The Kingdom of God and the Transhuman Age

Speaker 1

Our next speaker will be Dorothy Deasy. Dorothy is a design researcher with experience in both qualitative and quantitative research methods. She excels on strategic qualitative projects, which allow her to explore the intersections of meaning. Culture and Technology. She holds a BS degree in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Loyola University in Chicago and a Master’s of Applied Theology from Merrill Hurst University in Portland. The emphasis of her theological focus is on spirituality and transhumanism. And I’d like to add that Dorothy is on the board of directors for the Mormon Transhumanist Association. She is herself a Christian transhumanist and not a Mormon transhumanist. And she has made spectacular contributions to our organization. I’m happy to have her speaking today. Thank you, Dor.

Dorothy Deasy

Thank you. It is an honor and a privilege to be a part of the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

Dorothy Deasy

The transhuman age, like the kingdom of God, is already present and still unfolding. There are those who feel that these two paradigms are at odds, that they represent opposite and rival views of humanity perhaps on par with good and evil. In this paper, I will argue, however, that the perceived threats and comparisons to Nazi Germany stem not from science and technology, but rather from an ideology of total domination and the commercialization of humanity. In contrast, if transhuman philosophy embraces spirituality, ecosystem, and symbiotic thinking, thereby co-creating with God, then both humankind and society may be transfigured to bring about the promises of the kingdom.

Dorothy Deasy

I will draw on the work of Jewish philosopher and historian Hannah Arndt, who wrote extensively on totalitarianism and the Holocaust, and applied her work to the subject of transhumanism. Where possible, I’ve edited quotes to be gender neutral.

Dorothy Deasy

What is the hope of spiritual transhumanism? It is the transfiguration of society and ourselves to live in unison with God. For me, it is synonymous with the realization of the kingdom of God. and it has three components, nonviolence, neither physical nor economic, codification of the rights of man, and co-creating in a way that reflects an understanding of the sacredness of creation.

Dorothy Deasy

Jesus referred often some fifty sayings in parables to the kingdom of God. From these sayings, Jesus’s followers learn how to behave in the here and now. The present change in behavior is part of what allows God’s vision for life on earth to evolve. The kingdom is realized when humankind is working in concert with divine intent for social justice and nonviolence.

Dorothy Deasy

For me, the kingdom of God is not theocracy, especially a theocracy that lays claim to know the mind of God. Historian Gary Wills quotes a passage from the parable of the rich man in Matthew: Many of the first will be last, and the last first. And goes on to say that anti-hierarchical last sentence shows that the symbolic prophetic meaning of the twelve has nothing to do with church governance below. In the 21st century and beyond, the kingdom of God represents acknowledgment of and flourishing for all of humankind. It is inverting how we think about economics and a realization that true capital comes from human ingenuity. Eliminating poverty ensures that the resources of all voices may contribute to the whole.

Dorothy Deasy

I emphasize human aspects, not to deny or belittle the emergence of artificial intelligence but to underscore that the kingdom of God is based on humans working in cooperation with God.

Dorothy Deasy

The kingdom of God is directly related to the Edenic allegory. What we experience as the fall from grace, which is knowing good and evil, is the loss of paradox. We, with our human nature, believe in our own convictions, sometimes at the exclusion of respect for the wisdom of others who do not share our perspectives. The kingdom of God is present when we realize that God, and perhaps God alone, is able to weave what we see as disparate parts into a unified whole. The disobedience of the fall is believing our own egos rather than seeing God active in the world.

Dorothy Deasy

This vision may seem inconsistent with transhumanism, because transhumanism often brings to mind images of technology from science fiction. Yet I look at the amazing world unfolding before us and see God active in the world. There are daily breakthroughs in research and execution, such as the use of genomics to cure cancer, creating crops resistant to blight, saving lives with artificial and animal-grown organs, helping infertile couples conceive, implants that can short circuit Parkinson’s tremors cars that do not need drivers, and the news that Voyager has crossed over into interstellar space.

Dorothy Deasy

Already, emerging technologies have helped to reduce global poverty, and this year, wild polio in India was eradicated. We are all transhumanists because the very context of industrialized modernity is to push beyond the boundaries of nature to become supranatural.

Dorothy Deasy

But does the inevitability of the progression of history Necessarily mean that it’s evidence of God’s work in the world. Those who find transhuman age technologies threatening sometimes make comparisons to Nazi Germany and the abuses of the Third Reich. They see an emphasis on eliminating disease as further marginalizing those with physical impairments. They see genetic engineering as eugenics designed to create a master race. Such concerns are more than an example of Godwin’s law. They are a legitimate desire to learn from the past. They serve, however, to obscure the fact that the abuses of fascism were political and socioeconomic rather than technological. Transhumanism is possible because of the convergence of technologies, not conspiracy. Individuals that reach transhuman goals do not have the power to recreate Nazi horrors. Only when people are stripped of their political and judicial personhood, as is the case of a totalitarian government or the dissolution of government, can such a system re-emerge.

Dorothy Deasy

Hannah Arndt, a Jewish philosopher and historian from Germany, writing in the wake of the Holocaust. She is most well known as the person who coined the term the banality of evil. She wrote, The impetus, and what is more important, the silent consent to such unprecedented conditions are the products of those events which in a period of political disintegration suddenly and unexpectedly made hundreds of thousands of human beings homeless, stateless, outlawed, and unwanted. while millions of human beings were made economically superfluous and socially burdensome by unemployment. This in turn could only happen because the rights of man, which had never been politically secured but merely proclaimed, Have in their traditional form lost all validity.

Dorothy Deasy

It was the political ideology that perverted the nascent science of genetics. There is only one thing that seems to be discernible, she said. We may say that radical evil has emerged in connection with a system in which all humans have become equally superfluous.

