The Future of Transhumanism as a New Religious Movement

Ted Peters

Okay. My task is to ask Ask the first question: Is transhumanism a new religious movement? And then after I answer that. Then I’ve got a couple more issues to raise. What might theological issues be and what might ethical issues be? Issues be.

Ted Peters

So, one of the reasons why I’m starting this morning is that I want to provide some of the ABCs of transhumanism. and then think about a theological response. I have interest for two reasons. One, I grew up in a technological home. My dad was an automotive engineer. Engineer, and my mother used to always say, I like new things. And so every year we all were always trying to anticipate what General Motors would bring. be bringing out of the new design. And so that’s a part of my uh background. And then I was a futurist for a while, really concerned about climate change and all of those kinds of things back in the nineteen seventy. And then Ronald Reagan got elected, took away our future, and so now I’m a recovering futurist. But what’s nice about the transhumanists is that they bring the Future back again.

Ted Peters

Well, just to summarize the items in the transhumanist portfolio I’d like to look at, and that is the future orientation based upon the con Concept of evolution, the convergence of biology, especially genetics, with nanotechnology and Related technologies, human enhancement with special attention given to human intelligence The overcoming of death, there are at least two different types of overcoming death within the transhumanist portfolio. The anticipation of the singularity, are you going to plot?

Speaker 2

I wish uh you could be creating a Okay, good.

Ted Peters

All right. And then finally, uh uh the post-human species and how we might uh Think about that. So that’s where we’re going, and that’s where I’ll take you in the next few minutes.

Ted Peters

As Hank mentioned, I come from Berkeley. And I love Berkeley. I love the interdisciplinarity, the fact that we’ve got more scientists at the University of California than Orange County has oranges. It’s wonderful. I have an interdenominational setting, an inter-religious setting. For me, it’s. It’s a great place to think about religious and theological matters. And we have a research group called the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences. And you can see on our journal. The Golden Gate Bridge not yet completed. We would like to see a bridge between science and religion in which the traffic goes both ways.

Ted Peters

My framework for today is to think in terms of this triangle of religion, science, and culture. It’s not just Just religion and science, but it’s the cultural framework. And as theology is the intellectual reflection upon religious matters. Specifically, I want to deal with the mindset of the transhumanists amongst us within the framework of our larger culture and And our cultural dispositions.

Ted Peters

So let’s start now and take a look at the transhumanist agenda and some of the key concerns, and it is future-oriented. And the approach to the future is A to recognize the long story of evolution and then B for the current generation to take Control of our evolutionary future. You don’t have to read everything I put up here, but I want to take a look at this. key paragraph from the World Transhumanist Association and draw out its implications. Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. Now

Ted Peters

Pause for a minute about that. If Nick Bostrom transferred to the colours, Humanist voice were here, he would say, One of the problems with common sense and with traditional religion is we think that human nature is fixed. But it’s not. Human nature or the human condition could be very different in the future, and the way we’re going to make it different Is through technology. I have to think about that. Technology really does change things. There’s no doubt about that. Does technology change the fundamental human condition or not? That’s an important question that we need to pose. We know what the transhumanism is. Answer is, the question is: is it realistic or not?

Ted Peters

We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human Condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects. Unchosen psychology. If you don’t like negative emotions, wouldn’t it be nice to take a pill so you didn’t have to experience Them suffering and our confinement to the planet Earth. Could we or our descendants fill space with our consciousness?

Ted Peters

Now my question, remember, is transhumanism a new religious movement or not? And there are some transhumanist voices who want to say We’ve got the Cadillac of intellectual ideologies. It’s the full full thing. And some will call it, Simon Young calls it, a totalized philosophical system with three basic divisions. First,

Ted Peters

At the metaphysical cosmological level, the world is, quote, a process of evolutionary complexification toward ever more complex Structures, forms, and operations. So, this is a metaphysical commitment. What is reality? The answer is: reality is evolution. Evolution is progressive, it has a Direction it goes from the simple to the complex, and although you don’t see it in this statement, what is considered the most complex of all is intelligence. All right, reality. Is fundamentally evolutionary in character and its future is aimed at intelligence, okay?

Ted Peters

At the psychological level, you’re in my individual level, we human beings. Are imbued with an innate will to evolve. Any philosopher, any theologian has got to have an anthropology. What is the essence of making A human, a human. The transhumanist answer is the will to evolve. So you got up this morning and you went for your first cup of coffee. Did you think about your will to evolve? That’s a question. Well, transhumanists would say: whether you think about it or not, it’s there and in. It is operative, but note the intrinsic connection. The cosmos has a will to evolve. You and I have a will to evolve.

