Christian Transhumanism

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Prepare for HyperEvolution

with Christian Transhumanism

James McLean Ledford

Download the full PDF version of Christian Transhumanism

Christian Transhumanism is an ancient idea, and yet it is the most advanced form of Christianity. Theologian Paul Tillich points this out in a compilation of his lectures titled A History of Christian Thought. He traces Christian Transhumanism back 1800 years to the early anti-Gnostic theologian Irenaeus of Lyons; "Irenaeus called salvation recapitulation. He was pointing to Ephesians 1.10 which speaks of all things in heaven and earth being gathered up in Christ." "It means that the development which was broken in Adam is resumed by Christ and fulfilled in him. In Christ the new mankind has started. That which mankind was to become... However, not only mankind but the whole cosmos finds its fulfillment in Christ." Paul Tillich calls this idea "The profound doctrine of a transcendent humanism, a humanism which says that Christ is the fulfillment of essential man, of the Adamic nature." "And we can become fully human through participation in this full humanity which has appeared in Christ. This includes eternal life, and similitude with God with respect to participation in infinity." Then Tillich says, "I am always surprised how much better the theology of the ancient church was than the popular theology which developed in the nineteenth century, how much profounder and more adequate to the paradox of Christianity, without becoming irrationalistic, nonsensical, or absurd." So Christian Transhumanism is rational. It makes sense and it bridges the gap between the real world today and what we are to become. We got lost, but recent developments are making it clear where we are togo.

A Way For The Free And Forward Thinking

What it means to be human will change soon and you will probably experience it. So read carefully. In the coming years computer-human interfaces will become so intimate that users may be considered superhumanly intelligent transcendent humans, or "transhumans". We will have a choice in how to use vast new power. Use it for material gain? Or, aim this power at spiritual growth. In this new era of understanding, most will see the dead end of material gain, and see a better outcome in a life dedicated to spiritual growth. For individuals taking the spiritual path, the lower hierarchy of material needs will fall away and so naturally the transhuman will become a benevolent and self-actualized spiritual being. Ultimately, life as represented by mankind will shift from consuming material for sustenance to a flow of information. This means that we shift to a wholly spiritual life where truth is the way. As material needs diminish, transhumans will increasingly be sustained by a powerful flow of Word that can be called the Glory of God. In giving up competition and control strategies and turning to God, we grow to be all that we can be; Christ-like.

Essential to Christian Transhumanism is the notion that love is a cognitive process and God expects us to participate in our salvation by learning how to love perfectly. In this way we access the Glory of God, becoming Christ-like (Christian).This webpage and http://www.technical-jesus.com will go on to clarify the technical aspects of love, and the love process.

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Christian Transhumanism

Zoltan Istvan: The Transhumanist Candidate – Roads and Kingdoms

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This week on The Trip podcast: Zoltan Istvan has come from the future with a message New Hampshire doesnt want to hear.

Here they are in the New Hampshire Secretary of States office, paying their thousand dollars to be on the official primary ballot. They are the lesser-known candidates, the dramatic fringe of each presidential primary election up here. And they are the stars of my quadrennial quixotic reporting project with photographer Shane Carpenter. And listen, they arent like Tom Steyer lesser-known, theyre like Vermin Supreme lesser-known, Mary Maxwell lesser-known, Zoltan Istvan lesser-known. Almost nobody knows these people, but theyre running anyway. This is the fifth primary that Shane and I have spent ducking out of mainstream campaign press events to track down the people who are just obsessive, idealistic, or imbalanced enough to think they should run for president, often with no money, no support, sometimes no platform really. Of course, the idea of a non-politician becoming president was distinctly more laughable before 2016, and now it doesnt seem that funny at all. But these candidates are something different, a wild bunch, far more entertaining and thought-provoking even than the scripted candidates. Shane and I just published a feature on the lesser-known and their radical approach to democracy on roadsandkingdoms.com; I hope youll take a look. But for now, in this episode, Ive got one of the most composed and compelling of this years fringe candidates, writer and transhumanist Zoltan Istvan. We drank some 15 year old Dalwinnie Scotch and talked about exoskeletons, being escorted at gunpoint from a megachurch, and why he let someone jam a horse syringe into his hand to give him a permanent bio-chip implant.

Here is an edited and condensed transcript from my conversation with Eva. Subscribers canlisten to the full episode here. If youre not on Luminary yet, subscribe and listen (and get a 7-day free trial) by signing uphere.

Nathan Thornburgh: What is transhumanism?

Zoltan Istvan: Transhumanism is a social movement, now of many millions of people around the world, that want to use science and technology to radically transform the human body and transform the human experience. Anything from exoskeleton suits to brain implants to even driverless cars. But whatever it is, its kind of the top 10% of the most radical technologies that are affecting the human race.

Thornburgh: You say there were many millions. Are these people who would actively knowingly define themselves as transhumanists, or you think its just aligned with the way that they look at the world?

Istvan: I think there are now probably millions that would say, if you ask them are you a transhumanist, they would now say, yes I am. When you ask them, is that what they consider themselves? Thats a little bit more challenging of a question. Google, for example, is probably the most transhumanist of all the companies out there, and they have the largest, what we call life extension company, a company worth billions of dollars, that wants to overcome aging. Its specifically designed to make people essentially live indefinitely. So we are getting to a point when you can now say millions and likely tens of millions who are supporters of the idea. Chinas probably leading the transhumanist movement in terms of innovationthey have the first designer baby babies and stuff like that. So there might be even many more.

But the word is just an umbrella term for many other ideas. Cryonics, singulariatism. Cyborgism. Singularity is the concept of transhumanists where they believe that AI will become so sophisticated that our human brains wont even be able to understand its sophistication. And at that point we get left behind.

The main goal of transhumanism is overcoming death with science and technology.

Thornburgh: The word itself, can you just break it down for me?

Istvan: Well, the Latin would say its beyond human.

Thornburgh: Okay, got it. All of our limitations are physicalchronological aging, mortality. Those are the things that youre going to supersede through technology.

Istvan: Basically, yes. And nobodys really sure like exactly what transhumanism means in terms of the specific agenda. Is it when a primate picked up a rock and made an axe millions of years ago, or is it a robot taking over a workers job, which of course is increasingly happening. Is that transhumanism, or is it brain implants? Nobody really knows, but whatever it is and it radical science is, is sort of changing the human species and the core of it is the microprocessor. It keeps evolving exponentially and we even have things like quantum computing now happening where, you know, that could revolutionize again, the microprocessor. So anything that applies to the human being, in terms of merging us with machines, is a transhuman event.

I think whats very important is that there are various versions of transhumanism. There are socialist transhumanists, there are libertarian transients like myself, and there are transceivers party transhumanism. Of course, Im, Im the founder of the transceivers party, but Im also now running as a Republican. But Ive also run as a libertarian, Ive said openly, I might run as a Democrat in the future. For me, its about the seed of transhumanism. You can take it whichever political way you want. Theres also Christian transhumanism, theres Buddhist transhumanist. So we want a worldwide movement. I want different factions. I want a decentralized idea of it. And I hope to influence it in terms of it grows and grows and grows. Because you have to understand about 80% of the worlds population believes in an afterlife. The main goal of transhumanism is overcoming death with science and technology. Were fighting 80% of the population. So its very important that we coalesce together as a movement that says we need to change that 80%. We need to change their mindset. And thats really where the cultural reform comes in, and why its so important to have a huge movements like environmentalism, where the trajectory is that one day we also become a billion person movement that really wants to move beyond our cultural heritage.

Thornburgh: So lets, lets posit success and you reach those 80% and flip them into transhumanists. What will that actually mean? Does that mean that they will vote for people who pour more resources into death-defying technologies or pass laws? What, practically, would having people be fired up about transhumanism do?

Istvan: Thats the best question. The great question. Thats exactly what Im trying to do. My main goal here with running for office and my main goal of spreading transhumanism is to get more money into the hands of the scientists who are making the movement happen. You have to understand, right now our United States Congress, all 535 members, all nine Supreme Court justices, believe in an afterlife, and they say they believe in God, so they have no real reason to pass laws to put money into the hands of the scientists who want to end aging and live indefinitely and upgrade ourselves to this new bionic future. Now the problem with that is if the entire government doesnt want to give money to it, it doesnt happen. Really only private industry does it. We need an American culture on board with transhumanism.

I run for office in hopes of saying, look, instead of giant military fighting warrants in Afghanistan and Iraq, were going to take that money and put it into creating a science-industrial complex in America dedicated to ending aging and upgrading the human being. Its a very different kind of way. Im interested in American healthcare, in terms of eliminating disease. And thats a very transhuman idea that our president right now doesnt share. A president whos cut the budget of the National Institute of Health.

Im running because, ultimately, I think that Trump has failed the most important part of America: the science and innovation part.

Thornburgh: Youre running as a Republican. This is your opponent.

