Christian anti-transhumanist manifesto

Here's a Christian manifesto on combating the siren song of transhumanism; it isn't for nothing that Ken MacLeod calls the Singularity the "rapture of the nerds," it really represents a kind of secular, techno-transcendentalism. It's not just reactionary hand-wringing, either; there's some meaty questions about bioethics, a transhuman divide between the rich and the poor; gene patents, and the rights of uplifted organisms:

Where biotechnology is ultimately headed includes not only redefining what it means to be human, but redefining subsequent human rights as well. For instance, Dr. James Hughes, whom I have debated on his syndicated Changesurfer Radio show, wants transgenic chimps and great apes uplifted genetically so that they achieve "personhood." The underlying goal behind this theory would be to establish that basic cognitive aptitude should equal "personhood" and that this "cognitive standard" and not "human-ness" should be the key to constitutional protections and privileges. Among other things, this would lead to nonhuman "persons" and "nonperson" humans, unhinging the existing argument behind intrinsic sanctity of human life and paving the way for such things as harvesting organs from people like Terry Schiavo whenever the loss of cognitive ability equals the dispossession of "personhood." These would be the first victims of transhumanism, according to Prof. Francis Fukuyama, concerning who does or does not qualify as fully human and is thus represented by the founding concept that "all men are created equal." Most would argue that any human fits this bill, but women and blacks were not included in these rights in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. So who is to say what protections can be automatically assumed in an age when human biology is altered and when personhood theory challenges what bioethicists like Wesley J. Smith champion as "human exceptionalism": the idea that human beings carry special moral status in nature and special rights, such as the right to life, plus unique responsibilities, such as stewardship of the environment. Some, but not all, believers in human exceptionalism arrive at this concept from a biblical worldview based on Genesis 1:26, which says, "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.'"

AN OPEN LETTER TO CHRISTIAN LEADERS ON BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF MAN (via Beyond the Beyond)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Quite a few humans I’ve met can barely be recognized as “responsible for their own actions”. And are as such in name only. This is typically an assumed quality more so than a practiced quality. But it’s a person’s natural entitlement to decide how much they want to give a damn about their actions. Whether or not that entitlement fits into the laws of a given land is another matter.

Technology and science are going to move forward. That’s kind of what it does. Saying “thou shalt not” with respect to a given area of study will only slow things down. Some other country somewhere will develop the technology. We will end up waving a finger at the developers and anyone that misuses the technology, while buying products/services/benefits of that same technology some time down the road. Anything with any interest will get developed at some pace or another. What we need to do is recognize this when some new area of study comes up or gets forked, and develop policy regrading it from the outset.

We also need to stop pretending we are nature’s special children. We were not wanted/desired/planned, we just kind of happened somewhere along the way. The desire to put ourselves first and subjugate any other form of sentience that arises, especially if it’s due to our intervention (“enhanced” animals) or creation (artificial intelligence), is almost reflexive. While we are entitled to choose our paths in life as a result of free thinking, we are not entitled to a special spot in the universe. If we do go around granting sentience to creatures/things, we better be ready to treat them like more than toys. Judging by man’s history, I honestly think we’d do our damndest to keep anything of the sort under our feet and under our control. And it’s a pity.

That’s just my 2 cents. Not even going to touch the religion aspect of it.

-Igg
- JaxS
  
  I agree with much of what you say, except I don’t think it’s a pity that we want to control and use other organisms to our own advantage. If we did not have this clearly adaptive trait we would not now exist except in a magical fairy land where everything is fair for everything.
  
  The simple and brutal truth is that if humans didn’t follow this path another species would have and we would not now be enjoying the comfortable life near the top of the food-chain.
Anonymous

No matter what we are talking about, deciding how to treat it should depend on two things: would you want yourself / a similar being to yourself treated this way, and is there a sufficient difference between yourself and the thing that warrants treating it differently? I think this pretty much covers moral treatment of any conceivable anything. (And it doesn’t depend on religion/history in general.)
udqbpn

No matter what we are talking about, deciding how to treat it should depend on two things: would you want yourself / a similar being to yourself treated this way, and is there a sufficient difference between yourself and the thing that warrants treating it differently? I think this pretty much covers moral treatment of any conceivable anything. (And it doesn’t depend on religion/history in general.)
Peter K.