Dorothy Deasy

What happened under the Third Reich was a creation of a system of total domination which sought to destroy the human nature of all citizens, not just those killed in the concentration camps, on several levels. judicial, social and moral. The government enacted laws that were arbitrary, laws that classified some citizens as non-human created a penal system that allowed for detention without regard to criminal action, and used arbitrary punishment to turn neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, and family members against one another. Some citizens were made stateless and thereby lacked protection under the law, even at the global level. The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human, Arndt said. Eugenics was certainly an abuse of the regime, but that abuse followed the creation of a system of total domination. In short, fascism was at the root of the Holocaust.

Dorothy Deasy

And now we stand at a unique time in human history. Increasingly, climate change and severe drought may be harbingers of threats to our food production system. And the introduction of a combination of machine intelligence and robotics may displace millions of workers, leading to another wave of massive unemployment. We see imperfection in our economic structures, such that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is increasing. The standard of living for many is in decline.

Dorothy Deasy

Michael Lewis, in his book Flash Boys, notes that flash trading has rigged the stock market. This should be a warning that AI is not morally neutral. In a market-driven economy, innovators seek to meet the needs of their consumers. They target those who have the money to spend and design for those who fit their target. How do we rethink product valuation such that profit is only one measure of ROI, not the only measure? How do we ensure that the needs of all are taken into account? How do we employ these technologies for beneficence and avoid creating a system of total domination? How do we accept the promise of machine emergence while still valuing humans not as consumers, but as inherently deserving the rights of man?

Dorothy Deasy

Arndt wrote, a conception of law which identifies what is right with the notion of what is good for. For the individual, or the family, or the people, or the largest number, becomes inevitable once the absolute and transcendent measurements of religion or the law of nature have lost their authority.

Dorothy Deasy

That is precisely why this organization is important. We stand for the vision of the divine. We are part of a more secular ecosystem, including the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, IEET, Center for Genetics and Society, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and, of course, Google’s AI Safety and Ethics Review Board. Together, we can help shape the unfolding of the transhuman age to respect human flourishing and work towards avoiding the creation of a biological caste system. Together, we can lobby and avoid political abuses that would pervert the intentions of emerging technologies.

Dorothy Deasy

Preventing political abuse is also why gay rights and a reinvigoration of the rights for the disabled are essential. not simply for the protection of these minority groups, but for the stance that the guarantee of protection of law applies to all humans.

Dorothy Deasy

The essence of spirituality in general, and Christianity in particular, is not to adhere to any given set of beliefs, but rather to become and remain committed to a lifestyle of action. dominant among these being the universal acceptance of and reverence for humanity itself. To become transhuman is not to endeavor to replace or move beyond humanity. To become transhuman is to remove the barriers and obstacles which might exist, preventing each individual from reaching the apex of their potential.

Dorothy Deasy

Transhumanism, which seeks to replace humanity with a new species of technology-based life forms, is at best in denial, and at worst, leading down a path to a total domination system. Spiritual transhumanism is rather concerned with human flourishing itself. It is to transfigure the human so that every opportunity is given for self-actualization.

Dorothy Deasy

Moreover, spiritual transhumanism is concerned not with the individual alone. It is about the individual or person. It is not about individual or personal self-actualization. but rather with the flourishing of humanity as a whole. To allow some to transmute at the expense of others is to cede to selfishness and greed. Rather, flourishing or godhood occurs only at the communal level, only when the welfare and well being of all are taken into account and improved.

Dorothy Deasy

Here is the distinction between commercial transhumanism versus spiritual transhumanism. We live or die as a unified species. We recognize that humans have the ability and the right to be co-creators with God, but we also recognize that there is a distinction between being co-creators and rivals. The respect for godhood is the recognition of ecosystem, that we live in a universe of symbiotic relationships. If we seek to establish one right way, whether that benefits a church, an ideology, a political party, a gender, or a species, then we are placing ourselves outside of spirituality in general and Christianity in particular.

Dorothy Deasy

The notions of ecosystem and symbiosis need to pervade all our institutions, from health care to economic structures. Writer Andrew Solomon points out, the exceptional is ubiquitous. To be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state. In his book, Far from the Tree, he explores the complex relationship between identity and illness and makes the observation The problem is to change how we assess the value of individuals and of lives to reach for a more ecumenical take on healthy. We need to get good at paradox. While emerging technologies may seek to mitigate disability, we must come from a place of compassion and not stigmatization. Rather than seeking one view of bioethics, either purely secular or purely faith based, how do we develop eclectic options allowing individuals to decide for themselves into which paradigm they fit?

Dorothy Deasy

Symbiosis applies to economic solutions as well, seeking economic reforms that rebuild our business ecosystem. This may mean replacing GDP with an alternative measure that supports income for individuals across a wide spectrum of fields. There is no question that STEM fields are important, but small business, social work, pastoral care and nonprofits are equally as important. Corporations that realize excessive profits from the deployment of AI should be responsible for funding non technology startups and subsidizing Main Street ventures.

Dorothy Deasy

We must also pay attention to our legal system with such steps as reform of NSA surveillance practices, extending postal privacy rights to e mail. moving toward a system of direct referendum at the Federal level, the restoration of voting rights to former convicts who have completed their sentences, constitutional change to eliminate the death penalty and codifying the right to vote. Congressional hearings on aspects of the Patriot Act that subvert protections of due process, elimination or stronger citizen oversight of privately run prisons and read only safeguards in databases that hold forensic data such as fingerprints and DNA.

Dorothy Deasy

Transhumanism can lead to the coming of the kingdom. but only if we are intentional about creating our society to be on earth as it is in heaven. Thank you.