Mormon Transhumanism

Speaker 1

Current president of the Mormon Transhuman Association and I think he has some interesting news for all of us. Of us about what’s going on in his areas of expertise over here.

Speaker 2

Thank you, David. Thank you so much, Peter, for letting me borrow your computer up here. Forgot my adapters, and I was going to have to go without my slides, and that would have been unfortunate. It would have been less interesting to watch. And also, Mike, Harry, thank you so much for the invitation to speak. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Speaker 2

So I’m going to be talking about Mormon transhumanism today, and I’m going to approach that in four steps to help you You understand why it might even be something that exists. That might come across to some of you as just like a mind bender. How could Mormonism, this traditional religion, and transhumanism, this very emerging cultural phenomena, how could they possibly come together? It just strikes so many people as just completely bizarre and for good reasons. So, I’m going to try to approach that gradually for you, say a little bit about Mormonism to start out, and then from there I’ll explain something. About Mormon transhumanism, how they come together. From there, I’ll talk a little bit about a popular logical argument among Mormon transhumanists called the New God Argument. And finally, I’ll end with just saying a few things about an association of Mormon transhumanists that I currently serve as the president for. And I’ll tell you a little bit about what we do and what kinds of members we have, what kinds of people we are.

Speaker 2

So first of all then on Mormonism. Just as a kind of a get to know your audience so I can customize what I say here for a second. If you would, raise your hands if you identify as a transhumanist or a singularitarian or an extropian or something along those lines. Okay, it looks like almost all of us are there. I’m there with you. I identify as a transhumanist, too. I bet the numbers are going to be lower here, though. How many of you are religious? Okay, so I’m guessing I’m seeing about 10% of us maybe are religious persons. One final question. Is anybody else out there a Mormon? Besides my wife, that’s cheating. Oh, there’s two of us. That’s right. So there’s three Mormons in the room. Excellent.

Speaker 2

So let me tell you first a little bit about Mormonism and what Mormonism is at its heart. And this may help you start to understand why transhumanism is compatible with Mormonism. Mormonism at its base is an immersive discipleship of Jesus Christ. Now you’ve all heard of Christians, but what I mean by immersive in this case is very important. Mormonism is not so much a religion about Jesus as it is an aspiration even to live the religion of Jesus. So with Jesus, Mormons aspire to trust in, to change toward, and to fully immerse our bodies and our minds in the role of Christ. Now, Christ is not Jesus’ last name. Christ means Messiah. Christ is the Greek word that’s the equivalent of Messiah in Hebrew. And Messiah is something like a savior or a person set apart or anointed for a special purpose. And that special purpose, from the perspective of the ancient Jews going after the Christians, was salvation, or helping humanity, helping us be relieved of our oppressors. Of course, many ancient Jews thought that that would be more of a political relief from oppressors, and then Christians took on this idea that it should be a relief from death and a relief from hell. So, Mormons have this notion that we should immerse ourselves in this identity of Christ with Jesus, that we should become gods and saviors with Jesus, that we should console each other. Heal each other, raise each other up together. And from that very beginning of what Mormonism stands for at its heart, you might start to see why. Mormonism and transhumanism have this compatibility, this desire for transformation towards a state of being that would reach out and try to change the human condition so dramatically.

Speaker 2

Just a few brief comments on the history of Mormonism. It was founded in the early 1800s by Joseph Smith. He claimed to have visions and revelations from God throughout his life, leading up to the time when he was killed. He lived to about age 38. And during his life, Joseph Smith published a book called The Book of Mormon. That’s where the name of the religion comes from. Mormon is Not Our God. Mormon is one of the characters in the Book of Mormon who purported to write the book that Joseph Smith received. So that’s where we got the name of our religion. When Joseph Smith died, the early church, the early Mormon church fractured, and some people stayed in the eastern United States, and some people went to the west. Most Mormons went to the west, following the person up here in the upper right corner, which is Brigham Young. Brigham Young led most of the Mormons to the West, where most Mormons still live today in the state of Utah. And today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the formal name of the Mormon Church. Numbers about 16 million members worldwide, about half of them living in the United States and half international.

Speaker 2

Mormonism has an unusual metaphysics. Joseph Smith described the metaphysics along these lines. First of all, God was not always God in modern metaphysics, and matter was never created. Mind and matter emerged simultaneously with God, and God sought to organize them. According to existing laws, and to institute new laws whereby others could progress to become gods themselves. So Mormonism is consistent in many ways with many accounts of physicalism or naturalism. Now, do all individual Mormons go that direction with their interpretation of the religion? No, but many do.