Istvan: You gotta you gotta hit them hard on that. One thing Trump has done that hasnt been great is hes not only cut the budget of the National Institute of Health, but he hasnt made a culture where science really thrives. In China, its thriving. Chinas our main kind of competitor at this point. So probably within five years, China lead the world in AI and genetic editing. Its game over for America in terms of leadership, and who wants not authoritarian nation to be leading the world and in science and technology. So this is where I really fault Trump. In fact, this is why Im running. This is the singular reason Im running because, ultimately, I think that Trump has failed the most important part of America: the science and innovation part.

Thornburgh: What is your background? Take me way back.

Istvan: My career really began after I graduated from Columbia University, and I went into journalism at National Geographic. And so for five years I traveled around the world and I wrote something like 50 or 60 articles for their website, and also was on their National Geographic Today, show, doing a lot of documentary work. It was a great time in my life. I was in my twenties, I covered a lot of conflict zones, so saw some horrifying things. In Vietnam I was covering the demilitarized zone 20, 30 years after the war. And theres a bunch of rice farmers that now dig up bombs that were dropped in Vietnam from Americans, but theyre unexploded. They sell the metal. But to get there you have to go through these landmine-infested jungles. And I almost stepped on one. It freaked me out because my guide had to throw me out of the way and pointed to the ground. And after covering war zones for a while kind of gets in your head. And it was that moment in Vietnam when I said, you know, Im going to stop being a journalist and Im going to do something to try to overcome death. And of course transhumanism has been an ongoing movement since the 90s, and thats their primary job. Their primary purpose is to use science to overcome death.

Istvan: So I came home, joined the movement, wrote a novel, the novel did really well. It was called The Transhumanist Wager, became a bestseller, and it launched my career as a public figure. And because I was a journalist, I began writing some of the very first transhumanist columns. So Ive had an ability over six years to write over 230 opinion pieces and essays for major media, almost cheerleading transhumanism. Up until that point, no one had ever been optimistic about it. People had been kind of skeptical.

Thornburgh: That literally came from a near-death experience that you had.

Istvan: Its based on two or three years of covering other conflicts. Id covered the Sri Lanka conflict. I covered the Kashmir conflict between Pakistan and India. Id been doing some pretty harrowing stories and it made me, I think it kinda got in my head, I dont want to say its PTSD, but really it made me think, What if we could overcome death? And when it hit me that I could do this, I realized that this is why I want to dedicate my life to.

Thornburgh: Does transhumanism have any rights or rituals or holidays?

Istvan: Its secular. Its a very decentralized movement. A lot of the life-extension people are not interested in the robotics people, because life extension people want to biologically live longer, where the robotics people want to become machines and upload themselves. So even though they are both transhumanist and I like both groups, they dont really talk to each other. Then there are the biohackers, who are mostly young, tattooed people that are putting chips in. I have a chip in my hand. It opens my front door, starts a car, it sends a text message.

Thornburgh: You have this right now?

Istvan: I have it right now. You can touch it. Its right there. Push. Youll see. Youll feel a bump. Its a glass-enclosed microchip.

Thornburgh: Does that hurt when I press your chip?

Istvan: No. Its tiny. Its the size of a grain of rice. When you get these chip implants, you use a horse syringe you just put it in. Its kind of painful. But the chip itself is about the size of a grain rice.

Thornburgh: But that wasnt sexual what we just did?

Istvan: No. Its just a chip.

Thornburgh: How do you program this chip? Is this like a radio-frequency identification?

Istvan: Yeah. Unfortunately, the technology doesnt work with Apple phones, but it works with all Android. And so if you have an Android phone, you will actually be able to put it against my hand and then get my serial number. Of course, that freaks people out, because who has a serial number? But you can also put in medical information. So if youre unconscious and they find you, they can scan it. But in my case, Im a surfer and a jogger and when you go surfing you have to always hide your keys, and what a pain in the butt that is, because then someone can steal it when youre surfing and take your car. So in my case, its just great because all my keys are embedded into my hand and you can even do things like hold Bitcoin on it, but you cant pay it Starbucks yet.

Listen to the full episode at Luminary.

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Zoltan Istvan: The Transhumanist Candidate - Roads and Kingdoms

Dublin Theatre Festival reviews: The Great Hunger, and To Be A Machine – Irish Examiner

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The Great Hunger

IMMA

Four Stars

The Abbeys promenade production around the grounds of IMMA is the only live show to survive the dreaded Phase 3 Covid-19 protocols at this years Dublin Theatre Festival.

It divides the 14 stanzas of Patrick Kavanaghs titular long poem between individual performers, with troubadours leading the small, masked audience through the autumn evening.

We set out between two lines of illuminated trees, lured the stark, unmistakable voice of Lisa ONeil. Then, Liam Carney appears between the potato drills: old Patrick Maguire, the peasant farmer, clay made flesh. He stayed with his mother till she died/At the age of ninety-one.

By then, he was sixty-five". This is his tragedy; through it, Maguire personifies in Kavanaghs indictment the poverty, conservatism, and sexual frustration of the rural Ireland he knew.

While the satirical target might not be as obvious as it was when Kavanagh wrote The Great Hunger in 1942, the poem lends itself to dramatisation, thanks to Kavanaghs deft portraiture and his ability to conjure a telling scene.

It also, of course, speaks to the universal. Lines like Sometimes they did laugh and see the sunlight or something was brighter a moment have a sudden poignancy now.

Meanwhile, of the performers, Derbhle Crotty in particular shines in an intimate, captivating scene. Her aliveness to the words, her movement, her expressiveness are a wonder a reminder of the great hunger within us all for the kind of moments only theatre can deliver.

To Be a Machine

Project Theatre

Four Stars

Last year, Dead Centre gave audiences an empty stage for their ghost play Becketts room. This time, things are reversed: an actor is present, but the theatre is empty.

Game of Thrones star Jack Gleeson is the man in the room, playing the writer Mark OConnell in a faithful exploration of the ideas in his acclaimed book on transhumanism, To Be a Machine. The framing of the show gives ample scope for playful echoes and illustrations of OConnells themes.

To begin with, for instance, we are asked to upload videos of ourselves in advance of the performance. We see them on the night: electronic, disembodied versions of ourselves on individual tablet screens where the audience would be.

No better way, then, to discuss such things as the US company Alcor, which preserves its customers disembodied heads in the hope of reanimation; or whole brain emulation and the philosophical questions such a technology would raise.

Both shows end on October 10; for more, check out dublintheatrefestival.ie

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Dublin Theatre Festival reviews: The Great Hunger, and To Be A Machine - Irish Examiner

Religious and spiritual online forums consist of chaotic, impactful ideas – Lamron

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It was 3 a.m. on a typical Saturday in Geneseo. UHots was closing and there was nothing to domy alumni friend was visiting, so we trudged through the rain back to my place for an early morning catch-up. His life is a lot more exciting than mine, so I listened intently as he told me of his post-grad misadventures.

Did I ever tell you about the time I was almost recruited into a cult? he said casually. No, he had not. I listened intently as he told me of a private subreddit he had been added to and the pseudo-intellectual who ran the page, inviting people who had like-minded views to join.

This got me thinkingthis subreddit cant be the only page like this on the internet. Since then, I have uncovered similar communities and ideas (i.e. places where spiritual thought meets modern politics and personal musings) grasping for meaning in the digital age. I believe the new frontier for religious thought lies not in the worship spaces of yesteryear, but in online forums and other digital spaces where one can make their beliefs heard and gain a following.

Spiritual groups born and bred online occupy a space somewhere between absurdism and grave sincerity. There is a whole spectrum of those who believe, dont believe or are simply curious about a given sect of online spiritual thought.

In conducting research, I came across the website for The Church of Google, a parody religion founded in 2009 with the goal of creating commentary about the sophistication and increasing symbiotic relationship that technologies like Google play in our lives. I also came across online forums such as MySpiritualgroup, which is self-described as an online spiritual group which seeks to gather all genuine truth seekers from around the world and focuses on metaphysics and esoteric thought.

Additionally, there are countless Reddit forums, like the one my friend joined, focused on the interplay between religion and psychedelics, anarchy and the alt-rightto name a few topics that have been brought into the conversation via dedicated subreddits.

One of the most intriguing online spiritual movements is one called H+, or Transhumanism. According to H+pedia, an online Wikipedia-esque transhumanist encyclopedia, transhumanism can be defined as a belief or movement in favour of human enhancement, especially beyond current human limitations and with advanced technology such as artificial intelligence, life extension and nanotechnology.

While prescribers to the philosophy might describe themselves as post-religious, there is something fundamentally spiritual about their way of thinking, which combines the concept of human transcendence with modern technological advancement. I may add that transhumanists are the same people in favor of gene modifying and strong AI technology, as well as proponents of the concept of technological singularity.

