Religion among the Sons of Abraham. .

          Three great religions today, Christianity, Islam and Judaism all have their roots in a common source. They all trace back to  Biblical Abraham. But, they have diverted significantly over the years to become distinct in their own ways due to various factors.  But, they all have a couple of things in common. They all believe in one God and not a multiplicity of Gods as practiced by other religions. They all depend on a book to tell them what to do. In every case this book is deemed to be holy, the word of God. Why? Because somebody, or group of somebodies, said so. They also have another common thread, throughout their history these three religions have been highly patriarchal, although in more modern times a lot of restrictions have been lifted in certain religions. Men were the bosses and women were bound to obey them. Women were inferior and segregated in social standing in every way one can think of. In a real sense women were the property of men, to be bought and sold by their fathers and their main function seemed to be that of a maid and brood mare. The thing is that the "holy" books support this condition. The Muslims, to a some extent, depending on which country you pick, haven't eased very much on those conditions even in modern times. But, then they are really a young religion, some 600 hundred years younger than the Christians. Think back 600 years and the Christians had many of the same beliefs.   
    Let us start out by announcing that I am not a biblical scholar, or even close to one, nor have any desire to go that route. What I am is a person curious about history and why things are as they are, although I don't pretend to be a scholar in that area either.  The contents of this little treatise may offend some people, maybe a lot of people, who read it. But, I find it interesting. 
      I don't want to talk about God, or a divine being by any name. I don't know, if fact nobody knows, whether there is a God or not. On  the other hand it is impossible to show that God doesn't exist.
      Certainly many, maybe most, people fervently believe that there is some divine being that created and controls our world. That this divine being is a personal God that looks after us and can answer our prayers, heal the sick and do other wonderful things for us. 
     Belief in their God buoys people at a time when they could have collapsed from sorrow or fear. People send their loved ones off this mortal life in the promise of a life after death with the sure knowledge, or at least the hope, that they  will be reunited again. That belief sustains them and lets them go on with our lives. It has been said that there are no atheists on the battlefield. And, there are lot of conversions to religion from people facing death from serious illnesses or danger.
     Stephen Hawkins said that God wasn't necessary for the creation of the universe. That's true, but when you look at the size and scope of the universe, in which we are such a tiny and insignificant part, it is hard to believe that there wasn't some great plan to this whole thing. 
     If there was a planner for this vast universe, with all it's natural and physical forces at play, then, I believe, that the planner is so superior and different from us, in every way, that we have absolutely no hope of understanding the planners nature or motivation in creating such a enormous and mysterious world or what we're doing in it. We would have about as much chance knowing the motives and desires of that entity as an gnat would know about us. I have heard the argument that we were created in God's image to worship Him. Now isn't that a whizzer. God needs somebody to worship Him?  A being so powerful that he created this vast universe?
     It has been said that if God didn't exist, we would create him. We needed God(s) because they explained the unexplainable.  Zuess, Thor, Odin, Apollo, Venus, Neptune and a whole host of Gods were imagined to be the cause for the sun to traverse the sky every day, lightning to strike, storms that wrecked ships and terrified people, volcanoes that erupted causing great damage, plaques that wiped out huge populations and almost everything, good and bad, for which mankind did not know the reason.
      We had to placate the Gods or they would be mad at us and so we decided that prayers, offerings and sacrifices were necessary to show the Gods that we worshiped them and feared them. That way, we hoped, the Gods would smile down on us and the Sun would rise in the morning, that spring would happen after a cold winter, that the volcano that is near wouldn't erupt, that the battle would be won for our side, the illness afflicting himself or somebody close would be cured and for all kinds of other reasons. That practice of sacrifice reached epoch proportions in some societies with the Aztecs sacrificing thousands of people to their God to curry His favor. 
          The need for God(s) gave rise to religions because mankind must somehow formalize their beliefs. With religion however, came the need to communicate with God(s) and know what was wanted of them. Ergo, the rise of Prophets, Elders and the Priesthood, or something like them, that purports to have direct pipe line to God and knows His will. Alexander never made a move without consulting the Oracle. Caesar made sacrifices to the Gods before every battle. The Pope is said to be infallible in matters of faith. Catholic Priests can forgive sin. Mohammad was visited by Gabriel an Angel direct from Allah. The position of the church leaders in religion gave this group great wealth and powers in the affairs of men. What followed, of course, by the established church powers, was that they would  go to any means to maintain and even increase that power. Rebellion against that idea when it grew to excess is what spawned the Jesus movement among the Jews, after all Jesus was really rebelling against the established church, and the Protestant movement in the Christian church. The Jewish Priests wanted Jesus killed and you've heard of the Inquisition, the church powers struck back with a vengeance at the threat to their position, all in name of God of course. 
      The rise of religions have also resulted in killings on a massive scale and sometimes genocide. The Jews did not just win battles in their conquest of the Holy Land, the killed every man, woman and child in the conquered cities, or so the Bible says. The Crusaders slaughtered the Muslims when they captured cities. The Turks tried their best to eliminate the Armenians. The Germans, with help of the Poles, French and conquered Ukraine did their best to solve the "Jewish" problem with mass executions of Jews. The Czar of Russia drove the Jews from their homes of many years. Muslims have strapped explosives to their bodies or flew planes into tall buildings in order to kill those that don't believe as they do.   The Muslims and the Hindus did their best to kill each other upon the exit of the British from India and the establishment of the independent India and Pakistan. All in Gods name of course, or so they were instructed.          