The article does hit most of the concerns I’ve always had with near-singularity advancement. But man it makes me cringe whenever someone mentions the year 2012. It’s just the next millennial meme and bringing it up casts a shadow over everything else you’re talking about.

Any scientist who brings up a specific future date as the time when some specific technological advance (or set thereof) will change the culture in a dramatic way generally appears to be speculating wildly. And any time a date for the apocalypse is brought up by another Christian it makes me wonder what part of “know neither the day nor the hour” they don’t understand.
mtreder

Click below for a response commentary from Dr. Patrick Lin, an IEET Fellow whose NSF report Tom Horn hijacked for his dire warning to Christians:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/lin20100921
bshock

Sorry, just a little ad hominem reactionary hand-wringing: why is anyone still listening to Francis Fukuyama?

Isn’t he like the social sciences version of William Kristol — blatantly, demonstrably, destructively wrong in every major proposition?

Oh, that’s right — history really did end when the Soviet Union fell. Yeah, good luck with that, professor.
- sapere_aude
  
  Very few people are still listening to Fukuyama; but perhaps they should be. The few of us who do still take his “end of history” thesis seriously have actually read what Fukuyama has written on the subject (instead of getting our information secondhand from his critics), and have understood what he was actually saying (instead of buying into the straw man caricatures of his claims that his critics love to ridicule).
  
  Fukuyama never said that history would end with the fall of the Soviet Union. Rather, he said that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism herald the ultimate triumph of Liberalism over its ideological competitors (Communism, Fascism, Absolutist Monarchism, etc.). He said that the entire world would eventually embrace Liberalism, because Liberalism is the inevitable byproduct of modernization, and all nations want to share in the material benefits that only modernization can provide. He also said that it may take generations before the entire world fully modernizes and liberalizes; and that there would be many struggles and difficulties along the way. Most notably, he pointed out that there would still be lots of resistance from conservative and fundamentalist forces, especially in the Muslim world, who reject modernization and abhor Liberalism. But, he argued, that the ultimate victory of Liberalism was virtually guaranteed in the long run.
  
  The “end of history” that Fukuyama wrote about was based on Hegel’s idea that “history” is simply the battle of big ideas; and that, in the end, one of these big ideas would emerge supreme, having defeated all its rivals. Fukuyama argued that, with the end of the Cold War, this “end of history” could now be anticipated; and it was already clear which big idea would finally emerge as the undisputed winner: Liberalism. However, he made it very clear that this would not happen for a long time to come, and that there would still be many clashes ahead. (And, even when the “end of history” finally arrives, that wouldn’t mean the end of all conflict; only the end of ideological conflict. People and nations would still have competing interests.)
  
  Fukuyama’s thesis can be falsified only if you can point to clear evidence that (a) the trend toward modernization, globalization, and the spread of liberal democracy, market economics, and greater respect for human rights and the rule of law that has been going on around the world for well over half a century is finally coming to an end and will ultimately reverse; (b) there has been a significant resurgence of Communism, Fascism, or Absolutist Monarchism in the world; or (c) a new ideology is emerging that might give Liberalism a run for its money. Personally, I’ve seen no clear evidence of any of these things. (And, no, I don’t see Islamism or other forms of religious Fundamentalism as potential long-term competitors to Liberalism; since they are too exclusive, too restrictive, and too anti-modern, and thus lack the popular appeal of Liberalism.)
  
  The critics who point to 9/11 and the “War on Terror” as evidence that Fukuyama was wrong remind me of the climate change deniers last winter who pointed to blizzards as evidence that global warming is a sham, or creationists who insist that the theory of evolution can’t be true because there are still monkeys in the world who haven’t yet turned into humans. These people don’t really understand the theory they are criticizing; so they are making claims that sound patently absurd to anyone who does understand the theory. Popular criticisms of Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis are every bit as absurd.
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    Thank you for that.
    For more on Hegel:
    
    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/
    
    IIRC, Marx claimed that in his works he had “put Hegel on his head”: in some sense, Hegel was a fore-runner to Marx – perhaps Hegel was like the father, and Marx was like the rebellious, yet bright, son.
dequeued

Bwhaha, you’ve only touched on the tip of the iceberg.

There are far more Christians on the internet who are terrified of trans-humanists, than there are, actual trans-humanists.

