In the summer of 1990, I was running a pretty weird nightclub in the Roppongi neighborhood of Tokyo. I was deeply immersed in the global cyberpunk scene and working to bring the Tokyo node of this fast-expanding, posthuman, science-fiction-and-psychedelic-drug-fueled movement online. The Japanese scene was more centered around videogames and multimedia than around acid and other psychedelics, and Timothy Leary, a dean of 60s counterculture and proponent of psychedelia who was always fascinated with anything mind-expanding, was interested in learning more about it. Tim anointed the Japanese youth, including the 24-year-old me, The New Breed. He adopted me as a godson, and we started writing a book about The New Breed together, starting with tune in, turn on, take over, as a riff off Tims original and very famous turn on, tune in, drop out. We never finished the book, but we did end up spending a lot of time together. (I should dig out my old notes and finish the book.)

Tim introduced me to his friends in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They were a living menagerie of the counterculture in the United States since the 60s. There were the traditional New Age types: hippies, cyberpunks, and transhumanists, too. In my early twenties, I was an eager and budding techno-utopian, dreaming of the day when I would become immortal and ascend to the stars into cryogenic slumber to awake on a distant planet. Or perhaps I would have my brain uploaded into a computer network, to become part of some intergalactic superbrain.

Good times. Those were the days and, for some, still are.

Weve been yearning for immortality at least since the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Greek mythology, Zeus grants Eoss mortal lover Tithonus immortalitybut the goddess forgets to ask for eternal youth as well. Tithonus grows old and decrepit, begging for death. When I hear about life extension today, I am often perplexed, even frustrated. Are we are talking about eternal youth, eternal old age, or having our cryogenically frozen brains thawed out 2,000 years from now to perform tricks in a future alien zoo?

The latest enthusiasm for eternal life largely stems not from any acid-soaked, tie-dyed counterculture but from the belief that technology will enhance humans and make them immortal. Todays transhumanist movement, sometimes called H+, encompasses a broad range of issues and diversity of belief, but the notion of immortalityor, more correctly, amortalityis the central tenet. Transhumanists believe that technology will inevitably eliminate aging or disease as causes of death and instead turn death into the result of an accidental or voluntary physical intervention.

As science marches forward, and age reversal and the elimination of diseases becomes a real possibility, what once seemed like a science fiction dream is becoming more real, transforming the transhumanist movement and its role in society from a crazy subculture to a Silicon Valley money- and technology-fueled shot on goal and more of a practical hedge than the sci-fi dream of its progenitors.

Transhumanism can be traced back to futurists in the 60s, most notably FM-2030. As the development of new, computer-based technologies began to turn into a revolution to rival the Industrial Revolution, Max More defined transhumanism as the effort to become posthuman through scientific advances like mind uploading. He developed his own variant of Transhumanism and named it Extropy, and together with Tom Morrow, founded the Extropy Institute, whose email list created a community of Extopians in the internets cyberpunk era. Its members discussed AI, cryonics, nanotech and crypotoanarchy, among other things, and some reverted to transhumanism, creating an organization now known as Humanity+. As the Tech Revolution continued, Extropians and transhumanists began actively experimenting with technologys ability to deliver amortality.

In fact, Timothy Leary planned to have his head frozen by Alcor, preserving his brain and, presumably, his sense of humor and unique intelligence. But as he approached his deathI happened to visit him the night before he died in 1996the vibe of the Alcor team moving weird cryo-gear into his house creeped Tim out, and he ended up opting for the shoot my ashes into space path, which seemed more appropriate to me as well. All of his friends got a bit of his ashes, too, and having Timothy Leary ashes became a thing for a while. It left me wondering, every time I spoke to groups of transhumanists shaking their fists in the air and rattling their Alcor freeze me when I die bracelets: How many would actually go through with the freezing?

That was 20 years ago. The transhumanist and Extropian movements (and even the Media Lab) have gotten more sober since those techno-utopian days, when even I was giddy with optimism. Nonetheless, as science fiction gives way to real science, many of the ZOMG if only conversations are becoming arguments about when and how, and the shift from Haight-Ashbury to Silicon Valley has stripped the movement of its tie-dye and beads and replaced them with Pied Piper shirts. Just as the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road that brought us Cambridge Analytica and the Pizzagate conspiracy was paved with optimism and oaths to not be evil.

Renowned Harvard geneticist George Church once told me that breakthroughs in biological engineering are coming so fast we cant predict how they will develop going forward. Crispr, a low-cost gene editing technology that is transforming our ability to design and edit the genome, was completely unanticipated; experts thought it was impossible ... until it wasnt. Next-generation gene sequencing is decreasing in price, far faster than Moores Law for processors. In many ways, bioengineering is moving faster than computing. Church believes that amortality and age reversal will seem difficult and fraught with issues ... until they arent. He is currently experimenting with age reversal in dogs using gene therapy that has been successful in mice, a technique he believes is the most promising of nine broad approaches to mortality and aginggenome stability, telomere extension, epigenetics, proteostasis, caloric restriction, mitochondrial research, cell senescence, stem cell exhaustion, and intercellular communication.

Churchs research is but one of the key discoveries giving us hope that we may someday understand aging and possibly reverse it. My bet is that we will significantly lengthen, if not eliminate, the notion of natural lifespan, although its impossible to predict exactly when.

But what does this mean? Making things technically possible doesnt always make them societally possible or even desirable, and just because we can do something doesnt mean we should (as were increasingly realizing, watching the technologies we have developed transform into dark zombies instead of the wonderful utopian tools their designers imagined).

Human beings are tremendously adaptable and resilient, and we seem to quickly adjust to almost any technological change. Unfortunately, not all of our problems are technical and we are really bad at fixing social problems. Even the ones that we like to think weve fixed, like racism, keep morphing and getting stronger, like drug-resistant pathogens.

Dont get me wrongI think its important to be optimistic and passionate and push the boundaries of understanding to improve the human condition. But there is a religious tone in some of the arguments, and even a Way of the Future Church, which believes that the creation of super intelligence is inevitable. As Yuval Harari writes in Homo Deus, new technologies kill old gods and give birth to new gods. When he was still just Sir Martin Rees, now Lord Martin Rees once told a group of us a story (which has been retold in various forms in various places) about how he was interviewed by what he called the society for the abolition of involuntary death in California. The members offered to put him in cryonic storage when he died, and when he politely told them hed rather be dead than in a deep freeze, they called him a deathist.

Transhumanists correctly argue that every time you take a baby aspirin (or have open heart surgery), youre intervening to make your life better and longer. They contend that there is no categorical difference between many modern medical procedures and the quest to beat death; its just a matter of degree. I tend to agree.

Yet we can clearly imagine the perils of amortality. Would dictators hold onto power endlessly? How would universities work if faculty never retired? Would the population explode? Would endless life be only for the wealthy, or would the poor be forced to toil forever? Clearly many of our social and philosophical systems would break. Back in 2003, Francis Fukuyama, in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, warned us of the perils of life extension and explained how biotech was taking us into a posthuman future with catastrophic consequences to civilization even with the best intentions.

I think its unlikely that well be uploading our minds to computers any time soon, but I do believe changes that challenge what it means to be human" are coming. Philosopher Nikola Danaylov in his Transhumanist Manifesto says, We must all respect autonomy and individual rights of all sentience throughout the universe, including humans, non-human animals, and any future AI, modified life forms, or other intelligences. That sounds progressive and good.

