Jesus Christ supercomputer

What the resurrection can teach us about a post-human future

As the depraved queer son of a West Texas preacher, I gave up thinking about God and eternity decades ago, but there are certain times of year when I can’t help but recall my first love: Jesus Christ. When I was just a little Church-going homosexual, Easter was my favorite religious holiday. I loved the white suits, the pastel palette, and palm motif. I loved the drama of the resurrection and the morbidity of the crucifixion. Something about it all scratched a perverse itch in me. There’s just something so camp about celebrating the brutal murder and miraculous regeneration of the son of God with boiled eggs and tales of mischievous, bipedal rabbits. 

This Easter’s eve I’m thinking about eternal life more than usual, thanks in part to my current obsession with life-extension and cryonics. The more I’ve learned about transhumanism, the pseudo-religious techno-utopian philosophy that has some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful people clamoring for eternal life, the more I’ve come to recognize the movement’s similarities to Christianity. The leaders of tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Tesla seem laser focused on creating a future so radically different from our current existence that there’s no way to even imagine it. Truth be told, they’re really just repackaging age-old themes as shiny new concepts aided by hyper-intelligent machines. 

Meghan O’Gieblyn’s God, Human, Animal, Machine offers a thoughtful, thorough dissection of transhumanist ideals and how they echo those of Christian teaching. She argues that “What makes transhumanism so compelling is that it promises to restore through science the transcendent—and essentially religious—hopes that science itself obliterated.”

God, Human, Animal, Machine is a brilliant read and an excellent introduction to transhumanism and its many offshoots, but if you don’t feel like digging that deep, here are just a few points to ponder as Easter beckons. 

God 2.0 

If God made us in their image, and we build superhuman machines in our own, are they not somehow God-like? This sort of circular thinking looms large in God, Human, Animal, Machine for good reason. Artificial Intelligence visionaries like Google’s Ray Kurzweil foretell a future where biological humans cease to exist. In our place an omniscient hive mind runs on servers in the sky, enabling billions of virtual beings to live in eternal bliss. Who needs heaven when you can just colonize space?    

Immaculate Conception for all! 

Immaculate Conception, or the idea that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin when she got prego, is a central plot point in the Bible. As ridiculous as it might have once seemed, sexless conception is no longer outside the realm of possibility. Procedures like In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and now In Vitro Gametogenesis (IVG) are changing the mating game entirely. Men, it seems, are becoming less of a necessity in the process of reproduction. Transhumanists see this new form of science-backed immaculate conception as evidence of a monumental shift in humanity. Sound familiar? Jesus much?

Selective Resurrection

I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the one thing on every good Christian’s mind this weekend: the second coming. As the story goes, the ultimate martyr was nailed to a cross and essentially beaten to death by his own followers before being buried in a cave-like tomb, secured with a giant boulder. But no one puts the almighty’s baby in a corner. J.C. pulled himself together and got back out there just days after dying for your sins. 

The concept of resurrection has undergone a post-Enlightenment overhaul thanks to transhumanists who believe that the cure to aging and, thus, the key to eternal life, will be found in their lifetimes. And if that doesn’t happen, they can always have their heads frozen in the hopes that science will find a way to bring them back to life someday.

I Wanna Live Forever!

Among other things, Christianity and Transhumanism share an ultimate goal: Life everlasting. Where the former believes that through a righteous life and honorable death, we might ascend to heaven, the latter favors never dying in the first place. You can think of superhuman AI, space colonization, and genetic engineering like something of a techno-utopian holy trinity: your ticket to eternity.   

The Ultimate To-Do List

The Ten Commandments are old, like real old. So why not give them a facelift, or at least a little filler? In 1998 Nick Bostrom and David Pearce formed the World Transhumanist Organization (now known as humanity+) with the goal of codifying the various threads of transhumanism. The resulting Transhumanist Declaration isn’t nearly as succinct as The Ten Commandments, but does a good job of summarizing the movement’s goals and ethics. I’ve included the most recent iteration of the founding document below. 

THE TRANSHUMANIST DECLARATION

1. Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.

2. We believe that humanity’s potential is still mostly unrealized. There are possible scenarios that lead to wonderful and exceedingly worthwhile enhanced human conditions.

3. We recognize that humanity faces serious risks, especially from the misuse of new technologies. There are possible realistic scenarios that lead to the loss of most, or even all, of what we hold valuable. Some of these scenarios are drastic, others are subtle. Although all progress is change, not all change is progress.

4. Research effort needs to be invested into understanding these prospects. We need to carefully deliberate how best to reduce risks and expedite beneficial applications. We also need forums where people can constructively discuss what should be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.

5. Reduction of existential risks, and development of means for the preservation of life and health, the alleviation of grave suffering, and the improvement of human foresight and wisdom should be pursued as urgent priorities, and heavily funded.

6. Policy making ought to be guided by responsible and inclusive moral vision, taking seriously both opportunities and risks, respecting autonomy and individual rights, and showing solidarity with and concern for the interests and dignity of all people around the globe. We must also consider our moral responsibilities towards generations that will exist in the future.

7. We advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise.

8. We favour allowing individuals wide personal choice over how they enable their lives. This includes use of techniques that may be developed to assist memory, concentration, and mental energy; life extension therapies; reproductive choice technologies; cryonics procedures; and many other possible human modification and enhancement technologies.