution is essential to the body's functioning. Transcript: Chris Young So you feel, for me, I feel the love of God through community. If everyone in the community is a manifestation of the goodness of God, that's where you're going to feel God's love the most. And that's why community is so important to me. Jeremy Steele Can you explain that a little bit more? Chris Young Yeah, well, Catholics have a doctrine they call the mystical body of Christ, and it comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where Paul is making an analogy of a body and how each of us is part Of it. And, you know, if a hand says, I'm not a foot, I don't belong to the body, sorry, dude, you're so part of the body and so on. And then in verse 22, he says, you then are Christ's body, and each of you is part of it. So together, as a community, we make Christ present here on ours. And that really crystallized for me another story from that tape that the priest gave me right he told the story of a woman who was paralyzed and she says i can imagine my body doing all Sorts of wonderful things you know caring for my children loving my husband but i'm trapped in a body that's unresponsive to my will. And I could relate that to my own body because my muscles are so weak, I can't do anything. And so, you know, I don't know what part of the body I am. Am I the pinky finger on the left hand or the big toe on the right foot? But if I don't do my part in the community, if I don't contribute, I handicap the body of Christ. I handicap the community. And even though I survived that, I wouldn't wish it on anybody. Jeremy Steele Yeah. Chris Young So then, and you know, volunteers and contributing to the community, that was a core belief all along. Right. So now I have a compulsion to serve the community. So now we've gone from knowing God to loving God to serving God by serving the community. ([Time 0:21:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a7b39348-6c48-4b36-9024-a344cea68e0c)) - **Eucharist Passing The Turing Test Thought Experiment** - Chris, skeptical about the Eucharist's literal real presence, proposes a Turing test analogy: symbols can become indistinguishable from what they represent. - He suggests the Eucharist or Jesus might 'pass the Turing test' by making representation feel like the real thing. Transcript: Chris Young At the very bottom of this. I have plenty of those. Jeremy Steele Yeah. Chris Young At the very bottom of this was the real presence in the communion in Eucharist. Jeremy Steele And tell us what that is. Chris Young Catholics believe that when we receive communion, when the priest prays over the bread and wine, it actually becomes the body and blood of Christ. Yeah. They have a real presence. And that's totally ridiculous. To me, it's ironic. Know the process are supposed to be the literalists where the catholics are you know it's metaphoric it's the medicine but when it comes to eucharist you know jesus says unless you eat My flesh and nigger my blood you have no rights We take that literally. Jeremy Steele Right. Which is, I don't know, it's so wild sometimes when you think, you know, you just work through a very logical system. A stream of Christianity that has this sort of very logical progression to end up with something so illogical is just wild. Yeah. Chris Young So, I thought about it for a lot of years. I said, look, seriously, it's just a symbol. But for Catholics, it is the symbol. It is the most important part of Catholic theology, to attend Mass and to receive communion. And you know, they say you are what you eat. If that is the body of Christ, then that's how you become one with the body of Christ. Yeah. It's a symbol of our unity. It's the essence of the Catholic experience. I got a question. What if can't a symbol become so powerful and so meaningful that it becomes indistinguishable from the thing that it represents? Now, where did I get a crazy idea like that? Jeremy Steele Right. Chris Young I got it from Alan Turing. Jeremy Steele Right, yes. I love Alan Turing. And that movie, The Imitation Game, is brilliant. Chris Young Yes. So for those who haven't seen the movie, Turing was a brilliant mathematician. And during World War II, he invented a computer that would crack the german codes the enigma card yeah but then the imitation came which computer scientists these days call the turing Test he says he was even in the 40s and 50s he was so far advanced he was talking about artificial intelligence yeah yeah and he says what if you interview a computer in those days it would Be over a teletype right and you interview a human being and what if you can't tell the difference right and and this is called the the this is the classic turing test for artificial intelligence Yes so he's saying what if this symbolic representation of a human being is so perfect that you can't tell the difference so said, maybe what the church is trying to say is that the Eucharist Passes the Turing test. Maybe the symbolism is so powerful and so perfect that it's indistinguishable from the real thing. So now, the most ridiculous thing the church teaches in the light of my computer science background and