Still, in his manifesto Nikola also writes, Transhumanists of the world unitewe have immortality to gain and only biology to lose. That sounds a little scary to me. I poked Nikola about this, and he pointed out that he wrote this manifesto a while ago and his position has become more subtle. But many of his peers are as radical as ever. I think transhumanism, especially its strong, passionate base in exuberant Silicon Valley, could use an overhaul that makes it more attentive to and integrated with our complex societal systems. At the same time, we need to help the left-behind parts of society catch up and participate in, rather than just become subjected to, the technological transformations that are looming. Now that the dog has caught the car, tranhumanism has to transform our fantasy into a responsible reality.

I, for one, still dream of flourishing in the future through advances in science and technology, but hopefully one that addresses societal inequities, retains the richness and diversity of our natural systems and indigenous cultures, rather than the somewhat simple and sterile futures depicted by many science fiction writers and futurists. Timothy Leary liked to remind us to remember our hippie roots, with their celebration of diversity and nature, and I hear him calling us again.

Read the original here:
The Responsibility of Immortality: Welcome to the New ...

Could it be that AIs will be vastly different from what we imagine them to be, not only being able to think faster and be far more intelligent by multiple powers of ten, but have a completely different understanding of the world?

The first AIs willf or sure be made more or less in ouw own image, cause we dont have that much to go by but ourselves, but what about AIs designed by AIs, designed by AIs?What about Intelects which have a completely different "mind architecture" not based on our mamal brains?

Could such a Mind make new discoveries we would not have been able to make because we are limited by our biology?

could such a mind solve philosophical problems we have not been able to solve?

We for example can, with absolut certainty, only say "I think therefore Iam", everything else is not really (at least from the philosophical viewpoint) verifiable, but could an advanced mind, which i have described above, be able to be certain about more things, like the existence of an outside world etc.?

What do you think?

More:
Transhumanism - reddit

Theological Reflections on Technology and Human Enhancement

Technology has changed our world dramatically over the past century and promises to change it more rapidly in coming years. Emerging computer and biomedical technologies have the potential to revolutionize our bodies and perhaps our understanding of human nature. Transhumanism is the name for the movement that enthusiastically embraces the opportunity to transcend bodily limits with new technology, especially the possibility of extending the human lifespan and increasing mental and physical abilities. Its most optimistic advocates predict a future where death has been defeated through the power to reverse biological processes or offload mental states onto computers. What should be the response of the church to Transhumanism and the technological possibilities for human enhancement that are on the horizon?

In September 2015, the Samford Center for Science and Religion held a conference on Transhumanism and the Church as a way to promote critical reflection and public understanding on an issue that will become increasingly important in future decades. The keynote lectures for the conference can be found in the video player and playlist at the top of this page.

Pittsburgh Theological SeminaryEditor of Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement

The College of New JerseyAuthor of Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman

Arizona State UniversityAuthor of Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodiesand What It Means to be Human

Samford UniversityAuthor of Dimensions of Faith: Understanding Faith Through the Lens of Science and Religion (forthcoming)

Oxford UniversityAuthor of Eschatology and the Technological Future

St. Louis UniversityCo-Author of Chasing After Virtue: Neuroscience, Economics, and the Biopolitics of Morality (forthcoming)

Emory UniversityAuthor of Biblical Theology: Problems and Prospects

Wheaton College

Author of Prophets of the Posthuman: American Literature, Biotechnology, and the Ethics of Personhood

See the rest here:
Transhumanism Conference at Samford University

The title of this years True Legends Conference is Transhumanism and the Hybrid Age. For the followers of Steve Quayle, Timothy Alberino and Tom Horn, these might be familiar terms, but the importance of the topic deserves a clear understanding by all. So what exactly is transhumanism? And for that matter, what is a hybrid?

Transhumanism is defined as the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology. Of course, this sounds admirable. Who among us does not want to move toward the goal of eliminating human pain with ever increasing intelligence? But transhumanism is much more than that. With the unending surge in biological know-how, we now have the ability to redefine what it means to be human. Through tools like artificial intelligence, robotics and especially genetics, science is playing a very high-stakes game in the homo sapien sandbox. The end result of this game will have massive implications for future generations.

A quick internet search of the term transhumanism reveals a host of good intentions. Phrases such as broadening human potential, overcoming aging and cognitive shortcomings, and eliminating suffering decorate articles highlighting the possibilities at our fingertips. Breakthroughs like thought-controlled robotic limbsor even regrowing natural limbsseem to make the decision to proceed a no-brainer. If we can do it, we must, as long as were careful, they say. An obligatory word of warning is usually inserted somewhere among the celebratory jargon about how we must never misuse these technologiesas if mankind would ever do such a thing? The question is; Are those who rule over us responsible enough to wield such power?

The power of our technology is being concentrated into the hands of the technocratic elite, and there is more at stake than the Terminator scenarios portrayed in Hollywood. There are deeper spiritual consequences underlying the transhumanist agenda, consequences that can have eternal ramifications. And this is why Steve Quayle and Timothy Alberino have decided to address the topic of Transhumanism and the Hybrid Age in this years True Legends Conference.

This raises another question: What exactly is a hybrid? The official definition reads as follows: a thing made by combining two different elements; a mixture. In our current context, would having a robotic arm make you a hybrid? Would this be a bad thing? I would not want to tell people needing a limb that they cannot have it for either their own good or the good of mankind. Nor deny the blind sight, or the diseased a cure via some amazing biotechnological breakthrough. Thats what makes this such a sticky issue. The cryptic phraseology in Genesis concerning Noah being perfect in his generations also gives me great pause. How is it that all flesh became corrupt in the pre-flood world? Was the rest of the worlds population a hybrid mix of some kind, an unholy amalgamation of beast, man and tech?

We are fast approaching an irreversible tipping point that will radically change society as we know it, and fundamentally redefine what it means to be a human being.

Darrin GeisingerTrue Legends 2018 Conference Coordinator

See the original post here:
What is Transhumanism? - GenSix Productions

Transhumanism is an international, cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition, by making available technologies that greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. [1]Many transhumanists believe in the compatibility between the human mind and computer hardware, with the implication that human consciousness can be transferred to alternative media, known as mind uploading. Since the Science of the Soul and the Consciousness functions of the spiritual bodies, have not yet been discovered by scientists, this has potentially extremely destructive consequences to human consciousness and the electromagnetic functions of the Lightbody. Posthumans (the result of applied transhumanist technologies) could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousness, or the result of making profound technological augmentations to a biological human.

Transhumanism is a school of thought that seeks to guide us towards a posthuman condition. Essentially, this is about creating artificially intelligent hybrids or cyborgs to replace the organic spiritual consciousness of humans. Some examples are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical technological enhancements. Some of the proposed biological enhancements are using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, brain mapping, wearable or implanted computers, and entrainment of cognitive techniques. Most of these options are designed to disconnect the human soul from the human body, and prepare the body to be used as a shell for a new host. Effectively, this is integrating technological and pharmaceutical hybridization to damage human DNA, as preparation for body snatching.