Speaker 2

Consistent with its kind of unusual metaphysics, Mormonism also offers an unusual theodicy or its account of evil. Why is there evil in the world when we claim that there is also a God? Why doesn’t God just solve that problem? Well, from a Mormon perspective, that is because God is optimizing for something other than the mitigation of suffering. God is optimizing for the creation of more gods, and that requires certain kinds of experiences conducive to creative and compassionate growth from a Mormon perspective. In Mormonism, there’s this story of a premortal war in heaven or a premortal council that resulted in a war. In that premortal council, there were two plans presented to God. One plan was to create. The world with people in it that would not suffer. And it was kind of the low risk of the two plans. Second, the other plan was that the world would be created with real risks. Real opportunities, the opportunity to create more gods, more demons, more angels, more suffering, but also wonderful risks. And as the story goes, God chose to follow the plan of risk, of taking the risk, knowing that real suffering would result from that, but also recognizing that real opportunities would stem from that choice.

Speaker 2

The Mormon account of the future begins with the time that we’re in now. We Mormons describe the time that we’re living now as the fullness of times when God is revealing unprecedented amounts of knowledge to humanity, and that with that knowledge we’re preparing for greater things to come. Mormonism as a Christian religion does anticipate the return of Christ, and I’ll talk to you in a few minutes about how Mormon transhumanists view that. That may strike a chord with some of you who are interested in artificial intelligence. Intelligence. Subsequent to the return of Christ, Mormons also hold to this notion that the world will be transformed into a millennial paradise beyond present notions of suffering or death. And that in that millennial paradise, the living will be transfigured to immortality, and the dead will be resurrected to immortality. And in Mormonism, again, going with its unusual metaphysics that I mentioned before. Everything is material and embodied. Immortality is not something far away or supernatural in an otherworldly place. But immortality is embodied. More robust bodies, more glorified bodies than we currently enjoy, but still embodied. Even God in Mormonism is embodied. And so the anticipation of a Mormon is that during the millennium, the living will be transfigured, the dead resurrected, to embodied immortality, and then go on to learn more, to grow more. become more compassionate and to ha become more creative and eventually attain to what Mormons consider gods to be. So that’s some background on Mormonism.

Speaker 2

Let me now shift into Mormon transhumanism. The first thing I want to say about Mormon transhumanism before talking about some of our views related to technology and science. is to help you understand that Mormon transhumanists are not limited to traditional or secular accounts of the religious phenomenon. What I mean by that is that oftentimes if you ask a traditional person, what is religion? They might say, well, religion is to have faith. In God, as that particular person understands God. That’s what religion is to that person. If you were to ask a secular person, well, what is religion? Well, they might say it’s this thing that’s starting to die off because people are becoming. Wealthier, better educated, and we’re really entering kind of this post-religious phase where religion is going to die, go away. Those are some typical accounts you get of a religious phenomenon. Well, not all, but many Mormon transhumanists embrace more of a post-secular understanding of religion. For example, a Mormon transhumanist might look at God as a post-human projection, and that there’s a function that God fills by being that post-human projection. One of my Mormon transhumanist friends fact on Facebook just sent me a message the other day saying wouldn’t it be cool to start a presentation saying something like God is the asymptote of human potential And, you know, I laughed, he laughed. And Mormon transhumanists understand that kind of perspective on God that you probably won’t get out of mainstream Mormons typically.

Speaker 2

So I’ll warn you on that. Another thing that a Mormon transhumanist might mean by post-secular religion is looking at religion itself as a technology, perhaps the most powerful social technology. one that’s used to excite or provoke strenuous communal behavior towards a shared goal. Now that can be a good or a bad thing. We’ve seen religion do horrible things. historically, but we’ve also seen religion do beautiful things, wonderful things historically. So a Mormon trench humanist might say, hey, why can’t we direct religion towards these good ends and try to mitigate its risk of becoming destructive and super sectarian and divisive? And then, likewise, with prophecy. A Mormon transhumanist from a post-secular perspective might say, well, the function of prophecy is not to be Kind of fortune teller. The function of prophecy, if you look at it historically, is to provoke the community to interact with the prophecy, to pursue desirable futures, and to avoid, you know, undesirable futures. So this post-secular perspective is something that many Mormon transhumanists do adopt.

