Transhumanism is a recent movement that extols mans right to shape his own evolution, by maximizing the use of scientific technologies, to enhance human physical and intellectual potential. While the name is new, the idea has long been a popular theme of science fiction, featured in such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bade Runner, the Terminator series, and more recently, The Matrix, Limitless, Her and Transcendence.

However, as its adherents hint at in their own publications, transhumanism is an occult project, rooted in Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, and derived from the Kabbalah, which asserts that humanity is evolving intellectually, towards a point in time when man will become God. Modeled on the medieval legend of the Golem and Frankenstein, they believe man will be able to create life itself, in the form of living machines, or artificial intelligence.

Spearheaded by the Cybernetics Group, the project resulted in both the development of the modern computer and MK-Ultra, the CIAs mind-control program. MK-Ultra promoted the mind-expanding potential of psychedelic drugs, to shape the counterculture of the 1960s, based on the notion that the shamans of ancient times used psychoactive substances, equated with the apple of the Tree of Knowledge.

And, as revealed in the movie Lucy, through the use of smart drugs, and what transhumanists call mind uploading, man will be able to merge with the Internet, which is envisioned as the end-point of Kabbalistic evolution, the formation of a collective consciousness, or Global Brain. That awaited moment is what Ray Kurzweil, a director of engineering at Google, refers to as The Singularly. By accumulating the total of human knowledge, and providing access to every aspect of human activity, the Internet will supposedly achieve omniscience, becoming the God of occultism, or the Masonic All-Seeing Eye of the reverse side of the American dollar bill.

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Transhumanism | Conspiracy School

Transhumanism is knocking at the door. Dubbed as Humanity+ or H+, the idea to radically revolutionize humanity has emerged in the last decades as a global intellectual movement. With a slogan of melding humans with the machine, it aims to radically alter human nature by means of technological advancement.

Transhumanists ask, 'If humans can interfere with the process of evolution, is it possible for us to create a human being with greater capacities than what we are now?'

Proponents of transhumanism envision a human that goes beyond its current biology and cognition. They are trying to move society into the next stage of human development where man achieves super-intelligence and emotional well-being. Transhumanists ask, If humans can interfere with the process of evolution, is it possible for us to create a human being with greater capacities than what we are now? Can we make a human species without weakness of disease and illness, anger and sadness, and ultimately overcome death itself?

Some see such technologically driven future as not just desirable, but a necessity. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX indicated an inevitability of humans to symbiotically bond with artificial intelligence, if the human species were to remain relevant. This call for humanitys radical makeover comes right at the midst of the digital age, where Homo sapiens, with the progress of science and technology is crossing the Rubicon, challenging physical boundaries and organic biological limitations.

The rapid expansion of technology in this new millennium radically transformed our social landscape. The modern life filled with information has placed everyone behind computer screens and cell phones. As society has become more abstract, it became virtual, fabricated with images that are dissociated from the facts and events of the world.

The beast of neoliberalism that has been devouring victims abroad is now finally coming home to roost. Now, ordinary Americans are suffering from unemployment, homelessness and lack of access to medical care.

In many ways, the recent hype of fake news reflects this counterfeit reality that we are all surrounded by. Waves of whistleblowers in recent years revealed that we live in a kind of simulation intervened by government and corporate media propaganda. The 2008 financial meltdown exposed the global economy, overdriven by the bubble of toxic assets and stocks that were propped up by central banks with their money made out of thin air. This Ponzi scam of financial engineering was further covered up by bank bailouts, creating a fake recovery.

Meanwhile, our democracy has been one big consumer fraud. We have been duped by psychopaths in power who pull the strings of puppet politicians. Civic power has been fragmented by a corporate duopoly, keeping the populace in false hope for change in the electoral arena. With tactics of divide and conquer, monetary elites behind the scenes trigger emotions, stirring conflicts among voters in a national tournament of identity politics. Once people are trapped by fear and hatred that are carefully manufactured, they easily lose sight of reality. Rather than finding commonality and building a coalition to solve problems, many engage in mutually assured self-destruction.

While the American working class is distracted by this political charade, the economy continues to stagnate, making the divide between the rich and poor ever wider. The beast of neoliberalism that has been devouring victims abroad is now finally coming home to roost. Now, ordinary Americans are suffering from unemployment, homelessness and lack of access to medical care. Young people are burdened with predatory student debt, where despite the promise of college recruiters, there are few viable jobs for them. Social services are defunded, throwing away elders, while a military budget gets fatter and fatter, with increased defense contracts for the never ending wars.