Ted Peters

Then move to ethics. What are the ethical or social Implications of the cosmological and psychological commitments, we should seek to foster our innate will to evolve. If that’s our nature, we have a will to evolve, then we have a moral responsibility to do so. How? By continually striving to expand our abilities throughout life by acting in harmony. with the essential nature of the evolutionary process. Note two things going on here. One, this is a naturalistic ethic. A naturalistic ethic starts with a description of what’s going on in nature and moves to a prescription of what we ought to do. And in this case, nature is defined as evolution. Ergo, you and I have a moral responsibility to increase Evolution. Simon Young is right. This is a totalized metaphysical, anthropological, and ethical system.

Ted Peters

I want to say a few things about the work of Ted Chu. I’ve got a lot of print up there. Byron Ballistos will be Speaking later, he introduced me to Ted. He’s got this new book, and I don’t want to suggest that I’m being paid for advertising this, but I do really think it’s the best book on. In terms of outlining and defending the transhumanist vision. And Ted will remind me, he’s a computer person from China. Is that right, Byron? Macroeconomist, formerly from China, but now in the Middle East. Yeah.

Ted Peters

And note his way of iterating this. I am convinced that our purpose. Note the word purpose, very important. So this is not scientific, right? Science does not deal with purpose. But our purpose is to transcend our limiting biology and the resulting limitations. In our consciousness, thus enabling the rise of new breeds of sentient beings, freed from our genetic limitations. In the pursuit of the highest transcendental aspirations of the promotion of cosmic evolution. We’re moving from cosmic evolution to your and my purpose. Again, a couple more quotes from Ted.

Ted Peters

Ethics then. Remember, I’m suggesting this is a natural Ethic. Ethics and morality must be grounded in an understanding of our evolutionary history. If we have been born by evolutionary processes, that’s natural. Therefore, it follows that is your and my moral responsibility for the future, and human values are going to have to change. accordingly. The further evolution of the cosmic creation should be our highest goal. Note what’s not being said, it’s not the flowering of you and me as individuals that’s at Stake. It is the future of the cosmos. You and I are going to be the servants of this great evolutionary march. Okay, let me go on then to a second tenet within the transhuman

Ted Peters

Portfolio, the mixing together of biology and technology. Actually, it’s more complex. I’m going to use William Sims Bainbridge here as an example. He has a little phrase called NBIC convergence. I’m going to expand it a little bit. Nanotechnology, you’re probably aware, is dealing with physical particles that are so primary, they are below the level of biology. That is to say, these are the components that are sub-biological in character, which means if we can create machines at that level we actually constructure the life forms based on that.

Ted Peters

When it comes to biotechnology, most transhumanists are first of all concerned about genetics And what happens with regard to gene expression in the human genome, could we Get in there with nanotechnology and actually engage in a form of genetic engineering for the purposes of enhancing. uh human physical and uh intellectual capacities. Of course, information technology. Of course, cognitive science. Uh what has already been mentioned is artificial

Ted Peters

Intelligence. Now, it’s important just on the realism question to ask: if we’ve had computers now for seven decades or so, and the goal has been to create an intelligence. Computer. It has not yet happened. Yes, computers have enormous capacity. They don’t have intelligence. Will we cross the threshold and will things change? I have to say, we don’t know for certain, but we can expect it. So artificial intelligence on the agenda. We’re not there yet. Intelligence amplification, slightly different.

Ted Peters

In this case, we’ll start with urine My Intelligence and try to enhance it. Step one, create a chip, a bio-nanotech chip of some kind that could be searched Implanted in our brain, and the first ones probably would have enhanced memory. You could put the entire Encyclopædia Britannica in one of these chips. And when you’re thinking and you want access to factual information You could get it immediately. This is not an enhancement of intelligence, it’s an Enhancement of your and my access to data, yet it would be a marvelous achievement.

Ted Peters

Dr. Latori and I were at, did I pronounce your name right, at a conference at Stanford a few years ago, and this topic was discussed, and I love the way the imaginations work. If you and I have this chip in our brain, and we have the Encyclopedia Britannica in there, we’d want to have updates, right? So the way to get updates is to have it attached on Wi-Fi to a server who would send us updates automatically, maybe even on From a satellite above. Okay, so now you and I are regularly getting updates right into our brain. Well, think of the possibilities. What happens if somebody decides to give us misinformation or disinformation? Or horror, the thing that terrifies me the most is that they would put into my chip a Geico commercial. You know, and there you could not get away from advertising. So that’s the downside. But please note: step one: memory enhancement, then step two, perhaps. we will get to that threshold and cross over to intelligence amplification. Finally, capitalism.

Ted Peters

You might say, what’s that doing there? Well, answer is that transhumanists generally believe that we need fertile ground for creativity. and money to support it. And you’re only likely to get it from private investors. So there tends to be a link between transhumanism and uh laissez-faire capitalism.