     Christian slave owners and the whole southern population avowed that it was God's will that Blacks were made inferior and should be kept in slavery, after all they were the children of Ham. Even after emancipation, that line of reasoning was being preached from the pulpit in southern churches for many generations to support the idea that blacks were inferior and should be segregated. 
     The French Catholics tried to slaughter the Protestant Huguenots while the English Protestants were making war on the Catholics.
      At the root of all these events was the teaching of their various religions. 
     So, religion. while on one hand granted great comfort to individuals, it has caused untold misery to millions.
     Have you ever noticed that the God(s) are just like us, filled with easily recognized human emotions. Not surprising because we created them in our image. They get jealous, they get mad, they demand that they be worshiped. The stories of Odin and Thor and the Greek Gods adopted by the Romans, is a story of strife, jealousy, love, wars and all the other conditions that we are familiar with.
      Look at the old testament and the story of Job and Abraham and his son. Both of those stories are about a God that is subject to vanity. The Abraham and Job stories are about God wanting to prove to Lucifer that they would be faithful to him no matter what he inflicted upon them. Strange that an all powerful being would feel the need to do that. Sounds very human doesn't it? If a human King had inflicted those trials on one of their subjects we would call him a monster. 
      The Tower of Babble story is the story of a God who got angry at the people and scattered them to the winds, resulting in the development of all the different languages that we speak. Of course that was really just a story to explain why every one didn't speak the same language.
      In fact, the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament in the Christian Bible is a story of a wrathful God who punished the people when they didn't act according to his wishes. That's the story of Noah, the punishment of Adam and Eve being banished from Eden, of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lots wife and even the story of Moses who was not allowed to enter the promised land. 
     Strangely the God of the New Testament is a kind and merciful God who sent his son among us to atone for our sins. Not sure how being crucified on a cross atones for the sins of persons who rob, kill and generally wrecks havoc on his fellow man. It's almost like the God of the New Testament was a new God.  
       Look at Genesis in the Hebrew and Old Testament of the Christian Bible. That book is full of interesting stories. In the very beginning God created a man, Adam, and then removed a rib from Adam and created Eve. All was peachy keen, living carefree in the Garden of Eden where there was no want, pain or any other bad thing. They had one mandate. Don't eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. But, Eve tempted Adam to eat the fruit because it was so delicious. You know the story from there. The mystery is: What was so special about the tree of knowledge. It is often considered that what the story was really about was SEX.  Eve tempted Adam into having sex with her. So Eve, and by inference all women, were temptresses who will tempt men into sin and damning their souls. That gave rise to all kinds of restrictions on women in the religions of the sons of Abraham.  
     The other neat story is the Cain and Abel tale. Cain and Abel made a sacrifice to God from the area of their labor. But, God didn't favor Cain because he only sacrificed the produce he grew in the fields, while Abel was favored because he scarified a lamb. That really doesn't make any sense does it? Cain was giving him the product of his hard labor while Abel, with much easier job as a shepherd gave him something that required little effort on his part. But, the idea of blood sacrifice was required by the pagan religions in those days so the ancient peoples understood that story. Cain then slew Abel in a jealous rage and was driven to wander and to take a wife and live in the land of Nod which was east of Eden.  He was given the Mark of Cain to insure the people wouldn't kill him because he was hated. Wait a minute. Adam and Eve, according the Hebrew and Christian Bible, were supposed to be the first people on earth with only their children alive. Where did the woman that became Cain's wife come from? Did he marry his sister? And where did the land of Nod come from?  Who were the people who were a threat to Cain? Apparently there was a whole civilization to the east of Eden that gets only honorable mention. Interesting. Some early writings had an answer for that, but the those stories were not included in the current Bible. They required that Eve actually be the second wife to Adam. But, that's another story. 
       And then, there is the creation story, which is not plausible to say the least. At least if taken literally. Bible purest have dated the age of the universe to be something like six thousand years. If one took the Bible literally that might hold up. But, there is so much scientific evidence that puts that premise to be false. In fact, only a few of the stories in the old testament are supported by archeological findings, mostly the newer events. 
    Take the story of Moses. A fun story. But, there is no archeological evidence that there was significant presence of Jews in Egypt at the time that is attributed to Moses (The New Kingdom). Remember the number of Jews that left Egypt was supposed to be in the order Six Hundred Thousand men (Exodus 12:37-38). That meant the number of Jews in the exodus would number something in the order of one and half to two million people when you include the women, children and non Israelite's exiting from Egypt and roaming the Sinai for 40 years. No archeological evidence exists to support the presence of Jews traveling in the Sinai, and with that many people traveling through out a locale for so long, it is certain they would have left evidence of their presence behind. But, at the same time there is significant evidence of Jews in Canon and in Sumeria . In addition, imagine the significant impact on the economy of any nation if that large a labor force left at one time. After all the population of Egypt at the time was somewhere around 3 to 4 million Egyptians.  