While political corruption is deepening the crisis of institutions and governments, Silicon Valley tech companies through lobbying have steadily gained influence in Washington. Now, technological innovation is pushed forward as a solution to the breakdown of social systems. From Apple and Google to Facebook, giant tech companies put a monopoly on AI, trying to control its development, so to dictate the course of our future. With the initiative of universal basic income (UBI), wealthy and elite technologists advocate for the creation of a robot economy where labor is replaced by automation.

This techno-utopia does not come for free. One has to pay a heavy price for the ticket to this supposed heaven on earth.

Here the radical vision of humanity 2.0 arises. The coming of a post-human era promises to alleviate suffering, make us stronger, more intelligent and godlike. Transhumanists try to bring eternal life through insemination of machine intelligence into the human body. By combining big data with AI software, the idea is already there for humanity to attain digital immortality, where one can develop mind clones of oneself that has its own life on the web. Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and futurist shares his aspiration of uploading a digital memory, creating a new pill that slows down peoples perception of time and drugs that can eliminate painful memories.

The idea of fusion with technology as a next stage in human evolution can speak to our own narcissism induced by social media attention culture. The H+ agenda can be marketed by appealing to ones desire for recognition, to be boundless and to attain mastery of oneself. Through social engineering, it will corral the herd and achieve mass adoption. Yet this techno-utopia does not come for free. One has to pay a heavy price for the ticket to this supposed heaven on earth. In the exchange to transcend human limitations, we are asked to give up the essence of being human. What are we expected to sacrifice on this altar of transcendence.

Humans are endowed with subjectivity that places them in relationship with the world. With this self-awareness, we are given freedom to determine the course of our own actions. While machines can only do what they are programmed to do, humans with intention can choose their actions and alter the situation through insight and creativity. This freedom releases spontaneity and variation, making the environment not fixed and unpredictable. At the same time, out of this comes the potential for errors. Choices expose men to the propensity for mistakes and make them fallible.

The AI trend of technological intervention of humanity now threatens this ability to make choices.

The AI trend of technological intervention of humanity now threatens this ability to make choices. Automation narrows and eliminates the space for humans to make their own decisions, locking society into a deterministic future. Through scientific and mathematical precision, the force of mechanization tries to remove possibilities for errors and by doing so, it deprives something essential about human beings.

What make us different from these artificial beings is our free will and unique learning processes that are associated with it. Our connection to the world binds us deeply to the consequences of our own choices. In a moment we make a mistake, reality blows up in our face and we are forced to see the results of what we have created. The feeling of shame and guilt that overwhelm us can break the heart wide open. The unbearable pain awakens ones moral sensibility. With these burning sensations, we directly experience our own actions and the effect they have on others lives.

When we confront our own mistakes with honesty, we can transform this sense of humiliation into humility. We learn to become humble. This connects us to other human beings, allowing us to see reality from their perspectives. This empathy makes us strive to mend our actions. It is the foundation of conscience that makes humans acknowledge their errors and inspire one another to repent, undo wrongdoing and learn.

It is this morality rooted in our relationship to the environment that corporate culture has been trying hard to eradicate. Agendas behind transhumanist movements can be seen as the ultimate goal of transnational corporations. The rise of corporate power turned civilization against nature. Multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations like Monsanto have assaulted life by monopolizing seeds and poisoning food with GMOs.

Corporations as artificial entities bring the force that hardens the heart. They assert themselves in society through the legal fiction of corporate personhood. The theater of the American Dream managed by big business has turned citizens into consumers, who are directed to find happiness in consumption and material acquisition. Unbridled greed of capitalism bombards all with ads and commercials, 24 hours 7 days a week, making us chase after products that we dont need and to be always cheerful, while suppressing sadness and deep dissatisfaction of life with antidepressant drugs. Ensnared by glamorous Hollywood life and a culture that worships youth, many engage in a pathological pursuit for perfection, to be beautiful, thin, and ageless.

In this fictional world, we are not humans. Workers are exploited, being treated as disposable with no benefits, while mega corporations look for the next cheap labor to exploit and new markets to make a killing. The merciless cyborg with its callous skin controls world finance, turning all living beings into caricatures in their tyrannical fantasy. In this artificial natural selection pushed forward by the invisible hands of the market, the cold algorithm enacts financial terrorism, dictating who should survive and who should die.

