Eschatology and the Technological Future

Michael S. Burdett

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317576648
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Théologie et religion
• Sous-sujet: Théologie chrétienne

The rapid advancement of technology has led to an explosion of speculative theories about what the future of humankind may look like. These "technological futurisms" have arisen from significant advances in the fields of nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology and are drawing growing scrutiny from the philosophical and theological communities. This text seeks to contextualize the growing literature on the cultural, philosophical and religious implications of technological growth by considering technological futurisms such as transhumanism in the context of the long historical tradition of technological dreaming. Michael Burdett traces the latent religious sources of our contemporary technological imagination by looking at visionary approaches to technology and the future in seminal technological utopias and science fiction and draws on past theological responses to the technological future with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul. Burdett's argument arrives at a contemporary Christian response to transhumanism based around the themes of possibility and promise by turning to the works of Richard Kearney, Eberhard Jüngel and Jürgen Moltmann. Throughout, the author highlights points of correspondence and divergence between technological futurisms and the Judeo-Christian understanding of the future.

1
Introduction

Our Technological Future, Philosophy and Religion

This is a book about the technological future. It is about how technology in the last two centuries has stimulated our speculations, imaginations and hopes for the future. Of course, it might be added that this preoccupation with the future is not unique to the technological future. Concerns about economic stability and the erosion of confidence in our models of economic growth have equally contributed to increased speculation about the future as have the present ecological and energy crises. Alvin Toffler coined the term ‘future shock’¹ in the mid-1960s as a way to illustrate this present concern with the exceeding pace of modern life and our general malaise, uneasiness and anxiety felt about the future. This preoccupation with the future, so Toffler tells us, is a direct result of our growing technological environment. Indeed, we find today that issues surrounding technology can’t help but influence these other areas which cause us to reflect on the future. For instance, some experts claim that the solution to economic turmoil is greater technological innovation.² And the general consensus is that the ecological and energy crises can be aided with increasing green technologies. Where other forces may compel us to obsess about the future, technology is very much a key component to all imagining of that future today.

Of course, more will be said about our public fixation with the technological future, particularly in the next two chapters. This book, however, is also about how the future gets constructed. What exactly is the future from a more philosophical point of view? How does the future relate to the present and to the past? Does appealing to ontology help? Is the future just a product of the past and present? Is it driven from ‘behind’, or is it something which beckons from ‘ahead’? These issues are the topic of the final three chapters.

This text also addresses these questions from the Christian tradition. The latter half asks how Christians, in particular, have thought about the technological future and how they construct the future. Christian scholars have, in the past century, increasingly reflected upon the force of technology on individual lives, the church, and history and the future more generally. While I would suggest that not enough attention has been devoted to technology, there has been a vibrant tradition that has significantly contributed to Christian reflection on technology and the future. Because the focus of this text is on the technological future, most of these Christian reflections will derive from Christian eschatology—the study of the last things.³

Whereas these are the general themes of the present work, I also offer a constructive argument. In the first instance, I aim to assess how and to what extent technological futurism, and in particular transhumanism as an extreme version of technological futurism, can be incorporated into the Christian tradition. In so doing, I aim to highlight the relative deficiencies and harmony transhumanism has with the Christian understanding of the future. In the second instance, I argue that Christian eschatology can provide a more robust account of the future than that offered by technological futurism. I argue that Christian eschatology, when it emphasises the themes of possibility and promise, can—at the least—provide a needed corrective to technological futurisms and specifically transhumanist understandings of the future, or—at most—provide a counterreligious narrative which allows for radical hope in the way technological futurisms alone cannot. Christian eschatology does not restrict itself to what is only actual to create its future. Rather, it is open to a God of possibility and promise who is not limited to interpolation and history, but can bring the radically new in the Kingdom of God. The Christian response to technological futurism is that the future is God’s future and must be set within the interpersonal nature of a promissory triune God who brings new possibilities to the world.

But why is this book needed specifically? First, as intimated above, society today is concerned about the future and, in particular, there is concern about how technology is ‘ramping up’ the stakes of our continued existence. As we will come to see in the next few chapters, technology has been the locus of salvation for many when reflecting on the future whilst, for others, it has been the gravest enemy. Generally speaking, this book is required because technologically driven ideologies verging on the religious are becoming ubiquitous today.⁴ This makes explicit dialogue with traditional religions absolutely imperative. I offer an account here derived from Christianity and do not presume to speak for other faiths on the matter. But, for Christians, the concerns of the world are important and the technological future is a major concern of the world. Second, this book is critically important because it focuses on a particular technological futurism which is gaining widespread appeal today: transhumanism. This text is not unique in recognising the need and value of Christians to consider transhumanism. Many books and articles have been written in the past two decades on Christianity and transhumanism. But, none have really contextualised it in the long historical tradition of transhumanism and technological dreaming. They either restrict themselves to the present century and contemporary figures who weigh in on the issues or have not sufficiently assessed the future that transhumanists propose or how they go about constructing that future.⁵

