Purpose of the Mormon Transhumanist Association

Lincoln Cannon

So welcome to the twenty thirteen conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. My name is Lincoln Cannon, and I’m the President of the Association by appointment of the Board of Directors, who are elected by the voting members of the Association, many of whom are here today. And I will be leading this morning’s session of the conference.

Lincoln Cannon

On behalf of the Association, I want to thank you all for being here, and I want to particularly thank the leaders of the association for all of the work that they’ve put in to make this happen and are currently doing to make this happen. I know that there were emails flying around in the middle of the night last night. I woke up this morning and had more emails to respond to that I hadn’t seen when I went to bed. So, a lot of work being put into this, and I want to thank them very much for that.

Lincoln Cannon

I’d like to start the conference today by commenting on the purpose of this association. The Mormon Transhumanist Association stands for the proposition that we should learn to become gods. And not just any kind of God, not the kind of God that would raise itself above others, but rather the kind of God that would raise each other together. We should learn to become Christs, saviors for each other, consolers and healers, as exemplified and invited by Jesus.

Lincoln Cannon

In fact, the religion, Mormonism itself, is an immersive discipleship of Jesus Christ. It’s not so much a religion about Jesus as it is the religion of Jesus. With Jesus, we would trust in, change toward, and fully immerse both our bodies and our minds in the role of Christ. And we would also endure in that role. Working to reconcile ourselves, our relations, our world, and even do that through suffering and death if need be. Anticipating the day of transfiguration and resurrection to immortality and eternal life in a fullness that this afternoon our keynote speaker, Richard Bushman, will be speaking more about.

Lincoln Cannon

So while we may not be Christian by creed, we’re plainly Christian by gospel. And I hope that Karl Teicherb will say a few things about that later on. Carl will be talking about giving a Christian criticism of religious transhumanism. I’m looking forward to that.

Lincoln Cannon

Mormonism is also a school for prophets. The name of the religion itself reminds us of a book. That would extend the Bible. And the way it would extend the Bible is in part by claiming that yet other books would also extend the Bible. And in turn, that book reminds us of a man. And that man would speak and act for God in part by saying everyone should speak and act for God.

Lincoln Cannon

The Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith are not fortune tellers, but rather forth tellers. They would express a sublime aesthetic. A Holy Spirit provoking us to speak and act so as to fulfill their prophecies, in part by learning to become prophets ourselves.

Lincoln Cannon

For some, prophecy is not a living proposition, let alone religion or God. They wonder if perhaps we’ve not heard that God is dead. And they’re right to wonder. Following their gods, traditional religions do seem to be dying, particularly in technologically advanced and prosperous places. And observing this, many have embraced the secularization hypothesis that religion itself is dying. However, that hypothesis is showing its age, and it’s now embraced more by anti-religious voices In popular culture than by experts, among whom another hypothesis is coming of age.

Lincoln Cannon

If God is merely a supernatural superlative, he very well may be dead. But positing such as God misses the function of God. God always has been and is at least a post human projection, an extension and negation of human desire. Imagined and expressed through human thought, language, and action, and their constraints That’s not to say God is only so much. To the contrary, as demonstrated in the New God argument, we’ve moral and practical reasons to suppose that others have already realized these posthuman projections.

Lincoln Cannon

And I hope that Peter wicks, where’s Peter? I hope that you’ll be talking a little bit about that in your speech to us. Peter’s been invited to deliver an atheist critique of religious transhumanism.

Lincoln Cannon

However, no matter your attitude toward faith, God is at least this much, a post-human projection. Understood in terms of that function, God clearly isn’t dead and never was, except perhaps to the extent that evolution is part of except to the extent that recurring death is part of evolution.

Lincoln Cannon

Likewise, if religion is merely genuflection to the supernatural, it very well may be dying as well. But again, that overlooks function. Most of us have regarded religion too narrowly, and much that’s supposed to be secular actually functions as religion.

Lincoln Cannon

For example, some claim inspiration from science or ethics. Awe fills us as we contemplate the vastness of space or the voice of the people. Yet the inspiration is not merely in the reductionist implications of science or in the procedural adjudications of ethics. Rather, aesthetics are woven through them, tying them together in meaning. And that’s why we care about science and ethics.

Lincoln Cannon

Aesthetics shape and move us, and at their strongest, they provoke us to a communal strenuous mood. When they do that, they function as religion. Not necessarily in any narrow sense, but aesthetics that provoke a communal strenuous mood are always religion from a post-secular vantage point.

Lincoln Cannon

Of course, none of this means that science or ethics should or even could be displaced by religion. To the contrary, science should continue to reconcile our contending accounts of experience. as ethics should our contending accounts of desire. Each should expand its reach to the uttermost, always better informing our aesthetics, affecting each other in a feedback loop. Yet even as science and ethics increasingly empower us, let’s not fool ourselves into supposing that they’ll ever be sufficient or finished.