Now, in Trumps America, the fiction of corporate personhood finds a new iteration to make its dream great again. As the nation consolidates power with the new administration, we all become contestants in The Apprentice. In this grandiose Reality Show, we are told to mimic corporate personhood, to be cunning and self-serving or we will be fired. The world of Wall Street entices all to a path of personal power, filled with ambition, vanity and pride. Plundering through exploitative business practices and addictive gambling of high frequency trading becomes a way of life. Corruption is rife with rampant greed and sexual conquest.

Inside 9-5 office hours of white collar jobs, relationships became impersonal and transactional, where people are forced to hide real emotions behind professional masks. In this supposed free market competition that bars entry to immigrants, people of color and transgenders, workers are trained to mind their own business by climbing up the ladder of success in a rat race of profit at any cost. Deep inside the labyrinth of organizational hierarchies, we are cut off from our own authentic feelings and lose the ground of consensual reality. We no longer are held accountable by feedback of others.

The goal is no longer just total control of the world to create an ever more perfect world, but to control human nature itself by reprogramming our biology to create a perfect self.

Now, with depletion of resources and environmental destruction, the life of the American dream is becoming unsustainable. As the fantasy of corporate personhood is losing its fuel, it seems to be carried into a vision of techno-utopianism. Through mass surveillance and authoritarian use of police force, the corporate state has been attacking privacy and autonomy of individuals. From face recognition technology and biometrics used at borders to AI augmented cyber-security and auto flying drones, it further mechanizes this world. The goal is no longer just total control of the world to create an ever more perfect world, but to control human nature itself by reprogramming our biology to create a perfect self.

As the disfranchised middle class is slowly waking up from their insulated reality and starting to face their broken life, transhumanism offers all a short cut to nirvana. From the magic of genetic modification to the creation of the mind file, through making humans directly interface with the net, technology is presented to rescue us, trying to numb throbbing aches in the arteries that carry the ebb and flow of our human experience.

Transhumanist thinkers with technological enlightenment ideas declare the liberation of humanity from a cog in the wheel of the corporate machine, only to once again ensnare all in their Sci Fi illusory future. From self-driving cars to androids, robots that are designed to look and act like a human, artificial intelligence is here in everyday life, promising to make our life more convenient, efficient and safe. With a gospel of machine supremacy preaching perfection, increased dominance of technology can annihilate our free will that is a prerequisite for developing conscience.

With artificial nerves that cant carry the warmth of blood, robots mimic life in their synthetic existence. They are the phantoms that claim immortality, when they never even had a chance to truly live. These ghosts in the machine make us sever our ties to the world, by turning the heart into a pump that pushes out the pain of our mother in her giving birth to a child.

Our remembering of her pain that brought all of life makes us remain connected to her world. We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake, said renowned Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. He continued:

But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same; we are walking through the fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that its a commitment, its a true relationship.

Our ability to feel is a testimony of being human, allowing us to be a real person in this fake world. To be human is to live among flesh, being audaciously flawed. Our striving to bear our own pain awakens compassion. We are able to forgive ourselves and others. We find strength to love one another in our authenticity found in each others imperfection. This total acceptance of human errors connects us to potent creative power within that resists rigidity, mechanization and all stagnation, keeping the world alive through our relationship with her.

Humanity is now at a crossroads. With the exponential growth of technology, we have the capability to bring a great turning or destroy the world.

Humanity is now at a crossroads. With the exponential growth of technology, we have the capability to bring a great turning or destroy the world. Branches of science; technology, engineering, chemistry and medicine helped mankind overcome natural disaster and disease and live more comfortably in this harsh physical environment. Renewable energy technologies can help us create a sustainable future. These are tools that can be used for the good. They can reduce poverty and enhance the quality of our lives. But they can be also used against us and our ability to make choices needs to be preserved to determine which path we will take.

Transhumanism is marching on into our society, showing its footsteps everywhere. With iPad and Android, talking gadgets are entering into the crib, hijacking childhood imagination. Day and night technology snatches youngsters attention, plugging them into Instagram and Snapchat. As the expansion of this machine world accelerates, our life gets faster and faster, making it harder for us to be present in our own bodies.

We need to stay awake and not sleepwalk through this time of decision. Reality may be painful, but if we lose our own sense of reality by giving up what feels at the center of our hearts, it will be the death of our own selves. Such is a tragic loss of what it means to be human and the life of all on this planet that we are meant to steward.

Originally posted here:
Transhumanism: A Final Corporate Takeover of Humanity

The title of this years True Legends Conference is Transhumanism and the Hybrid Age. For the followers of Steve Quayle, Timothy Alberino and Tom Horn, these might be familiar terms, but the importance of the topic deserves a clear understanding by all. So what exactly is transhumanism? And for that matter, what is a hybrid?