The fundamental basis of the Transhumanism concept is the A.I. downloaded into the scientific human mind from the Negative Aliens and Satanic Forces, in their quest to survive and achieve immortality by hijacking human consciousness and ultimately possessing the human host body. They do not have flesh and bone bodies and covet ours. Most academics are filled with a variety of mind control and alien implants to be a cog in the wheel to steadily enforce alien control systems. Most early transhumanism concepts were developed by geneticists interested in eugenics and sustaining life forms in synthetic environments. (Like the eugenic experiments similar to those of the Black Sun Nazis). A common feature of promoting transhumanism is the future vision of creating a new intelligent species, into which humanity will evolve and eventually, either supplement it or supersede it. This distraction on the surface is a scheme, while the underlying motivation is intending species extinction of what we know as humans today. Transhumanism stresses the evolutionary perspective, yet it completely ignores the electromagnetic function of human DNA and the consciousness reality of the multidimensional human soul-spirit. They claim to want to stop human suffering but have no idea of the alien machinery and mind control implants used to imprison human consciousness. They know nothing about the afterlife, what happens during the death of the body or even how the human body or Universe really works, yet they want to control every aspect of the human body with artificial technology.

A primary goal of many transhumanists is to convince the public that embracing radical technology and science is in the human species best interest. With the False God Alien Religions used to spread the rhetoric of fear and mindless obedience on one end, and the primarily atheistic science used to mock all things religious without any comprehension of true spiritual understanding on the other, they have the bases covered. Consciousness and spiritual groups are quickly labeled Conspiracy theorists by scientists to intimidate, discredit and shut us up. Obviously, until people have personal consciousness experiences outside of their body, have the ability to communicate with assorted lifeforms, such as deceased humans and travel to other dimensions, they have zero information about consciousness and are totally uninformed and ignorant about the nature of reality. None of these transhumanist people, are remotely qualified to be put in charge of scientifically directing the future evolution of the human species. Propping up egomaniacs and Psychopaths, and giving them power and control over world affairs and influence over public perception is the game of the NAA Controllers.

The true knowledge of the Sacred Sciences of the Soul and mechanics of human multidimensional consciousness have been obliterated from record and conveniently mind controlled out from the majority of sciences. If scientists integrate theories of the soul or consciousness outside of the consensus of the mind control standard, they risk ridicule and losing their funding and careers. Unfortunately, the controlled mainstream sciences do not recognize multiple dimensions of consciousness inherent in the functions of activated human DNA, or know that biological life and multidimensional human consciousness does not end on this earth. The quest for biological immortality on a prison planet is ludicrous when experiencing the capability of human multidimensional consciousness. After the human body expires, if the undeveloped and disembodied consciousness is merged and assimilated into artificial intelligence, the remnants of that human soul will not have a human body to incarnate into any longer. Hence, that person will lose their connection to organic spiritual biology and cease to be human. Transhumanism is a Consciousness Trap. [2]

Since the persons Consciousness has not been prepared for the afterlife, whatever is left of his energetic quanta will be assimilated into a cyborg body or other types of synthetic life forms or EBEs. There are currently spiritually disconnected humans existing on the earth that will be assimilated into synthetic life forms that appear as Extraterrestrial Biological Entities, but were actually human souls in human bodies in past timelines. Most of the smaller EBE bodies assimilate nutrients from light similar to plants. They are unable to evolve, reproduce, ascend or move into higher dimensions of consciousness. Some of these EBEs have returned to the earth from the future to try to break into the human genetic code, in this earth timeline in order to save themselves. Many of these EBEs were once humans that were involved in the Orion Wars, and were captured in Orion and used in worker colonies. Some from the earth were enslaved on the astral plane by other races of creatures, such as Mantids, Grey Aliens and Reptilians that took them as workers to other planetary systems. Some are even used as minions for carrying out human abductions in MILABS soul transference projects. Many of them had their consciousness erased and they do not remember that they were once human.

This is one of the possible results of the Transhumanism movement underway in this earth timeline now, that leads to the potential future alien or dark force control over that Soul. Once the consciousness is assimilated into artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, that being can no longer incarnate into an organic human form. That person cannot incarnate again into human realms, such as planet earth. They become a displaced entity that cannot die and be reborn into another identity they are enslaved and merged with an AI hive mind. This is desired by many of these negative groups, such as the Alpha Draconis/Orion Group, as then they have full control over the life force of humans that can be made into worker slaves. This is the main purpose as to why Transhumanism is being marketed and pushed aggressively during this time, they want to create more human EBEs and cyborgs or host bodies. When that person drops their body while the Universal Gates are open, they can easily be transported to many different planetary systems for trading as a workforce commodity.[3]

The term directed evolution is used within the transhumanist community to refer to the idea of applying the principles of directed evolution and experimental evolution to the control of human evolution. This has its base in Eugenics theories.

When we look at the larger Galactic picture of consciousness enslavement, we see the NAA's many pronged agenda to target the Brain, CNS and thought forms of every person on earth. Through the agenda of Transhumanism, we see the promotion of hybridization and synthetic integration with artificial neural networks for control over the CNS and Brain. What is starting to surface with more clarity is that our human Neurobiology is wired for empathy, which connects us to higher consciousness and has a spiritual function. The NAA and their minions of soulless AI infected synthetic beings do not have the bio-circuitry for empathy. We are in essence, in a struggle between human EMPATHS, and alien hybridized humans and extra-dimensional aliens that are NON-EMPATHS. [4]

Archontic Deception Behavior

SPE

Luciferian

Satanic

NAA

Human Trafficking

Read the original here:
Transhumanism - Ascension Glossary

If science and technology are left totally free, mankind can achieve an enhanced, transhuman future, rid of all pain and even free of death except by choice. At least that was the view of some 150 scientists, philosophers and engineers at the recent TransVision 2004 conference at the University of Toronto. The conference did not target only the U.S. Christian right for opposing such things as stem cell research. It challenged every faith community that believes a human being is more than just one more biological product. The weekend of Aug. 7 was organized by the World Transhumanist Association. In 2005 its conference will be in Caracas, Venezuela, where this small band of transhumanists will continue to challenge all larger faith communities to review what they have to say about a brave new world that would carry us far beyond the engineered manipulations that seemed so distant when Aldous Huxley wrote in 1932 about creating babies in test tubes.

The six-year-old W.T.A. has nearly 3,000 members, two-thirds of them in the United States. Most are male engineers, philosophers and research scientists. Co-sponsors of the Toronto conference included a number of similar organizations that exist mainly as stylish Web sites mounted by small groups with names like Betterhumans, Extrophy Institute and Immortality Institute.

Advertisement

For Nick Bostrom, co-founder of W.T.A. and an Oxford University philosopher, transhumanism is a new paradigm for thinking about humankinds future that rejects the assumption that human nature cannot be changed. Transhumanists, who include computer scientists, neuroscientists, nanotechnologists and researchers working at the forefront of technological development, believe that we can and should try to overcome all our biological limitations by means of reason, science and technology. They seek complete freedom to use new technology to augment intelligence, increase human strength and beauty, bring about sustainable mood enhancements, prolong life greatly and make it possible to leave the earth and explore and inhabit space.

David Pearce, who joined Bostrom in founding the W.T.A., predicted in an article published in 1977, The Hedonistic Imperative, that with genetic engineering and nanotechnology our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.

Perhaps because the transhumanist message is disseminated mostly over the Internet, and perhaps also because of the W.T.A.s call for total freedom in scientific exploration and technical engineering, many of the nonmember participants in the Toronto weekend were university students preparing for high-tech careers. The conference made the faith views of the transhumanists easily accessible to these students.