The internet is chaos, and so it only makes sense that spiritual communities that have formed from the internet are chaotic as well. The wide range of content, from intellectual to idiotic, underscores the wide range of beliefs being vocalized. Not only have we been ushered into a new age with technology providing platforms to express opinions, but the very opinions themselves have also been altered and shifted due to the emergence of the internet and what that means for human development.

As spiritual discussion online continues to mold the worldviews of many internet users, it is important that we attempt to broaden our understanding of this emerging intellectual discourse in order to better understand its real-world implications.

You can call Hayley Jones a metamorphosis rock because they do well under pressure!

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Religious and spiritual online forums consist of chaotic, impactful ideas - Lamron

Abandoning Earth: Personhood and the Techno-Fiction of Transhumanism – Patheos

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by Jens Zimmermann, Project Director, Human Flourishing; Canada Research Professor for Interpretation, Religion, and Culture at Trinity Western University; Visiting Professor for Philosophy, Literature, and Theology at Regent College; Visiting Fellow of the British Academy at the University of Oxford; Research Associate at the Center for Theology and Modern European Thought in Oxford. Read more about Dr. Zimmermann.

One of the most important contemporary issues is our relation to technology. To be sure, technology is nothing new but has always been integral to human evolution; never before, however, has technology suffused every area of life or shaped human self-understanding to the extent it does today. Consequently, debates about the benefits and possible drawbacks of technology currently dominate all crucial, formative arenas of human existence: work, education, healthcare, social development, and even religion. Critical voices are not lacking in these discussions but, on the whole, we increasingly place our future hopes for society in technological enhancements. Transhumanism, in its pursuit of a humanly engineered evolution that will eventually leave the body behind by uploading our digitized brains to computing platforms, a vision that includes merging human with artificial machine intelligence, is merely the extreme edge of a techno-reasoning that increasingly forms our collective social imaginary.

How is one to assess this development? I suggest that the most effective assessment of techno-reasoning is to probe the range of its imagination. After all, how we perceive the world, others, and ourselves is principally a matter of the imagination. As the well-known Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye put it in The Educated Imagination:

we use our imagination all the time: it comes into all our conversation and practical life: it even produces dreams when we are asleep. Consequently we only have the choice between a badly trained imagination and a well trained one, whether we ever read a poem or not.[1]

Fryes reference to poetry indicates his view that literature best exemplifies the language of the imagination, of how we perceive the world in all its semantic complexity: our use of metaphors and choice of words in everyday speech reveals the vision of society, and indeed of reality that underlies our thoughts and actions. Equally important, the fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce out of the society we have to live in, a society we want to live in.[2] We need fiction to envision reality differently. We often use the word fiction to refer to what is untrue or false, but the word actually means creative invention and describes our capacity for understanding and shaping reality meaningfully through narrative. Hence reimagining society differently depends in turn on the sources that train our imagination to produce narratives for our self-understanding.

What should concern us is that Transhumanisms imagination runs only along engineering and computational lines. Transhumanists like to call themselves critical rationalists,[3] but the fact is that this critical aspect is limited to a techno-reasoning that produces a narrative of techno-fiction. When we examine the current techno-reasoning of transhumanism, we will find a strongly diminished view of human identity that reduces consciousness to the activity of neuronal networks we can detach from the body and transferable to a computing platform.[4]

It is generally known that transhumanism denigrates the human body as rather primitive biological form of existence that requires perfection through nano- and computing technologies. Ultimately, as Ray Kurzweil argued in his book How to Build a Human Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (2012), the brain is a complex biological machine in which human ideas, feelings, and intentions are ultimately tied to neuronal functions of the brain. Kurzweil imagines that the imminent completion of mapping this biological machine anatomically will allow us to digitize its functions and thus transpose human thinking into computational format, permitting in turn the uploading of ones mind (of consciousness, self, or personality) to a data cloud storage. This transhumanist vision indicates a breathtaking ignorance of human cognition and its dependence on biology for a human consciousness. For one, aside from being technologically unfeasible, the computational model of the brain and its possible detachment from the body is flatly contradicted by recent neuroscience and its insistence on embodied cognition.

For example, the well-known neuroscientist Antonio-Damasio breaks with the traditional cognitivist view of human beings as rational minds inhabiting insentient bodies.[5] In his book The Self Comes to Mind (2010), Damasio reintroduces the body as essential for structuring the brain, albeit still based on a representational view of cognition: Because of this curious arrangement, the representation of the world external to the body can come into the brain only via the body itself, namely via its surface. The body and the surrounding environment interact with each other, and the changes caused in the body by that interaction are mapped in the brain. It is certainly true that the mind learns of the world outside via the brain, but it is equally true that the brain can be informed only via the body.[6] You may not consider this concession very great, but eight years later, Damasio rejects the Cartesian mind-body dualism behind traditional neuroscience, arguing that a new, biologically integrated position is now required.[7]

This new position leaves behind a computational model of the mind, rejecting the dried-up mathematical description of the activity of the neurons because it disengaged neurons from the thermodynamics of life.[8] New brain science acknowledges, according to Damasio, that the body as organism, for example through our nervous and immune systems, possesses a kind of perception conveyed through feelings that are registered in turn as complex mental experiences that help us navigate life. Damasio concludes that neural and non-neural structures and processes are not just contiguous [i.e. adjacent, sharing a common boarder] but continuous partners, interactively. They are not aloof entities, signaling each other like chips in a cell phone. In plain talk, brains and bodies are in the same mind-enabling soup.[9] On the basis of this new insight (new to brain scientists at any rate), Damasio rejects the reductive, but sweepingly common notion in the worlds of artificial intelligence, biology, and even neuroscience, that natural organisms would somehow be reducible to algorithms.[10]

Damasios new insights from Neuroscience are a welcome antidote to the severely stunted imagination of the Transhumanists. Even so, neuroscience in general, and transhumanism in particular, suffer from a striking lack of philosophical reflection on the historical origins of the naturalist and functionalist view of organic life that still forms the imaginative framework of cognitive science. Natural scientists, along with all those who pursue their research into human perception in the investigative mode of the natural sciences, still have a hard time with admitting that metaphysics is always at play when imagining what it means to be human. How many scientists (and indeed philosophers) are fully conscious of the historical developments that made possible a purely materialist view of reality?

The philosopher Hans Jonas offers a superb philosophical analysis of this development and its effects on the study of human nature in The Phenomenon of Life: Approaches to a Biological Philosophy (1994). He describes how the duality of mind and spirit of the ancient world was reified into a mind-body dualism by Descartess division of reality into the two spheres of timeless mental ideas on the one hand, and spatio-temporal mechanisms of material stuff on the other hand. Leaving the side of mental ideas to religion and philosophy, he reduced nature (including animals and the human body) to an inert machine running on functional, mathematical principles, wholly explorable through quantifiable data. The legacy of Cartesian dualism was the modern conception of nature without soul or spirit.[11] Encouraged by the enormous success of the scientific method, it was only a matter of time until a secularist science, eager to do away with Descartes God, also claimed the mental sphere for its mechanistic understanding of reality.

This mechanistic monism was further aided by Darwins theory of evolution. Naturalistic evolution exploded Cartesian dualism or a separate mental realm by integrating human beings into a general developmental process. Jonas argues that even though evolution raised once again the problem of how the transcendent freedom and intentionality of consciousness could arise from such a process, the functionalist bias of naturalism closed the door to any arguments that may have led out of the reductionist dead-end of materialist monism. Early evolutionary theory dogmatically adhered to a mechanistic view of causality that tried to explain organic life analogously to complex machines, declaring consciousness to an epiphenomenon, a random side-effect of an essentially material process. This view, argues Jonas, inverts how organic life forms, and in particular human beings, actually function. Human thought and action originate from an intentional center and exercise volitional freedom in their striving to accomplish goals. While we are certainly able to automate strategies for accomplishing goals, this ability does not warrant reducing our humanity to the workings of a complex machine.

Jonas work himself has helped inspire profound changes in evolutionary theory, including the growing conviction among evolutionary psychology that an embodied intentionality or consciousness is intrinsic to organic life itself. The phenomenon of organic life is impossible to describe, let alone understand, without recognizing that a minimal form of intentionality, individuation, and indeed freedom is evident in even the most primitive living organisms striving to survive.

Neither transhumanism, however, nor the AI research that fuels transhumanists hopes for melding human and machine intelligence, have followed this trend of evolutionary biology. Instead, the transhumanists and AI researchers remain beholden to the basic premise of cybernetics that human life and thought boil down to mechanisms controlled by the exchange of information and are therefore amenable to transposition into algorithms so that the essence of human thought and emotion can be digitized and replicated on computational platforms.