Transhumanism is defined as the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology. Of course, this sounds admirable. Who among us does not want to move toward the goal of eliminating human pain with ever increasing intelligence? But transhumanism is much more than that. With the unending surge in biological know-how, we now have the ability to redefine what it means to be human. Through tools like artificial intelligence, robotics and especially genetics, science is playing a very high-stakes game in the homo sapien sandbox. The end result of this game will have massive implications for future generations.

A quick internet search of the term transhumanism reveals a host of good intentions. Phrases such as broadening human potential, overcoming aging and cognitive shortcomings, and eliminating suffering decorate articles highlighting the possibilities at our fingertips. Breakthroughs like thought-controlled robotic limbsor even regrowing natural limbsseem to make the decision to proceed a no-brainer. If we can do it, we must, as long as were careful, they say. An obligatory word of warning is usually inserted somewhere among the celebratory jargon about how we must never misuse these technologiesas if mankind would ever do such a thing? The question is; Are those who rule over us responsible enough to wield such power?

The power of our technology is being concentrated into the hands of the technocratic elite, and there is more at stake than the Terminator scenarios portrayed in Hollywood. There are deeper spiritual consequences underlying the transhumanist agenda, consequences that can have eternal ramifications. And this is why Steve Quayle and Timothy Alberino have decided to address the topic of Transhumanism and the Hybrid Age in this years True Legends Conference.

This raises another question: What exactly is a hybrid? The official definition reads as follows: a thing made by combining two different elements; a mixture. In our current context, would having a robotic arm make you a hybrid? Would this be a bad thing? I would not want to tell people needing a limb that they cannot have it for either their own good or the good of mankind. Nor deny the blind sight, or the diseased a cure via some amazing biotechnological breakthrough. Thats what makes this such a sticky issue. The cryptic phraseology in Genesis concerning Noah being perfect in his generations also gives me great pause. How is it that all flesh became corrupt in the pre-flood world? Was the rest of the worlds population a hybrid mix of some kind, an unholy amalgamation of beast, man and tech?

We are fast approaching an irreversible tipping point that will radically change society as we know it, and fundamentally redefine what it means to be a human being.

Darrin GeisingerTrue Legends 2018 Conference Coordinator

See more here:
What is Transhumanism? - GenSix.com

The Shinar DirectivePart 2

Posted on December 7, 2014

Published: December 07, 2014

by Dr. Michael Lake

In chapter two of The Shinar Directive, we uncover a gold mine of information encoded into the stories presented in the Torah (especially in the book of Genesis). The sages of Israel understood these hidden mysteries and taught that it would take a faithful student of the Word a lifetime just to discover some of the secrets God presented to us in Genesis 13.

Over the years, several of my students have attempted to develop an exhaustive study of the book of Genesis for their doctoral dissertations. As they examined the original language of the Hebrew text and discovered such a treasure trove of information, they concluded that their dissertations could only cover a fraction of what is available in just the first chapter. Even then, many of their papers far surpassed the required standard length of a doctoral dissertation. What God can say in one sentence can become a lifetime of study for any serious student of the Word.

The perfect example of the power of one sentence from God is when Jesus made a seemingly simple statement in Matthew 24:37:

But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. (Matthew 24:37)

Jesus was speaking of the last days. In the verse that preceded this statement, we find:

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. (Matthew 24:36)

Since we have been so deprived of our Hebraic heritage, most students of the Bible miss the fact that Jesus had just used a Hebraic idiom that connected what He was sharing with the Feast of Trumpets. The language He continued to use in verses 4042 confirms this fact for those who use the tools of hermeneutical[i] research to understand the cultural setting in which Jesus taught. Although the purpose of this chapter is not to teach on the importance of cultural idioms[ii] and their proper use within our exegetical[iii] exercises to glean truth from the Word of God, I hope I have sparked your interest enough to promote expansion of your hermeneutical toolbox. We need to realize that Jesus did not minister in the streets of Detroit or the country hills of Kentucky. He spoke to a culture that had a deep and enriched heritage cultivated by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and nourished by a study of Torah. Biblical scholar Dr. John Garr makes this observation regarding our habitual dismissal of the cultural setting in our interpretative processes:

The problem is that practically all societies and people groups have read their own concepts and cultures into the Bible rather than drawing out of the Holy Scriptures the truths that have always been there. The churchs approach to Holy Writ has been ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. When interpreting the Bible, Christians have engaged in eisegesis rather than exegesis by injecting their preconceived notions into Scripture rather than extracting from the text what it clearly says.