Ted Peters

Okay, let’s go on then uh to uh human enhancement. I’ve just mentioned uh memory enhancement. And hopefully, a leap in your and my intelligence, and also the overcoming. Of death. And what I love is the Prometheanism. Oops, I’ve got the wrong one here. The Promethean mood. I like people with big ideas, and I don’t know anybody who has bigger ideas than the transhumanists. As humanism freed us from the chains of superstition, note the interpretation. Of history there. Let transhumanism free us from our biological chains. So you’re in my biological substrate. Is a prison from which we need to be liberated. Now pause for a minute. Have you ever heard this one before? Yeah. Plato. Gnosticism, Hinduism, right? And uh here it comes uh back again in a slightly different form. Um uh I uh ordinarily don’t like to read long passages

Ted Peters

But this is really, really special. Biofatalism. Note the negative association of the body. If you’re a biological creature, you are fated. Biofatalism will increasingly be replaced by techno-kandooism. The belief in the power of the new technology to free us from the limitations of what our bodies and at least the minds that we have inherited. In the 21st century, the belief in the fall of man will be replaced by the belief in his inevitable transcendence, not possible. Or potential, but inevitable transcendence. That is to say, there’s another fate or another destiny at work here. And what is it? It’s superbiology. Now, let us cast aside cowardice and seize the torch of Prometheus with both hands. Now, Prometheus, that element I’m going to want to look at in a little bit more detail here in a minute. Of all the gods to appeal to, why this one? Well, it’s kind of natural actually.

Ted Peters

Aubrey deGrey spoke here a few months ago and made the point that you’ll find a lot of transhumanists making. Death is a disease, and if it’s a disease, we got to cure it. There is a good chance aging can be entirely Entirely defeated within the next few decades and is going to be defeated through science and technology. Well, let’s pause and talk about that a little bit. E

Ted Peters

Here is the sarcophagus of Lady Dorothy Dotteridge, and this sits in the Exeter Cathedral. In southeastern England, ask the philosophical question: Is death an inescapable part of our finitude or Can we think of it as a disease awaiting a cure? One of the approaches within the transhumanist

Ted Peters

Camp is Radical Life Extension, and here we’re going to use Bionotech. To help extend our life, just as an aside, I worked for a number of years as a Ethical consultant to the Geron Corporation, Stem Cell Research Corporation, responsible for the isolation of human embryonic stem cells. And the original vision by the founder of Geron, Michael West, was that we would beat death and live forever by the Use of stem cells. Well, as it turns out, most of the scientists at Geron decided that we’re not going to live to be more than 120. Years no matter what. But what we can do is rejuvenate the various organs in our body so that we live a very healthy life right up until our 120th. birthday and then we get sick and we die and we don’t have to go to the hospital. Um I just want to say that I’ve seen this one before and as far as I know medical people theorize that the body is Isn’t going to live perpetually. However, within the transhumanist movement, maybe we can beat death through nanobiotech.

Ted Peters

A second and very different vision, the cybernetic immortality, and we get this from Ray Kurzweil and some others. And here the assumption is, is that your and my mind is the product of an information pattern produced by our brain. We’ll work with the analogy that the brain is the hardware and the mind is the software, which means if we can Capture the pattern, we can move it from the biological substrate of our body into a non-biological or digital substrate. And our consciousness will then be transferred. So here’s Ray Kurzweil uploading a human brain means scanning all of its salient details and then reinstating those details into a suitably powerful computational substrate. This process, now it’s one thing to treat the mind

Ted Peters

As a calculator, it’s another thing to have first-person subjectivity. And Ray thinks We can get the latter as well. This process would capture a person’s entire personality, memory, skills, and history. So once your consciousness Is moved into a computer as long as it’s plugged in and as long as we make sufficient backups, there’s no reason in principle why you couldn’t Live forever.

Ted Peters

What I would like to do is pause for a minute now and take a look at the options of How to think about the relationship between the mind and the body. Philosophers have been doing this for 2,500 years. And it’s not a new thing. If you’re a transhumanist, what kind of commitment are you likely to make? I see three options in the current Discussion, what you’re going to read in Time magazine and in popular books who are interpreting the neurosciences these days. You’re going to read that the mind and the brain are actually two ways of looking at the same thing. That is to say, there’s a materialist reductionism at work. That says you might think that your mind has a certain independence over against your body, but in fact, that’s a delusion. Because what’s going on in your mind really is brain activity. It also helps, if you hold this view, to locate your intelligence then in the brain. I just want to say that’s a questionable assumption.

Ted Peters

I had a friend for a while who worked in the robotics laboratory at MIT. And she had a theory that I kind of liked, and that is that intelligence is not limited to the brain. In fact, there’s intelligence strewn throughout your body. She used the illustration of a piano player. I mean, have you ever gone to a nightclub? No, you never have. But if you’re into the nightclub, there’s the piano player. With a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and he’s playing the piano. Can you go over and talk to the piano player? Yes, you can. You carry on a conversation. And while you’re doing that, the fingers are playing a melody. Why? Well, the fingers have an intelligence and they’ve been trained and they just go about their work. And so my friend actually tried to invent robots with computers in the extremities, in the hands And in the feet, and they would learn things independently of the main computer up here and then funnel the information back and forth. At any rate, that’s a long way of saying maybe it’s the case. That if you focus intelligence only on the brain, we might be only getting part, but not all. Be that as it may, I just want to say one option, very prevalent, a lot of people believe it, is that your and my mind is inextricably and reducibly related to the biological substrate. Okay, that’s not what transhumanists think.