This brief historical sketch shows us that transhumanisms abandoning of the earth by leaving behind the body constitutes not a neutral fact based on scientific progress but is indeed a historically conditioned choice. This choice takes one particular aspect of human perception, namely our ability to abstract material from the rich flow of experience to objectify and quantify it for better understanding, and the re-imagines all of reality in these terms. This reductionist ontology ignores the organic and especially the personal aspects characteristic of human life.

It is worth reiterating that the materialist, functionalist premise of transhumanism (and much AI research) is neither empirically convincing nor in any way morally neutral. From a historical point of view, it is actually astonishing how beholden the field of techno-science still is to scientistic attitudes originating in the scientific revolution and the European Enlightenment.

For example, the well-known AI researcher Marvin Minsky (d. 2016), equated belief in consciousness with the kind of religious mumbo jumbo science is supposed to combat.[13] For Minsky, there is no such thing as consciousness, there is no such thing as understanding.[14] Those who believe in such silly superstitions ignorantly hold to this religious idea that there is magic understanding: there is a magic substance that is responsible for understanding and for consciousness, and that there is a deep secret here.[15] For Minsky, the problem of consciousness and understanding with regard to AI simply doesnt exist because he has a thoroughly mechanical, functionalist view of the human mind. For this reason, he looks to Freud as an important figure because hes the first one to consider that the mind is a big complicated kludge of different types of machinery which are specialized for different functions.[16] While most of psychology and other sciences have moved on from Freuds nave mechanical view of the psyche, transhumanism and much popular opinion has not.

One cannot blame transhumanists for wanting to improve human life, but a sober, historical-philosophical analysis of transhumanism exposes it as delusive and naive. The whole idea of engineering a post-human existence by abandoning the organic body is based on an untenable materialist metaphysics. As Hans Jonas perceptively put it, materialistic biology (its armory recently strengthened by cybernetics) is the attempt to understand life by eliminating what actually enables this attempt in the first place: the authentic nature of consciousness and purpose.[17] Only because they suppress the basic structure of organic life and reduce consciousness to an epiphenomenon of materialist functions can transhumanists propose their futuristic vision. Only because they have already reduced life to a machine, however complex, can they imagine a post-humanist future of immortality through technology. The transhumanist imagination concerning our humanity is deceived by the strange proclivity of human reason to interpret human functions by the categories of the artifacts created to replace them, and to interpret artifacts by the categories of the human mind that created them.[18]

Given that transhumanism is driven by this historically conditioned reductionist view of human life, I am less worried about the question whether transhumanism functions as Ersatzreligion, though the growing number of Christian transhumanists is somewhat alarming. Their belief in technology as providential means for procuring god-likeness and immortality makes one wonder about the efficacy of the incarnation. Why did God bother to become a human being rather than a cyborg? Only an imagination already hooked on techno-fiction could suggest that the divine transformation of biological matter is inferior to, or even akin to a man-made metamorphosis through technology.

From a traditional Christian perspective at least, techno-fiction that deems the body to be optional ranks among gnostic heresies. As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer explained, from an incarnational point of view, we dont have bodies but we are our bodies, and are thus rooted in the earth. Abandoning the earth, he declared, therefore means also to lose touch with our fellow human beings and with God who created us as embodied souls. Bonhoeffer concluded that the man who would leave the earth, who would depart from the present distress, loses the power which still holds him by eternal, mysterious forces. The earth remains our mother, just as God remains our Father, and our mother will only lay in the Fathers arms him who remains true to her.[19]

However, what is of greater concern than grouping transhumanism among gnostic heresies is that the movement perpetuates the pervasive techno-reasoning in our culture by glorifying the functionalist image of human existence that continues to enthral the public social imaginary by means of social media and AI research. Transhumanism is just one example, perhaps the most glamorous one, of our current collective culture delusion that the human mind, human language, and human relations boil down to functions that computers will eventually master in far better ways.

We would do well to listen to critical voices of those well familiar with the computing industry like Jaron Lanier. Lanier, credited with inventing virtual reality, exposes the false and dangerous presuppositions of techno-fictions. For example, he debunks the delusion that AI has anything to do with computers gaining intelligence, let alone sentience. AI, he reminds us, is nothing but a story we tell about our code.[20] This story, he confesses, was originally invented by tech engineers to procure funding from government agencies. AI, in short, does not exist if one implies that machines actually think or feel with even the lowest form of consciousness we know from organic life.

Lanier warns that current techno-fiction and our use of technology are deeply dehumanizing. Social media apps are designed to manipulate users into addiction to exploit their consumer habits. Moreover, the whole gamut of computing technology erodes our self-understanding of what it means to be truly human. Lanier worries that if you design a society to suppress belief in consciousness and experienceto reject any exceptional nature to personhoodthen maybe people can become like machines. The greatest danger, he concludes, is the loss of what sets us apart from all other entities, the loss our personhood. His warning echoes the prophetic voices of other critics like the former software coder Steve Talbot, or the late philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, who also worried that instead of adapting technology to human intelligence we slowly conform human consciousness to the functional logic of machines.

These thinkers show us that one does not have to be a luddite or religious zealot to reject transhumanism or entertain a critical attitude towards the nave embracing of current technologies. What is at stake in the discussion about technology and transhumanism is nothing less than our true humanity. Now, it is certainly the case, in my view, that the more holistic approach to human existence offered by religions, and in particular the Christian teaching that God became a human being, provide better anthropological frameworks for approaching technology than secularist or naturalist approaches; however, the time may be ripe for all those concerned about losing our true humanity to come together in exposing the dehumanizing misconceptions put forward by transhumanists, no matter how much these are presented in the radiant, Luciferian promises of divinity. Sicut eritis deus . . . .

[1] 134-135.

[2] 140.

[3] Max More, The Philosophy of Transhumanism in Transhumanist Reader (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, 1-17), 6.

[4] Martin Rothblatt, Mind is Deeper than Matter, in Transhumanist Reader, (317-326).

[5] Economist John Greys endorsement of Damasios recent book The Strange Order of Things (2018).

[6] The Self Comes to Mind, 97.

[7] The Strange Order of Things, 240.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 200. Damasion recognizes that the worlds of artificial intelligence, biology, and even neuroscience are inebriated with this notion. It is acceptable to say, without qualification, that organisms are algorithms and that bodies and brains are algorithms. This is part of an alleged singularity enabled by the fact that we can write algorithms artificially and connect them with the natural variety, and mix them, so to speak. In this telling, the singularity is not just near: it is here. For Damasio, these common notions are not scientifically sound because they discount the essential role of the biological, organic substrate from which feelings arise through the multidimensional and interactive imaging of our life operations with their chemical and visceral components (201).

[11] Jonas, Phenomenon of Life, 140.

[12] Das Prinzip Leben, 219.

[13] Why Freud was the First good AI Theorist in Transhumanist Reader, 169.

[14] Ibid., 172.

[15] Ibid., 170.

[16] Ibid., 169.

[17] Das Prinzip Leben, 230.

[18] Prinzip Leben, 199.

[19] Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English, 10, 244-45.

[20] Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

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Abandoning Earth: Personhood and the Techno-Fiction of Transhumanism - Patheos

The Only Way Humankind Stops The Machines From Taking Over Is Getting Religion – The Federalist

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With yesterdays futuristic technologies increasingly becoming todays product announcements, the progress of science seems unstoppable. Mark OConnells excellent new book To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death follows the authors interactions and interviews with self-professed transhumanists.

This eclectic collection of scientists, tech giants, journalists, and enthusiasts are prophets of a coming post-human species that embraces technology as the means to transcend present biological and psychological limitations. The book itself is masterfully and humorously written, and gives the reader a thorough introduction to the ideas and people behind the transhumanist movement.

The book serves a more important purpose than simply describing transhumanism, however: OConnells interactions with transhumanists show that modern man is not prepared to argue against transhumanism. He must either accept it or find a theological alternative.

It seems that, sociologically speaking, transhumanism springs from the same part of man that desires to create religion. Man fears death, so must overcome it in some way. From this fear, the social scientists tell us, man creates fantasies about deities and paradises, resurrection and glorification. In its own way, transhumanism becomes religious insofar as it represents another in a long line of sets of belief adopted by man in hopes of overcoming his mortality. This time, man seeks help not from mystical transcendent beings but from his own will, instantiated in technology.

Some religious sects like Mormonism have made a place for transhumanist ideas, but transhumanists like Max More have made clear that traditional Christian doctrine and transhumanism are largely incompatible, given the difficulty of reconciling both sets of claims. However, on at least one point, the transhumanist and the Christian agree: death is an enemy to be conquered. The Christian New Testament claims the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Transhumanists concur, and propose that if death can be conquered through technology, death should be conquered through technology.

I am not a scientist. I lack the knowledge to tell scientists who advocate transhumanist ideas that they are wrong about what technology can accomplish. When non-experts like myself grapple with the transhumanist ideas, we traffic in intuitions and philosophies about consciousness, personality, death, and what it means to be human, rather than in scientific arguments.