Texts without context have become pretexts for proof texts! The grammar of the Scriptures (the Hebrew language of the first testament and the Hebrew thought underlying the Greek language of the second testament) has been largely minimized if not downright ignored. Likewise, the history and culture of the people through whom and to whom the sacred texts were committed have been virtually ignored. Entire theologies have been based upon a criterion of dissimilarity in which texts in the Apostolic Scriptures that have clear connections with the Hebrew Scriptures have been dismissed by some scholars as not being the authentic words of Jesus and the apostles but the work of subsequent redactors. It is as though Jesus had to have been born and lived in a vacuum and never influenced by his native language and culture. The very idea has given rise to a Christianity that has been wretched from its theological and historical moorings and set adrift in a maelstrom of nonbiblicalin far too many cases, anti-Biblicaltraditions, including postmodernism, consequentialism, secular humanism, and even demonic perversion.[iv]

If the cultural context within Scripture is so essential to the formation of the practics of our faith, is it not equally paramount in our understanding of Bible prophecy? Such casual dismissals caused prophecy teachers in the past century to declare anyone teaching that Israel would once again become a nation as a promoter of heresy. When Israel became a nation overnight in 1948, it shook the very foundations of many evangelical prophecy ministries worldwide. We need to learn from these mistakes and incorporate a Hebraic understanding into our hermeneutical process.

I said all of that to make a point: When Jesus spoke of the days of Noah, it served as a memory trigger to all of the hearers who could tap into over one thousand years of teaching regarding every aspect of the Noah narrative. In the times of Jesus, there were not chapters and verses to Scripture; these would not be added until the twelfth century by Stephen Langton with the introduction of the Latin Vulgate Bible. The sages of Israel would use a word or phrase to take the hearers to the portion of Scripture they were referring to. This is especially true with the Torah. Thus, as diligent students of Gods Word, we must labor to hear with Hebraic ears and dig deep into Noahs story to properly ascertain all that Jesus was referring to. Which was

1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. 5And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:18)

So many things seem to jump off the page as I approach these verses. Before I fully dive into the story of Noah, I want to touch on a biblical conundrum for the Transhumanist Movement contained within these passages of Holy Writ. In verse 3, God declares that He is going to limit the lifespan of man to 120 years. As we examine the text, we find as a mission of grace to mankind, Noah spent 120 years preaching repentance and building the ark. It was only after the canopy over the earth was broken up by God that the Flood came, and with it the dynamic changing of earths environment, which reduced mans lifespan. Prior to the Flood, according to biblical record, men would not even begin to have children until they approached their eighties or older! Now God sets the time limit to a mans life based on the number of years that Noah preached of the coming destruction and the need for repentance. (This also serves as a prophetic warning that there is a limit to how long God will extend His grace toward men.) The more time sinful man had to live and learn, the deeper he would become entrenched with the knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil. If given enough time, mans insatiable appetite for dark knowledge would transform earth into a literal hell that God could not tolerate. Today, transhumanists[v] are endeavoring to circumvent Gods restraints on our lifespan. From what I have read in their literature, this is one of their primary goals. Seventy, eighty, or even one hundred and twenty years are not enough for them. While they lament over global warming and the perils of overpopulation, they seek to provide only a chosen few the opportunity to live hundreds of years, if not obtain near immortality. With the exponential acceleration of knowledge in the last days and the possibility of extending the life span of the Luciferian Elite, they may well have the time needed to thwart Gods intervention in Genesis 6! You see, God shortening mans lifespan to 120 years (and then later to seventy to eighty) was not a judgment against humanity; it was an expression of His grace toward all mankind.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

I want to examine verses 4 and 5 in a manner that is similar to a physicians diagnostic procedure: He would examine the presenting symptoms. Symptomology can be used in medicine and nutrition, and even in examining the health of a civilization. If certain symptoms are present in a patient, it will point toward the underlying disease that caused it. There is an intertwining aspect within the text of the corrupt Sons of God (Bene Elohim), the development of hybrid offspring, and the explosive evil within mens hearts. This wickedness that manifested within mankind was declared as great by God. In Hebrew, the word for great is rab (rab). This word means abounding, strong, exceedingly, and more numerous than.[vi] When evil has become so strong that it abounds throughout humanity and its perpetrators are more numerous than the righteous, it is a presenting sociological symptom of interference by the fallen Bene Elohim. (More on this later in both the new book The Shinar Directive as well as an upcoming online entry dedicated to the Communion with Darkness.)