1.1 Definition of Terms

How is technology treated here? In some ways, this will become clearer throughout the text. But, suffice it to say here that the technological future to which I refer is not exhausted by, say, the future of the computer, the car or the linear accelerator. I do not mean the future of a particular technology, although this is included. I am interested in how technology as a universalising and totalising force on society and humanity is taken up in imagining the future.⁶ This book is not overtly concerned with the ethical mandates of growing technologies, but is interested in how humanity perceives that technology often in religious terms. Through study of speculation about the future, tacit convictions and ultimate concerns become much clearer. All of which implies that study of the technological future can be relevant today because it can help illuminate how we think and feel about ourselves and our environment in relation to that technology.

I suggest in this book that there are two possible approaches to the future. These two approaches provide a helpful heuristic in guiding our reflections on the technological future. Following Jürgen Moltmann and Ted Peters, the future can be interpreted as either futurum or adventus.⁷ The English term for future is derived from the Latin term futurum whereas the German term for future, Zukunft, comes from adventus. Futurum refers to the future as an outworking of present conditions and forces so that the future is a product of what has preceded it. It is driven from behind. Adventus, on the other hand, describes that which is coming. It makes no claims about the future being the sole product of the past and present and instead speaks of arrival. It is driven by what is ahead.⁸

I have been using the term technological futurism. A technological futurism is a future in which technology figures prominently. I use it to describe notably secular notions of the future that give a certain priority to the future as a product of forces inherent in the present: futurum. It is often related to our human future in the form of utopia or dystopia but is inclusive of any reflection on the future. The ‘technological’ qualifier signifies that the content of this future and the catalyst is technology. Not all technological futurisms are equal. I do not intend to imply by this term that the technological future posed by Edward Bellamy is the same as that posed by R. Buckminster Fuller; still less that transhumanism conveys a future that is identical with that of the technocrats. I see technological futurism on a gradient where religious accounts of the future make up the other end of the scale. Some accounts of the technological future are more secular and depend upon futurum, making them favour a technological futurist approach, whereas others might appeal to God’s action in the world and adhere to the future as adventus.⁹

From the fourth chapter, my main focus is on a unique strand of technological futurism: transhumanism. I prefer to use the term transhumanism instead of posthumanism, another term sometimes used, because, first, it is the term used by the organisation formerly called the ‘World Transhumanist Association’ and now called ‘Humanity+’. Second, the term transhumanism better describes its relation to humanity. ‘Post’ tends to allude to something just after the human and doesn’t necessarily provide orientation as to how it relates to the human except that it has moved on from it. I favour transhumanism precisely because it provides more content as to how this movement relates to the human: It is transcending it.¹⁰ These transhumanists say humanity is in the process of being transcended and this will be important for interpreting it along religious lines.¹¹ Despite focusing my comments to a specific technological futurism, transhumanism, by the end of this book many of the reflections and criticisms levelled at transhumanism may be extended to technological futurism more broadly.

1.2 Methodology and Overview

The methodology of this text, or how I go about addressing the technological future, is visible from its overall structure.¹² The next three chapters, chapters 2 through 4, consist of what I call ‘visionary approaches’ to the technological future. These chapters chart the ascendency of our public technological imagination and how it arises from religious sources. My aim is to trace the ways in which our imagining of the future has shifted from one instituted by or in conjunction with God to a future more reliant upon human endeavours—from adventus to futurum. In many ways, these chapters locate the field in which technological futurisms have arisen in our public awareness. They represent the secular phenomenon to which Christians must respond. These chapters also give a history of how something like contemporary transhumanism could have come about. It isn’t a history of just transhumanist ideas per se, but a history of dreaming about the technological future of which transhumanism is a product. The second section, chapters 5 and 6, then considers how notable Christian figures in the 20th century have provided a theological response to these ideas of technology and the future. These Christian responses will then contextualise and orient the final chapters which give a constructive appeal. This final section then considers the philosophical and theological issues at play in constructing the future. Issues such as the future’s relation to ontology and, from a Christian perspective, how promise and possibility are central to understanding the future as Christians.

The next chapter looks at the history of our contemporary technological imagination in technological utopias. It begins with works by Francis Bacon and N. F. Fedorov and moves into the 19th and 20th century considering several American technological utopias. The third chapter turns toward works of science fiction and assesses three ways technology has been depicted in the future in science fiction: (1) adventurous and transcendent; (2) dystopian and oppressive; and (3) questioning the demarcation between humanity and technology. Chapter 4 then assesses the proposed future of three contemporary transhumanists: Raymond Kurzweil, Martin Rees and Nick Bostrom. It suggests that transhumanism has many religiously motivated elements and depends upon a future that is constructed purely out of the present, futurum. Chapter 5 then moves into past theological responses to technology and the future where it assesses the techno...