IMAGE: PHOTO OF MINECRAFT
My time thinking about transhumanism and religion has essentially boiled down to an exercise where I try to identify the natural methods a God would use or like to see used to fulfill a prophecy. I would say few of the prophecies fulfilled in the history of the people of God have occurred “miraculously”, but have mostly been the unfolding of a series of causes and effects of people’s decisions. As such, I believe that most of the events that will result in the paradisiacal state of the Millennium will be the result of the personal decisions and actions of billions of people.
Read more >>IMAGE: PHOTO OF WOMEN LOOKING OUT TO SEA
Science fiction and real science are in a symbiotic relation with powerful feedback loops: science fiction is inspired by science, and in turn it inspires new scientific and technical developments. At times, new developments are directly inspired by the imagination of science fiction writers - for example the fictional technologies described by William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and more recently Ernest Cline, shaped and continue to drive real developments in consumer electronics and virtual reality, a recent example being the Oculus Rift. More often, science fiction ignites with overpowering interest in science and technology the flexible and imaginative minds of the young, who then become the next generation of scientists and engineers. This has a huge social impact:
Read more >>Who Should Speak?
IMAGE: PHOTO OF WRITING ON WALL
(Gandhi Museum, Delhi, India)
God comes
like a prairie dog, popping up--
alert, curious-- and disappearing again.
God comes
like a cherry blossom, unfolding pink and delicate in fragrance and flower;
giving way to leaf and stem, fruit and stone.
Read more >>IMAGE: PHOTO OF CHILD LOOKING OUTSIDE
Having and raising children is a critical part of the propagation of the species. Until Immortality or other reproductive options are realized, or otherwise finally engineered, it is critical to our long term survival. Children are therefore our most important resource.
Read more >>The Mormon Transhumanist Association (MTA) was extremely philanthropic in 2014. Members of MTA contributed generously to charity campaigns in Uganda that were conducted by Roger Hansen and Hank Pellissier, managers of MTA humanitarian projects.
Below is a list of sponsored campaigns with an estimate of MTA philanthropy in each:
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The feminist philosopher Donna Haraway observed that the cyborg is not just a creature of speculative fiction, but of modern social reality.1 She saw the myth of the post-human cyborg as a feminist alternative to the dualist myth of the human. In the traditional construction of a human, we imagine that the person is conceptually separable from his bodily mechanisms. This is baked into modern intuition, because we say, for example, that a human “has” a body or brain, not that a human “is” a body or brain. A cyborg is not a traditional human in that sense. It is a person inseparably welded and wired to her embodiment. A cyborg is an indivisible and indistinct union of person and mechanism, and it is impossible to locate the true boundary between woman and machine.
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IMAGE: PHOTO OF CODE
As a programmer, my greatest creative outlet is writing code. While searching deep inside an interconnected web of bits and logic to hunt down that perpetual last bug may seem to someone from the outside to be anything but creative, there is a unique type of creativity that is found in writing software. A new sense of awe and joy is found in the deeply felt human experience of curiosity, exploration, and creation when we see those things not as uniquely human and ephemeral but as things which can make us one with nature, the universe, each other, and God.
Read more >>Dear members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association,
You're invited to participate in the association's 2014 survey, which will help association leadership better represent you and your interests. As in previous years, we've designed the survey such that you can complete it in less than 5 minutes! Here's the link:
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Mormonism is, above all other things, an immersive discipleship of Jesus Christ. It's not so much a religion about Jesus as it is an aspiration to live the religion of Jesus. This Gospel is to trust in, change toward, and fully immerse both our bodies and our minds in the role of Christ, to become gods and saviors, to console, to heal, and to raise each other up together. This is the heart of Mormonism. This Gospel of Jesus Christ underlies Mormon Transhumanism.
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