Speaker 2

Mormon transhumanists also don’t only look to secular roots when they think about transhumanism. Oftentimes, when you hear secular transhumanists describe the origins of transhumanism, they’ll emphasize the secular parts. They’ll emphasize early Greek philosophy, they’ll emphasize some of the non-religious humanists of recent centuries. But as it turns out, that’s only part of the story. Religious humanists have also contributed quite substantially to the emergence of modern transhumanism. We can go as far back as to the early Christians, many of whom taught this idea that humanity should become God, humanity should become Christ. But we can also come much more recently. I’ve got a couple of pictures up here. The man on the left is Fedorov. He was a cosmist of the Russian Orthodox tradition. He was a Russian Orthodox priest. And he taught the very interesting idea that humanity’s common task should be the technological resurrection of all of our ancestors. On the right, we’ve got a French Jesuit priest, Pierre K. R. Deschardon, and he had An idea of humanity using technology and evolution to make this communications network all throughout the planet where we became eventually one with God. And he emphasized technological evolution and its unity with the Christian faith. And in many ways, if you read the book, God, The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Many of the ideas that Ray Kurzweil shares about his various epics of of technological evolution, he was clearly informed by Des Chardin’s views, whether directly or indirectly I don’t know, but if you go read Deschardin, you’ll see Kurtzweil Ideas in them. So, religious humanists have also played an important role in the emergence of modern transhumanism, and Mormon transhumanists you’ll find will emphasize That because we don’t want the secularists to think that they’re the only game in town.

Speaker 2

Alright, so a vision of the future from a Mormon transhumanist perspective. I want to emphasize that there’s not just one. Mormon transhumanists have many visions of the future. We don’t insist on any particular one of them. And we’re also usually reasonable enough to acknowledge that we could be wrong about lots of things. So, what I’m going to share with you is maybe just one vision of the future from a Mormon transhumanist perspective. So, that begins with this fullness of times idea that I’ve expressed to you before. Mainstream Mormons have this idea that God is hastening his work and revealing to humanity more knowledge than ever before in our day. While Mormon transhumanists will associate that with the technological advance that we’re perceiving all around us. I think it’s very clear at this point that information technology has produced a revolution. We’re on the verge of starting to see that revolution, I think, in biotechnology. And many of us hope to see such revolutions in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence development going forward. forward into the future. Whether it will follow a Kurtzweilian trajectory or not, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone really knows. But it would be wonderful if we can harness the power of that technological change to do some very good things in the future. World, and I think most of you in this audience would probably agree on that.

Speaker 2

Mormon transhumanists are not necessarily singularitarians, but many of them are. And there are some very interesting relationships between religious transhumanism generally, or even just religiosity generally. And singularitarianism. If you think about the singularitarians that you might know personally, or if you are one, you’ll know that singularitarians very often talk about apocalyptic risks associated with the advanced Of artificial intelligence. They also talk about millenarian-style opportunities. You know, it may be able to help us produce abundance. It may be helpful. Able to help resuscitate the dead. It may be able to help us live in a world beyond present notions of suffering and death. And of course, as I’m sure almost everyone here knows, we’ve been chided for that. This is the rapture of the nerds we might have heard said from time to time. But there’s a reason why that joke goes around and that resonates with people because these are not new ideas except in the way that we are explaining the ideas. The emotions and the sociology related to this phenomenon are very, very ancient. When people anticipate these sorts of great events in the near future, they behave with the full range of apocalyptic, messianic, and millenarian behaviors, and we see that both among secular transhumanists. Not all of them, but many of them, and Mormon transhumanists as well.

Speaker 2

Of course, one of the notions of Christianity is this idea that Christ will return. And some Mormon transhumanists will adopt a very traditional notion of what that means. Jesus of Nazareth will come back and the world will be different as a consequence. Many Mormon transhumanists take the idea that if Jesus or Christ Christ was born of a biological body the first time around? Why couldn’t Christ be born of a technological body the second time around? Why couldn’t the emergence of artificial intelligence and our even integration with it? Through enhanced intelligence, produce a sort of global Christ consciousness or elevate the compassion, the empathy that we have for each other as we experientially connect in a worldwide network. Perhaps not so different from what Tehar de Chardin, the Jesuit priest I mentioned to you previously, imagined. So, Mormon transhumanists will adopt views such as that at times as well.