And, there is no record of any economic impact on Egypt in the time frame. Most historians believe that the Moses story is largely fiction, but there likely is a grain of truth in the story somewhere. 
      Then there is Noah. Another fun story to entertain kids in Sunday School. It doesn't take much of a search into the history of the earth to know that there was no flood that covered the earth at any time that humanoids walked here.  The story probably grew out of stories of big floods, which at times did happen, and the discovery of fossils of sea creatures high on mountains. Having no knowledge of plate tectonics, the only conclusion they reached was that, sometime in the past, great oceans covered the earth for a time. At least that's one theory as to how the Noah story evolved. 
     Even these stories don't compare to the Jonah and the Whale story. The idea that some body could be swallowed by a whale and survive in it's belly really stretches the imagination.  
    Of the three religions with common roots, only two have a mandate to go out and convert everybody they come in contact with, by force or any other way. Islam and Christianity was spread at the point of a sword. The Jews, however, are a clannish bunch and closely guard the walls of their religion.  After all, they are the Chosen People, although, based on their history I'm not sure what they were chosen for.  Perhaps they were chosen to be persecuted, slaughtered and driven from one land to another after the Christians became dominate in western and eastern Europe. And, today they have whole nations of Muslims on their backs calling for their annihilation. It must be nice to be chosen.
     Of the three, the Jews are the oldest of the religions. Their holy book is a collection of stories handed down for generations by word of mouth, and finally, some, no way of knowing how many, where collected into a single scroll or book, the Tanakh. I couldn't figure out when that happened, perhaps as early as the 5th century BCE. A Bible scholar may know the answer to that but, I don't think it's all that important.   
     There were certainly stories that were not included in that book, but were left out because they didn't support the ideas that the people who started bringing the stories together liked. There is no way to ever know, but knowing just a little bit about human nature argues that many tales that were part of the oral tradition would be left out of the "Official" book.  Multiple stories about the creation are common everywhere. All the religions of the world, including those in the New World,  have different creation stories.We need them to explain the how and why we are here.  
     The tales that made into the Hebrew Bible are in many ways just tales to teach that it is good to be faithful to God. But, the main thrust of the book is to relate the history of the Jewish people and their relationship with their God, even though many of the tales are suspect, to say the least. Note, I said Their God. The First Commandment delivered by Moses for the Jewish people was that He was their Lord and that they should have no other Gods before Him. It is interesting that the Commandment doesn't say that He was the only God, only that He was their God. Not surprising when you consider at the time of creation of the Commandments, many God's proliferated the known world. 
     The Jews have evolved a long string of traditions through the years. I think that many of the those traditions transcend the several Jewish sects that have developed, but on the other hand different sects within Judaism have diverged. When you consider that history of the Hebrew Bible and it's evolution through the centuries, it is easy to see where stories told and handed down would get embellished and changed to fit whatever message the tale teller wished to convey as the traditions of their faith became solidified and traditions grew. Even after the stories were written down, to copy them would require a scribe to do so by hand, so they would be very rare. It would be typical that people who could read the written account would then retell the story to others. And, among the listeners would be be someone who would put the tale to papyrus, or whatever the medium that was used at time. Another chance for someone to put a spin on the story. 
      However, somewhere along the line they began to view the written versions as sacred and became very careful to accurately copy the text. That is known because the comparison of the newer versions to the oldest known texts are very faithful, it's just the oldest known texts are relatively new considering the time span of the Jewish religion.  