The Toronto conference had just ended when it was announced on Aug. 11 that a Newcastle University team had been given a license in Britain to clone human embryos for therapeutic research purposes. The following weekend, Lux Research, a consulting company that studies nanotechnology, reported that corporations, governments, universities and others will spend an estimated $8.6 billion (U.S.) on such research and development in 2004, more than double the estimated $3-billion level of 2003. (Nanotechnology is used to build products out of components whose size is less than 100 nanometers, usually designer molecules. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter; the word is derived from the Greek root nano, which means dwarf.) The vision of the late physicist Richard Feynman, who proposed in 1959 that molecular manufacturing processes would make possible digital control of the structure of matter, is now becoming a reality in laboratories.

Because foreseeable innovations might enhance human life beyond all present constraints of disease or aging, there should be no limits whatever on new technologies, according to the self-styled transhumanists, who describe themselves mainly as avowed atheists with a libertarian bent.

The Toronto conference was their latest collective effort to win public support for their viewpoint. They talked about the creation of entities with greater than present-day human intelligence. One session looked at quantum miracles and immortality, another at a kinematic cellular automata approach to building self-replicating nanomachines. One of the few women W.T.A. members talked about posthuman prototypes debating their own design.

There was some questioning and debate amid their optimistic reports. There was both scornful criticism and tentative support of the U.S. presidents Council on Bioethics and its cautionary stance. Questions arising directly from religion fared less well. Christian resistance to some new techniques was characterized at one point as a Luddite dragging in of Trojan horses.

Yet, as a sign of some openness for dialogue, the Toronto conference began with a day described as a conversation between religion and transhumanism. This was a sequel to a similar workshop in July on a post-human-future, organized by the Ian Ramsey Centre, part of the theology faculty at the University of Oxford. In Toronto, however, many religious families were not represented, and those who did present some Buddhist and Christian reflections were also paid-up transhumanist members.

Tihamer Toth-Fejel, a research engineer with General Dynamics, identified himself as a Catholic. He noted without comment from any other conference participant that transhumanism is somewhat a product of secular humanism, which blindly rejects God, dehumanizes us into animals, claims that no objective statements can be made about morality (except the one just made), and ignores that we are intrinsically valuable because we are made in the image and likeness of God.

In The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly (summer 2004), Toth-Fejel wrote that nanotechnology is only a tool and can be used for good or evil; the problem is that some significant opportunities made possible by precise molecular manipulationespecially within our own bodiesmay seem good but will actually be harmful to our humanity as persons. Enhancements that degrade our humanity are not good for us, because they contradict who we are as persons and, therefore, should be prohibited and discouraged. Our difficulty is in recognizing which enhancements are degrading us, discovering how this degradation occurs and, finally, finding the strength to resist the alluring promises they make.

Other questions about the limits of transhumanism arose during a presentation of work being done by the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto. Steve Mann, a pioneer in developing wearable computers to aid vision, stressed that his main interest was not to enhance human functions but to explore how technology mediates between people and the world around them. Robert Logan recalled Marshall McLuhans law that each technical medium enhances some human function but also causes obsolescence, replicates and reverses into its opposite. As an example, computers enhance information handling, replace typewriters, replicate libraries and bring on information overload. The ambiguity of new technologies can be seen in the recent report by Britains Environment Agency that Prozac, widely used as an antidepressant, is building up in the countrys river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.

There are many questions to discuss, therefore, with W.T.A. members. The views expressed by James Hughes, W.T.A.s executive director, suggest the difficulties involved in joining them in a dialogue that engages their own faith. Hughes, now a Buddhist, says that new medical technology should be governed only by the principles of liberal democracy: equality, liberty and solidarity. People have the right to control their own bodies, he contends, and efforts by government to control such things as euthanasia or gene manipulation are throwbacks to the authoritarianism of the church and totalitarian states...to dogma and fear.

For Hughes, the human embryo is not a person. It is a biological product, so we must think we can use it for good ends. Engineering genes is like using any other technology, and the precautionary principleDont do anything until you understand the long-term consequencesis Luddite. We are a society that learns. Physical safety is the only ground he would accept for limiting technology. He is sure, he said in a public debate in Toronto last year, that in about 400 years there will be people with green skin and four eyes who are devout Roman Catholics.

Hughes and others do not think of their transhumanism as a religion, but they maintain their faith in their worldview with religious zeal. For Catholics, therefore, dialogue with them could amount to the kind of interfaith dialogue that Pope John Paul II discussed in Article 68 of Pastores Gregis, his summary of the 2001 synod on the mission of bishops. Such dialogue, the pope said, belongs to the new evangelization, especially in these times when people belonging to different religions are increasingly living together in the same areas, in the same cities and their daily workplaces.

Therefore, one challenge of the new evangelization, especially for Catholic lay scientists and engineers, is to enter interfaith dialogue with transhumanists and like-minded people, perhaps especially over the Internet, searching for those seeds of the Word which lie hidden among them, rejecting nothing that is true and holy in what they have to say.

The second challenge is to clarify what to bring to this dialogue. Catholic scientists and engineers, the Second Vatican Council taught, are among those whose first and special vocation is to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs, like nanotechnology, and directing these developments according to Gods will. Is it Gods will that everything that can be done should be done?

Near the end of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley put todays transhumanist argument in the mouth of Mustapha Mond, the authoritative state representative. Industrial civilization, Mond says, is only possible when theres no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning. The challenge, then, is to develop counterarguments in favor of a human civilization with self-denial, with limits, with constraints. For that, there is an inescapable first question: What does it really mean to be human?

Read this article:
Transhumanism | America Magazine

Transhumanism is knocking at the door. Dubbed as Humanity+ or H+, the idea to radically revolutionize humanity has emerged in the last decades as a global intellectual movement. With a slogan of melding humans with the machine, it aims to radically alter human nature by means of technological advancement.

Transhumanists ask, 'If humans can interfere with the process of evolution, is it possible for us to create a human being with greater capacities than what we are now?'

Proponents of transhumanism envision a human that goes beyond its current biology and cognition. They are trying to move society into the next stage of human development where man achieves super-intelligence and emotional well-being. Transhumanists ask, If humans can interfere with the process of evolution, is it possible for us to create a human being with greater capacities than what we are now? Can we make a human species without weakness of disease and illness, anger and sadness, and ultimately overcome death itself?

Some see such technologically driven future as not just desirable, but a necessity. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX indicated an inevitability of humans to symbiotically bond with artificial intelligence, if the human species were to remain relevant. This call for humanitys radical makeover comes right at the midst of the digital age, where Homo sapiens, with the progress of science and technology is crossing the Rubicon, challenging physical boundaries and organic biological limitations.

The rapid expansion of technology in this new millennium radically transformed our social landscape. The modern life filled with information has placed everyone behind computer screens and cell phones. As society has become more abstract, it became virtual, fabricated with images that are dissociated from the facts and events of the world.

The beast of neoliberalism that has been devouring victims abroad is now finally coming home to roost. Now, ordinary Americans are suffering from unemployment, homelessness and lack of access to medical care.

In many ways, the recent hype of fake news reflects this counterfeit reality that we are all surrounded by. Waves of whistleblowers in recent years revealed that we live in a kind of simulation intervened by government and corporate media propaganda. The 2008 financial meltdown exposed the global economy, overdriven by the bubble of toxic assets and stocks that were propped up by central banks with their money made out of thin air. This Ponzi scam of financial engineering was further covered up by bank bailouts, creating a fake recovery.