Speaker 2

Transhumanity. So, subsequent to all of these changes of our time, many of us, particularly cryonicists, anticipate the day will come. When we will have the technology to quite radically change or improve or resuscitate our bodies. Mormon transhumanists embrace this idea quite strongly. Our scriptures Are filled with reasons for Mormon transhumanists to do this. Again, immortality in Mormonism is physical and embodied. It’s not supernatural and far away. Heaven. And the millennial paradise are not far away or supernatural in the Mormon mythology. This earth, this planet, is supposed to be transformed to become heaven, transformed to become So we have this incentive to use what tools we observe around us to try to achieve those ends. And I’ll talk a little bit more later about this mandate, spiritual mandate. that Mormons can describe as stemming from their own scriptures to engage in the transhumanist work. But basically, there’s a strong parallel between Mormon prophecies about transfiguration, resurrection, and immortality. and transhumanist notions that we can use technology to engineer better bodies and better minds.

Speaker 2

Finally, some transhumanists look into the distant future and imagine what post-humanity might be like. And of course we hear interesting discussions about megascale engineering or the creation of simulated worlds and things along those lines. This stuff ends up being very resonant with Mormon transhumanists and with many Mormons, many mainstream Mormons even. This idea that in the distant future humanity and our descendants may have the capacity. To create whole new worlds. Mormons, as you might know, are very interested in family history. We have gigantic genealogical databases. and we’re working on making them ever larger every day. We probably know who the ancestors of every one of you in this room are. And while most Mormons wouldn’t tell you what I’m about to say, they would probably have a much looser notion of why we’re doing this. What I would suggest to you is that maybe that information could help for those of you who believe in such ideas as and so most of you are going to, as cryonicists, believe in the idea, at least the hope, that we have the potential to resuscitate cryonics patients someday. Because of the information that is preserved by the structure of the brain. Well, some people speculate that there might be information preserved even more broadly than our brain, embedded in our environment, and that idea is called quantum archaeology that we might Be able to tease out that information from the environment. And then, of course, some people would speculate that if our world is running in a computer simulation, like Simulation hypothesis supposes, then maybe the programmer of that simulation is maintaining information as well that could help in a resurrection. In any case, all of the genealogical work that Mormons are doing could contribute to the same sorts of endeavors that mind files are contributing to, or theoretically might contribute to, as preserved by transhumanists.

Speaker 2

Just briefly, if this were a Mormon audience, I would spend more time on this, but basically, you can use Mormon scriptures. To develop the notion that there is a spiritual, a religious, even a divine mandate for Mormons to engage in the transhumanist project that our scriptures even require this of us. And one of the interesting things that results from this that may interest this group is Peter actually mentioned in his talk that He thought it more likely that we would be able to advance in AI work than in enhanced intelligence work because of the FDA. And I agree that that’s a major risk. Well, have we considered what happens? according to the laws of the United States, when this advance in enhanced intelligence actually becomes an issue of freedom of religion. Um so we actually have had um lawyers that are members of the MTA make the case that the Mormon Transhumanist Association And Mormons generally may be in a unique position to help advance enhanced intelligence work because of our ability potentially to get around some of the issues related to regulation of those sorts of endeavors.

Speaker 2

Alright, I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the new God argument, but I want to give you a flavor for it, because the new God argument is a very popular argument among Mormon transhumanists. Now I told you a few minutes ago that Mormon transhumanists often embrace a post-secular religious understanding. And that might mean that for some Mormon transhumanists, I’ve got friends who are this way, they might believe that God just doesn’t exist yet, that God is something that we are supposed to become. However, most Mormon transhumanists do believe that God now exists. And the New God argument is one of the reasons that many Mormon transhumanists would suggest from a rational perspective. They would also appeal to various emotional and spiritual reasons. But from a rational perspective, many Mormon transhumanists would appeal to the new God argument as a reason to trust in the existence of God. And I emphasize the word trust because this is not an ontological argument. The argument does not purport to prove that God exists. What it purports to do is to give a moral or a practical reason to trust that God exists because the existence of God may correlate with our future. And so basically, the New God argument begins with an assumption, the faith assumption is what it’s called, and it’s an assumption that many transhumanists that are secular also hold, and that is the idea that humanity will not go extinct. Before evolving into a super intelligent post-humanity. So, from that small assumption there, now this might be wrong, right? This is an assumption that’s made. To inform the remainder of the argument.