Ted Peters

The second option that you’re going to find more amongst transhumanists Is the model of the brain, the mind being the software and the brain being the hardware? The mind is an information Pattern. It may be produced by the brain, but it is a pattern, and that we can upload this pattern into our computer. Discard the body and live cybernetically in perpetuity. Now, what I find fascinating is this. Seems to be a digital version of body-soul dualism, which we ran into before. I call this the selectomy. If you can imagine that the body would die, you’d have surgery and you’d pull the soul out and send it off to heaven.

Ted Peters

Rene Descartes is probably the one who most vividly Described the soul as an intellectual substance, and the body, of course, as a material substance. Do we have a version of that here? Where the body and well, we don’t use the soul now, but our intelligence are Separate and that you can pull the intelligence out of the body. I just want to say it’s a form of dualism, slightly disguised, but it’ll have all the problems and difficulties that Plato had with that, and with what medieval Christians had with it, what Descartes had with it. Finally, the theologians that I know

Ted Peters

Like to think of the mind or soul in relational categories. And here is Noreen Hertzfeld, who teaches computer science at St. John’s University in Minnesota and she goes to the Turing test. How many are familiar with the Turing test? Yeah, okay, you should. And the Turing test is a way of asking is the computer intelligent or not? And to slightly oversimplify If you and I engage the computer and we think it relates to us in an intelligent fashion Fashion, it follows that it’s intelligent. Well, up until this point, no computer has passed the test. It may in the future, but not up until this point.

Ted Peters

Well, Noreen then. concludes intelligence must be relational. I don’t know if that’s a non-sequitur or not, but that is her position. Another uh theologian who works in this area, Greg Peterson at uh University of Nebraska, I think. We are not simply disembodied reasoning machines. That is to say, your and my reasoning capacity is interrelated not just with our body. But with our social network and in bodily and communal context. So I just want to say that there are options there for Thinking about what our mind is, do the transhumanists, does Ray Kurzweil have the most viable option? Is the question.

Ted Peters

The singularity, well, that’s a prognostication or a forecast for the future that there will be this great threshold that we will pass in which A there will be intelligent computers, B they’ll become more intelligent than we are C, they will self-replicate and eventually you and I will want Their dust as they wind toward the future. Ray Kurzweil is the one who gives us the concept of the singularity. The purpose of the universe, look again, he’s grounding his thought cosmically in nature. The purpose of the universe reflects the same purpose as our lives, to move toward greater intelligence and knowledge. Note that is a whopper of an assumption. We will, within this century, be ready to infuse our solar system with our intelligence through self replicating non-biological intelligence that will spread out through the rest of the universe. You can see there’s a real Promethean Grand vision at work here.

Ted Peters

And then finally, the post-human species, which David Chu calls Kobe. Cosmic being. So you and I are isolated individuals and between breakfast and dinner each morning we go to One finite location to another, but our descendants will have an intelligence and a consciousness that will be. Uh cosmic wide. That’s uh the vision here. Okay.

Ted Peters

Let me turn a little bit toward analysis and the kinds of people I hang around with like to look at the secular society. and ask whether or not there are hidden or disguised religious dimensions at work. Ian Barber just passed away a few months ago as one of the founders of Of the field of science and religion. He thinks we have a general tendency to turn technology into a religion, seeking meaning and salvation through new technologies? Would transhumanism fit within this larger cultural trend? All right, my basic question is, is transhumanism a new religious movement or not? And here’s my answer: yes and no.

Ted Peters

Yes, there certainly is a thrust towards transcendence. Now, this isn’t your claim. Classical mysticism, in which we look for the all or the whole hidden beneath the relationship Of the parts. It’s a temporal transcendence. The future will transcend the present. Evolution in this scheme is virtually a mystical form. That there’s a fundamental reality, it is evolutionary in character, it accounts for our origin, our present, and our Future destiny. It is a natural power to which you and I need to pay homage.

Ted Peters

There’s a call to human self-sacrifice. Sacrifice. That is to say, you and I have a moral responsibility not to serve our own selfish or narcissistic ends, but rather to serve cosmic evolution and its future. And that may mean we have to sacrifice the human race on behalf of our descendants, which will be more intelligent, superphysical, and Cosmic in scope. Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for more intelligent descendants? That’s a spirituality, it’s an ethics of considerable profundity, if you think about it, I think.