This is true of OConnell as well. In his research, OConnell encounters scientists who tell him that living to extreme ages will be possible soon, within his and his childs lifetime. Some subjects interviewed even theorize that eventually we could theoretically upload consciousness and become more machine than man. OConnell clearly sees the progression from the thought of men like Thomas Hobbes to the ideas of transhumanism. Hobbes saw man as fundamentally an organic machine, so there seems to be no reason that machine could not be upgraded.

Despite hearing the arguments and understanding their source, OConnell refuses to accept transhumanism. This is not because he thinks transhumanist ideals are unachievable, but because he cannot stomach the idea of living forever, or being himself in any other physical form. He ultimately objects not to the practicality of the transhumanist project but to the propriety of it.

OConnells resistance to transhumanism culminates in a fascinating exchange in the book where OConnell is forced to defend death and mortality as preferable to eternal life and vitality. He mounts standard arguments: Lifes brevity is what gives it value. Impending death makes our continued existence meaningful in some way. Also, life sucks; why extend it?

OConnells transhumanist companions deftly deflect his objections. There [is] no beauty in finitude, they say. They argue that OConnells qualms come from an essential human need to grapple with death and somehow justify it as good so we can avoid constant dread and despair. And, OConnell admits, the transhumanists are right. There is something palpably absurd about defending death as some sort of human good.

Despite conceding the point, OConnell concludes the book by restating his rejection of transhumanism, and the reader is left wondering why. If the transhumanists are correct in theorizing that our continued acceptance of death is just an evolutionary symptom of a disease that can and will be cured, what possible reason could we have to deny the inevitable?

In a poignant scene in the book, OConnells child begins to wrestle with mortality following the death of his grandmother. The boy is comforted when he learns that his father is writing a book on people who are trying to create a world in which people no longer have to die. What comfort is there to offer if we are to reject both religion and transhumanism? What compelling reason do we have to embrace despair when technology offers hope?

Simply put, defending death is a lost cause. Even if, as OConnell theorizes, the idea of meaning [is] itself an illusion, a necessary human fiction, man has continued maintaining that illusion for millennia and seems to persist in preferring life to death. Unless OConnell and others like him are prepared and able to convince the bulk of humanity that death is a happy end to be embraced, not fought against, it seems a choice has presented itself. This choice is between different religions that offer escape from death. Transhumanism offers the materialist a religion through which to conquer death; other religions offer the same to those who have faith in gods other than technology.

Will OConnell and others who reject both transhumanism and other religions refuse anti-aging treatments if they become available? Will they abstain from extending their lives, if given the choice? Only time, the one thing transhumanism cannot hope to overcome, will tell.

Philip is a senior political philosophy student at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA, and will begin graduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall

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The Only Way Humankind Stops The Machines From Taking Over Is Getting Religion - The Federalist

Bloodborne, Transhumanism and Cosmic Cyberpunk – Kotaku UK (blog)

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With all its morbid decadence, the richly-layered Gothic imagination and cosmic horror of Bloodborne tends to overshadow some of its more (post)modern influences. Bloodborne isnt a traditionalist, after all, but a punk: or to be more precise, a cyberpunk. It may not havesinister corporations or hackers, yet this sci-fi renegade still conjures the rebellious ghost in the machine.

Most obviously, theres the overpowering presence of that looming megalopolis Yharnam as dependent on monumental, almost brutalist architecture as any good futuristic urban sprawl. The social dynamics within Yharnam echo the politics of cyberpunk, the hegemonic power of the Healing Church pitted against the social outcasts roaming the grimy streets. Dangerous social experiments and unchecked technological advancements have led to a Victorian dystopia. There are even cyberspaces, simulated, subordinate worlds in the form of the Dreams, which can be accessed and even hacked by those who are privy to secret knowledge.

Yharnham:

Ridley Scott'sBlade Runner:

And just like cyberpunk, the world of Bloodborne is held captive by the promise of transhumanism the idea that humankind will, one day, be able to transcend our fleshlylimitations and become something more. Whether it is Deus Ex or Bloodborne, the tool for this quasi-religious endeavour is cutting edge research and technology. In Deus Ex, that means body modification through nanotech or even merging consciousnesses with an omnipresent AI. In Bloodborne, its the Healing Church and Byrgenwerth researching into the old ones and their blood that drives this change: aiming to transform humans, in theory, into celestial beings that have entirely discarded their humanity. Not unlike in Blade Runner, the eye becomes an omnipresent symbol of self-directed evolution and the dangerous knowledge necessary to pursue it.

However, Bloodborneisa punk that refuses to slavishly follow in the tracks of those that came before. The differences are the most fascinating thing here. The futuristic vision of transhumanism, whether it is presented as a utopian promise or a dystopian threat, is seen as an evolutionary culmination or perhaps even singularity that severs the umbilical cord that connects us to our evolutionary history. The human is a product of natural processes, distant cousin of the apes. The posthuman the product of transhumanism is something different (strangely, it is our human arrogance that leads to this fallacy of teleological evolution.)

Blade Runner

Eye of a Blood-Drunk Hunter

Bloodbornes idea of transhumanism is recognisable, but different. Its still a morally complex idea, both pursued by individuals and institutions while also causing societal upheaval, but its vector is in the opposite direction. The path to transcendence doesnt lead the inhabitants of Yharnam away from humankinds evolutionary history, but confronts it head-on in a retrogressive journey. The first enemies our hunter encounters are beastmen, many of them recognisably human but some, like the werewolves or Vicar Amelia, almost devoid of human characteristics. Theyre hairy and canine, clearly mammalian despite their deformities. So far, this is in keeping with stories like Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or H.P. Lovecrafts tales of human degeneracy, such as Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, in which a British nobleman burns himself alive after discovering that one of his ancestors was an ape goddess from the Congo. These stories play with our post-Darwinian revulsion at being the offspring of mere animals.

But as you progress through Bloodborne, the hunter descends deeper down the evolutionary ladder. Soon, enemies resemble snakes, insects, arachnids. Later, they become more alien still, strange variations of squids, snails, slugs (that is, molluscs) or even fungi. They have names like Celestial Emissary, or Celestial Child and are closely related to the Great Ones, some of whom, like Ebrietas or Kos, share similarities with the games mollusc-like creatures. Bloodborne displays a special fascination with mushrooms and molluscs, as well as the creatures of the ocean (especially in The Old Hunters DLC). These creatures are associated with the primordial, the early origins of life on earth, and their strange forms, both beautiful and disturbing, gives them a semblance of otherworldliness. And since they dont seem to belong to this world, perhaps they originally visited earth from unknown regions of the cosmos?

Kos

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos

Celestial Child

Nudibranch, Nembrotha Kubaryana. Photo by Nick Hobgood

Nudibranch, Nembrotha Cristata. Photo by Chriswan Sungkono.

Nudibranch, Tritoniopsis Elegans. Photo by Sean Murray.

From this anthropocentric perspective, becoming like these creatures means getting closer to the miraculous origins of life, when the earth and the cosmos had yet to be disentangled. The transhumanism of Bloodborne thus turns the usual teleological view of human evolution on its head; the forces of evolution, whether natural or self-directed, will not bring humans closer to the gods, but have instead distanced them from the celestial spring of life. To fulfil their atavistic yearning to return to the lap of the cosmos, the inhabitants of Yharnam must regress to earlier evolutionary stages. The horror and tragedy of turning into wolf-like beasts, therefore, isnt just due to a revulsion to our animal ancestors or the destruction they cause, but the knowledge that those beastmen didnt regress far enough. If only they hadnt gotten lost in this evolutionary valley, they could have emerged on the other side as transcendental beings, as kin not of the earth, but the cosmos. At least, thats one way of looking at the complex picture Bloodborne paints.

The transcended hunter as slug-like Great One in Bloodbornes true ending

The beautiful thing about this is that it doesnt just fly in the face of transhumanism as it is usually understood, but the most problematic aspects of Lovecrafts work, too. The ugly concept of degeneracy, with all its overt racism, was an integral part of Lovecrafts fictional worlds. The ancient and unambiguously evil powers of the Great Old Ones is tied to primitives and mongrels, marginalised humans seen as genetically impure and degraded. They are easily manipulated by the old gods and worship them in the hidden and remote corners of the earth.

In Bloodborne, the blame of Yharnams ruin is dramatically shifted. The hidden corners of worship arent foreign jungles or secluded villages, but the sacred spaces of a church that is the backbone and centre of a sprawling megalopolis; the mysteries of the Great Ones are still secret knowledge, but secrets of a powerful, manipulative elite (as you would expect in the conspiracy-filled worlds of cyberpunk stories). But while this elites endeavours clearly lead to a horrific dystopia, the moral issues of this regressive transhumanism stay ambiguous throughout. The degenerate beastmen are hapless, unfortunate victims rather than villains. The experiment of transcendence through reverse evolution seems doomed to fail, but it is not at all clear whether that goal is inherently misguided. After all, the Great Ones seem amoral rather than evil (not unlike the people of Yharnam), and the hunter is no stranger to the allure these celestial beings exert through their disturbing kind of beauty. Perhaps their apparent darkness stems purely from the human minds failing to comprehend their true nature? Either way, Lovecrafts ideas of degeneracy doesnt entirely fit into Bloodbornes world.