Meanwhile, our democracy has been one big consumer fraud. We have been duped by psychopaths in power who pull the strings of puppet politicians. Civic power has been fragmented by a corporate duopoly, keeping the populace in false hope for change in the electoral arena. With tactics of divide and conquer, monetary elites behind the scenes trigger emotions, stirring conflicts among voters in a national tournament of identity politics. Once people are trapped by fear and hatred that are carefully manufactured, they easily lose sight of reality. Rather than finding commonality and building a coalition to solve problems, many engage in mutually assured self-destruction.

While the American working class is distracted by this political charade, the economy continues to stagnate, making the divide between the rich and poor ever wider. The beast of neoliberalism that has been devouring victims abroad is now finally coming home to roost. Now, ordinary Americans are suffering from unemployment, homelessness and lack of access to medical care. Young people are burdened with predatory student debt, where despite the promise of college recruiters, there are few viable jobs for them. Social services are defunded, throwing away elders, while a military budget gets fatter and fatter, with increased defense contracts for the never ending wars.

While political corruption is deepening the crisis of institutions and governments, Silicon Valley tech companies through lobbying have steadily gained influence in Washington. Now, technological innovation is pushed forward as a solution to the breakdown of social systems. From Apple and Google to Facebook, giant tech companies put a monopoly on AI, trying to control its development, so to dictate the course of our future. With the initiative of universal basic income (UBI), wealthy and elite technologists advocate for the creation of a robot economy where labor is replaced by automation.

This techno-utopia does not come for free. One has to pay a heavy price for the ticket to this supposed heaven on earth.

Here the radical vision of humanity 2.0 arises. The coming of a post-human era promises to alleviate suffering, make us stronger, more intelligent and godlike. Transhumanists try to bring eternal life through insemination of machine intelligence into the human body. By combining big data with AI software, the idea is already there for humanity to attain digital immortality, where one can develop mind clones of oneself that has its own life on the web. Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and futurist shares his aspiration of uploading a digital memory, creating a new pill that slows down peoples perception of time and drugs that can eliminate painful memories.

The idea of fusion with technology as a next stage in human evolution can speak to our own narcissism induced by social media attention culture. The H+ agenda can be marketed by appealing to ones desire for recognition, to be boundless and to attain mastery of oneself. Through social engineering, it will corral the herd and achieve mass adoption. Yet this techno-utopia does not come for free. One has to pay a heavy price for the ticket to this supposed heaven on earth. In the exchange to transcend human limitations, we are asked to give up the essence of being human. What are we expected to sacrifice on this altar of transcendence.

Humans are endowed with subjectivity that places them in relationship with the world. With this self-awareness, we are given freedom to determine the course of our own actions. While machines can only do what they are programmed to do, humans with intention can choose their actions and alter the situation through insight and creativity. This freedom releases spontaneity and variation, making the environment not fixed and unpredictable. At the same time, out of this comes the potential for errors. Choices expose men to the propensity for mistakes and make them fallible.

The AI trend of technological intervention of humanity now threatens this ability to make choices.

The AI trend of technological intervention of humanity now threatens this ability to make choices. Automation narrows and eliminates the space for humans to make their own decisions, locking society into a deterministic future. Through scientific and mathematical precision, the force of mechanization tries to remove possibilities for errors and by doing so, it deprives something essential about human beings.

What make us different from these artificial beings is our free will and unique learning processes that are associated with it. Our connection to the world binds us deeply to the consequences of our own choices. In a moment we make a mistake, reality blows up in our face and we are forced to see the results of what we have created. The feeling of shame and guilt that overwhelm us can break the heart wide open. The unbearable pain awakens ones moral sensibility. With these burning sensations, we directly experience our own actions and the effect they have on others lives.

When we confront our own mistakes with honesty, we can transform this sense of humiliation into humility. We learn to become humble. This connects us to other human beings, allowing us to see reality from their perspectives. This empathy makes us strive to mend our actions. It is the foundation of conscience that makes humans acknowledge their errors and inspire one another to repent, undo wrongdoing and learn.

It is this morality rooted in our relationship to the environment that corporate culture has been trying hard to eradicate. Agendas behind transhumanist movements can be seen as the ultimate goal of transnational corporations. The rise of corporate power turned civilization against nature. Multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations like Monsanto have assaulted life by monopolizing seeds and poisoning food with GMOs.

Corporations as artificial entities bring the force that hardens the heart. They assert themselves in society through the legal fiction of corporate personhood. The theater of the American Dream managed by big business has turned citizens into consumers, who are directed to find happiness in consumption and material acquisition. Unbridled greed of capitalism bombards all with ads and commercials, 24 hours 7 days a week, making us chase after products that we dont need and to be always cheerful, while suppressing sadness and deep dissatisfaction of life with antidepressant drugs. Ensnared by glamorous Hollywood life and a culture that worships youth, many engage in a pathological pursuit for perfection, to be beautiful, thin, and ageless.

In this fictional world, we are not humans. Workers are exploited, being treated as disposable with no benefits, while mega corporations look for the next cheap labor to exploit and new markets to make a killing. The merciless cyborg with its callous skin controls world finance, turning all living beings into caricatures in their tyrannical fantasy. In this artificial natural selection pushed forward by the invisible hands of the market, the cold algorithm enacts financial terrorism, dictating who should survive and who should die.

Now, in Trumps America, the fiction of corporate personhood finds a new iteration to make its dream great again. As the nation consolidates power with the new administration, we all become contestants in The Apprentice. In this grandiose Reality Show, we are told to mimic corporate personhood, to be cunning and self-serving or we will be fired. The world of Wall Street entices all to a path of personal power, filled with ambition, vanity and pride. Plundering through exploitative business practices and addictive gambling of high frequency trading becomes a way of life. Corruption is rife with rampant greed and sexual conquest.

Inside 9-5 office hours of white collar jobs, relationships became impersonal and transactional, where people are forced to hide real emotions behind professional masks. In this supposed free market competition that bars entry to immigrants, people of color and transgenders, workers are trained to mind their own business by climbing up the ladder of success in a rat race of profit at any cost. Deep inside the labyrinth of organizational hierarchies, we are cut off from our own authentic feelings and lose the ground of consensual reality. We no longer are held accountable by feedback of others.

The goal is no longer just total control of the world to create an ever more perfect world, but to control human nature itself by reprogramming our biology to create a perfect self.

Now, with depletion of resources and environmental destruction, the life of the American dream is becoming unsustainable. As the fantasy of corporate personhood is losing its fuel, it seems to be carried into a vision of techno-utopianism. Through mass surveillance and authoritarian use of police force, the corporate state has been attacking privacy and autonomy of individuals. From face recognition technology and biometrics used at borders to AI augmented cyber-security and auto flying drones, it further mechanizes this world. The goal is no longer just total control of the world to create an ever more perfect world, but to control human nature itself by reprogramming our biology to create a perfect self.

As the disfranchised middle class is slowly waking up from their insulated reality and starting to face their broken life, transhumanism offers all a short cut to nirvana. From the magic of genetic modification to the creation of the mind file, through making humans directly interface with the net, technology is presented to rescue us, trying to numb throbbing aches in the arteries that carry the ebb and flow of our human experience.

Transhumanist thinkers with technological enlightenment ideas declare the liberation of humanity from a cog in the wheel of the corporate machine, only to once again ensnare all in their Sci Fi illusory future. From self-driving cars to androids, robots that are designed to look and act like a human, artificial intelligence is here in everyday life, promising to make our life more convenient, efficient and safe. With a gospel of machine supremacy preaching perfection, increased dominance of technology can annihilate our free will that is a prerequisite for developing conscience.