Ted Peters

Then finally, science and technology are the tools by which we move towards utopia. One of the most exciting things about transhumanism Is it’s utopianism. All broken things are going to get fixed if we just have enough science and technology. I want to say all of those make it. Make transhumanism give it a religious structure, or if you don’t like the word religion, a spiritual structure.

Ted Peters

There are a couple of ways in which transhumanism is not a new religious movement. New religious movements are one of the areas that I study. And most of those that are categorized, at least. As cults have a structure, an organization, and I like to think of it as a wheel with a hub. And at the hub is the guru or the shaman or the axis mundi, and it’s usually a person who connects heaven and earth in one fashion or another. I just say I don’t see that in transhumanism. There are certain heroes, Ray Kurzweil or Nick Buck I mean they’re they’re these uh people that transhumanists like, but they don’t fun function as cult leaders. And there isn’t really a worship, with the exception of maybe the practical service that we give to the forces of evolution. Evolution. So I want to say, in answer to the question, is transhumanism a new religious movement? I want to say it has some characteristics that are religious, but certainly not In its entirety.

Ted Peters

Okay, the last section then of my presentation is: are there theological issues and are there some ethical Issues that ought to come to the front and center. And here’s one. At the Arizona State University a couple years ago, in which I was at a transhumanist conference, I met a Christian transhumanist. His name was Jim Ledford. There’s his So, Jim, just you know, I asked him how how can you reconcile your Christianity with transhumanism?

Ted Peters

Humanism, and he made two very interesting points. Number one is he goes to Irenaeus’s doctrine Of sanctification. Irenaeus of Lyon, France, was an ancient church father who said that even though you and I are born in the image of God, We’re not in the likeness of God. We have a long evolution ahead of us in which we become more and more like God. And Dr. Ledford says, I think The transhumanist future looks like this sanctification. So he merged those two things together. But then, here’s an interesting thing.

Ted Peters

If intelligence is the highest value on the transhumanist list, note what Mr. Ledford says: no, no, no. Love is the highest value. Value. Intelligence can be used for good or evil. Love is used only for the good, and it would be better to be a stupid lover. an intelligent warmonger, okay? So what he wants to do is move love into the place where intelligence sits. In traditional transhumanism. And then he has his marriage of Christian commitments and transhumanism.

Ted Peters

The issue I want to raise is different. Not that there’s anything wrong with this. I just want you my issue has to do with let’s be realistic. About transhumanist assumptions regarding progress. And as a Christian, I want to say we have more than one view of time. We’ve got two views. And so I want to compare progress and eschatology.

Ted Peters

You can see here, and I’m not going to read this long quote. How the fundamental assumptions here are that evolution is progressive and we know that progress leads. to intelligence. I want to say, A, that’s not scientific. B, it actually could lead uh into some uh dang Misunderstandings.

Ted Peters

Okay, let’s ask the question: Is evolution progressive? And you can see the sign here, and the caveman is somewhere in the middle. Darwin in a weak moment said that it is man in the distant future would be far more perfect creature Than he now is. Did Darwin really believe that? Well, it depends on how you read his own work. And I think that Darwin. waffled on that particular question.

Ted Peters

But today’s evolutionary biologists are near unanimous, not completely Completely, but near unanimous, no. There is no progress in evolution. Progress is A, an unscientific concept, B, there’s no evidence for it. And just because you and I As intelligent creatures, are the product of evolution, does not mean that there’s a built-in purpose or trajectory or direction. Direction or tell us within evolution that leads to intelligence.

Ted Peters

And Francisco Ayala is one who says the only criteria by which evolution measures anything is reproductive fitness. That is to say, who makes more babies? And you and I make a lot of babies because we’re intelligent, but not Not as many as beetles do or ants do. And Ayala says we’ll be long gone and the cockroaches will Still be making babies. There is no destiny on behalf of intelligence built into evolution.

Ted Peters

And so the mistake seems to be this: that what you and I have observed over the last two or three centuries, we’ve observed technological progress. We know what that is, it exists. As I said, I grew up in a family in which progress was our most important product. But then to take technological progress in our experience and then superimpose it upon nature, the biologists say, no, you can’t Do it. Okay, so the belief that there is a destiny built into evolution, is that scientific? The majority of scientists are going to say, nope, it’s not. Sorry.

Ted Peters

Now, the issue of Prometheanism comes up, and by the way, I’m not frightened by Prometheanism like many of my religious Religious colleagues are. Nevertheless, we need to discuss it. And you probably all know the story of Prometheus, but I’ll try to summarize it in just a few sentences. Back when the world was being created, according to the ancient Greek myth, it was dark and cold and damp and wet. And Prometheus the Titan thought, oh, I wonder if we could have fire. I mean, I see up there on Mount Olympus the gods, they have fire. If we could steal some of that fire, we could light candles, we could have lamps in our houses, we could have fires in our fire Places, etc. So Prometheus sneaks up to the sun with his torch, and he lights his torch, and he comes back to earth, and he gives the earth the blessing. Of fire.