I’ve seen 700+ comments in LOOONG blog posts analyzing frame by frame music videos.
But that’s probably more in the vein of the “New World Order” believers.
JoshuaZ

The “rapture of the nerds” claim isn’t accurate at all. It brings in bad emotions that have nothing to do with transhumanism or the Singularity. The vast majority of Singularitarians don’t think that there’s only going to be good stuff for the people who believed. They specifically hope for a Singularity that will benefit everyone.

Incidentally, most of the arguments in this essay are ones which are not at all original and are easily refuted. For example, the argument that there will be a rich-poor divide as a result is empirically bad since improvements to tech level raise the boat for everyone generally. The argument is also just stupid as can be seen by the fact that no one would use this as an argument to stop researching new medicine or improving any other technology that benefits rich people before it benefits the rest of the population.
svensPalm

Charles Stross: Accelerando
Jesse M.

These people believe in objective moral truths, no? Interesting that their response to a morally ambiguous scenario like uplifted chimpanzees is not “let’s try to figure out what the morally correct attitude towards such beings would be” but simply “let’s make sure this never occurs so that we never have to have our moral certitude sullied by ambiguity!” Obviously it’s fine for them to say the creation of such beings would itself be an immoral act, but what if it were a fait accompli? According to them, since intelligent chimps weren’t “created in God’s image” would it be OK to enslave them, use them for medical testing, eat them, etc., even if their intelligence was completely equal to that of a human’s? On the other hand, if they would grudgingly admit that such a being would deserve human rights, that suggests that their notion that human rights flow simply from our being created in God’s image is not something they actually believe in a wholly consistent way…

Also interesting that they only consider things like genetic engineering and mind/machine interfaces, but give no consideration to things like A.I. or mind uploading…I’d guess they don’t bother because they’re so sure of the existence of a “soul” that they think no computer program could ever show genuine intelligence…
edinblack

This is the guy who’s worried that genetic experiments will release the demons of the Bible.

See: “Genetic Engineering May Release Giant Demons, Author Warns (Sept 2008)”
http://multitude.tv/content/view/455/60/
zapan

On a side note, the french word “Transhumance” illustrated on this villa decorative plate, have nothing to do with transhumanism, but more with seasonal migration of sheep herds in the Alps.

Still an appropriate metaphor could be made, abut the human herd and it’s political elite sheperds, unaware of the straying heralds of a new species of humans roaming free in secret digital valleys.
jjsaul

Considered from the most basic perspective, that horse done r-u-n-n-o-f-t. When did he want us to slam the barn door closed? Antibiotics? Corrective lenses for vision? Writing? Agriculture?
- Anonymous
  
  Walking upright?
Anonymous

So, the basic objection is that transhumanism would change our “exceptionalism” i.e. pompous baseless moral belief that humans are the epicentre of the universe, the sole purpose for propping up all the galaxies, stars, planets, for the enourmous spans of time that have passed since the world came to be, for all living things on earth. It was all stage setting for the ones who really count: we we we! We humans have the divine right to torture, enslave and kill any number of other sentient beings for almost any trivial purpose just because they are Others and not God’s favourites (God who, luckily, also place us front and center as the crown of all creation). In addition, transhumanism would also, according to the article, allow for use of our organs to save the lives of others after our own death.

My assessment of all that: two fullhearted cheers for transhumanism! BRING IT ON!
P. Lund

Can’t wait to see the Papal Bull on Robot Baptism
Derek C. F. Pegritz

I’ve already placed this idiot on my list of potential subjects for testing out some new neural reprogramming nanotics. They’ll either cure him of his mental illness or devour his brain. Either way, the Pattern wins.
current

I see there have already been book recommendations, but I urge everyone interested in transhumanism/posthumanism to read Greg Egan, especially “Permutation City” – hard SciFi at its very best :)
pecoto

David Brin discusses some of these very issues in his excellent “Uplift Wars” books. In the future he presents, mankind has already “uplifted” chimpanzees, dogs and dolphins to be sentient species in their own right. I think we would be foolish to discount the usefulness of potentially creating other sentient beings to inhabit the universe with us……if for no other reason than that until we have a genuine “first contact”, we are very very alone out here. It seems foolish and a bit short-sighted (not to mention egotistical) to assume only our species is capable (or deserves) sentience.
Anonymous