With artificial nerves that cant carry the warmth of blood, robots mimic life in their synthetic existence. They are the phantoms that claim immortality, when they never even had a chance to truly live. These ghosts in the machine make us sever our ties to the world, by turning the heart into a pump that pushes out the pain of our mother in her giving birth to a child.

Our remembering of her pain that brought all of life makes us remain connected to her world. We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake, said renowned Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. He continued:

But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same; we are walking through the fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that its a commitment, its a true relationship.

Our ability to feel is a testimony of being human, allowing us to be a real person in this fake world. To be human is to live among flesh, being audaciously flawed. Our striving to bear our own pain awakens compassion. We are able to forgive ourselves and others. We find strength to love one another in our authenticity found in each others imperfection. This total acceptance of human errors connects us to potent creative power within that resists rigidity, mechanization and all stagnation, keeping the world alive through our relationship with her.

Humanity is now at a crossroads. With the exponential growth of technology, we have the capability to bring a great turning or destroy the world.

Humanity is now at a crossroads. With the exponential growth of technology, we have the capability to bring a great turning or destroy the world. Branches of science; technology, engineering, chemistry and medicine helped mankind overcome natural disaster and disease and live more comfortably in this harsh physical environment. Renewable energy technologies can help us create a sustainable future. These are tools that can be used for the good. They can reduce poverty and enhance the quality of our lives. But they can be also used against us and our ability to make choices needs to be preserved to determine which path we will take.

Transhumanism is marching on into our society, showing its footsteps everywhere. With iPad and Android, talking gadgets are entering into the crib, hijacking childhood imagination. Day and night technology snatches youngsters attention, plugging them into Instagram and Snapchat. As the expansion of this machine world accelerates, our life gets faster and faster, making it harder for us to be present in our own bodies.

We need to stay awake and not sleepwalk through this time of decision. Reality may be painful, but if we lose our own sense of reality by giving up what feels at the center of our hearts, it will be the death of our own selves. Such is a tragic loss of what it means to be human and the life of all on this planet that we are meant to steward.

See the original post here:
Transhumanism: A Final Corporate Takeover of Humanity

The future belongs to those who can afford it. This may be virtually true in todays world, where surviving retirement can feel impossible, but its also the literal premise of Altered Carbon, Netflixs new prestige sci-fi series. Based on Richard K. Morgans novel of same name, the neo-noir is set several hundred years in the future, when human consciousness has been digitized into microchip-like stacks constantly being swapped into and out of various bodies, or sleeves.

This technology, along with innovations like human cloning and artificial intelligence, has given society a quantum leap, but its also sent socioeconomic stratification into overdrive, creating dire new realities for the poor and incarcerated while simultaneously producing an elite upper-class. Called Metsshort for Methuselahsthe members of Altered Carbons 0.001 percent have achieved virtual immortality thanks to vaults of their own cloned sleeves and cloud backups full of their stacks. Its either dystopia or utopia, depending on ones bank account.

Whatever your views on the shows plot, in which a former rebel supersoldier named Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), on ice in a stack prison, is revived and hired by a Met to solve the murder of his last sleeve, Altered Carbons best quality is its worldbuilding. In the 25th century, transhumanismthe belief that human beings are destined to transcend their mortal flesh through technologyhas reached its full potential, and some of its end results are not pretty, at all.

But Altered Carbon is only the latest bit of transhumanism to hit TV recently. From Black Mirrors cookies and Philip K. Dicks Electric Dreams mind-invading telepaths and alien bodysnatchers to Star Trek: Discoverys surgical espionage and Travelers time-jumping consciousness, the classic tropes of body-hopping, body-swapping, and otherwise commandeering has exploded in an era on the brink, one in which longevity technology is accelerating more rapidly than ever, all while most people still trying to survive regular threats to basic corporeal health and safety.

These tropes have enjoyed a healthy existence in sci-fi and horror for decades, but now more than ever transhumanism is ubiquitous in pop culture, asking us to consider the ethical, personal, political, and economic implications of an ideology with a goalimplementing technology in the human body to prolong and improve lifethat is already beginning to take shape.

A crucial fact to remember about transhumanism and the philosophies it inspired, including the ones modeled by Altered Carbons Mets, is that its conception was heavily rooted in eugenics. Though earlier thinkers had already produced work one could call transhumanist today, the term wasnt coined until 1951, by Julian Huxley, a noted evolutionary biologist (and brother to Brave New World author Aldous Huxley). Julian Huxley believed strongly in the fundamentally exclusionary theory that society would improve immensely if only its best members were allowed to procreate. In the speech in which he first used the word transhumanism, he claimed that in order for humans to transcend the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, society ought to enact a concerted policy to prevent the present flood of population-increase from wrecking all our hopes for a better world.

While he didnt necessarily believe the criteria for what constituted best should be drawn along racial or economic lines, the ideology Huxley promoted was inherently elitist. It also allowed for virtually as many interpretations as there are people, and plenty of those people, particularly those in powerespecially in Huxleys time, but also in the fictional future of Altered Carbondid and do believe best means white, straight, financially successful, and at least nominally Christian. As a result, the concept he named ended up being primarily conceptualized in its infancy by white men of privilege.

This, of course, didnt remain the main interpretation of transhumanism for long. In the years following Huxleys coinage, humans made profound leaps in technological innovation, first in computers and then in AI, which allowed more people to envision the possibilities of one day being able to transcend their organic limitations. The basic concept was easily repurposed by those whose oppression has always been tied to physical violencenotably people of color, LGBTQ people, and women.

By the early 1980s, scholars like Natasha Vita-More and Donna Haraway had revamped the concept with manifestos that argued transhumanism ought to be about diversity and multiplicity, about breaking down constructs like gender, race, and ability in favor of a more fluid, chimeric alternative in which each person can be many seemingly contradictory things at onceincluding human and machine. (As WIREDs Julie Muncy explains in her review of the first season, Altered Carbon touches upon but never really takes a stance on this dimension of a post-corporeal world.)

As Silicon Valley boomed, so did transhumanism. Millionaire investors have poured endless cash into anti-aging research, machine intelligence companies, and virtual reality; meanwhile, the possibility of extended or superhuman life has veered even further into becoming the exclusive purview of the extremely rich (and, more often than not, extremely white and extremely male). In 1993, mathematician and science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge pegged the arrival of the singularitythe moment at which technology, particularly AI, supersedes human intelligence and either eliminates humanity or fuses with it, allowing people to finally become post-humanat around 2030; by 2005 futurist Ray Kurzweil was agreeing with Vinge in his now-seminal book The Singularity is Near. (The Verge has a solid timeline of transhumanist thought here.)

Today, working organs are being 3D-printed. Nanites, while a few years off, are definitely on the horizon. And the technologies that fuel nightmare fodder like Black Mirror are becoming realities almost daily, which gives the overwhelming impression to laypeople that the Singularity, while perhaps still technically far off, is imminent.

Add privatized healthcare, police brutality, immigration, sexual assault, and plenty more extremely real threats to peoples physical bodiesnot to mention the exponential growth of the TV industry itselfand youve got the perfect cocktail for a flood of transhumanist sci-fi shows that give form to anxieties viewers have about both wanting to escape the physical confines of their blood-bag existences and being absolutely, justifiably terrified of what could go wrong when they actually do.