Being kin to both the Lovecraftian as well as cyberpunk, Bloodborne, too, is a kind of mongrel. But this impurity is precisely what enables it to distinguish itself and comment meaningfully on its ancestral genres. It reshapes its influences by letting disparate ideas collide and creates something fresh from the wreckage. Its not unique in its subversion of transhumanist idealism or Lovecraftian racist tropes, but the way it combines these separate issues in a seamless if ambiguous whole is entirely original.

Bloodborne is both a cyberpunk dystopia in which the end point of self-directed evolution is not a disembodied mind, but a slug or a squid, as well as a tale of cosmic horror where that dubious degeneracy stems not from shady outsiders or social outcasts, but squarely from within organised mainstream religion and science. It shares with cyberpunk an awareness and distaste for the unequal power dynamics in a world governed by the amoral ambitions of hegemonies, but, like Lovecraft, looks backwards to our distant origins rather than to the future. And soBloodborne transcends its influences, and challenges us on new planes of existence.

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Bloodborne, Transhumanism and Cosmic Cyberpunk - Kotaku UK (blog)

HYBRIDS, NEPHILIM, HUMAN GENETIC ENGINEERING …

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Tom Horn discusses transhumanism and trans genetic manipulation Behind closed doors scientists and corporations have breached genetic codes that separate the individuality of all animal and plant species on earth. Laboratories around the world are honing their skills while our humanity and dignity as a species is on the operating table like a universal Frankenstein, subject to a wholesale psychic and physiological re-design under the guise of progress.

The proponents claim the field of Transhumanism will change the world by eliminating sickness and famine while at the same time, governments and military groups around the globe are having clandestine meetings to discuss super soldiers, super intelligence, and even super animals to maintain military dominance and control over the populations of the world. Even more horrifying they must create committees to implement plans to defend their nations against future terrorism performed by transhumans (modified human beings) with the universal understanding that no nation can afford NOT to engage in this apocalyptic future of genetically altered life. We are at war for the mind of a generation and the soul of the human race. Billions of dollars are at stake with corporations and powerful individuals looking toward a post human future world

Every living creature was created by God, according to its own kind, and man was created in the image of God. So for man to cross genes and create lifeforms from the transferring of genes from one species to another is blasphemous and pure evil! In fact, it comes straight from the workings of Satan and the fallen angels. Yet daily, we consume GMO foods, oftentimes without our knowledge or desire to do so. To purchase foods that are not genetically modified is a challenge. Whats more, it has been proven that by ingesting GMO products, our very genes are being alteredour DNA is being rewritten!

What will the future generations of mankind be like? What surprises and evils are in store?

Genesis 1:24-31 tells us:

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kindslivestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

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HYBRIDS, NEPHILIM, HUMAN GENETIC ENGINEERING ...

Transhumanism – creation.com

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Will mankind evolve into a perfect being?

by Calvin Smith

Illustration by Caleb Salisbury

Transhumanists believe that humans can use technology to guide their own evolution to become post humans, with fantastic new abilities and the possibility of eternal life.

Resistance is futile! Fans of the Star Trek science fiction franchise will recognize the classic phrase as a chilling warning delivered by humanitys arch nemesis; the Borg.

The Borg were a group of beings that had been integrated together via technological implants that over-rode individuals consciousness to form one massive hivelike existence for its members. They despised individualism above all and prized technology as a tool to further their cause, conquering entire races by absorbing them into their collective by force (or destroying those that resisted) hence the threatening phrase above. Their cybernetic implants were their most sinister and recognizable hallmark. By taking the best of every race they subjugated, they were formidably powerful beings. But was this just science fiction?

Those that relegate such ideas to fantasy or fiction might be jarred by modern headlines like the following; Professor to Surgically Implant Camera in His Head1. Many might consider such an act as bizarre, but the New York University photography professor is apparently attempting this as part of an art exhibit. The concept of surgical implants is becoming exceedingly more common in all levels of society.

Whether for safety reasons (tracking devices/chips), medical reasons (neural/dental implants) or purely cosmetic reasons (breast, extraocular implants) many people seem more comfortable with a blending of technology and their bodies.

The idea of using science to enhance our standard of living is of course a practical and biblical concept, as we now live in a sincursed world and so need to use whatever means we can to help us overcome threats such as crime, disease and disasters. But some have thought to use science for quite some time now in a more sinister and far reaching manner.

During the Great Depression (early 1930s) a social movement called Technocracy became highly popular in the USA for a brief period. The Technocrats proposed dealing with the crisis of the Great Depression by replacing politicians with scientists and engineers who supposedly had the technical expertise to manage the economy.

The Technocracy movement may be traced to the progressive engineers of the early twentieth century such as the writings of Frederick W. Taylor (who introduced the concept of scientific management). Although there were a variety of Technocratic groups and organisations in a number of countries, its most visible figurehead in the US was Howard Scott, who popularised the writings of Technocrats like Thorstein Veblen, a professor and published economist.

And what was at the root of the concepts championed by Veblen? As Geoffrey M. Hodgson (Research Professor in Business Studies at the University of Hertfordshire) made clear in his article Thorstein Veblen and Darwinism:

Using Darwinian principles to improve mankind is founded on the understanding that man has evolved over millions of years and that therefore we were less or sub human in the past. Then, logically we will evolve into something more/better or post human in the future. The concept that we can assist our evolution through scientific means isnt new and is gaining widespread popularity. (For a pictorial depiction of this visit the Before & After Humans website on MSNBC released in 2005.3)

Its an entirely logical premise if one thinks that man is the ultimate authority. After all, why not give evolution a hand if its headed onwards and upwards anyway. Such help could even be regarded as part of the evolutionary process itself. That is, until one realizes that this concept being applied to enhance societies has been tried before.

The horrific consequences of social Darwinism has been thoroughly documented, Nazi Germany being the prime example of survival of the fittest ideas being applied to a society and the eugenics movement (the science developed by Darwins cousin, Francis Galton) frequently touted as the obvious result of the concept that some of us are more fit (evolved) and some less fit to survive/procreate etc. The Nazi death camps were the final solution birthed by eugenic concepts like racial hygiene.

Modern atheists like Richard Dawkins try to downplay the connection between Darwinism as science, and social Darwinism as a moral concept. Dawkins stated on The Science Show (ABC Radio, 22 January 2000);

Dubbed Transhumanism it attempts to be all inclusive, embracing Darwinism, Intelligent Design, spirituality, science, belief in ET etc wrapped up in a self guided salvation message.

But he has also said that although he doesnt agree with Hitler, certain ideas of eugenics may not be that bad after all. In a letter to the editor of the Sunday Herald (Scotland) he said if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability?4 So in at least one sense Dawkins does agree with Hitler! And as much as he tries to avoid the logical connection between someone believing Darwinism also believing in social Darwinism, they are there all the same.

On the coattails of the postmodernist movement, ultra-modernism has birthed a new concept based on these (above) ideas resulting in a large global phenomenon that is gaining tremendous popularity with a broad base of supporters worldwide. Dubbed Transhumanism, one of the reasons it is popular is it attempts to be all inclusive, embracing Darwinism, Intelligent Design, spirituality, science, belief in ET etc wrapped up in a self guided salvation message. In short:

How will this utopia come about specifically? Christian apologist Carl Teichrib (a Canadian-based researcher and writer on globalization) explains;

The transhumanist group Technolifes website makes it clear;

And in a video8 on their site we hear Humans have a natural desire for perfection. Who will settle for normal when you can be perfect? Today we have the technology to go beyond any limitation nanotechnology, biotechnology, neuroscience, informatics all of these knowledge fields will soon converge. Superior bodies and minds, bodies without pain, without limits now we can offer you to be happy, healthy, beautiful and forever young.

Many might consider this a fringe movement except for the fact that this website represents a research project funded by European Union (The EU is an economic and political union of 27 member states located primarily in Europe including the UK, France, Germany, Sweden etc).

And a quick overview of a 2003 report titled, Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science reveals these ideas are indeed far reaching. This extensive 405 page document issued by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce of the US explains its (indiscernibly transhumanisistic) goal isnt just better bodies and more effective minds but actually the preventing an inevitable societal catastrophe.

In its introduction we read;

This is more that overcoming illnesses, diseases and birth defects that have beset us since the Fall. According to this report the answer to humanitys ultimate problems is a kind of worldwide technology induced unity:

Sounds like the Borg to me!