That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. (Genesis 6:2)

There is great speculation regarding the identity of the Sons of God in Genesis 6:2. I prefer the traditional Hebraic view that these were angels and not men. Some would argue today that the sons of God represented the descendants of Seth. Dr. Chuck Missler explains the origin of the Sethite theory:

The strange events recorded in Genesis 6 were understood by the ancient rabbinical sources, as well as the Septuagint translators, as referring to fallen angels procreating weird hybrid offspring with human women-known as the Nephilim. So it was also understood by the early church fathers. These bizarre events are also echoed in the legends and myths of every ancient culture upon the earth: the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the South Sea Islanders, the American Indians, and virtually all the others.

However, many students of the Bible have been taught that this passage in Genesis 6 actually refers to a failure to keep the faithful lines of Seth separate from the worldly line of Cain. The idea has been advanced that after Cain killed Abel, the line of Seth remained separate and faithful, but the line of Cain turned ungodly and rebellious. The Sons of God are deemed to refer to leadership in the line of Seth; the daughters of men is deemed restricted to the line of Cain. The resulting marriages ostensibly blurred an inferred separation between them. (Why the resulting offspring are called the Nephilim remains without any clear explanation.)

Since Jesus prophesied, As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be, it becomes essential to understand what these days included.

Origin of the Sethite View

It was in the 5th Century A.D. that the angel interpretation of Genesis 6 was increasingly viewed as an embarrassment when attacked by critics. (Furthermore, the worship of angels had begun within the church. Also, celibacy had also become an institution of the church. The angel view of Genesis 6 was feared as impacting these views.)

Celsus and Julian the Apostate used the traditional angel belief to attack Christianity. Julius Africanus resorted to the Sethite interpretation as a more comfortable ground. Cyril of Alexandria also repudiated the orthodox angel position with the line of Seth interpretation. Augustine also embraced the Sethite theory and thus it prevailed into the Middle Ages. It is still widely taught today among many churches who find the literal angel view a bit disturbing. There are many outstanding Bible teachers who still defend this view.[vii]

In my own personal research, I have concluded that Dr. Missler is correct. All of the sages of Israel and the early Church fathers concluded that the sons of God referred to some category of angel and not righteous men. It should also be noted that, in the rabbinical literature of today, these sons of God are still interpreted as fallen angels as well. The only deviation from this interpretation is within Catholic theology and the Protestant theology that was influenced by Rome.

George H. Pember, in his classic work written in late 1800s, Earths Earliest Ages, came to the same conclusion:

These words are often explained to signify nothing more than the intermarriage of the descendants of Cain and Seth: but a careful examination of the passage will elicit a far deeper meaning.

When men, we are told, began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the sons of God saw the daughters of men. Now by men in each case the whole human race is evidently signified, the descendants of Cain and Seth alike. Hence the sons of God are plainly distinguished from the generation of Adam.

Again; the expression sons of God (Elohim) occurs four times in other parts of the Old Testament, and is in each of these cases indisputably used of angelic beings.[viii]

To me, the concept of producing giants by the marriage of godly men with corrupt women is far-fetched. If that were the case, we would have giants living among us today. It is obvious that something more was going onsomething supernatural.

What this has to do with The Shinar Directive is centrally important, and not just for ancient days but the near future as well, regardless how incredible that may seem.

CONTINUED IN NEXT ENTRY

[i] Hermeneutical or hermeneutics: the study of the methodological principles of interpretation (as of the Bible).

[ii] Idiom: a form of a language that is spoken in a particular area and that uses some of its own words, grammar, and pronunciations.

[iii] Exegetical or exegesis: an explanation or critical interpretation of a text.

[iv] John D. Garr, Family Worship: Making Your Home a House of God (Atlanta: Golden Key Press, 2013) 1213.

[v] Transhumanist (abbreviated as H+ or h+): an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

[vi] Strongs, # H07227.

[vii] Chuck Missler, Mischievous Angels or Sethites? http://www.khouse.org/articles/1997/110/.

[viii] George H. Pember, Earths Earliest Ages (Crane, MO: Defender, 2012)175176.

Original post:
transhumanism Biblical Life Assembly

Gods Will Be Watching was de Paco's first attempt at infusing a video game with ethical and moral dilemmas, and it was a resounding success when it landed in 2014. Deconstructeam was thrust into a broader conversation about the power and creativity of indie games, and there was enough money in the bank to start working on the next thing. This time around, de Paco wanted to be more deliberate -- Gods Will Be Watching was unfiltered, and in the end, its message got away from him.