But however uncomfortable it may be, that dilemma is not accidental. It has become necessary to understanding and surviving our current techno-political moment. Whether enjoying the ecstasy of possibility in Altered Carbons disembodied immortality or writhing in the agony of imagining eternity as a digital copy of ones own consciousness, the roller coaster of emotions these shows elicit ought to be a major signal to audiences that now is the time to be thinking about the cost of pursuing technological immortality. If stacks and sleeves are indeed our inevitable future, the moral quandary wont lie in the body-swapping itselfitll be reckoning with who gets to do it and why.

View original post here:
'Altered Carbon' and TV's New Wave of Transhumanism | WIRED

Gods Will Be Watching was de Paco's first attempt at infusing a video game with ethical and moral dilemmas, and it was a resounding success when it landed in 2014. Deconstructeam was thrust into a broader conversation about the power and creativity of indie games, and there was enough money in the bank to start working on the next thing. This time around, de Paco wanted to be more deliberate -- Gods Will Be Watching was unfiltered, and in the end, its message got away from him.

"With Gods Will Be Watching, I wasn't really aware of the power of video games as a storytelling medium or maybe as communicating a message, so I kind of just made the game and put a lot of my instinctive philosophy in there," de Paco said. "I realized that I accidentally made an anti-system game, in which you have to go against any form of authority, so this time I tried to actually be aware of what I am telling and what I'm doing with the game."

The result is a concise yet branching cyberpunk story about the awful power massive technology companies can assert over people's daily lives (and bodies and minds). Through this lens, de Paco asks players how far they would go to obtain or sustain happiness, and what it truly means to be human. When we lose our emotions, do we lose our humanity?

Although the game offers a range of answers in its dialogue trees, it doesn't actually wrap all of these questions up in a nice ethical bow. They're not meant to be answered; they're de Paco's grand social experiment, designed to provoke thought and conversation. And here, it seems The Red Strings Club has succeeded.

De Paco said the game itself takes about three or four hours to complete on a standard playthrough. However, many Twitch streamers end up playing for something like 10 hours because they spend most of the time talking through the game's direct questions with the live chat.

"It comes in really lengthy conversations about what if it's good or not to get rid of emotions, or how it might benefit society," de Paco said. "It's really great."

Some of the game's questions are far-fetched scenarios specific to this particular future, but others feel relevant to life today. Scientists may not have developed implants that can alter our character yet, but we enjoy a common stimulus in caffeine and a depressant in alcohol. We have pills that promise to calm, excite and otherwise change our moods. We play with our emotional states every day.

This is a harsh reality for de Paco: Two years ago, some close friends and family members started taking antidepressants, and the experience made him question the essence of humanity on a grand scale, sparking the theme of The Red Strings Club.

"It makes you wonder if they're still the same person or if they're happier or not," de Paco said. "For me, writing this kind of magic technology that is able to remove depression and everything was a way for myself to explore, to cope with the idea of people close to me being changed."

De Paco isn't on a mission to end the antidepressant industry. In fact, he wishes the effects of these drugs could be streamlined like in The Red Strings Club, allowing people to alter their moods like code. "I wouldn't mind to change that for an implant or maybe just changing a variable instead of having to go through the process of taking pills or being medicated," he said.

If he were given the option, de Paco wouldn't choose to remove any of his own negative emotions, arguing that would also eliminate a core part of his humanity. He's more into to the idea of digitizing his consciousness and ditching his body altogether.

"I would totally love to digitize myself," de Paco said. "I wouldn't mind not having this body, if I can feel pleasure, and, I don't know, take digital drugs or something like that. I would like to be digitized, but I wouldn't like to lose any of the aspects of my mind. I don't like being depressed, but usually being depressed is a way to know something is wrong and you have to do something about it. If I take those things from me, it's like I would lose my ability to discern what's good and bad."

Not that de Paco knows what's good and bad now -- he's still asking questions about the essence of humanity and observing his social experiments across Twitch, Steam and social media. He's still figuring it out. So is everyone else.

Read this article:
'The Red Strings Club' explores the morality of transhumanism

The Shinar DirectivePart 2

Posted on December 7, 2014

Published: December 07, 2014

by Dr. Michael Lake

In chapter two of The Shinar Directive, we uncover a gold mine of information encoded into the stories presented in the Torah (especially in the book of Genesis). The sages of Israel understood these hidden mysteries and taught that it would take a faithful student of the Word a lifetime just to discover some of the secrets God presented to us in Genesis 13.

Over the years, several of my students have attempted to develop an exhaustive study of the book of Genesis for their doctoral dissertations. As they examined the original language of the Hebrew text and discovered such a treasure trove of information, they concluded that their dissertations could only cover a fraction of what is available in just the first chapter. Even then, many of their papers far surpassed the required standard length of a doctoral dissertation. What God can say in one sentence can become a lifetime of study for any serious student of the Word.

The perfect example of the power of one sentence from God is when Jesus made a seemingly simple statement in Matthew 24:37:

But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. (Matthew 24:37)

Jesus was speaking of the last days. In the verse that preceded this statement, we find:

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. (Matthew 24:36)

Since we have been so deprived of our Hebraic heritage, most students of the Bible miss the fact that Jesus had just used a Hebraic idiom that connected what He was sharing with the Feast of Trumpets. The language He continued to use in verses 4042 confirms this fact for those who use the tools of hermeneutical[i] research to understand the cultural setting in which Jesus taught. Although the purpose of this chapter is not to teach on the importance of cultural idioms[ii] and their proper use within our exegetical[iii] exercises to glean truth from the Word of God, I hope I have sparked your interest enough to promote expansion of your hermeneutical toolbox. We need to realize that Jesus did not minister in the streets of Detroit or the country hills of Kentucky. He spoke to a culture that had a deep and enriched heritage cultivated by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and nourished by a study of Torah. Biblical scholar Dr. John Garr makes this observation regarding our habitual dismissal of the cultural setting in our interpretative processes:

The problem is that practically all societies and people groups have read their own concepts and cultures into the Bible rather than drawing out of the Holy Scriptures the truths that have always been there. The churchs approach to Holy Writ has been ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. When interpreting the Bible, Christians have engaged in eisegesis rather than exegesis by injecting their preconceived notions into Scripture rather than extracting from the text what it clearly says.

Texts without context have become pretexts for proof texts! The grammar of the Scriptures (the Hebrew language of the first testament and the Hebrew thought underlying the Greek language of the second testament) has been largely minimized if not downright ignored. Likewise, the history and culture of the people through whom and to whom the sacred texts were committed have been virtually ignored. Entire theologies have been based upon a criterion of dissimilarity in which texts in the Apostolic Scriptures that have clear connections with the Hebrew Scriptures have been dismissed by some scholars as not being the authentic words of Jesus and the apostles but the work of subsequent redactors. It is as though Jesus had to have been born and lived in a vacuum and never influenced by his native language and culture. The very idea has given rise to a Christianity that has been wretched from its theological and historical moorings and set adrift in a maelstrom of nonbiblicalin far too many cases, anti-Biblicaltraditions, including postmodernism, consequentialism, secular humanism, and even demonic perversion.[iv]

If the cultural context within Scripture is so essential to the formation of the practics of our faith, is it not equally paramount in our understanding of Bible prophecy? Such casual dismissals caused prophecy teachers in the past century to declare anyone teaching that Israel would once again become a nation as a promoter of heresy. When Israel became a nation overnight in 1948, it shook the very foundations of many evangelical prophecy ministries worldwide. We need to learn from these mistakes and incorporate a Hebraic understanding into our hermeneutical process.

