To the Jews, a Stumblingblock, and to the Greeks, Foolishness

Although most religious people anticipate some kind of eventual salvation and victory over death, it’s not uncommon for many of them to hesitate when the prospect is actually within reach. When grand overarching redemption narratives remain in the distant future, they are safe; they provide comfort in trials without interfering too much with our daily lives. The surprising near-term apocalyptic predictions of transhumanists, however, can be disturbing. They threaten the tidily sewn-up redemption narratives, perhaps especially for some Mormons, whose non-metaphysical universe is compatible enough with transhumanist visions of the future to give them pause. Many people react to these visions with both awe and disappointment, sometimes at the same time. There’s a feeling of “whoa, that’s crazy,” and “wait, is that all there is?”, sort of like the red-headed man who is at first astounded at Sherlock Holmes’ ability to divine intimate details of his personal history but who, after having it all explained to him says, “I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it after all” (“The Red-Headed League,” Arthur Conan Doyle).

At our 2014 MTA conference, our Mormon guest speaker, Adam Miller, shared his reservations about transhumanism with a vivid metaphor. Outing himself as perhaps the most reluctant resurrectionist in all Mormondom, Miller used the pop culture vampire as a metaphor for radical life extension. “For the vampire, the extension of life itself inevitably becomes something to be suffered. Every cable TV vampire worth their salt, finds their existential crisis heightened, rather than ameliorated by their quasi-immortality.” Miller made the important point that physical renewal without a corresponding spiritual transformation (which is what, presumably, Miller assumes transhumanist salvation to be) would only serve to increase our boredom and brokenness. Like many religious people, Miller seems reluctant to accept transhumanist salvation as legitimate, for perhaps good reasons, depending on which transhumanists one is listening to.

I’d like to address these kinds of concerns today. They arise, I believe, both from lack of imagination on the part of many religionists and from lack of ethical awareness on the part of many transhumanists. This is also an area where I feel the Mormon Transhumanist Association can provide some much-needed thought leadership.

It can sometimes be alienating to be a religious transhumanist.

One of our primary goals as an organization is to try to bridge the gap between the sublime and the secular. We want to get strangers talking to each other and finding more common ground with one another. Come to a meetup of Mormon Transhumanists and you’ll find some strange combinations. Devoutly religious people rub shoulders with skeptics and atheists, and everyone seems to still be friends! Conversations tend to be enthusiastic and respectful. Who are these people?!

Why do we care about bridging this gap?

Mormon transhumanism attempts to syncretize and valorize traditional practices while holding our minds open to new possibilities. Having been raised, for the most part, in traditional backgrounds, we see the value in these traditions while we also recognize some of their limitations. We want to respect and preserve tradition, to the extent it remains beneficial.

We have also personally observed that many secular groups connected with transhumanism have struggled with internal contention and disagreement that has hampered their progress. Our Mormon upbringing has given us an exceptional capacity for cooperation that helps us to overcome these fractious tendencies and get things done. The Mormon Transhumanist Association, partly as a result of these qualities, is currently the largest advocacy network for the ethical use of technology and religion and one of the largest transhumanist organizations.

So Mormonism bolsters these two qualities among transhumanists, among others: it promotes a more respectful and less disdainful attitude towards those people and groups whose cooperation will be critical towards the future success of our civilization, and it understands how to organize effectively.

In addition to these pragmatic qualities, Mormon theology is remarkably compatible with a secular worldview in ways that are often surprising to those who are less familiar with it.

Many secular transhumanist visions of the future fail to address important ethical challenges that religion has explored more seriously. For example, Ray Kurzweil, in his bestselling book The Singularity Is Near, describes a hedonistic future in which people will be able to have sex in virtual worlds with simulations of their favorite celebrities. Christian pastor and transhumanist Chris Benek rescues this narrative by pointing out that any intimate relationship worth having requires both parties to be sentient, and once a being is sentient, we are morally obligated to obtain its consent for all our interactions with it, and to interact with it in ways that are conducive to its well-being.

This brings up the concept of mind uploading. Some secular transhumanist visions of the future have spoken of the body as a burden and a nuisance that we will eventually discard when it becomes possible to upload our consciousness directly into a computer. Mormon theology, on the other hand, values embodiment highly and claims that only when our consciousness is united with a body can we receive “a fullness of joy.” Indeed, artificial intelligence researchers are discovering how essential embodiment is to all aspects of learning. While we may eventually gain the ability to upload our minds to another computational substrate, that substrate had better be as rich as what we are currently experiencing, or it will lack essential aspects of living. For all relevant intents and purposes, successfully uploaded minds will be embodied still.

I’ve touched on some of the ways religious transhumanism can complement and inform secular audiences.

As I said earlier, Adam Miller raised the concern that mere immortality would be insufficient to overcome our natural brokenness and propensity to sin, and could in fact exacerbate some of the problems of our present existence. I agree with him, and I feel that his calling attention to this deficiency is a good example of how secular transhumanism sometimes overlooks or downplays certain ethical challenges. Merely living indefinitely would not satisfy us if the nature of our lives did not also adapt to our new condition.

Mormonism distinguishes between immortality (overcoming death) and “eternal life,” which is defined as overcoming sin, or achieving a state of godlike compassion and benevolence. Mormon transhumanists believe that such eternal life is both something we should strive toward as we contemplate any physical healing or enhancement, and something that we should use all tools at our disposal to try to achieve, including science and technology.

Another concern that is often expressed by religious people is the worry that we are “playing god,” that is, that there are certain ‘lines in the sand’ that are the purview of God alone, and that we are not to cross.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to pursue desired futures in detrimental ways⁠—just that the appropriateness of certain technological advances depends greatly on the context and the motivations of those involved. Whether or not “playing god” is a virtue or a vice depends entirely on the type of god we are “playing.” Do we use our power to exalt ourselves to the exclusion of others, or to exalt our fellows alongside ourselves? Do we strive to emulate the noblest qualities we can conceive of in our heavenly parents, or do we selfishly lord our authority over others? Mormonism teaches that “power and influence …” can only be maintained “by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned” (D&C 121:41). This is the model that Mormon Transhumanists strive to emulate.