"With Gods Will Be Watching, I wasn't really aware of the power of video games as a storytelling medium or maybe as communicating a message, so I kind of just made the game and put a lot of my instinctive philosophy in there," de Paco said. "I realized that I accidentally made an anti-system game, in which you have to go against any form of authority, so this time I tried to actually be aware of what I am telling and what I'm doing with the game."

The result is a concise yet branching cyberpunk story about the awful power massive technology companies can assert over people's daily lives (and bodies and minds). Through this lens, de Paco asks players how far they would go to obtain or sustain happiness, and what it truly means to be human. When we lose our emotions, do we lose our humanity?

Although the game offers a range of answers in its dialogue trees, it doesn't actually wrap all of these questions up in a nice ethical bow. They're not meant to be answered; they're de Paco's grand social experiment, designed to provoke thought and conversation. And here, it seems The Red Strings Club has succeeded.

De Paco said the game itself takes about three or four hours to complete on a standard playthrough. However, many Twitch streamers end up playing for something like 10 hours because they spend most of the time talking through the game's direct questions with the live chat.

"It comes in really lengthy conversations about what if it's good or not to get rid of emotions, or how it might benefit society," de Paco said. "It's really great."

Some of the game's questions are far-fetched scenarios specific to this particular future, but others feel relevant to life today. Scientists may not have developed implants that can alter our character yet, but we enjoy a common stimulus in caffeine and a depressant in alcohol. We have pills that promise to calm, excite and otherwise change our moods. We play with our emotional states every day.

This is a harsh reality for de Paco: Two years ago, some close friends and family members started taking antidepressants, and the experience made him question the essence of humanity on a grand scale, sparking the theme of The Red Strings Club.

"It makes you wonder if they're still the same person or if they're happier or not," de Paco said. "For me, writing this kind of magic technology that is able to remove depression and everything was a way for myself to explore, to cope with the idea of people close to me being changed."

De Paco isn't on a mission to end the antidepressant industry. In fact, he wishes the effects of these drugs could be streamlined like in The Red Strings Club, allowing people to alter their moods like code. "I wouldn't mind to change that for an implant or maybe just changing a variable instead of having to go through the process of taking pills or being medicated," he said.

If he were given the option, de Paco wouldn't choose to remove any of his own negative emotions, arguing that would also eliminate a core part of his humanity. He's more into to the idea of digitizing his consciousness and ditching his body altogether.

"I would totally love to digitize myself," de Paco said. "I wouldn't mind not having this body, if I can feel pleasure, and, I don't know, take digital drugs or something like that. I would like to be digitized, but I wouldn't like to lose any of the aspects of my mind. I don't like being depressed, but usually being depressed is a way to know something is wrong and you have to do something about it. If I take those things from me, it's like I would lose my ability to discern what's good and bad."

Not that de Paco knows what's good and bad now -- he's still asking questions about the essence of humanity and observing his social experiments across Twitch, Steam and social media. He's still figuring it out. So is everyone else.

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'The Red Strings Club' explores the morality of transhumanism

The future belongs to those who can afford it. This may be virtually true in todays world, where surviving retirement can feel impossible, but its also the literal premise of Altered Carbon, Netflixs new prestige sci-fi series. Based on Richard K. Morgans novel of same name, the neo-noir is set several hundred years in the future, when human consciousness has been digitized into microchip-like stacks constantly being swapped into and out of various bodies, or sleeves.

This technology, along with innovations like human cloning and artificial intelligence, has given society a quantum leap, but its also sent socioeconomic stratification into overdrive, creating dire new realities for the poor and incarcerated while simultaneously producing an elite upper-class. Called Metsshort for Methuselahsthe members of Altered Carbons 0.001 percent have achieved virtual immortality thanks to vaults of their own cloned sleeves and cloud backups full of their stacks. Its either dystopia or utopia, depending on ones bank account.

Whatever your views on the shows plot, in which a former rebel supersoldier named Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), on ice in a stack prison, is revived and hired by a Met to solve the murder of his last sleeve, Altered Carbons best quality is its worldbuilding. In the 25th century, transhumanismthe belief that human beings are destined to transcend their mortal flesh through technologyhas reached its full potential, and some of its end results are not pretty, at all.