Ted Peters

Well, did the gods like this? No, they didn’t like this. They didn’t like the idea that Prometheus would go into the realm of the sacred. and steal something that was holy, and then take it back down to earth. So Zeus captures Prometheus, chains him to a rock, and every day an eagle comes and eats out his liver. I never can figure out why Zeus would give him that punishment, but that’s the way the story goes. The moral of the story is. That if you and I, as human beings, ever cross the line and try to become gods, the gods are going to punish us. In the modern world, we no longer believe in the gods, so we give nature the job of punishing us.

Ted Peters

And the modern version of the Prometheus Myth is the Frankenstein myth. As Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1815, Electricity had just been discovered and they thought then that electricity was the source of life. So Frankenstein created Creates life out of electricity. And funny thing, that myth has not gone away. Has anybody ever heard of the Miller U-ray? Experiments. The attempt to create life is to create the primordial soup and then zap it with lightning. So the same thing that was in the Frankenstein science story and as far as I know there’s no theory that says yes electricity and life somehow Or other belong together, yet it’s continued to be believed.

Ted Peters

But the point is that contemporary Prometheanism says that if you and I cross the line and violate nature. Nature will come back and clobber us. And the myth is used especially by the Sierra Club to say that our treatment of earth is going to cause earth. Get angry and do to us what Zeus did to Prometheus. So the question is: does this apply to the transhumanists? And for me, it’s an open question, but it’s going to get asked.

Ted Peters

Bill Joy asks it. Anyone ever heard of Bill Joy? You’ve got to have, okay? Sun Microsystems wrote An essay called The Future Doesn’t Need Us. And he starts, listen, what could go wrong? Well, lots of things could go wrong. Science could come up with germs that we have no protection from that could get loose. Those nanobots, those little machines, might become self-replicating. And nothing will stop them like the sorcerer’s apprentice, and will all die in an ocean of Gray goo. Or robots will displace humanity. Well, transhumanists think that’s a good idea. Bill Joy thinks it’s thinks it’s It’s a bad idea.

Ted Peters

And so I think, says Bill Joy, it’s no exaggeration to say that we are on the cusp of the further perfection of Extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which of weapons of mass destruction. Okay, this is coming from within the computer community. Now, it’s not a religious position, and it’s basically the Promethean myth. If Prometheus steals fire from the gods, nature Is going to clabrus.

Ted Peters

That certainly was the theme of this recent movie, Transcendence. And notice how transhumanist movies are now being. Uh being released, and in this case, um our uh Heary uh hero here. Dr. Will Caster is uploaded into a computer and suddenly has access to all the computers. He wins $30 million off the stock market. And with that success, he creates his own army. And things kind of like go downhill, and finally, his former friends have to reject him. It’s the Promethean problem. again. And so I think we’re going to see this coming up again and again as transhumanism meets the wider culture. Is it my problem? No, but it’s going to be A problem that many will think about.

Ted Peters

Oh my no. Humans didn’t invent us at all. We evolved from plastic wires and little micro thingers. This is actually an anti-intelligent design. Maybe it’s pro-intelligent design.

Ted Peters

All right, I want to deal with the concept of sin for a minute. Remember, Nick Bostrom and other transhumanists start with. Can the human condition be changed fundamentally, and can technology deal with it? Well, one issue the Christian theologian is going to look at is sin. Can technology make us less sinful or not? That’s a question. And poor judgment, well, maybe we can fix that. But I think about graffiti and computer viruses. I don’t know how you feel if you go under a bridge or see a beautiful building and it’s just marred with graffiti, you say. What leads to a crime like that? Why would someone take something beautiful and do that?

Ted Peters

Then, with the advent of computers, you have the invention. Of computer viruses. What good do they do? Nothing, but they make other people’s lives miserable. Is that the human condition? Is it the case that no matter how we advance in science and technology, there’s always going to be some Some human being somewhere who is going to try to graffitiize it. That equivalent.

Ted Peters

Well, Ray Kurzweil actually addresses this issue with regard to computer virus. And here’s his answer. Well, the good people on computers will just have to be smarter than the virus makers. To stay ahead of them. Well, that’s another way of saying human nature is not going to change. We’re just going to have to keep the battle going on in indefinitely.

Ted Peters

Um finally, totalitarianism. Uh back at the Stanford conference uh that we were at, the issue of totalitar Came up, and imagine if a large number of us have these memory enhancement chips. In our minds, and if they are connected to a server, and if the wrong political party gets into office and decides. To put those thoughts in our minds, will they have a tool for totalitarianism that currently they might not? Have. These are just speculations that need to be entered into the repertoire.