I said all of that to make a point: When Jesus spoke of the days of Noah, it served as a memory trigger to all of the hearers who could tap into over one thousand years of teaching regarding every aspect of the Noah narrative. In the times of Jesus, there were not chapters and verses to Scripture; these would not be added until the twelfth century by Stephen Langton with the introduction of the Latin Vulgate Bible. The sages of Israel would use a word or phrase to take the hearers to the portion of Scripture they were referring to. This is especially true with the Torah. Thus, as diligent students of Gods Word, we must labor to hear with Hebraic ears and dig deep into Noahs story to properly ascertain all that Jesus was referring to. Which was

1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. 5And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:18)

So many things seem to jump off the page as I approach these verses. Before I fully dive into the story of Noah, I want to touch on a biblical conundrum for the Transhumanist Movement contained within these passages of Holy Writ. In verse 3, God declares that He is going to limit the lifespan of man to 120 years. As we examine the text, we find as a mission of grace to mankind, Noah spent 120 years preaching repentance and building the ark. It was only after the canopy over the earth was broken up by God that the Flood came, and with it the dynamic changing of earths environment, which reduced mans lifespan. Prior to the Flood, according to biblical record, men would not even begin to have children until they approached their eighties or older! Now God sets the time limit to a mans life based on the number of years that Noah preached of the coming destruction and the need for repentance. (This also serves as a prophetic warning that there is a limit to how long God will extend His grace toward men.) The more time sinful man had to live and learn, the deeper he would become entrenched with the knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil. If given enough time, mans insatiable appetite for dark knowledge would transform earth into a literal hell that God could not tolerate. Today, transhumanists[v] are endeavoring to circumvent Gods restraints on our lifespan. From what I have read in their literature, this is one of their primary goals. Seventy, eighty, or even one hundred and twenty years are not enough for them. While they lament over global warming and the perils of overpopulation, they seek to provide only a chosen few the opportunity to live hundreds of years, if not obtain near immortality. With the exponential acceleration of knowledge in the last days and the possibility of extending the life span of the Luciferian Elite, they may well have the time needed to thwart Gods intervention in Genesis 6! You see, God shortening mans lifespan to 120 years (and then later to seventy to eighty) was not a judgment against humanity; it was an expression of His grace toward all mankind.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

I want to examine verses 4 and 5 in a manner that is similar to a physicians diagnostic procedure: He would examine the presenting symptoms. Symptomology can be used in medicine and nutrition, and even in examining the health of a civilization. If certain symptoms are present in a patient, it will point toward the underlying disease that caused it. There is an intertwining aspect within the text of the corrupt Sons of God (Bene Elohim), the development of hybrid offspring, and the explosive evil within mens hearts. This wickedness that manifested within mankind was declared as great by God. In Hebrew, the word for great is rab (rab). This word means abounding, strong, exceedingly, and more numerous than.[vi] When evil has become so strong that it abounds throughout humanity and its perpetrators are more numerous than the righteous, it is a presenting sociological symptom of interference by the fallen Bene Elohim. (More on this later in both the new book The Shinar Directive as well as an upcoming online entry dedicated to the Communion with Darkness.)

That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. (Genesis 6:2)

There is great speculation regarding the identity of the Sons of God in Genesis 6:2. I prefer the traditional Hebraic view that these were angels and not men. Some would argue today that the sons of God represented the descendants of Seth. Dr. Chuck Missler explains the origin of the Sethite theory:

The strange events recorded in Genesis 6 were understood by the ancient rabbinical sources, as well as the Septuagint translators, as referring to fallen angels procreating weird hybrid offspring with human women-known as the Nephilim. So it was also understood by the early church fathers. These bizarre events are also echoed in the legends and myths of every ancient culture upon the earth: the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the South Sea Islanders, the American Indians, and virtually all the others.

However, many students of the Bible have been taught that this passage in Genesis 6 actually refers to a failure to keep the faithful lines of Seth separate from the worldly line of Cain. The idea has been advanced that after Cain killed Abel, the line of Seth remained separate and faithful, but the line of Cain turned ungodly and rebellious. The Sons of God are deemed to refer to leadership in the line of Seth; the daughters of men is deemed restricted to the line of Cain. The resulting marriages ostensibly blurred an inferred separation between them. (Why the resulting offspring are called the Nephilim remains without any clear explanation.)

Since Jesus prophesied, As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be, it becomes essential to understand what these days included.

Origin of the Sethite View

It was in the 5th Century A.D. that the angel interpretation of Genesis 6 was increasingly viewed as an embarrassment when attacked by critics. (Furthermore, the worship of angels had begun within the church. Also, celibacy had also become an institution of the church. The angel view of Genesis 6 was feared as impacting these views.)

Celsus and Julian the Apostate used the traditional angel belief to attack Christianity. Julius Africanus resorted to the Sethite interpretation as a more comfortable ground. Cyril of Alexandria also repudiated the orthodox angel position with the line of Seth interpretation. Augustine also embraced the Sethite theory and thus it prevailed into the Middle Ages. It is still widely taught today among many churches who find the literal angel view a bit disturbing. There are many outstanding Bible teachers who still defend this view.[vii]

In my own personal research, I have concluded that Dr. Missler is correct. All of the sages of Israel and the early Church fathers concluded that the sons of God referred to some category of angel and not righteous men. It should also be noted that, in the rabbinical literature of today, these sons of God are still interpreted as fallen angels as well. The only deviation from this interpretation is within Catholic theology and the Protestant theology that was influenced by Rome.

George H. Pember, in his classic work written in late 1800s, Earths Earliest Ages, came to the same conclusion:

These words are often explained to signify nothing more than the intermarriage of the descendants of Cain and Seth: but a careful examination of the passage will elicit a far deeper meaning.

When men, we are told, began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the sons of God saw the daughters of men. Now by men in each case the whole human race is evidently signified, the descendants of Cain and Seth alike. Hence the sons of God are plainly distinguished from the generation of Adam.

Again; the expression sons of God (Elohim) occurs four times in other parts of the Old Testament, and is in each of these cases indisputably used of angelic beings.[viii]

To me, the concept of producing giants by the marriage of godly men with corrupt women is far-fetched. If that were the case, we would have giants living among us today. It is obvious that something more was going onsomething supernatural.

What this has to do with The Shinar Directive is centrally important, and not just for ancient days but the near future as well, regardless how incredible that may seem.

CONTINUED IN NEXT ENTRY

[i] Hermeneutical or hermeneutics: the study of the methodological principles of interpretation (as of the Bible).

[ii] Idiom: a form of a language that is spoken in a particular area and that uses some of its own words, grammar, and pronunciations.

[iii] Exegetical or exegesis: an explanation or critical interpretation of a text.

[iv] John D. Garr, Family Worship: Making Your Home a House of God (Atlanta: Golden Key Press, 2013) 1213.

[v] Transhumanist (abbreviated as H+ or h+): an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

[vi] Strongs, # H07227.

[vii] Chuck Missler, Mischievous Angels or Sethites? http://www.khouse.org/articles/1997/110/.

[viii] George H. Pember, Earths Earliest Ages (Crane, MO: Defender, 2012)175176.

Originally posted here:
transhumanism Biblical Life Assembly