        The story of how the current Christian Bible evolved and finally set in stone is an interesting one.  Anybody who thinks there was agreement among the various Christian branches in the early church hasn't read history. In fact Christians were killing each other over their differences. There was real disagreement on the nature of Jesus, Mary, the trinity, women's role in the church and many other issues.  As everybody is aware now, there were many gospels, most of them having one of the Disciples names attached, that were floating around in the first 3 centuries of the Christian churches. None of them actually written by the Disciples, in fact no one knows who actually wrote the Gospels, but they were apparently created some 30 to 150 years after the death of Jesus. We know about a few of them because of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other discoveries in the last century or so. There is no way of knowing how many others were destroyed as being heretical. After the Church took power, all Gospels not included in the approved canon were ordered destroyed and to possess them was a death sentence, let alone to read them in church. 
     The Emperor Constantine, a recent convert (probably, maybe) to Christianity, noted that there was no consistent  and uniform consensus concerning many of the fundamental issues in the Christian church among it's many different followers. He wanted to use the growing Christian religion as a unifying force for his empire.  So he called a council of leading church figures (the Bishops of the major church centers) to define what should be taught as official Christian theology.
    The first attempt to officially define the nature of Jesus, the Trinity and Mary was tackled at the Council Nicea (c.325 CE) chaired by the Emperor Constantine. Up to then there was no recorded effort or serious attempt to reign in the various beliefs prevalent among the Christians. Either some of the major branches of Christianity were not invited or chose not to attend, as there is no record of the Gnostic's or any other branch attending. Only those branches that had embraced a Priesthood with a defined hierarchy got their say in the council. After all, Constantine wanted a church that he could control and without a strict hierarchy that would have been hard to do. Constantine set himself up as the head of the church.
     Various synods were convened after that and after about a one hundred year evolution from the time of Constantine, as to which books would be included in the bible and considered holy, was most likely finalized under the the direction of Augustine of Hippo at the synods of Hippo (c.383) and two synods of Carthage (c 397 and 419). Of course, this was an all Catholic, all male get together, so it isn't surprising that the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene was excluded. It presented a position that could not be tolerated, by giving women a prominent place in the Christian Church. The Gospel according to Thomas was also left out because it may have cast doubt on some of the other stories that were in the final Bible. The Gospel according to Peter presented a resurrection story that the bishops didn't care for. The Gospel of Judas didn't make it because it told a different story of the events leading up to the crucifixion. Several others didn't make the cut, including the Gospel according to James.
    They liked the story in Revelations, even though they really had no idea who wrote it, and we still don't. Somebody named John?  It scared the population and gave power to the church. It should be noted that the concepts of Hell and a great battle was not a new one. It was an old tradition among many religions. In fact a lot of the story in Revelations could have been borrowed from Pagan tales that told a story along the same lines. By the way, Armageddon is a place not an event.   
     One can not talk about Christianity without talking about Paul, or Saul if you wish. He was the most influential writer and Apostle of Jesus in the early church. He was the one who brought the gentiles into the church where before him, it was common that only Jews were welcomed. 
     Almost half the books in the New Testament are attributed to Paul. In his writings he drew heavily on Stoic writings to express his view of the message of Jesus. Most people know that Paul never met Jesus, except the resurrected Jesus, according to him, that moved him to convert, so everything he knew was second hand. 
There is no way of knowing how much of his theology was actually taken from any contact he had with 12 Disciples or was his own ideas about what the Christian Church should be, heavily influenced by Stoic writings. 
     Paul traveled widely over the middle east and into Spain to preach his message as well as writing the letters that appear in the New Testament. He, more than any of the 12 original Apostles, was responsible for the spread of Christianity over the Roman world. 
    However, women can thank Paul, or someone writing in his name, for many of the restrictions placed on them in the developing Christian Church.
From Wikipedia:

