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With Jesus, I am against dogmas and dogmatic thinking, religious or otherwise.

• Ben Blair

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In the gospel account of Matthew Jesus performed many healings of the sick:

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'Pool of Bethesda' by Carl Bloch

Whatever the historical rationales were, worship today that doesn’t aspire to emulation is empty. We give altogether too much effort to describing how great Jesus was as a mark of the fixed gap between us and Him. The reason Jesus is worthy of worship--the reason any being is worthy of worship--is because that being has lived, or is living in such a way that is a significant moral step ahead of us and others; it’s a mode of life worthy of not only our admiration, but our aspirations, and we work to follow that lead and close the gap. In this way, we should hope that we would worship Jesus; for worthy is the Lamb.

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The following meditations are from a variety of members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association as they individually reflect on the Christmas season and on a vision of transhumanism that can produce fruits worthy of Christ. Each meditation is the view of the individual author and does not represent the official stance of the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

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Gerard van Honthorst

We get the Christmas message mixed up. We read it as a very special baby, and everyone comes to witness or see and point to, and adore the baby, who will grow to become the savior of the world. We read the child as the focal point, and our role as spectator: the classic carol O Come All Ye Faithful captures this sentiment in the refrain’s crescendo: ”O come let us adore Him! O come let us adore Him! O come let us adore Him! Christ, the Lord!”

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Lincoln Cannon will present on Mormon Transhumanism at Theologians Testing Transhumanism in Berkeley, California, on Wednesday 7 December 2016 at 6pm Pacific. Lincoln is a board member, founder, and former president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. He will present live remotely via Skype in the Donner Lab Auditorium at UC Berkeley. Attendance is free and open to the public.

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The Mormon Transhumanist Association is pleased to announce Blaire Ostler has been appointed to serve as Chief Executive Officer by Christopher Bradford, President of the association. She was unanimously approved by the board of directors.

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Mormonism, like many religions, involves free will and an all-knowing God. The combination of these two principles can lead to serious paradoxes and cognitive dissonance when certain forms of deterministic interpretations are used - see theological explorations of free will. Even scientific attempts at defining concepts like omniscience runs into problems - see Laplace's demon for a problem approaching this classically. While my own views are certainly not flawless, I do feel that as we step away from the deterministic interpretations which were often popular in the century Mormonism arose out of, a more robust approach to reconciling free will and the knowledge of God can be found.

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Mormon Transhumanist Association board member Blaire Ostler and Chief Marketing Officer Caleb Jones will speak at the Sunstone Northwest Symposium in Seattle WA on November 19, 2016.