Lincoln Cannon

We care for and use them only in accordance with aesthetics, which presents itself as foremost among them at the most vital moments of life. When we must act according to whatever wisdom and inspiration we already have, life cannot wait. How will we act? Will we see beauty in science? Will we feel unity in ethics? Will we care? And how much will we care? Could our degree of concern make a practical difference? These are questions that should matter to all except perhaps the most apathetic, escapist, or nihilistic among us.

Lincoln Cannon

It’s not enough that we can describe our world through science or imagine a better world through ethics. We also want to make a better world. We can do that through engineering and governance, but it’s also not enough to make a better world. We want to feel it. Sometimes powerfully. And more, we want to share our powerful feelings with others in ways that move us together.

Lincoln Cannon

As engineering and governance are action on science and ethics, religion is action on aesthetics. As engineering and governance are the power of science and ethics, religion is the power of aesthetics.

Lincoln Cannon

We can raise our eyes from the altar of religious and anti-religious dogma. And if we do, we’ll see that the hand raised to finish the dying God is always the sign of the oath to the resurrecting God. And if we can keep our eyes raised, resisting the carnage below, we’ll also see that the hand is our own, and it holds a blade that’s aged and stained. That’s when we have a choice either to repeat the old sacrifices of our ancestors, or finally to make the new sacrifice that they always implied. We can put ourselves on the altar and learn to become gods.

Lincoln Cannon

Put differently, the negation of one post-human projection always implies another. until humanity chooses to become posthumanity.

Lincoln Cannon

Transhumanism is the ethical use of technology to expand our abilities from the human to the posthuman. For some, this conjures up images of comic book cyborgs with gun arms and laser eyes. Of course, transhumanism is partly about body enhancement. But probably most of you will agree that a gun arm doesn’t qualify as an enhancement either aesthetically or practically.

Lincoln Cannon

For better examples, look at the technology that enhances you right now. Some of you are using computing devices. In fact, I dare say most of you. Some of you are using them to communicate, maybe to browse if you’re bored. You might be watching through glasses or contacts or surgically modified eyes, or listening to me through hearing aids or cochlear implants. You’re probably wearing clothing. Maybe some of you on the stream aren’t. But assuming you are, that clothing has served for you to enhance your ability to adapt to environmental change. Under those clothes, you might have implants or prosthetics. Through your blood, drugs may be relieving pain, heightening attention or facilitating growth. That’s just right now.

Lincoln Cannon

Think through the rest of the day leading up to this moment: the cars, the refrigerators. Think through your life. Consider human history. If technologically enhanced humans are cyborgs, then we’ve always been cyborgs. At least in the context of the past and the present, that’s not particularly controversial.

Lincoln Cannon

The controversy arises when we look forward How will technology change us in a few years or a few decades? What about a thousand years from now? How many drugs, surgeries, prosthetics and enhancements are there between humans and posthumans? as different from us now as we are from our prehuman ancestors. Is it possible to change that much? And if so, should we change that much?

Lincoln Cannon

Sometimes we talk about humans becoming more robotic or robots becoming more human. When we do, our language uses a dichotomy that is increasingly insufficient. for describing not only the possibility space, but even the actuality space.

Lincoln Cannon

Does a human receiving a prosthetic limb or an artificial heart become less human? Can a body originating from artificial DNA, conceived through an artificial process or gestated in an artificial environment ever be human? even if it’s eventually indistinguishable from a natural human? And for that matter, how natural are the humans that you actually know that are sitting next to you? Are agriculture and medicine natural? The blurring between artificial and natural is as ancient as the stick our distant ancestor wielded to extend her reach, or the leaves that he donned to enhance his skin.

Lincoln Cannon

In an important sense, a synthesis of anatomy and environment and tools made us human, empowering us above and differentiating us from our prehuman ancestors. In that sense, perhaps we’ve always been robots, for at least as long as we’ve been humans.

Lincoln Cannon

Of course, when we think of robots, most of us usually think of cold metal and hollow plastic. If that’s what robots are, then we aren’t, and never should or even could be robots.

Lincoln Cannon

So why do we want to enhance ourselves? The answer is not new. We want to enhance ourselves for all the reasons we’ve made tools since the beginning of history. Tools empower us. So we’ll continue to build more and better tools, and their synthesis with our anatomies will become increasingly seamless and intimate, because we want to and because we can for the power it provides.

Lincoln Cannon

Like all power, tools and their intimate evolution into body and mind enhancements are not inherently good or evil. Rather, they’re both risks to mitigate and opportunities to pursue, according to whatever wisdom and inspiration we might have. On the one hand, tools can empower us against each other Some hoard, others deplete, elites form, totalitarians control, revolutionaries revolt, artificial, catastrophic risks, far more serious than those of nuclear weapons, start to present themselves. And perhaps we could even realize the worst interpretations of the apocalypse.