"The second chapter of the first letter to Timothy—one of the six disputed letters—is used by many churches to deny women a vote in church affairs, reject women from serving as teachers of adult Bible classes, prevent them from serving as missionaries, and generally disenfranchise women from the duties and privileges of church leadership.

9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shame facedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety."

    It seems that Paul was a product of his day. 
    The Catholics, both the Roman and Eastern versions blamed the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. Luke said so.  But, historically that can not be accurate. The story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, doesn't hold water.  Pilate in washing his hands of the matter, would have made the crucifixion impossible.  Only a Roman magistrate could convict a person to be crucified, and then only for violating Roman Law.  And they were good at it. The Jew's Priests did not have that authority. In fact Pilate declared that Jesus was not guilty of violating Roman Law. Let's get real, why would Pilate, the Roman Governor be called on to judge such a minor case anyway. After all, he was the Governor of the province, only one step from the Emperor.  It is thought by many modern bible scholars that the person, or persons who wrote the Gospel according to Luke did not dare blame the Romans. After all the Romans ruled Israel with an iron fist at the time. Jesus was likely to have been actually found guilty of sedition under Roman Law by some Roman magistrate, which would have merited the crucifixion. But, adding Pilate to the story added spice, and gave the story greater importance. It should be noted that crucifixions were very common under the Romans so the crucifixion of Jesus would not have been special to the population at large. And, of course, the Christian used this story to persecute the Jews through most of the last two thousand years.  

     When one looks at the way the Christian Bible was put together, one wonders just how much God had to do with the final version and how much was the direct influence of men with their own agenda. Probably with good intentions, but swayed by their own biases and prejudices.  
     Central the the Christian creed are a couple of things related to Jesus. First of all, did a man, we now call Jesus, actually exist? Some scholars believe that Jesus is really just a merger of the teachings of several Rabbis or philosophers that were brought together and attributed to a fictional person. That one is hard to swallow. Just too many people wrote about what he said and did in a relatively short time after his death. The Gospels were written in a period of 30 to maybe 150 years after the crucifixion. Also, Paul's letters probably started a bit earlier. There was time to spin and embellish the message the Rabbi was teaching, but not enough to invent him out of whole cloth. 
    One of the sticking points, if one tries to correlate the Bibles version of the birth of Jesus with known history, is that the story doesn't actually hold water. To start with, Mary and Joseph was said to have come to Bethlehem because the Romans demanded that everybody return to the place of their birth for a census. The problem is that there is no record of the Romans asking for a census at that time and, to add confusion to the story, that is not the way the Romans conducted their censuses. Remember, the Romans were very good at keeping records and census was always conducted in place. So, if they came to Bethlehem, they came for a far different reason than given in the Bible. 
    And why Bethlehem? It was necessary for the story that the Messiah to be born in the City of David. That was the prophecy. So whether Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem or not, the story required that he was when it was decided that he was the Messiah. Many scholars don't believe he ever saw Bethlehem as a young child, that the story was just an artifact to enhance the Messiah image. 
    It is probable that Mathew was the first Gospel actually written (although some scholars believe it was Mark) and whoever wrote the other Gospels merely copied it- sort of. What's interesting is that the two accounts of Jesus's birth in Mathew and Luke (the only two Gospels that address the subject) don't match. One has the shepherds visited by the Angels scene and the other has the Wise Men (Magi) scene. 
   We love our nativity plays which have the Wise Men, sometimes depicted as Kings, being drawn by a bright star to the baby Jesus as he lay in his manger.  The problem is the Bible doesn't support that scenario. According to the Bible Jesus was about 2 years old when the Wise Men, actually Astrologers, visited Herod and asked about the new King of the Jews. Herod then supposedly had all the male children under 2 years old in the city of Bethlehem slain. From all historical records Herod was certainly capable of that atrocity. The fact that there is no record of it, if it happened, isn't too surprising. After all Bethlehem was just a small village which probably had no more than 10 or so boys that fit that category. 
    Mary and Joseph fled Bethlehem to escape Herod and went to Egypt. They returned to Israel after the death of Herod about two years later. We heard little of Jesus until He had an epiphany at around the age of 30 years. Considering the average age of mankind at the time, that would make Him very mature. He then started moving though Israel/Judea to preach his message. 
     His main points were probably best expressed in the passage set as the Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that never really happened, but was a artifact used by the writer of Mathew to bring together the things that Jesus said over a period of time to his Disciples in a concise manner. It doesn't lessen the message, just how it was delivered. 
     From about the fourth century, for a long while, there was only one Christian Church of any consequence, the Catholics. But, there was disagreement between the western church centered in Rome and the Eastern Catholics, sometimes called the Eastern Orthodox, centered in Constantinople. This disagreement resulted in the east-west schism in 1054 CE which officially separated the eastern from the western church. Then Martin Luther wrote the "ninety-five theses",  got excommunicated from the church as a result and the Protestants were born.They in turn have splintered into a number of different denominations, all with a little different idea of what the Scriptures actually say and mean.
     While there is clearly no idea who actually wrote the books of the Hebrew Bible or the Gospels of the Christian New Testament, there is no doubt who wrote the Quran.
     Mohammad born in 560 CE often went a cave to pray and meditate. At about age 40 he had his first revelation from the Angel Gabriel informing him of God's laws and how the faithful should live.  He proclaimed himself the last Prophet of God following in the tradition going back to Adam. He gathered a small army about him, overrun the city of his birth, Mecca, in 622 CE and from there spread the faith of Islam over the middle east. It's really in interesting story. It's too bad the Muslims are so hung up about the use of Mohammad's image in almost any form, that the story is not well known. A movie was made about his life, but due to threats it was never released.
     As usual with visitations of Saints, Angels or God himself to some individual, there is no witnesses to the act. They are usually in a remote place to a single individual, sometimes a cave or grotto. Or on top of a mountain or in the desert. It's up to the individual to decide whether those events actually happened, were they the imagination of some person, a hallucination or even a fraud. 
   
