How Should Christians Think About Transhumanism?

On today's Thinking Christian on Life Audio. Hey everyone, I'm James Spencer. Welcome to Thinking Christian. I'm here with Pauline Branslow, and we are going to talk today about the transhumanist declaration, specifically about really the first tenet of the transhumanist declaration. And the point that we're trying to get across here is that some of these declarations within the transhumanist declaration actually don't sound too bad. They aren't things that you would immediately disagree with, but I think there are real implications for how we think Christianly about transhumanism, about technology, and these are a great group of folks to interact with because they're really dedicated to technological advancement, and so they've thought through this an awful lot, and it's just interesting to kind of consider what they have to say. So, Aline, welcome. Thanks for being on Thinking Christian here. And any initial thoughts on this? Well, thank you for having me, and I actually think it's exciting that we have something on paper to work with. Now we have a declaration, and as any declaration, we don't see the unintended consequences. And that's why I'm very excited to at least wrestle with it to figure out, okay, what is something that we're not seeing here? It'd be kind of nice if AI had one of these, right? They're gonna. I really am quite certain they're gonna have one. I will say I think it's interesting that transhumanism has one of these and AI doesn't because transhumanism, as I've kind of gotten a little deeper into it, and I wouldn't say that I know all of it, you know, inward, backwards, and forwards just yet, but it does feel a little bit more ideological to me. It feels a little bit more religious to me that there is a, you know, a clear trajectory or what we might call in Christian circles a telos, an end to this. It has sort of an eschatological and utopian flavor that is largely, I think, underlying artificial intelligence, but made a little bit more explicit in the transhumanist literature. I'm curious what you think about this, but it might be that right now it's commercialized. So it's not as much as an idealization of it or as much as a philosophical approach or even centralized. I found it really interesting that Elon Musk himself went against the rapid system and rapid rhythm of how AI is actually exploding everywhere. He said we need to slow it down. That's the first time I think I heard him say we need to slow something down, right? Because I think he felt somewhat uncomfortable, I'm assuming now, on how fast this is going, but it was more of a rapid commercial, you know, drive. As in the transhumanist conversation has been around for a while. Humanity 2.0 is really kind of, it's becoming ideology, right? And it's now we have a declaration to work with, which I'm excited about. I'm curious if this is, this is why we're not seeing two declarations in that space. It may very well be. I mean, artificial intelligence does feel a little bit more like the wild, wild west to me right now. I think there are varying philosophies driving it, one of which, as you rightly mentioned, I think it's an economic philosophy. Yes. You know, people are really seeing this as something, you know, artificial intelligence that can minimize expenses in various different businesses, make everything more efficient is usually the way you hear that. But when I hear efficiency, what I really hear is we're going to maximize profits. You know, no need for those pesky humans around if we can make technology do it. And so, yeah, more efficiency generally isn't great for human beings when we're talking about technology. But that's definitely one of the philosophies driving AI. I would also say that transhumanism probably does scooch into the artificial intelligence realm. Yes. And that the interesting part, I think, about transhumanism is it doesn't appear that they are trying to eliminate humanity. There have been, at least not in all circles. Now, there are some people who might or who might say that we won't need aspects or certain people within humanity. That gets a little strange. I haven't looked into all of that yet. But for the most part, transhumanism presents itself as a philosophy that is pro-human. And so this first tenet really does underscore that, I think. So let me read it and then we can kind of discuss from a biblical and theological perspective and even a technological perspective, you know, what the implications might be for this and how we might, how Christians particularly might think about it. So here's the first tenet of the transhumanist declaration. Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth. That's the first tenet of transhumanism. Any initial thoughts, Aline, or you want me to kick it off? Yeah, I would love for you to kick it off. There's so much to work here, so much to work with here. There's so much to work with here. Please. Yeah, I mean, let's just talk about the first one, you know, the broadening human potential by overcoming aging. Overcoming aging. I mean, I'm getting, I just celebrated a birthday, right? So I'm 46 now. Okay. Happy birthday. Yeah, thanks. You know, you get overcoming aging. I'm most familiar with this with like fitness. There's a guy, Peter Attia, who does a lot of work on training for the, I think he calls it like the centennial marathon or something like that. You know, how do you live to be a hundred? And if you look at exercise effects on the body, it has a better benefit than things that would shorten your life like cancer or other things. It has like, you know, tenfold more benefit to longevity than those things have to actually shortening your life. And so I'm used to hearing that kind of claim and hearing that kind of conversation in the exercise industry. Here it takes on a little different feel and flavor, right? Overcoming aging in the transhumanist language is generally talking about something a little bit more extreme. It's either talking about overcoming death completely. Not only the, you know, I won't look as if I've aged, which can be part of it, but also actually never dying. And that never dying can be construed in a number of different ways. And just, you know, to give people a kind of a vague understanding of this. It isn't always just that, you know, you'd be always preserved in the state that you're in now. So like when I'm 190, I'd look exactly like I do now because we've overcome the effects of aging. It could very well be that my brain has been downloaded into an AI sort of model and that my consciousness, whatever it is, nobody really knows. Like good luck defining that one, lives on in some sort of