Time to re-read Cordwainer Smith. http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/
timothystotz

cf. Beneath the Planet of the Apes
knoxblox

Sorry to be nitpicky, but it’s “hand-wringing”, like wringing a towel dry.
- Tdawwg
  
  But how posthuman, this bionic hand-ringing!
  - knoxblox
    
    Ah, but have you ever tried to spoon cereal with bells for hands?
tzarchameleon

Here’s the nightmare scenario I use to introduce this topic to other people:

Jimmy was born with an incurable and ultimately fatal genetic disorder. His parents are offered an opportunity to have their child “re-born” without the pesky offending genes that sealed his fate the first time. Mom and Dad take the offer, and Jimmy2 is born, as sweet and cute as he was before, but now with much better genetic hygiene. Mom and Dad are so excited, they tell the world about their miracle baby.

Now, enter Whack-Job. He’s angry about cloning, IVF, genetic manipulation, the works. He hears the about how happy the family is now, but all he can see is ABOMINATION. Whack-Job stalks Jimmy2 and his family, eventually killing little Jimmy2.

Is this murder? Or is it destruction of property? Is Jimmy2 a person, or a really expensive and cute science experiment?

Try it out sometime. You’ll have the most amazing conversations in the whole bar.
escowles

harvesting organs from people like Terry Schiavo

Assuming she filled out an organ donor card, I don’t see a problem with this.

Nor do I have a problem with recognizing rights in transgenic animals, aliens, AIs, etc. that can be responsible for their actions. We’ve so far only encountered people who meet that criteria. But that doesn’t mean we’ll never meet or create any other kind of life or consciousness in the future.
Anonymous

Are these people insane? With all sympathy for Snakedart, I cannot see justification for venturing into such unnatural biological abominations, all because you’re mystified by the male nipple. It’s just wrong.
GTMoogle

Sometimes I wonder if people don’t realize that “slippery slope” is a _fallacy_, not a tactic.
Anonymous

“…basic cognitive aptitude should equal “personhood” and that this “cognitive standard” and not “human-ness” should be the key to constitutional protections and privileges.”

whoa! that leaves out @least 1/2 the t-partiers;-)
prettyb

So far all I see in the comments is reactionary hand-wringing from technophiles :)

I’ve not finished reading the manifesto, but it does, as Cory notes, contain some very thorny questions that must be addressed. Has the atomic age not taught us that just because we *can* do something does not mean that we *should*?
- LiudvikasT
  
  It also thought us, that whatever can be done, will be done. So why not do it ourselves?
makuus

Although I’m sure someone will argue to the contrary, I don’t believe that corporations were made in God’s image. And yet, they are accorded this quality of “personhood” and the rights and privileges pertaining thereto… So, what’s the big deal here?
Prufrock451

They do raise interesting points, and I look forward to a temporary ethical transplant to thoroughly examine their viewpoint when I visit their polis after I’m uploaded.
snakedart

And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’

Since Christians have yet to explain to me why God has useless nipples, or, if not, why he saw fit to put them on me (a male), I’d certainly support any effort to engineer them away, for the benefit of future generations.
- Anonymous
  
  Oh you poor sheltered soul er… I mean sentient entity. Nipples aren’t useless. They’re lots of fun. YOu can check it out for yourself with some primary research or just Google it.
- LiudvikasT
  
  Dude, no, I love my man-nipples. :D
- Anonymous
  
  They break up the blankness of the male chest. Didn’t you read Glory Road?
  
  Nobody reads any more. Barbarians.
- Brainspore
  
  What makes you think God’s nipples are useless? Maybe that’s where rainbows come from or something.
- Anonymous
  
  You don’t use them?
  
  Try it. You might like it. Or is it against the guy-code?
  - Anonymous
    
    Any uses they have is compensated for by drunk guys trying to pinch them off. I have no idea why that’s part of bonding.
- Robert
  
  Pfft, let me tell you about God. God isn’t interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look at how he spends his time: forty-three species of parrots. Nipples for men! Slugs? He created slugs? They can’t hear. They can’t speak. They can’t operate machinery!
Beelzebuddy

Yeah I dunno, Cory, this just seems like standard fearmongering with a christian slant. They’re not digging up any bones that science fiction authors haven’t been worrying for half a century or more. If you want to depress yourself with how much the future might suck, read something by Stephen Baxter instead. That man can write him some downer endings.