Key to the Science of Theology

Lincoln Cannon

Welcome to the 2016 conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. My name is Lincoln Cannon. I am a director and founder of this association, and I’ve served as its president for the last 10 years.

Lincoln Cannon

Three years ago at this conference, the renowned historian of Mormon origins, Richard Bushman, spoke here. And he proposed that the mission of this association is to take the place of B. H. Roberts and John Witzow. Roberts and Witzow are now long deceased, but they were Mormon apostles who were champions of science.

Lincoln Cannon

In 1908, Witzow published a book. It was entitled Joseph Smith as Scientist. And in it, he claimed that truth is truth forever. Scientific truth cannot be theological lie.

Lincoln Cannon

And then of similar mind, Roberts wrote in 1931 that to pay attention to and give reasonable credence to science is to link the Church of God with the highest increase of human thought and effort.

Lincoln Cannon

Of course, Roberts and Witzow weren’t the first Mormon apostles. To champion science. One of their predecessors was Parley Pratt, who was among the first twelve Mormon apostles organized by Joseph Smith. In 1855, Parley published a book entitled The Key to the Science of Theology, and that’s precisely what he considered the potential of theology to be, a science.

Lincoln Cannon

And I’d like to read to you the first words from his book, the preface of that book. I think that you’ll find. That these words are words that will resonate with just about any transhumanist, Mormon or otherwise. Here are his words.

Lincoln Cannon

The present is an age of progress, of change, of rapid advance and wonderful revolutions. The very foundations of society, social, political, commercial, moral, and religious, seem to be shaken as with a mighty earthquake, from center to circumference. All things tremble. Creation groans. The world is in travail and pains to be delivered. A new era has dawned upon our planet, and is advancing with accelerated force, with giant strides.

Lincoln Cannon

The railroads and the steamboats, with their progressive improvements in speed, safety, and convenience are extending and multiplying the means of travel, of trade, of association, and intercommunication between countries whose inhabitants have been comparatively unknown to or estranged from each other.

Lincoln Cannon

But, as if even these means were too slow for the godlike aspirations, the mighty throes of human thought, and its struggles for light and expansion, humanity seizes the lightning. tames and subdues it, and makes it the bearer of its thoughts and dispatches.

Lincoln Cannon

While these things are in progress by one portion of humanity, another learns to seize and control a sunbeam in a manner subservient to the progress of the fine arts, and by which means one performs in a minute the work which a short time since would have employed the most active years of a lifetime.

Lincoln Cannon

Those are the words of Parley Pratt that he used to introduce what is, in his estimation, a science of theology, and what was, in his estimation, the heart of Mormonism.

Lincoln Cannon

Another Mormon apostle that championed science was James Talmadge. He was a contemporary of Roberts and Widsoe, and echoing Pratt in 1899, Talmadge wrote these words.

Lincoln Cannon

to count the ticking of a watch thousands of miles away to speak in but an ordinary tone and be heard across the continent to signal from one hemisphere and be understood on the other, though oceans roll and roar between. To bring the lightning into our homes and make it serve as fire and torch, to navigate the air and to travel beneath the ocean surface, to make chemical and atomic energies obey our will. Remember this is 1899, are not these miracles?

Lincoln Cannon

At some point in his life, Talmadge had acquired a copy of Pratt’s book, The Key to the Science of Theology. And I happen to know that because I have the book here with me today. I received this book from my step-grandfather. And he his name was Wayne Wiscombe. He was married to Helen Brandley Wiscom as his first wife. When she died, he inherited it and he gave it to me. She was the granddaughter of Talmadge. And inside the front cover of this book is the stamp of Talmadge’s personal library. He had acquired it from the Deseret News Corporation at some point in his life.

Lincoln Cannon

For me, this book embodies Mormon transhumanism for a few reasons. First of all, Both Mormon Transhumanism and this book advocate the ethical use of technology and religion to extend human abilities. Second, both envision a future of unlimited human potential in compassion and creation. And third, both are an inheritance from past champions of science that were inspired by their Christian discipleship

Lincoln Cannon

And then finally, one of the reasons why this book embodies Mormon transhumanism for me is that today both the association and this book are going to move on to their next caretaker. A few months ago, I told the board of directors of the association that I felt it was time for us to have a new president. While I admit to some sadness in telling them that, I believe that ten years is long enough for anyone to be the leader of an organization like ours.

Lincoln Cannon

As transhumanists, we know better than most that change is essential to progress. And as religious transhumanists, we know better than most that change is too often resisted most when it’s needed most.

Lincoln Cannon

So last month, the other board members and I, all of us Democratically elected to represent the voting members of the association, we met together to select a new president. And the outcome was a unanimous vote for Christopher Bradford.

Lincoln Cannon

I’m proud to call Chris my friend. Over 15 years ago, he and I met in online philosophy discussions at BeliefNet. It was a forum, it’s still around, but not as popular as it once was. And since that time, I’ve spent countless hours with Chris discussing just about every topic that I’m capable of imagining.

Lincoln Cannon

Over the years, he has been involved and I have been involved in each other’s projects. We’ve worked together. Most importantly, he was one of the 14 Founders of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, along with me and several other people in this room. He’s also served as a director and vice president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. and he knows Mormonism and Transhumanism and this association as well as anyone and better than most.

Lincoln Cannon

Chris has my full support and confidence to be our new president. And Chris, I’d like to invite you up with me. Chris, I’d like to give you the key to the science of theology. And I trust that it will inspire you as it has inspired me.

Lincoln Cannon

Chris and I are going to take questions from you, any questions you might have regarding the change in the leadership of the association. or regarding its past or its future, whatever you might have on your mind for the next few minutes.

