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Most transhumanists are atheists, but former evangelical Meghan O'Gieblyn connects the Singularity to its roots in Christian eschatology (nplusonemag.com)

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[–]Anti-Theisthurricanelantern 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

So lying.

[–]coniunctio[S] 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

If I understand you, not necessarily. Did you read the entire essay? I know it is long, but it has some surprises. The comparisons between Christian eschatology and transhumanism are well done, but this doesn't necessarily imply deceit. I thought the writer did a fantastic job. My only complaint is that she glossed over the history of extropianism, but that may not be entirely her fault as that information is hard to find.

[–]Contrarianrasungod0 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Lots of philosophies were started by theists, doesn't make them theistic.

[–]coniunctio[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

That's true, and the author talks about how Julian Huxley stripped transhumanism of its religious theology:

Huxley, a secular humanist, believed that Teilhard’s visions need not be grounded in any larger religious narrative. In 1951, he gave a lecture that proposed a nonreligious version of the priest’s ideas. “Such a broad philosophy,” he wrote, “might perhaps be called, not Humanism, because that has certain unsatisfactory connotations, but Transhumanism. It is the idea of humanity attempting to overcome its limitations and to arrive at fuller fruition."

Even so, it's difficult to ignore the analogy between the hopes and goals of Christian eschatology rooted in religion, with those of the technological singularity rooted in science. The author demonstrates how both depend on the delusion that we will escape our own impending death.

[–]JamesRedford [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

I'm glad to see Meghan O'Gieblyn's present article on the logically-unavoidable religious implications of the advancement of technology (viz., "Ghost in the Cloud: Transhumanism's simulation theology", n+1 [n+1 Foundation, Inc.], No. 28: "Half-Life" [Spring 2017]).

A god (minuscule G) is an immortal sapient being who is still finite at any given time. Whereas God (majuscule G) is the infinite sapient being.

As physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler noted, "Any cosmology with unlimited progress will end in God." (See Anthony Liversidge, interview of Frank Tipler, "A Physicist Proposes a Theory of Eternal Life that Yields God", Omni, Vol. 17, No. 1 [Oct. 1994], pp. 89 ff. [8 pp.].) This means that, e.g., any form of immortality necessarily entails the existence of the capital-G God, in the sense of an omniscient, omnipotent and personal being with infinite computational resources. This is mathematically unavoidable, for the reason that any finite state will eventually undergo the Eternal Return per the Quantum Recurrence Theorem. This is very easy to see by considering the simple example of two bits, which have only four possible states (i.e., 22): hence, once these four states have been exhausted, states will have to recur. What that means is that any finite state can only have a finite number of experiences (i.e., different states), because any finite state will eventually start to repeat.

Thus, immortality is logically inseparable from the existence of the capital-G God, since mathematically, immortality requires the existence of either an infinite computational state or a finite state which diverges to an infinite computational state (i.e., diverging to literal Godhead in all its fullness), thus allowing for states to never repeat and hence an infinite number of experiences.

Consequently, transhumanism--if the goal by that position is immortality--is inherently theistic, not only in a lowercase-G god sense, but also in the capital-G God sense.

The concept of man being gods and becoming ever-more Godlike is simply traditional Christianity, going all the way back to Jesus's teachings (e.g., see John 10:34), that of Paul and the other Epistlers, and that of the Church Fathers. In traditional Christian theology, this is known as apotheosis, theosis or divinization. For many examples of these early teachings, see the article "Divinization (Christian)" at Wikipedia (Mar. 26, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Divinization_(Christian)&oldid=772236036 ). Though this traditional position of Christian theology has been deemphasized for the last millennium.

Indeed, the words "transhuman" and "superhuman" originated in Christian theology. "Transhuman" is a neologism coined by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy (Paradiso, Canto I, lines 70-72), referring favorably to a mortal human who became an immortal god by means of eating a special plant. For the Christian theological origin of the term "superhuman", see the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.), the first appearance being by Henry Montagu, 1st Earl of Manchester, in his Al Mondo: Contemplatio Mortis, & Immortalitatis (London, England: Robert Barker, and the Assignes of John Bill, 1636).

What Prof. Tipler has done is to make the foregoing mathematically and physically rigorous, as his Omega Point cosmology is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) demonstrating that the universe must end in the Omega Point: the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity having all the unique properties traditionally claimed for God, and of which is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause. Said Omega Point cosmology is also an intrinsic component of the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics, of which TOE is itself mathematically forced by the aforesaid known physical laws. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology has been published and extensively peer-reviewed in leading physics journals. For a great deal more on that, see my following article, which also addresses the societal implications of the Omega Point cosmology and details how it uniquely conforms to, and precisely matches, the cosmology described in the New Testament: