Transhumanism and the Religion of Apotheosis

Brett Carollo

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9798385267514
  9798385267521
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385267538
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Fundamentalism & Cults

In this study, which offers a detailed intellectual history of the contemporary transhumanist movement, Brett Carollo defends the view that transhumanism is a fundamentally religious phenomenon. The core of the transhumanist enterprise, Carollo demonstrates, is apotheosis, or the perennial impulse toward self-deification underlying the Western occult and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, among other channels of influence. What distinguishes transhumanism is its ethos of techno-superhumanism, the exclusive reliance on technology as a means to achieving superpowered immortality. The transhumanists themselves constantly invoke the symbolic figures of Prometheus and Lucifer to express the spiritually transgressive nature of their ambitions, and they self-consciously distort Christian theology, particularly eschatology, to the same end, peddling false promises of a technological resurrection. Indeed, as Carollo shows, this sort of immanentization of the transcendent is a hallmark feature of transhumanist thought, alongside techno-superhumanism and apotheosis--a perverse mysticism that contrasts with theosis, the form of deification taught by Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Applying a religious comparative lens, alongside theological and intellectual-historical analysis, Transhumanism and the Religion of Apotheosis exposes the roots of this unhallowed counter-spirituality and examines why it has become the de facto religion of the global superclass.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Religion and Transhumanism
• Chapter 1: Meet the Transhumanists
• Chapter 2: The Concept of Man
• Chapter 3: The Mysticism of Apotheosis
• Chapter 4: Engineering Religious Transhumanism
• Chapter 5: The Immanentization of the Transcendent
• Conclusion: Transhumanism, the Superclass, and the Dark Future of Religious Engineering
• Bibliography