Ted Peters

Langdon Gilke is a professor I studied under at the University of Chicago, and he As a student of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, and here’s their point: these are people who lived through two world wars and an economic depression Pression in between, and here’s their argument: every advance in science and technology, no matter what good it produces for society. Permits an equal advance in the power to do evil destruction and murder. And they saw the technological advances of those two world wars and the proportionate increase of destruction and death. So can the human condition be fundamentally changed? Well, science and technology will change a lot, but it’s not going to eliminate war, destruction, or malevolence. So can a leopard change its spots is the question.

Ted Peters

And will science and technology do it? I want to say, and I’m not a Pessimist, but I want to say, no, I don’t think so. Hey, Sisyphus, when you’ve got a minute, I’d like to discuss this progress report with you.

Ted Peters

Finally, my last point then is that as a Christian theologian, we have two views The future. One is from the Latin futurum, that’s the future of progress. That’s my dad designing new hood latches on GM cards. And which the future builds off the past step by step, bringing new things into existence. The second view is Adventus, and that’s God coming to us from the future.

Ted Peters

Futurum is characterized in my analysis by understanding decision and control. It’s the engine Mindset. What are the current trends? Let’s understand them. Let’s make a decision about which ones to actualize. And then take control through human action. And that is realistic with regard to one dimension of the future. But it’s also the case that God does new things. It’s not.

Ted Peters

Good enough to just wipe away religions and say, well, religions are all old-fashioned. They always look to the past. As Hank was saying earlier about Jewish prophecy, The prophets in the Hebrew scriptures were always looking forward to a future that would be different, but it’d be a future that would come courtesy of God. I think for the Christians, we look forward to the New Jerusalem.

Ted Peters

And the vision of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation is: God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, death will be No more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. Yes, this is utopia. But it’s a utopia that is a gift from God. Is there anything wrong with your and my hoping for this utopia? Nothing, nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just that that is going to have to be a threshold crossed by the future of God.

Ted Peters

Finally, then, ethically, I want to just distinguish three important ethical concepts. Therapy Using science and technology for good health, enhancement, that is to say, to give us better health, greater strength. And genetically, this is more and more going to be possible. Right now, think of the controversies over steroid use in professional sports, where one individual then Gets an advantage over another, and then finally, transhumanism, the grand vision in which all broken things Get fixed.

Ted Peters

I think these are just categories that we need to think about. And obviously, as a realist, I want to say, I’ll bet you. Don’t know, but I’ll bet you transhumanism will not be able to deliver utopia. But Along the way, frankly, I hope transhumanists give it their best shot. Along the way, maybe some of the byproducts, excuse me. Some of the byproducts for therapy and enhancement might be blessings that the rest of civilization will benefit from.

Ted Peters

So I close with a limerick. Living forever is the promise of transhumanism in a techno nano bio-transformed utopianism. Will we with our natural mind find ourselves left behind in the exhaust of a techno-candoism? Bye-bye. All right, go ahead and take some questions, he says. Anybody want to respond? Remind me, your name is. Lincoln, and Lincoln will be making a presentation earlier. Go ahead. Later.

Ted Peters

Transhumanism should be considered a religion. Right.

Speaker 3

And you’ve found some reasons to say yes, maybe it should be, and some reasons. To say, no, maybe it should not be. My question to you is: when you’re assessing that, were you assessing it in terms of monotheistic religions, maybe particularly modern ones? Or were you assessing It more in terms of the gener, more a broader religious phenomena that could include, for example, more ancient manifestations of religions. such as those that were polytheistic. And so the question is, how broadly were you trying to assess it as a religious movement, more narrowly? Or more broadly? Much more broadly.

Ted Peters

My model for what counts as religious comes from the field of the history of religions. Iliada. So these would be general structures of ultimacy, comprehensiveness, the relationship Between the interior life and the cosmos, very important, usually a center, a connection between the trans Transcendent and the imminent, using those kinds of criteria. Then, specifically with regard to those scholars who study new religious movements, sometimes called cults, but that’s Kind of a bad word in the field. Cults have a structure. So they have everything that’s religious, but then on top. Top of it, they have this structure. So, what I wanted to point out was I think transhumanism has general religious content, but it doesn’t have the tight structure that w you would expect uh of a new religious movement or an NRM. So, more general. No, I was not uh looking from a monotheistic perspective. Perspective on this.

Speaker 4

Uh Buzz. That’s my name. Buzz? Buzz. Buzz. Yeah.