AI-enabled robot, right? So there's a range of different ways that they've contemplated overcoming aging. Yes. You know, and ultimately death. So I was in San Francisco and there was a science conference going on and I found myself in a really weird situation being at a conference. And the presentation there concerned me to my core because it was on the plasticity of the brain. And they connected plasticity of the brain directly with longer living. So really fighting aging there. And they said, we took a mouse and through the plasticity of the brain, through the exercise of the brain, we prolonged the mouse's life. And I was excited. It became very interesting in that. But what was fascinating to me is somebody, okay, question. How did you do that? Right. How did it actually work? Right. And said, the entire science, the entire scientific experiment landed being on this one little dot and said, we assumed when the mouse was supposed to die. And from that one on, he lived, that mouse, he, lived this much longer, right? And I didn't get a chance to ask another question, but it was a very simple follow-up question. How did you assume when the mouse was supposed to die? It was, for me, that science was so broken. Every single person in this massive colosseum stood up and applauded. There's the massive success of the actual science, right? But it was concerning to me to say that we really had major leaps into what aging does, why is it involved, even theologically, why God put a limit to when we're supposed to live, how we're supposed to live, and why God responded to our longevity of life as a reaction to what we did with our lives. What did we do when we lived a thousand years? What did we do when we lived a hundred years? And how those people died being sick and tired of living and of observing the brokenness of humanity. And God said, I think I'm going to have to put a limit to this. So I'm curious from a theological, I'm bringing it back into your area. If this,

The first tenet in the first bullet point of the first tenet is, we need to make this longer. We need to reverse what God has done. We need to assume that we can fix this without actually thinking why it became a problem. Yeah, and I think, you know, from a theological perspective, that is my biggest challenge with the idea of overcoming aging. Overcoming aging, when you think about just some of the biblical, basic biblical teachings about this, you know, the wages of sin is death. Christ's resurrection, right, is an overcoming of death. Christ now lives eternally, bodily form, newly made body in heaven. And we're supposed to share in a resurrection like his at some point. When we start to substitute solutions to sin and its consequences, or its wages in this case, which is death, when we start to substitute new things in there other than Christ, I think we're making a crucial theological error. In other words, we're looking at it in terms of, we're seeing death as a symptom of something. And so again, the way I would argue that this tends to read is that we're going to treat a symptom. We're going to treat the symptom of death, and we're not going to get to the root cause of that symptom, which is sin. And so from a theological perspective, I see this as a flawed project. And I think it's important to note, because there's a difference in my mind between something like healthcare and transhumanism. Arguably, healthcare seeks to prolong life. And as we see deficiencies in the human body, illnesses, injuries, those kinds of things, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, healthcare professionals are trained to help overcome some of those injuries and diseases and to functionally prolong life. A way it might be better said is to preserve life. This isn't that exactly, right? This is a completely different thing. This is saying human beings can actually not die. We can not experience those effects that sin brings about. There's a technological solution to this. It is, if I were being sort of, I suppose, extreme about it, I would say what they're really trying to create is a technological Messiah. Yes. And that to me is uncomfortable, even if the overall claim isn't that crazy, right? Technology has prolonged life. I mean, we see life expectancy increasing, particularly in the United States and other sort of technologically enhanced nations or technologically savvy nations. Our life expectancy increases. This isn't even that. No. Right? This is a sort of a limitless expansion of that, which I think is just wrongheaded. And so that's where I kind of sit. At the same time, what I would say, and this is a little bit different take than a lot of people have on it, but when I look at the Tower of Babel narrative, Genesis 11, 1 through 9, I do not see people trying to rebel against God. I see them reacting and responding to real threats, real human threats, right? Like, we don't wanna be scattered. Being scattered is scary. Being scattered is a difficulty we don't wanna face. And so is there a solution to being scattered? Sure, we can come up with something. Let's do it. And we have all this capacity. And so now we're going to build a city and a tower, and we're all gonna live together and it's gonna be fantastic. Yes, yes. And so I don't wanna frame transhumanism in terms of these people are horrible human beings who believe this stuff. They're crazy thinkers. They're evil people, whatever. Because if we follow the narrative of that Tower of Babel, the reason that God comes down and stops them is because if they can build this city and this tower, nothing they purpose to do will be beyond them. God recognizes, it's like, it's not that they can't do it. That's the problem. It's that they can do it. That's the problem. And so I think a lot of this that they're talking about could potentially be accomplished. Like, I think technology can prolong our lives in some real significant ways, which is deceptive in the sense that it gives us the impression that eventually, if we just keep following the tech, we will no longer have death. It's scary. You're listening to Thinking Christian with Dr. James Spencer. When we come back, James and Alleen will continue this conversation on transhumanism. This is Thinking Christian on Life Audio. Your fearfully and wonderfully made. God looks at your heart, not your gene size. Do you know the verses yet still stress over your body? Oh, I get it. I was raised in church, but I struggled with food, eating disorders, and my body for decades. I'm Heather Creekmore, host of the Compared to You podcast, where we talk about all things body image and comparison from a biblical perspective. 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