Speaker 2

Based on that assumption, the new God argument branches into two directions. One is called the compassion argument, the other is called the creation argument. So first the compassion argument. The compassion argument basically says the basic notion of it is that as humanity continues to progress in destructive capacity If we do not simultaneously ensure that our goodwill for each other, our instrumental cooperation with each other, and ultimately our internalized compassion for each other does not also increase, you’re going to destroy ourselves. And that, as a consequence of that, if we don’t destroy ourselves, that suggests that we’ve probably learned how to be more cooperative and more compassionate. And the reasoning from there goes is that If there is a super intelligent post-humanity that managed to navigate those risks already, they would probably be more compassionate than we are presently today. That’s the gist of that argument.

Speaker 2

The creation argument is a generalization of the simulation argument that is fairly well known among transhumanists. As a simulation argument goes, if we ever go on in the future as post-super intelligent post-humanity to run many family history simulations or ancestor simulations As Dick Boston calls them, then we almost certainly are already living in one ourselves. Well, that argument can be generalized. It’s agnostic to any particular creative mechanism. So, it might be computation. It could be cosmo forming. Maybe we can create 80 universes. Or maybe it’s just terraforming to go out and create other worlds in our universe. Whatever your preferred mechanism might be, personally, I think computation. Seems like the most likely scenario if any of them are likely to create new worlds. Well, then what you can do is generalize from that, and you arrive at the same conclusion that the simulation argument arrives at, which is Generalized that if we ever go on to create many worlds in the future, based on any of these sorts of creative technologies, then we’re probably already living in a creative world now, as the argument goes. So that’s the creation argument. Combining the compassion and the creation argument conclusions together A Mormon transhumanist would suggest that this shows that we, based on this assumption that we’re not going to go extinct ourselves, we should conclude. For practical and moral reasons, that superintelligent post-humanity probably would be more compassionate than us, and that superintelligent post-humanity probably also created the world that we’re already living in. So something to scratch your head about tonight.

Speaker 2

Interesting note on that. There are some potential unwilling endorsements To the new God argument. If you’ve ever read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, he acknowledges the probable, his word probable, existence of God-like extraterrestrial. He calls them God-like rather than God because he’s talking about the traditional notion of God as more of like a supernatural superlative, which of course is not what a Mormon transhumanist would mean by God anyway. The God of Mormon transhumanism is an embodied God that became God through natural means. And then also, if you ever are interested in kind of an amusing short read, you can look up Sam Harris’s post. entitled Should We Be Mormons in the Matrix? And he has some, he acknowledges also that he paused, this argument gave him pause when he encountered it.

Speaker 2

Alright, some final words then about the Mormon Transhumanist Association itself. The Mormon Transhumanist Association was founded in 2000. There were 14 of us that co-founded it together. And it’s grown since that time to just shy of 500 members today. The rate of our growth has picked up in the last few years, and we hope that’s a sign of things to come and we’re working hard to make that the case.

Speaker 2

Some demographics for you on Mormon transhumanists. Most of us are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is by far the largest Mormon denomination. in the world, but not all of us are. And most of us do consider ourselves deists, believers in God. But again, not all of us do. We do have atheist members and we do have members that are not Mormons, that are other ki kinds of Christians, and people who aren’t even really particularly religious, but who support the work that the association does and want to be Affiliated with us. In case you’re interested in learning more about the demographics of the actual members of the association, there’s a short link here at the bottom, and I’d be happy to give that to you later if you’re interested in getting that information.

Speaker 2

All members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association support the Transhumanist Declaration. I imagine that most of you are familiar with that. In addition to that, all members of the association support what we call the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation. And it basically restates the same kinds of things that are in the Transhumanist Declaration, but in a little bit more religious flavor. Talking about the potential of humanity through science and technology and our risks that present themselves, and our duty to try to mitigate those risks, as well as the opportunities that we have before us to pursue.

Speaker 2

We spent a lot of time doing online promotion of the association and have had quite a bit of traction there. And finally, we also We have an annual conference that we sponsor where we invite people that are from the whole range of transhumanist thought, from Mormon thought, and even people who aren’t Mormons or transhumanists to come speak on the themes of technology and religion. And you’ll recognize some of the speakers out there that have been keynotes at our conference. Margarita Gray, Natasha, I think, will be speaking here tomorrow. She was our most recent keynote at our conference. conference in 2014. And so the our effort, our work as an association is to try to encourage really an extraordinary conversation. About technology and religion, and about how these things inform each other, and even about science and religion and spirituality in this broad discussion: do these things Do they conflict with each other? If not, can they be compatible? And can we even complement each other? Those are the sorts of questions that the Mormon Transhumanist Association explores.