Indeed, the transhumanist magazine H+ (Humanity +, the + signifying what humans will evolve into) revealed an article on November 16 2010 titled Problem Solved11 with the following tag line; In 2011, with your help, H+ Magazine will solve all the worlds problems!, listing everything from poverty, disease, discrimination, terrorism and even death as problems solvable by transhumanistic beliefs. While admitting tongue in cheek that they didnt believe a magazine could solve all the worlds problems, it reveals the faith that they hold, that this path of transhumanism will eventually be our savior.

Transhumanist conferences are becoming popular, with Humanity+ holding one called Redefining Humanity in the Era of Radical Technological Change recently at the Beckman Institute at Caltech Los Angeles, California.

Transhumanists use the term convergence interchangeably with the word singularity, defined as singularity represents a point in a future time when technological change takes place so fast it produces a qualitative shift in society: the birth of a super-intelligence, the merging of Man and Machine.12 Humanity will be so linked together and so able to communicate with itself that in a timeless moment of consciousness we will transcend into a higher plane of existence. In essence it would be what some transhumanists have described as the Techno Rapture. What would the result be?

As it is on Earth, so it shall be in the heavens. The inevitable result of incredible improbability evolution is lipping us into the transhuman salvationattained by good works.

Leading Transhumanist Mark Pesce (a co-inventor of 3-D interfacing for the worldwide web, and a judge on ABCs TV show The New Inventors) posits the following; Once the genome was transcribed, once we knew what had made us human, we hadin that momentpassed into the Transhuman. Knowing our codes, we can recreate them in our so-called synthetic rows of 1s and 0snow we will reach into the improbable, re-sequence ourselves into a new Being, de-bugging the natural state, translating ourselves into supernatural, incorruptible, eternal. There is no God but Man.13

Notice his use of biblical terminology within his worldview:

Although most transhumanists emphasize only the seemingly beneficial aspects of their beliefs, the obvious ties to the eugenics movement have been brought before them and are seemingly summarily dismissed by most. It seems for many that an ends justifies the means approach is the norm. As human cloning researcher, Richard Seed said; We are going to become Gods. Period. If you dont like it, get off. You dont have to contribute; you dont have to participate. But if youre going to interfere with me becoming God, were going to have big trouble. Then well have warfare.

To assist in educating those that may not be on board so to speak the Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance paper suggested; Unifying science and education. To meet the coming challenges, scientific education needs radical transformation (emphasis mine) from elementary school through postgraduate training. Convergence of previously separate scientific disciplines and fields of engineering cannot take place without the emergence of new kinds of people (emphasis mine) who understand multiple fields in depth and can intelligently work to integrate them. New curricula, new concepts to provide intellectual coherence, and new forms of educational institutions will be necessary.15

Because transhumanism combines so many attractive concepts it is seen by many to be a unifying force for good. Many Mormons have embraced it as it affirms the central point of Mormon theologytransfiguration or exaltationman becoming God. Hindus and Buddhists also share many transhumanist beliefs.

Some UFOlogists have also endorsed it as belief in intelligent alien life fits in quite nicely. After all, if we were once lower on the evolutionary scale, have evolved to where we are today and know we will evolve in the future then naturally there must likely be post humans of some sort already running around the universe. Perhaps they are visiting us and want to help us evolve and transcend further up the evolutionary scale.

Intelligent Design proponents and Darwinists can also work together. Perhaps aliens kicked off our evolution and even designed portions of life while evolution filled in the blanks? That way evolution is affirmed while explaining the complexity of some features that dont seem to be explainable by wholly naturalistic means (ATP Synthase, Kinesin etc). And complete atheists/naturalists can maintain their worldview while giving a nod to some sort of spiritual notion as well. After all, its easier to believe in a god if you can become one yourself!

Even those calling themselves Christians can enter in! James McLean Ledford (who runs the websites Technical-Jesus.com and Hyper-Evolution.com), a declared Christian Transhumanist recently spoke at the October 2010 Transhuman and Spirituality Conference at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where he delivered a talk called Christian Transhumanism. The description of his talk contained the following;

A future where all mankinds problems are solved (no tears, no pain, no struggle for existence, no conflict between each other), new, perfect bodies and minds, eternal life. Sounds great doesnt it!? The only problem is that transhumanism is based on a lie; evolution. All transhumanists hopes and dreams are built on a foundation believing molecules to man evolution being a real thing.

Just like the Technocrat Thorstein Veblen, they have designed their theories around the positivist science of Darwinian evolution. (Positivism is the philosophy that the only authentic knowledge is knowledge that is based on actual sense experience. Since Darwinian evolution has not been observed (so isnt scientific in the sense of being repeatable) and that positivism itself is not derived from a sensory experience, these ideas are based on a completely false foundations to begin with. It is the same old deception from Satan saying you will be like God 16 back in the Garden of Eden.

The concept of evolution is being constantly implanted into the consciousness of mankind. Similar to the victims of the Borg in Star Trek where the truth of who the victim was rewritten over the individuals true identity, once someone has been implanted with the concept of evolution, they can quickly get assimilated into an anti-God philosophy and be hard to lead back to truth.

Mankinds greatest hopes and dreams can indeed be achieved, but not by himself. People can be free one day of all tears, pain, mourning and even death. They will have a new incorruptible body and will live in paradise, but not because of what we will have done, but because of what our Savior Jesus Christ has done.

But this promise will not be given to everyone. It will only be extended to those that have repented of their sin and put their faith in Jesus Christ, the Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer of the Universe.

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Transhumanism – International Centre/Center for Bioethics …

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Outline of transhumanism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to transhumanism:

Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.[1] Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging and hypothetical technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as study the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.[1] They predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".[1] Transhumanism is often abbreviated as H+ or h+ ("humanism plus").

Transhumanism can be described as all of the following:

Neophilia strong affinity for novelty and change. Transhumanist neophiliac values include:

Survival survival, or self-preservation, is behavior that ensures the survival of an organism.[7] It is almost universal among living organisms. Humans differ from other animals in that they use technology extensively to improve chances of survival and increase life expectancy.

Technological evolution

Hypothetical technology technology that does not exist yet, but the development of which could potentially be achieved in the future. It is distinct from an emerging technology, which has achieved some developmental success. A hypothetical technology is typically not proven to be impossible. Many hypothetical technologies have been the subject of science fiction.

Some people who have made a major impact on the advancement of transhumanism:

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Transhumanism and the Great Rebellion – Rapture Ready

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This generation is witness to the emergence of a radical new social movement known as transhumanism. Expressing an unshakable faith in the continued and rapid advancement of human technology, transhumanists look to the future with what can only be described as a religious fervor. Many of this movement's adherents point to the singularity (an exponential increase in technological advancement so rapid the unaided human mind is unable to grasp its implications) as the climax of human civilization. Believing this event will usher in a new era for the human race in which limited mortals transcend their biological bodies and set out to conquer the universe, transhumanist anticipation of the singularity is comparable to Christian anticipation of the Second Coming ofJesus Christ.

Ironically, the Bible points out that in the time just prior to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the world will be characterized by unparalleled human arrogance. Led by the Antichrist, the human race will launch not only a spiritual rebellion against God, but an actual physical confrontation between itself and the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul foresaw this conflict almost two thousand years ago:

"For that day will not come until there is a great rebellion against God and the man of lawlessness is revealed--the one who brings destruction. He will exalt himself and defy every god there is and tear down every object of adoration and worship. He will position himself in the temple of God, claiming that he himself is God" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, NLT).

The Tower of Babel

To properly understand theoriginsof this rebellion, we must first examine the development of human civilization in the aftermath of the Flood. It is a time marked by another rebellion first chronicled in Genesis chapter 11, the story of the Tower of Babel:

"At one time the whole world spoke a single language and used the same words. As the people migrated eastward, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began to talk about construction projects. Come,' they said, let's make great piles of burnt brick and collect natural asphalt to use as mortar. Let's build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies--a monument to our greatness! This will bring us together and keep us from scattering all over the world.'

"But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. Look!' he said. If they can accomplish this when they have just begun to take advantage of their common language and political unity, just think of what they will do later. Nothing will be impossible for them! Come, let's go down and give them different languages. Then they won't be able to understand each other.'

"In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the earth; and that ended the building of the city. That is why the city was called Babel, because it was there that the Lord confused the people by giving them many languages, thus scattering them across the earth" (Genesis 11:1-9, NLT).

In this story, God scatters the human race and confuses the people with different languages. His reason for doing so is to avoid the inevitable disaster wrought by global government and a common language. Why are these things a concern? Because if they continueunabated, in due time, "nothing will be impossible" for the human race. This is more than a flippant comment by God. It's a prophecy of things to come.

It's a prophecy of something so bad, God put a stop to it the moment He first saw it. God knew that, left to pursue its technological development, the human race would one day challenge Him. After all, what was the motive for building the Tower of Babel in the first place?