But Altered Carbon is only the latest bit of transhumanism to hit TV recently. From Black Mirrors cookies and Philip K. Dicks Electric Dreams mind-invading telepaths and alien bodysnatchers to Star Trek: Discoverys surgical espionage and Travelers time-jumping consciousness, the classic tropes of body-hopping, body-swapping, and otherwise commandeering has exploded in an era on the brink, one in which longevity technology is accelerating more rapidly than ever, all while most people still trying to survive regular threats to basic corporeal health and safety.

These tropes have enjoyed a healthy existence in sci-fi and horror for decades, but now more than ever transhumanism is ubiquitous in pop culture, asking us to consider the ethical, personal, political, and economic implications of an ideology with a goalimplementing technology in the human body to prolong and improve lifethat is already beginning to take shape.

A crucial fact to remember about transhumanism and the philosophies it inspired, including the ones modeled by Altered Carbons Mets, is that its conception was heavily rooted in eugenics. Though earlier thinkers had already produced work one could call transhumanist today, the term wasnt coined until 1951, by Julian Huxley, a noted evolutionary biologist (and brother to Brave New World author Aldous Huxley). Julian Huxley believed strongly in the fundamentally exclusionary theory that society would improve immensely if only its best members were allowed to procreate. In the speech in which he first used the word transhumanism, he claimed that in order for humans to transcend the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, society ought to enact a concerted policy to prevent the present flood of population-increase from wrecking all our hopes for a better world.

While he didnt necessarily believe the criteria for what constituted best should be drawn along racial or economic lines, the ideology Huxley promoted was inherently elitist. It also allowed for virtually as many interpretations as there are people, and plenty of those people, particularly those in powerespecially in Huxleys time, but also in the fictional future of Altered Carbondid and do believe best means white, straight, financially successful, and at least nominally Christian. As a result, the concept he named ended up being primarily conceptualized in its infancy by white men of privilege.

This, of course, didnt remain the main interpretation of transhumanism for long. In the years following Huxleys coinage, humans made profound leaps in technological innovation, first in computers and then in AI, which allowed more people to envision the possibilities of one day being able to transcend their organic limitations. The basic concept was easily repurposed by those whose oppression has always been tied to physical violencenotably people of color, LGBTQ people, and women.

By the early 1980s, scholars like Natasha Vita-More and Donna Haraway had revamped the concept with manifestos that argued transhumanism ought to be about diversity and multiplicity, about breaking down constructs like gender, race, and ability in favor of a more fluid, chimeric alternative in which each person can be many seemingly contradictory things at onceincluding human and machine. (As WIREDs Julie Muncy explains in her review of the first season, Altered Carbon touches upon but never really takes a stance on this dimension of a post-corporeal world.)

As Silicon Valley boomed, so did transhumanism. Millionaire investors have poured endless cash into anti-aging research, machine intelligence companies, and virtual reality; meanwhile, the possibility of extended or superhuman life has veered even further into becoming the exclusive purview of the extremely rich (and, more often than not, extremely white and extremely male). In 1993, mathematician and science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge pegged the arrival of the singularitythe moment at which technology, particularly AI, supersedes human intelligence and either eliminates humanity or fuses with it, allowing people to finally become post-humanat around 2030; by 2005 futurist Ray Kurzweil was agreeing with Vinge in his now-seminal book The Singularity is Near. (The Verge has a solid timeline of transhumanist thought here.)

Today, working organs are being 3D-printed. Nanites, while a few years off, are definitely on the horizon. And the technologies that fuel nightmare fodder like Black Mirror are becoming realities almost daily, which gives the overwhelming impression to laypeople that the Singularity, while perhaps still technically far off, is imminent.

Add privatized healthcare, police brutality, immigration, sexual assault, and plenty more extremely real threats to peoples physical bodiesnot to mention the exponential growth of the TV industry itselfand youve got the perfect cocktail for a flood of transhumanist sci-fi shows that give form to anxieties viewers have about both wanting to escape the physical confines of their blood-bag existences and being absolutely, justifiably terrified of what could go wrong when they actually do.

But however uncomfortable it may be, that dilemma is not accidental. It has become necessary to understanding and surviving our current techno-political moment. Whether enjoying the ecstasy of possibility in Altered Carbons disembodied immortality or writhing in the agony of imagining eternity as a digital copy of ones own consciousness, the roller coaster of emotions these shows elicit ought to be a major signal to audiences that now is the time to be thinking about the cost of pursuing technological immortality. If stacks and sleeves are indeed our inevitable future, the moral quandary wont lie in the body-swapping itselfitll be reckoning with who gets to do it and why.

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'Altered Carbon' and TV's New Wave of Transhumanism