4.7 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transhumanism | 5/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T04:24:32.037729+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Spirituality === Although many transhumanists are atheists, agnostics, or secular humanists, some have religious or spiritual views. Despite the prevailing secular attitude, some transhumanists pursue hopes traditionally espoused by religions, such as immortality, while several controversial new religious movements from the late 20th century, such as Raëlism, explicitly embrace the transhumanist goal to transform the human condition by using technology to alter the mind and body. But most thinkers associated with transhumanism focus on the practical goals of using technology to help achieve longer and healthier lives, while speculating that future understanding of neurotheology and the application of neurotechnology will enable humans to gain greater control of altered states of consciousness, which were commonly interpreted as spiritual experiences, and thus achieve more profound self-knowledge. Transhumanist Buddhists have sought to explore areas of agreement between various types of Buddhism and Buddhist-derived meditation and mind-expanding neurotechnologies. They have been criticised for appropriating mindfulness as a tool for transcending humanness. Some transhumanists believe the human mind and computer hardware are compatible, with the theoretical implication that human consciousness may someday be transferred to alternative media (a technique commonly known as mind uploading). One extreme formulation of this idea that interests some transhumanists is Christian cosmologist Frank Tipler's proposal of the Omega Point. Drawing on ideas in digitalism, Tipler has advanced the notion that the collapse of the universe billions of years hence could create the conditions for the perpetuation of humanity in a simulated reality within a megacomputer and thus achieve a form of "posthuman godhood". Before Tipler, the term Omega Point was used by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist and Jesuit theologian who saw an evolutionary telos in the development of an encompassing noosphere, a global consciousness. Some Christian thinkers see mind uploading as a denigration of the human body characteristic of gnostic manichaean belief. Non-Christian and secular commentators have also described transhumanism and its presumed intellectual progenitors as neo-gnostic. The first dialogue between transhumanism and faith was a one-day conference at the University of Toronto in 2004. Religious critics faulted transhumanism for offering no eternal truths or relationship with the divine. They commented that a philosophy bereft of these beliefs leaves humanity adrift in a foggy sea of postmodern cynicism and anomie. Transhumanists responded that such criticisms reflect a failure to look at the actual content of transhumanist philosophy, which is rooted in optimistic, idealistic attitudes that trace back to the Enlightenment. After this dialogue, William Sims Bainbridge, a sociologist of religion, conducted a pilot study, published in the Journal of Evolution and Technology, suggesting that religious attitudes negatively correlated with acceptance of transhumanist ideas and indicating that people with highly religious worldviews tended to perceive transhumanism as a direct, competitive (though ultimately futile) affront to their beliefs. Since 2006, the Mormon Transhumanist Association has sponsored conferences and lectures on the intersection of technology and religion. The Christian Transhumanist Association was established in 2014. Since 2009, the American Academy of Religion has held a "Transhumanism and Religion" consultation during its annual meeting, where scholars of religious studies seek to identify and critically evaluate implicit religious beliefs that might underlie transhumanist claims and assumptions; consider how transhumanism challenges religious traditions to develop their own ideas of the human future, in particular the prospect of human transformation, by technological or other means; and critically and constructively assess an envisioned future with greater confidence in nanotechnology, robotics, and information technology to achieve virtual immortality and create a superior posthuman species. The physicist and transhumanist thinker Giulio Prisco writes, "cosmist religions based on science might be our best protection from reckless pursuit of superintelligence and other risky technologies." Transhumanist beliefs can be traced to the theories of the Russian mystic and philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov and his best-known supporter, the astronautics pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.