Why Christians Should Care About Transhumanism
With all of the problems in the world today, why would anyone suggest that Christian churches should care about transhumanism? It is a small movement, barely a blip on the cultural landscape. As an organization, transhumanists have at most a few thousand followers, mostly techies and philosophers of technology. They have an academic journal, a website, and an institutional toehold at least for now at Oxford University.1 They grab the headlines from time to time with promises that seem to be too good (or too scary) to be true. Even so, most people have never heard of transhumanism. Or if they have heard, they are not particularly interested in hearing more. So why should churches pay any attention?
Transhumanism deserves attention because of what it points to. The focus of this movement is the future of technology, especially its power to enhance human beings and to create artificial intelligence or AI . The technological transformation of humanity has already begun, and the changes we can see today are already making their mark on the social, psychological, and cultural fabric of our time. At the same time, advances in the field of computing are leading to powerful new forms of AI . Some experts believe that we will soon be creating machines more intelligent than any humans. To their credit, transhumanists urge us to pay attention to the humanity-transforming and humanity-displacing powers of technology. That alone makes them good to have around.
Some enhancement technologies, of course, are already so obvious that we do not need transhumanists to point it out. The best known is the use of various technologies to enhance athletic performance. New training methods, new equipment, widespread use of supplements, and of course performance enhancing drugs are all part of sports today, from Olympic arenas to suburban peewee football fields. Some drugs are legal to use when obtained with a prescription associated with a properly diagnosed medical condition. Some substances that do not require a prescription might be banned by sports regulatory authorities . Restrictions notwithstanding, many athletes turn to performance enhancing substances, sometimes justifying their decision because they are competing against other athletes who use similar substances.
It may be no coincidence that the public is mostly aware of advances in supercomputers because of well-publicized sports-like competitions that pit intelligent machines against human champions. Some of the best-known computer-vs-human competitions include chess, the traditional Chinese game called “Go,” and the television game “Jeopardy.” The machines are winning , but of course we need to bear in mind that a computer’s ability to beat the grand champion in the defined space of a game is not the same as exhibiting overall intelligence superior to humans. These competitions suggest, however, that AI research may be closing in on that goal .
Some of these developments are visible to the wider public. Many more advances in technology, however, are occurring daily in university and corporate research centers around the world. What the transhumanists help us see is that enhancement in sports and computer success in games like Jeopardy are just small parts of what is going on. Human enhancement technology pervades nearly every dimension and arena of our lives today, from the military and the workplace to academia. When we take the time to look closely, we can see people using technology to boost their performance in almost every field of human activity. Transhumanists see the broad connections here. They see human enhancement through technology as a system-wide trend, affecting nearly every human capacity and every dimension of human performance. They also wonder about the future of AI and whether some form of human consciousness could live indefinitely inside the intelligent machines that we create.
The fact that transhumanists like what they see here is no reason to dismiss the reality of the trend-line to which they are calling our attention. Looking not just at sports but in every direction, what we see is that the development of the technologies of human enhancement is already moving forward, gaining speed as it goes along. The trend line of technological advance is real. Does anyone really think the trend is about to stall or go in reverse? All the signs indicate that advances in technology are more globally distributed, more heavily funded, and more quickly achieved than ever before. The effects will be utterly transformative, changing forever what it means to be human.
What technologies will contribute to this transformation? Today it is mainly pharmaceutical products, developed of course to treat disease but used by many to enhance human performance. For example, more than a fourth of the students in universities say they have used prescription drugs such as Adderall, not because they have their own prescription or are trying to treat a learning problem, but because they want to boost their academic focus and their ability to concentrate for long periods of intense study. Many adults today use supplements such as resveratrol to tweak their metabolism, hoping to delay the aging process and increase longevity.
Do these drugs and supplements actually enhance human cognition or longevity? The evidence today is inconclusive. But in all probability, new and more effective drugs will be developed and used. Furthermore, the enhancement technologies of the future are likely to include many things beyond drugs. Transhumanists like to call our attention to things like chip implants, gene editing, and nanotechnology, all of which they say are likely to play a role in helping us transcend our biological limits . When these technologies are more fully developed, transhumanists insist, these new powers will make today’s attempts at human enhancement seem small.
Today’s small and partial enhancements point to what is coming. When technology advances step by step, it is too easy for us to get used to each step as it comes along and to overlook the net effect. We find ourselves very much like the proverbial frog in a pot of water warming slowly on the stove. We need to pay attention to the technological temperature of our times. Already today, technology is changing us. The greatest danger here is perhaps not the technology itself but our lack of awareness of what it is doing to us. Transhumanists are very aware of what is going on, and talking with them can heighten our awareness of how we are already being changed, step by step.
And beyond that, transhumanists offer us a preview of one possible version of the culture of the future. They really like technology. But more than that, they like what it can do to them. Others may worry that technology is dehumanizing us, but transhumanists embrace technology precisely because it super-humanizes us, at least as they see it. They call themselves transhumanists because they want to use technology to make themselves more than human. They predict that, over time, many of us will fall in love with what enhancement technology can do for us. When that happens, we will convert to their point of view. They think that when technology becomes more pervasive, more powerful, and more widely used, more people will be transhumanists in all but name.
Transhumanists have a point here, and we can see evidence for what they are saying by watching how much people love their computers and smartphones. Many people today wonder how they ever got along without these things. And when they think about it, they wonder how they could possibly manage anymore without modern medicine or transportation or other technology-based conveniences. Transhumanists predict that in the future, many of us will feel the same way about an ever-widening array of technologies, including those that act directly on the human body and brain. Their prophecy is that when we are enhanced, the new level will seem normal and we will not even be able to imagine going back.
Most of all, transhumanists are very helpful in mapping out scenarios of the human future. They work hard to imagine as concretely and specifically as possible how various technologies might develop, how they might affect individuals, and what the positive and negative social and economic impacts might be. We may think their predictions are wrong. The value of transhumanists for the church, however, does not rest on whether the future will match their scenarios. Their value lies in the way they stretch our imaginations, challenge us to develop our own ideas about the future, and most of all show us how seriously we ought to take human enhancement technology in all our assessments of what is coming. The futuristic scenarios of the transhumanists are an open invitation for the church to think in its own way about the culture of the future.
What is it, after all, to “discern the signs of the time”? We are admonished not just to pray but to “watch and pray.” It goes wit...