Christopher Bradford

And before we do that, I would like to invite everyone to Show our appreciation to Lincoln for his leadership in Washington. Now at that point.

Speaker 3

I figure we might as well, it’s an appropriate moment for us to share with Lincoln a token of our appreciation. We’ve We’re preparing for him a crystal seer stone engraved with the logo of the association and his tenure as president.

Speaker 3

And I just want to express my own gratitude for Lincoln. We’ve really looked up to him and gained so much from his leadership. It’s been incredible to witness. For me, the way he empowers us and inspires us to take things and run with them and to grow personally. Has really been a life-changing experience for me, and I’m so grateful for his friendship. That’s in earnest of the actual gift, by the way.

Lincoln Cannon

May we answer any questions?

Speaker 4

So aside from the annual conference, for those who form a media organization, what are the major duties and of the president and aims of the association.

Lincoln Cannon

Yeah, so three beat questions for the recording. What are the major duties and aims of the president of the association apart from the annual conference?

Christopher Bradford

So, the president of the association is very much the public face of the organization in many ways. And so there’s participation in other conferences. There’s participation in online forums. We hold regular monthly meetups and We’re working right now on making those a little bit more structured, and so helping people who are new to the ideas of the organization with introductory material, helping them kind of get their footing in what Mormon transhumanism is. In addition, the Constitution has the President acting also as the CEO of the organization. We have a separate management team that manages marketing, finances and so forth, legal affairs. And so the President also is responsible for those regular meetings and for ensuring that we maintain our nonprofit status and all of those types of things as well.

Lincoln Cannon

Does that sufficiently answer your question?

Speaker 4

I’ll be sad if this happens, but can we expect uh Lincoln to not be uh as active in writing on a lot of different forums about Mormon Transhumanism, and I’ll be delighted to see if Chris going to be more active in those transhumanism.

Lincoln Cannon

So the question was: should we expect To see Lincoln become less active in writing about Mormon transhumanism, and should we expect Chris to become more active in writing about Mormon transhumanism? Is that a fair restatement? I’ll only answer the first part of that question. I’ll let Chris answer the second part.

Lincoln Cannon

I suspect you will see me writing more about Mormon transhumanism going forward. When running the association, a lot of time and effort goes into tasks behind the scenes. where there are websites and conferences and all sorts of things to organize and run and make sure are operating effectively and efficiently. And so the time that I have historically put into those sorts of things, I imagine will start going into more writing about the the MTA and Mormon transhumanism. In particular, I have three open invitations to write for some peer-reviewed journals about Mormon transhumanism that I’ve not been able to satisfy and I’ll be working on all of those in the near future and those should be available hopefully. And I think they’ll be good tools for the association once Once they are available. So I think the answer to your question is that you should expect more of the writing about Mormon transhumanism from me.

Christopher Bradford

And I can address the second part of the question. Yes, you should expect to see more from me, in particular in online forums. Public involvement with Mormon transhumanism has been less online and more in conferences. In the last 12 months, I presented at four different conferences on Mormon transhumanist topics. But I do have plans to be more active in the online forums, and I have a number of things in the works that you’ll see coming soon.

Lincoln Cannon

Other questions?

Christopher Bradford

Any uh parting advice you want to share with the group?

Lincoln Cannon

Well, I’m not going to go away, so it’s not that sort of parting advice. But uh parting advice perhaps as As having been the leader of the organization, I wrote a blog post about this a month or two ago. One of the things that comes to mind as you ask the question is my experience with Interacting with others, both Mormons and non-Mormons, about Mormon transhumanism, and the types of reactions we get, and what my opinion is about good ways to respond to those types of reactions.

Lincoln Cannon

As probably most of you know, because I’m sure you’ve interacted about Mormon transhumanism with other people. We get a wide range of responses. We get very enthusiastic responses from some people. And a lot of people are more likely to be most people are probably more likely to be cautiously interested. Wow, that’s kind of different. Interesting. And then, of course, there’s the s the subset of people, probably small but loud, that really, really dislike. What we do.

Lincoln Cannon

And of course, there are there are two main types of those people. There are people who really dislike what we do because it runs counter to their understanding of religion, and they tend to think of us as the Antichrist or something like that. And then of course there are secular persons who te are quite anti-religious generally, and we kind of epitomize the horrible like effort to make religion persist in the face of their clear, dominant intellectual superiority. And of course the approach they take is one of ridicule usually, where we’re stupid and not worth listening to.

Lincoln Cannon

And so my advice regarding these things and and my own mileage has varied in my ability to to exemplify them. But my advice would be that a good sense of humor is good along the way. Um it’s probably not particularly p particularly effective to demonize them in return, um speaking of the r more religious fundamentalist types. And it’s also probably not particularly useful to ridicule them in return. Although, I think it is worth saying why we believe that the positions we take are better than the positions that they are taking, why we believe that religious fundamentalism, sectarian fundamentalism, has detriments, why we believe that secularism probably isn’t the strongest way forward. Things like that, I think, are definitely worth saying. I don’t think we should shy away from saying them, but I think that they’re, I know that there are constructive and friendly ways to say these things.

Lincoln Cannon

And so that I would I suppose is the advice I would give to members of the association is to try to exemplify that. friendly, constructive, but not frightened position of expressing the kind of religious vision, the kind of scientific and technological vision that that the association Stands for.

Lincoln Cannon

All right, I think our time for questions is up. Thank you very much for being here this morning, and I’ll turn the rest of the conference over to our excellent new president, Christopher Bradford.