      
         
         
    
 

The Looming Catastrophe

   I see a real problem facing mankind, especially those of us who live in the more advanced civilizations. In short it's the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics. And, it isn't the reason that science fiction writers love, where advanced machines try to take over the world. It's societies ever increasing use of advanced robotics to perform tasks that was once done by people.
    Think about it. Do you really need a waitress at a restaurant? Not if AI  advances much more than it is right now. You can certainly place your order using some kind of interface, such as a touch screen display. Your order could be prepared by an AI controlled robot and delivered to you table by an AI controlled cart. Even the clean up will be controlled by machines.
    Self driving cars are already in the pipeline and will become common pretty soon. What will follow is self driving trucks and buses. How about self piloting planes? That certainly is a technical possibility.
    Warehouses, already heavy in automation will become more so with the advance of AI and robotics. Pretty soon there will be no need for humans in that profession at all.
    How about medicine?  It is in the foreseeable future that machines controlled by advanced AI can do diagnostics and treatment better than any human doctor because of the ability to draw on vast medical data bases, and the ability to correlate all the information it can gather about your health.  Machines will perform complex operations that no human can manage because of the precision of the AI controlled movement. In the not too distant future you may never actually need to see a live doctor at all to get the best medical care. Misdiagnosis will be a thing of the past. Something that happens all to often now. I know personally about that problem. You can get all your checkups and other examinations at home, along with necessary prescriptions filled and delivered to your door within one hour by machine. If you need more extensive examinations or procedures you visit a local clinic where you check in and then let a AI controlled robot perform those tasks. No waiting.
     Dental care will be performed completely by AI controlled machines. Examinations  and necessary corrective procedures can and will be performed without the interaction with a dentist or dental technician.
    The number of humans necessary to build a car or truck, or for that matter any product that we use, has already been reduced by the reliance on automation. With advanced AI the need for people to build anything in a factory may nearly disappear all together. 
    To make matters worse, with advanced AI the machines will become self repairing. So the need for humans to maintain the machines will be significantly reduced. 
   Farming, already highly mechanized will move further into that direction so the need for humans to grow, tend to and harvest our food will be significantly reduced. 
   And, the list goes on. 
   AI controlled automation will make all the things we use cheaper, far better made with higher reliability and more available. That's the good side. 
    The problem is--where are all the people, put out of work by the prolific use of automation that is sure to come, go? How do they live?  It seems like the trend that is beginning to become evident even today will accelerate. There will be the highly educated, highly trained people who are very well paid and live a very good life. Then there will be all the large number others who's jobs disappear due to automation. 
     We have faced this type of problem many times in our history and each time the system has adjusted over a fairly short time and things have improved for everybody. Maybe that will happen in the future. That is because, in the past,  the new products that displaced the old and obsoleted the old skills, demanded more people to produce the increased demand for the new product. But, in the past the new product, such as the automobile replacing the horse and buggy, was still fairly labor intensive. That will not be so in the future. New products will be produced by automation and will require little usage of manual labor.
     Not every thing that could automated will be. Some tasks will be more cost effective to perform manually because of the cost of a robot to perform them. 
     The dilemma is, that with the increased production capability to turn out products at a prodigious rate, we need consumers. But, if automation replaces workers on a large scale, then where are the consumers?  That's a good question. Frankly I have no answer. Just wondering.