"Let's build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skiesa monument to our greatness!" (Genesis 11:4, NLT).

The human race set out to build a monument to its own greatness, exalting mankind above God and extending its tower far into Heaven with the sole intent of usurping God's glory and authority. This innate human desire did not end with the Tower of Babel. It continues to this day, and soon it will result in one final attempt to usurp the authority of God.

The Great Lie

The motive for this great rebellion will be predicated on lies. The Bible predicts that deception will be rampant in the end times. And just as God hardened the heart of Pharaoh for putting faith in his own power, He will do the same to the inhabitants of the earth who will become drunk with their own power:

"So God will send great deception upon them, and they will believe all these lies" (2 Thessalonians 2:11, NLT).

Paul makes it clear that these people will be deluded into believing "the lies." But what exactly are the "lies" to which he refers? A cursory examination of the first book of the Bible reveals a quote from the originator of lies. In fact, it's the very first lie referenced in the Bible:

"You won't die!' the serpent hissed. God knows that your eyes will be opened when you eat it. You will become just like God, knowing everything, both good and evil'" (Genesis 3:4-5, NLT).

These lies from the Garden of Eden are the same lies to which Paul refers. The same lies that brought sin into the world will be the same lies that spark the ultimate rebellion against God Almighty. Humanity will come full circle. In the last days, the same construction projects envisioned by the Tower of Babel architects will result in mankind achieving a level of technological sophistication so advanced that "nothing will be impossible for them." The human race will come to believe the great lies of the serpent.

In his arrogance, man will believe he is:

1) Immortal

2) All-knowing

3) Just like God

Mankind will mimic the earth-shattering arrogance of Lucifer by freely joining in his rebellious attempt to usurp the throne of God, because, without Jesus Christ, fallen mankind's ambition is the same as Lucifer's. Centuries ago, Isaiah described this fallen being and his sinister motives:

"How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning! You have been thrown down to the earth, you who destroyed the nations of the world. For you said to yourself, I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God's stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north. I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High'" (Isaiah 14:12-14, NLT).

In the last days, this passage will be an accurate depiction not only of Satan, but of all mankind.

The Transhumanist Movement

The latest incarnation of man's rebellion against God is the transhumanist movement. Many within the movement believe the singularity will lead to the emergence of "post-biological humans" who are able to shed their biological bodies and "upgrade their hardware." Others believe that by downloading themselves into a network, they will effectively become "immortal." True believers have modified their diets, exercise regimens, and entire lifestyle in an effort to increase the likelihood of living to witness human reversal of the aging process and eventual human "immortality."

Ray Kurzweil--inventor, author, and transhumanist--s considered one of the best in the world at accurately forecasting short-term and intermediate technological trends. In chapter 7 of his bestselling book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, he describes his view of the ultimate outcome of our technological advance:

"The matter and energy in our vicinity will become infused with the intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and emotional intelligence (the ability to love, for example) of our human-machine civilization. Our civilization will then expand outward, turning all the dumb matter and energy we encounter into sublimely intelligent--transcendent--matter and energy. So in a sense, we can say the Singularity will ultimately infuse the universe with spirit."

According to Kurzweil, the universe will be infused with "spirit" as a result of the natural advancement of our human-machine civilization. This suggests that the universe is not already infused with "spirit," and that if God exists, His designs are inferior to those who will be created by the predicted human-machine civilization.

In the next paragraph, he describes the advancement of the human-machine civilization as approaching the very conception of God. Ironically, he admits that the accelerating growth of evolution can never achieve the infinite character traits exclusive to God:

"Evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without any limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking."

The concluding sentence of this paragraph should send up red flags for every student of Bible prophecy. According to Kurzweil, as the human race moves forward, it will seek to free its thinking "from the severe limitations of its biological form." The Bible reveals that one day mankind will gather its armies in an attempt to "break the chains of God and set themselves free from His bondage." Psalms 2 describes this confrontation:

"Why do the nations rage? Why do the people waste their time with futile plans? The kings of the earth prepare for battle; the rulers plot together against the Lord and against His Anointed One. Let us break their chains,' they cry. And free ourselves from this slavery.' But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them" (Psalms 2:1-4, NLT).

Could this passage describe an attempt by post-biological humans to overthrow the rule of God? Could the chains that hold them in bondage be the "severe limitations of their biological form"? Remember, when this event occurs, Satan and his fallen angels are also inhabitants of the earth:

"Rejoice, O heavens! And you who live in the heavens, rejoice! But terror will come on the earth and the sea. For the Devil has come down to you in great anger, and he knows that he has little time" (Revelation 12:12, NLT).

In his arrogance and desperation, Satan will advance the dark powers of the spiritual realm, aided by a fallen mankind with powers beyond our current limitations, in a last-ditch effort to defeat God. The technological advancements of the near future will provide mankind with unprecedented power, and the ambitious goals of the transhumanist movement are already in direct conflict with God Himself.

The following verse provides additional support for believing transhumanism will play a pivotal role in this final rebellion. In the New Testament, when Jesus describes the signs of His coming to the disciples, He makes an interesting statement in light of our times:

"And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened" (Matthew 24:22, KJV).

Throughout the centuries, this verse has been interpreted as meaning the Second Coming of Christ will arrive just in time to save the human race from itself, meaning human wars would threaten to cause the extinction of the human race. However, it might mean that "no flesh will be saved" because a nakedly ambitious human race will transform itself into a race of "post-biological humans" intent on reshaping the universe according to an alternative agenda.

Given the history of human rebellion against God, it would be unwise to discount this possibility.

The Great Rebellion

Just as Paul prophesied, human ambition will ultimately lead to a great rebellion against God. This rebellion will reach its zenith at Armageddon, an actual geographical location in modern-day Israel. The gathering of the world's armies at Armageddon will not be (as some believe) a war of humans versus humans, but rather a literal, physical confrontation between rebellious mankind and the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. In addition to Psalms 2, this battle is referenced multiple times in Scripture, and it's clearly referenced twice in the book of Revelation:

"These miracle-working demons caused all the rulers of the world to gather for battle against the Lord on that great judgment day of God Almighty" (Revelation 16:14, NLT).

"Then I saw the beast gathering the kings of the earth and their armies in order to fight against the one sitting on the horse and his army" (Revelation 19:19, NLT).

The "one sitting on the horse" is identified as Jesus Christ. Literally interpreted, both of these passages state that the world will gather for battle against Jesus Christ. The Bible is clear about this; yet for countless generations, these passages have been interpreted as indicating a mere spiritual battle and not a literal, physical conflict. It's not difficult to imagine why. The idea of mankind physically engaging God in battle seems so preposterous that these passages have given way to numerous symbolic interpretations over the years. Yet Scripture is clear. Remember what God Himself said about the human race that will ultimately fulfill His Tower of Babel prophecy--"Nothing will be impossible for them!"

In fact, the book of Daniel reveals that the Antichrist will manage to attack "the heavenly armies, throwing some of the heavenly beings and stars to the ground and trampling them":

"From one of the prominent horns came a small horn whose power grew very great. It extended toward the south and east and toward the glorious land of Israel. His power reached to the heavens where it attacked the heavenly armies, throwing some of the heavenly beings and stars to the ground and trampling them. He even challenged the Commander of heaven's armies by canceling the daily sacrifices offered to him and by destroying his Temple" (Daniel 8:9-11, NLT).

The power of the Antichrist and the human beings of his era will far exceed what our generation can currently imagine. As proof, Daniel describes a time when the Antichrist will engage Jesus Christ Himself in battle:

"He will even take on the Prince of princes in battle, but he will be broken, though not by human power" (Daniel 8:25, NLT).

The human race, led by the Antichrist, will take on the Lord Himself in battle. Like the Tower of Babel generation, the arrogance of this final generation will extend all the way into the heavens, where the human race will attempt to usurp the glory and authority of God Himself. But just like the Tower of Babel generation, their efforts will end in utter failure.

Conclusion

The transhumanist agenda serves as a reminder of what the human race is without the blood of Jesus Christ--an enemy of God. A movement that views its ultimate purpose as bringing enlightenment to the universe sets itself up in direct opposition to God's own purpose. This is the very definition of rebellion, and it's the inevitable result of fallen mankind's sinful nature.

Yet despite our sinful nature, God provided us with the free gift of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. All we have to do is accept this gift. Those who accept it will experience peace and everlasting life, but those who reject it will become slaves to sin, and their ambition--ike Satan's--will one day lead to an outright physical confrontation with God Himself. It's a battle that God will win.

Britt Gillette is the author of Signs of the Second Coming: 11 Reasons Jesus Will Return in Our Lifetime and Coming to Jesus: One Mans Search for Truth and Life Purpose. Hes also the founder of End Times Bible Prophecy.

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