Speaker 2

Do I have time for any questions? No questions? Alright. Please, right back there and then we’ll come up.

Speaker 4

How does this generally be formed possible energy?

Speaker 2

I get this question very regularly. How does the general Mormon population respond to this? Most Mormons have never heard of transhumanism. Yeah, so when they first hear about it, they will think, just like every other person who is ever exposed to transhumanism for the first time, they’ll think, that’s kind of weird. However, most Mormons, most, are not hostile to the idea once it’s well explained to them by somebody who’s not already trying to poison the well. Most Mormons will respond with kind of a cautious interest. However, a minority of Mormons will do one of two things. They’ll start doing backflips with excitement because they’ll say Wow, I’ve always been a transhumanist. That’s how I’ve looked at it my entire life. And finally, I have found these other people who see it the same way. We have that happen all the time. And then an even smaller number will just go, oh, this is some kind of demonic aberration. And I honestly get that very, very rarely, but it does happen occasionally. That happens much more often, though, from non-Mormon religious persons who have very different metaphysical view of and different view of traditional scripture.

Speaker 5

First I’d like to say I thought it was a astounding, fascinating presentation. Thank you. I’ll be honest, I thought at first it was another whole idea Was an oxymoronic. And I’ve been on the Benedu website. I thought it was interesting. But what percentage of that 470-something or science

Speaker 2

Not enough, but you will be interested to know that I’m actually presently leading a project for the association to try to come up with a way of doing a group cryonics sign-up of some sort. And it’s been, I’ve been working on this for about six months or so now. And I know, Rudy, that you do. Life insurance for cryonasis. And I’ve actually contacted you, you, I don’t know if you remember, a few years back. So, yes, Mormon transhumanists, some of us, not all of us, but some of us are interested in cryonics. And we have a formal project everywhere where we’re trying to figure out how we might be able to do it as a group. We’re very communally oriented people. I would hate to be resuscitated without my family and friends. That might sound strange. Why not? Because the world will be so exciting, right? Well, I want to enjoy that with people that I already love. I want to meet you and cool people too, but I want to be there with people I love and care about.

Speaker 4

On a scale of ten, my belief is that the moon or surgeons have a ten. Mormons tell me that an angel named Moroni are both going to be my rival.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So let me respond in two ways to that question. Excellent question. In case people didn’t hear it. He asked about one just one of the many controversial issues in Mormon history, right? Things that seem very strange and merit skepticism. And this particular one that he mentioned was an angel giving the golden plates to Joseph Smith. Did I get the right one now? So, what is my belief, he asks in that question? Let me contextualize my belief in two ways shortly, and I need to wrap up quickly. Contextualize it in two ways. Number one, If we live in a world that was created by a great programmer in the sky, the matrix architect, it’s really not very hard to imagine that that matrix architect can give gold plates to people. But B um let’s say that the gold plates didn’t come from an angel. Let’s say that Joseph Smith found them, had a dream of an angel, and thought that they, or even lied. Let’s even say he just lied, like, go all the way to the other extreme. From a post-secular perspective, the function that Mormonism fills in my life, in the lives of people I love and care about a great deal, is very valuable. Mormonism is the reason why I’m here with you today at this cryonics conference. I’m not here to spite my Mormonism. I discovered the word transhumanism in my adult life, and I was one of those people who looked, pointed at it, and go, I believed that my entire life. So, from a post-secular perspective, even if it is a lie, which I don’t believe it is, I think that the question is not closed, and I’d be happy to discuss that in more detail with you. But even if it were a lie, there is a great deal of practical value that comes from the religion.

Speaker 4

Good question. Is God omnipotent? And if there are any limitations, what are they?

Speaker 2

Excellent question. Is God omnipotent? Um in Mormonism, there’s two kinds of Mormons. Those who think that God can no longer progress in knowledge and power and those who think that God does continue to progress in knowledge and power, most Mormon transhumanists are of the last We think that God continues to progress in knowledge and power. We don’t look at God in superlative terms except as kind of an approximation or as like a shorthand description of just how advanced God is compared to us. So I guess the answer to your question more directly would be I don’t think God is literally omnipotent, but I think he might as well be compared to you and me. Or she, by the way, because we also have this notion of Heavenly Mother in point. Thank you very much.