Speaker 4

Um I think that the within the hard uh science curse while in future, there’s more than simply the would-be do-gooders have to be smarter and cleverer than the ill-international Intented. In the very hard version, any malfeasance, any kind of malignancy. has its root in our present form in a biochemical reaction. That is, it’s rooted in a desire, and the desire comes from neurochemicals. And dispositions at a certain time, they have a history, certainly, but ultimately they’re all correctable. So that along with All the other enhancements, ultimately, ethical defects could be eliminated, which, of course, I know as a philosopher, there’s a huge philosophical problem. But I’m just saying that that is a let’s tease that one out a little bit because that’s that’s interesting and I noticed you used the word hard which I’m not familiar with

Ted Peters

With, but what this reminds me of, Buzz, was Socrates just before he dies, and Socrates Says, well, the reason we have violence and evil in the world is because of money, and the reason people want money is their bodies. So, he says When I die and my soul is liberated from my body, I won’t have to worry about money, I won’t have to worry about mowing the lawn or clipping my fingernails, I will be able to do pure philosophy. So for him, he wouldn’t be tempted to do evil. So let me ask you: is that the kind of thing Kurzweil has in mind that when we leave the biological substrate and then we’re in the digital substrate? That the desires that would lead to malfeasance simply won’t be there. Is that the argument? Well, let’s just what would Ray say?

Speaker 4

I have finished his last book, where he goes the furthest that he’s ever gone. Yeah, and I think that His that kind of transcendence stops at biology. And one of the and for me, the huge question still is what if He does become a free-loading or free-floating, excuse me, uploaded intelligence, right? What are you going to do to keep yourself entertained? Well, his answer is: you just keep learning everything and And you do that with other people who learn. And I say, well, if it’s anything like a biological intelligence, I can see a lot of room for just trying to be as we And nasty as you can, and just skewing everybody else up who’s floating around. Yeah. At any rate, interesting. I’ve started reading the new book. I haven’t finished it yet, but thanks.

Speaker 5

J just two things about the Turing test. The Turing test. The Leibniz Prize has been won a couple of times in the past few years by constructs that are definitely not sophisticated enough to be to be intelligent, uh smart, but not necessarily intelligent. And the Turing test also has some interesting failure modes in which a construct may not pass, but a human can provably fail. Okay, so with regard to the problems in the Turing test, is that a human could actually fail the Turing Turing test. Is that right? That’s one of them, yes. So that means that the Turing test cannot be trusted. Is that your point? My point is that I think the sophistication of AI technology has progressed to the point where the Turing test is no longer a reliable benchmark. We need something else. Oh, I see. Okay, that’s a good point. You know, some of my students seem to fail the Turing test, too.

Ted Peters

I didn’t say that. I did, actually. I did, actually, in undergrad. Oh, you did? Okay. To Elisa of all things. By the way, do you have a nomination for what would be a a replacement for the Turing test then? No, but I’m hoping someone else in the audience does. It’ll be an interesting discussion if nothing else. Yeah, right. Okay, uh Robert here looks like he’s anxious to g oh, I’m sorry, you go ahead.

Speaker 6

Okay, I had like a lot of responses, so I’ll just go through them very quickly. Okay. Okay. I think that Daedalus and Icarus is a much closer myth to the one of fire as a technology. Just take a moment, tell us the Icarus story. Does everybody know it already? Okay. Okay, go ahead. Okay.

Speaker 6

The other thing is the Frankenstein myth. Actually, its basis was also in engineering, in Galvanism, where Galvani found that he could make dead frogs’ legs jerk. Using a current. And so he had thereby had some idea that electricity was related to life. And this is the leaping off place for Frankenstein. Yeah, good point. Okay. Let’s see.

Speaker 6

The next one is about beauty and subjectivity in regards to graffiti. Now you’re telling me that graffiti is morally wrong, but it’s not wrong to the person who’s doing it, and it’s not wrong to a lot of the viewers of graffiti who appreciate it as art. We’ll talk about Banksy perhaps. The next one is about computer viruses. Often the computer viruses actually do have some sort of value to the person who created it. They’ll either harness your computer, using it as part of a botnet, use it to thieve details From you and do identity, you know, that sort of thing. It’s not gratuitously evil, the way that graffiti appeared to be gratuitously evil. Okay.

Speaker 6

Um oh, utopia. You were saying that there’s no re for believing in like heaven or a coming utopia. The thing with heaven and with some conceptions of utopia is that you believe that it’s something that’s going to be given to you. Whereas the engineering point of view is we have to make our utopia. We have to make our heaven. And so, yes, that would be the thing about believing that heaven is coming because it is just going to be given to you. And it’s the same kind of, some people have the same kind of consumer idea of transhumanism. It’s like, oh, you know, these scientists and engineers are going to make all this stuff, and then we can. you know, buy it and use it, maybe. I know, I know, I’m sorry.

Ted Peters

Well, I’ll just d deal with the the last one is that I don’t see it as either or. Either God gives us utility Or we invent it. I think the way the human mind works is that we envision a future that’s better than the present. And then we use our engineering to move the present in the direction of that vision. I think God props those visions. The human imagination. What the human imagination does is try to close the gap so that we can give sort of concrete form to this. So, as I said, my dad was an engineer. But I think medical researchers have a vision of what human health and flowering could be and how How can we move there? So, I think there’s this interaction between engineering to make the world a better place and then our vision of how it really ought to be. Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Thank you.