Lincoln Cannon

But on the other hand, tools can also empower us for each other. Already we’ve used them to build, relate, console, heal, in ways our distant ancestors imagined only gods to have the capacity. Perhaps some day, and I can’t wait to hear more from our keynote Aubrey deGray later on this morning about his subject, we might transfigure ourselves into ageless bodies. We might even resurrect ourselves and each other with sublime minds that relate with unfathomable compassion. and conceive thoughts that in themselves constitute nothing less than the creation of new worlds. In any case

Lincoln Cannon

Transhumanists affirm that we can and we should change through continued ethical use of technology to expand our abilities from the human to the posthuman.

Lincoln Cannon

If you’re a Mormon, you should be a transhumanist. To identify as a Mormon transhumanist is not at all redundant, but to identify as a transhumanist Mormon is redundant because Mormonism mandates transhumanism. In other words, you can be a transhumanist without being a Mormon But you can’t be a Mormon without being a transhumanist, at least implicitly. Of course, this is a controversial claim.

Lincoln Cannon

But we can make an argument from Mormon Scripture. So let’s take a look at that, and we’ll start with four premises.

Lincoln Cannon

First of all, God wants us to use ordained means to participate in God’s work. This first premise is based on scriptures, such as 1 Nephi 3, which says God prepares ways for us to accomplish His commands. Alma chapter sixty, which says God won’t save us, God won’t save us unless we use the means He’s already provided. DC Section 58, which says we shouldn’t wait for God to command us to engage in a good cause.

Lincoln Cannon

The second premise is that science and technology are among the means ordained of God. This premise is based on scriptures like 1 Nephi 17, where God commands Nephi to construct a ship to save his family. Alma thirty-seven, which says God gave Nephi a compass to guide his family to the promised land. DNC Section 88, where God commands us to study and teach everything from astronomy and geology to history and politics. And finally, D and C 121, which says that we will learn all the laws, all the laws of the natural world before attaining heaven. That’s the second premise.

Lincoln Cannon

The third premise is that God’s work is to help each other attain Godhood. This premise is based on scriptures like Third Nephi chapter twelve, where Jesus commands us to be perfect like God D and C seventy six, which says God would make us gods, of equal power with Him. Moses chapter one, which says God’s work is to make us immortal in eternal life.

Lincoln Cannon

And then finally, the fourth premise is that an essential attribute of godhood is a glorified, immortal body. This premise is based on scriptures like Ether 3, where the brother of Jared sees that God is embodied. D and C section 76, which says God has a body that’s glorified like the sun. DNC section ninety-three, which says full joy requires a body. Elements are the body of God, and intelligence is the glory of God. And DNC 130, which says God’s body is as tangible as that of a human.

Lincoln Cannon

So from these four premises, we can reason pretty straightforwardly. Since God wants us to use ordained means to participate in God’s work, and since science and technology are among those means, God must want us to use science and technology to participate in God’s work. Next, since God wants us to use science and technology to participate in God’s work, And since God’s work is to help each other attain Godhood, God must want us to use science and technology to help each other attain Godhood. And then finally, since God wants us to use science and technology to help each other attain Godhood, and since an essential attribute of Godhood is a glorified immortal body, we can conclude that God wants us to use science and technology to help each other attain a glorified immortal body.

Lincoln Cannon

This conclusion is both a religious mandate in that it purports to express the will of God and a description of the Transhumanist Project, advocating the ethical use of technology to expand human abilities. So if we arrived at this conclusion by valid reasoning, which we did, and if we began with premises that accurately reflect Mormonism, as I believe we have, Then Mormonism does mandate transhumanism.

Lincoln Cannon

So again, the Mormon Transhumanist Association stands for the proposition that we should learn to become gods. And that science and technology complement religion and spirituality as means for doing so. Here’s how it’s expressed in the affirmation of the association that all members support. Number one, we seek the spiritual and physical exaltation of individuals and their anatomies, as well as communities and their environments, according to their wills, desires, and laws. to the extent they are not oppressive. Number two, we believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are among the among the means ordained of God to enable such exaltation. including realization of diverse prophetic visions of transfiguration, immortality, resurrection, renewal of this world, and discovery and creation of worlds without end. And then number three, We feel a duty to use science and technology according to wisdom and inspiration, to identify and prepare for risks and responsibilities associated with future advances, and to persuade others to do likewise.

Lincoln Cannon

So that’s the purpose of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. And that’s what we’re going to try to do as speakers and participants at this conference today. We have a very exciting lineup of speakers. Most of them are here already. Some are still on their way, I’ve heard. And I’m personally very excited to be here with all of you.