during, maybe that's what they're trying to say. Maybe it's not that crazy after all. You know, take another one. ([Time 0:25:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a7d4db09-bfe9-4c30-afa5-626a0242c24a)) - **Returning Without Abandoning Skepticism** - After working through logic and skepticism, Chris reclaimed his place as a practicing Catholic while still calling himself a deep skeptic. - He emphasizes resolving hypocrisy as key to returning to communal practice. Transcript: Chris Young I take the idea of the community being the body of Christ. I relate that to my disability. I take these ridiculous ideas and decide maybe, just maybe, they pass the Turing test. Then I think in the end, I can say I'm still a deep skeptic, but I've gone through some logic that makes sense to me. And in the end of the day, I can now call myself a practicing Catholic Christian and not feel like a total hypocrite. Jeremy Steele Nice. Yeah. Chris Young And that hypocrisy is what drove me away from the church. And now I don't feel that hypocrisy anymore. That doesn't mean I'm not still skeptical. It doesn't mean I buy it off. But I've been through a process that makes me feel good about being a part of the church. Jeremy Steele And i think um i think one of the things that i love about this story is um is that you you left uh you left everything because of not being able to buy it, right? Because of your skepticism. ([Time 0:31:13](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0e3a1cb5-f972-47c6-bc58-3206050b785a)) - **Choose The Beliefs That Actually Work For You** - Jeremy advises choosing beliefs that work for you instead of inheriting an entire set; you can outsource belief to institutions but it's still your choice. - He encourages letting go of life-draining doctrines while keeping life-giving practices from traditions. Transcript: Jeremy Steele And i think um i think one of the things that i love about this story is um is that you you left uh you left everything because of not being able to buy it, right? Because of your skepticism. And then you continued at some point to, or you started at some point to re-engage without saying that like, okay, I have to believe everything, right? Because it, I mean, the Catholic Church says, like, you do need to believe all this stuff. And so when you left, it was like, well, I can't believe all this stuff, so I can't be a Catholic. But then you sort of let go of that one piece. And, and you've gotten to a place where, um, there's some of these things that bring life to you, maybe that resonate with your own experience and, um, just left the others in a pile of, I don't know, or I don't believe these things. And I think that's one of the things that is really helpful for people who are having a problem with the beliefs of maybe the stream of Christianity that they grew up in, is understanding That you get to choose what you believe. And you can outsource that choice to some sort of institution like the Roman Catholic church, but that in itself is a choice, right? And you are choosing what to believe. And so everybody gets to choose. So why not choose the beliefs that actually work for you, that you can actually bring life to you and, and just let go of the ones that don't. ([Time 0:32:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b013c4a8-28a3-4f4a-ae88-378e927651aa)) - **Not Church As Accessible Spiritual Community** - Chris found the Not Church Discord community where he explores scripture, spiritual practices, and receives mutual support through 'Holding Space.' - He serves there by sharing stories and hosting his podcast Contemplate Life, maintaining connection despite limited mobility. Transcript: Chris Young And so in that quest for knowledge, I found Dan McClellan. Jeremy Steele Right. Chris Young Who's a scripture scholar. Jeremy Steele Blessed be he. Yes. Chris Young And he led me to this crazy guy named Jeremy Steele. Yes. Jeremy Steele No, crazy is the right descriptor for sure. Chris Young Jeremy says, I'm a deep skeptic and a pastor. And no, you can't fix that. Right. Jeremy Steele I am essentially broken. There's no fixing it. Chris Young Yeah. And that led me to the Not Church community, which is a discord group. And it's a place where we learn more about scripture, we learn about God, we discuss it, we have these Zoom meetings where one week we do a teaching and then next week we do a meditation Or spiritual practices, which kind of opens me up to ways of reflecting outside of my Catholic experience. Okay? And then by sharing my story, well, then I also feel the support of that community. You know, we have a section called the Holding Space. Jeremy Steele Yeah. Chris Young If you have concerns and people offer you their support and their love. So I feel the love in that community. And then I can serve that community by telling my stories. I have my own podcast. Yeah. I call it Contemplate Life, and I share my stories there. I come on this podcast to share my stories, and that's how I give back to the humanity. That's how I serve the community. ([Time 0:35:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/38cb5c6e-2ae0-4a23-981c-5dd98155e7f7))