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Chapter Thirteen Transhumanism and Christianity ronald฀cole-turner The scholars who contributed to this book hold differing views on transhumanism and on the use of technology for human enhancement . Even so, several shared themes and common perspectives are clearly visible. For example, the contributors generally recognize that on the surface , at least, there are notable similarities between Christianity and transhumanism . Christians hope for eternal life that will be enjoyed with the fullest possible knowledge, joy, and moral purity. Transhumanists look forward to extending the human life span perhaps indefinitely while also enriching human knowledge, attaining greater happiness if not joy, and achieving moral balance or social harmony. One explanation of these similarities is that transhumanism has emerged from a culture shaped by Christianity. Another is that the yearnings of Christians and transhumanists, if not quite universally shared by all human beings, are broadly held and find their own expression in both contexts and perhaps elsewhere. The contributors agree that transhumanism presents a new challenge for theology and for the lives of ordinary Christians. How should Christians today view the emerging technologies of human enhancement? In light of these technologies, how should they view salvation? Some Christians may respond by trying to avoid enhancement technology altogether, holding to divine grace as the only valid pathway to true human fulfillment and transformation . Others may think that technology seems to provide something remarkably like what the Christian faith promises and therefore replaces the need for faith. Still others might find a way to enfold the limited enhancements of technology into the fuller transformations of faith. In fairness it needs to be noted that the contributors all agree with transhumanism on one important assumption, which is based on a shared acceptance of the theory of evolution as the best explanation of diversity and change in living organisms. Thus the contributors all accept the transhumanist starting point that biological organisms, including human beings, are evolved, changing, and possibly changeable, perhaps even through technological intervention. Human nature as it exists today was not created in its present form. Of course, we could find other theologians who would 194฀ ronald฀cole-turner argue for a creationist view and who would object to transhumanism on the basis that human nature should be seen as fixed and final and that it is either impossible or inherently immoral to try to change it. We have not taken that course here, first because we think it is theologically questionable to dismiss the well-verified findings of science, but more so because the focus of our attention is on theology and technology and not on theology and evolution. Shared Criticisms of Transhumanism The contributors to this book also agree that from the perspective of Christian theology, transhumanism is open to several criticisms. Though the argument is not explicitly developed in the preceding chapters, nearly every Christian theologian agrees that technologies of human enhancement pose a new challenge for anyone concerned about social and economic justice. The concern is not simply that the wealthy may be able to buy something that the poor cannot afford, but also that by purchasing enhancement technology , the wealthy might in turn convert their present wealth into future power, thereby widening the social gap between the few who are enhanced and the many who remain merely natural. This is especially worrisome if technology actually does succeed in engineering a new, posthuman species.1 Some of the chapters above, especially chapter 7 by J. Jeanine ThweattBates and chapter 8 by Celia Deane-Drummond, object to the transhumanist desire to escape the limitations of biology, which can only be seen as the latest form of the desire to flee the body. The contributors all tend to argue that transhumanists hold a view of the human self that is characterized by some of the Enlightenment’s more questionable assumptions, in particular the view of the self as a disembodied center of consciousness and will that uses technology to control the body and the environment but somehow remains largely unaffected by either. The most extreme version of disembodiment in transhumanism thinking, as Brent Waters points out in chapter 11, is found in the suggestion by Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil that the human self might escape death by uploading a digital version of the sum total of the mental life into one or more computers, there to live on as if little else has changed. In somewhat less extreme forms, a tendency toward a disembodied view of the self runs through many...

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