Authors

Evan McMullin (b. 1976) is an American politician, intelligence officer, and civic leader whose career has been defined by a commitment to democratic principles, moral courage, and service to the common good. Born in Provo, Utah, and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, McMullin served as a clandestine operations officer with the CIA for over a decade, working in counter-terrorism and national security across the Middle East and North Africa. He later served as Chief Policy Director for the House Republican Conference before launching an independent presidential campaign in 2016, earning 21% of the vote in Utah and drawing national attention as a principled alternative to the major-party candidates. McMullin’s public life has centered on the defense of constitutional democracy and human dignity against authoritarian impulses. In 2021, he co-founded the anti-authoritarian organization Stand Up Republic, and in 2022 he ran as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Utah, earning broad cross-partisan support. His advocacy consistently draws on moral foundations rooted in his faith, framing democratic participation and the protection of individual rights as ethical imperatives rather than merely political ones. McMullin’s career reflects a conviction that intelligence, courage, and moral clarity are inseparable—that the work of protecting human dignity requires both rigorous discernment and principled action. His willingness to challenge concentrated power and defend pluralistic institutions resonates with the Mormon transhumanist commitment to decentralized flourishing and the notion that genuine community requires consent, accountability, and the active participation of morally engaged individuals. In an era when technology increasingly mediates political power, McMullin’s insistence on transparency and ethical responsibility points toward the kind of stewardship that responsible technological progress demands.

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) was an American religious leader, statesman, and farmer who served as the thirteenth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1985–1994) and as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961). Born in Whitney, Idaho, Benson grew up on a family farm and carried a lifelong commitment to agrarian values, self-reliance, and public service. He served as a mission president in the British Isles and later as President of the European Mission following World War II, overseeing significant humanitarian and spiritual reconstruction efforts. Benson’s public career spanned both ecclesiastical and governmental spheres with unusual distinction. As Secretary of Agriculture, he advocated for free-market principles and became one of the most prominent Latter-day Saint voices in twentieth-century American political life. Within the Church, he served as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for nearly two decades before ascending to the presidency, during which he placed particular emphasis on the Book of Mormon as a keystone of faith and a guide for modern life. Benson held a deeply integrative view of truth, insisting that science and revealed religion are not adversaries but complementary paths toward the same reality. “Truth is truth, whether labeled science or religion,” he affirmed—a conviction that frames inquiry and faith as close allies. He also taught that God works through human beings, especially those of good will, to accomplish divine purposes across history. These commitments—to the unity of truth, to divine collaboration with mortal effort, and to the ongoing work of human progress—resonate naturally with the Mormon transhumanist conviction that technology, science, and religious aspiration are all expressions of a single trajectory toward greater intelligence, creativity, and Godhood.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896–1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer widely regarded as one of the greatest American authors of the twentieth century. He is best known for his novels depicting the era he named “the Jazz Age,” particularly The Great Gatsby (1925), which has become a cornerstone of American literary canon and a profound meditation on ambition, reinvention, and the limits of human aspiration. Fitzgerald’s career was marked by early success and later struggle. His debut novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), made him famous at twenty-three, and he became a celebrity chronicler of the Roaring Twenties alongside his wife, Zelda. His major works—including Tender Is the Night (1934) and the unfinished The Last Tycoon —explored themes of wealth, love, disillusionment, and the American Dream. He published prolifically in magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post to support his lifestyle, though his literary reputation declined in his later years. He died of a heart attack at forty-four in Hollywood, where he had been working as a screenwriter. Fitzgerald’s literary legacy resonates with questions central to Mormon Transhumanism, though often in a tragic register. His work obsessively examines the human yearning for self-transcendence—Jay Gatsby’s attempt to remake himself, to “repeat the past,” and to achieve a kind of personal transfiguration through sheer will. Yet Fitzgerald characteristically frames these aspirations as doomed by human frailty, moral failure, and the entropic pull of time. The famous closing line of The Great Gatsby —“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”—suggests a vision fundamentally at odds with the Mormon Transhumanist confidence that humanity can, through ordained means, actually achieve the transcendence it longs for. Fitzgerald was raised Catholic and retained a complex, often ambivalent relationship with faith throughout his life. His work rarely engages with theosis or divine grace as real possibilities; instead, it tends toward an elegiac naturalism in which human striving, however beautiful, ultimately fails without access to any redemptive framework beyond the self. This positions his worldview in genuine contrast with Mormon Transhumanism’s affirmation that compassionate creation and glorification are attainable destinies rather than merely beautiful illusions. Nevertheless, his penetrating exploration of the desire for transcendence—and his honesty about what happens when that desire is pursued without grace—makes his work a powerful companion text for anyone reflecting on the relationship between aspiration and redemption.

Felix Clairvoyant is a molecular biologist and prominent voice within the International Raelian Movement, advocating for a synthesis of “atheistic intelligent design” and transhumanist philosophy. Born in France and raised in Montreal, Canada, he cultivated an early passion for the sciences that led to a fifteen-year career in the biotechnology industry. This scientific rigor deeply informs his theological perspective, grounding his metaphysical claims in materialist biology rather than spiritual mysticism. As a leader in the Raelian Movement, Clairvoyant articulates the belief that life on Earth was scientifically engineered by an advanced extraterrestrial species known as the Elohim. Distinguishing his views from both traditional theism and evolutionary chance, he proposes a model of “scientific creationism.” In this framework, the Elohim are not gods but flesh-and-blood beings who have mastered the very technologies—such as genetic engineering and space travel—that humanity is currently developing, serving as a template for our future evolution. Clairvoyant gained recognition in the broader futurist community for his presentation at the Religion and Transhumanism Conference organized by the MTA back in 2014. There, he argued that Raelism is inherently transhumanist, viewing immortality not as a supernatural afterlife but as a technical problem solvable through cloning and memory transfer. He posits that acknowledging our extraterrestrial designers is a crucial step toward humanity’s maturation, framing peaceful technological advancement as a mandate for joining the galactic community. Beyond his philosophical advocacy, Clairvoyant has applied his analytical skills to a successful career in real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area. He maintains a disciplined lifestyle centered on meditation and chess, viewing these practices as complementary to his pursuit of mental clarity. He continues to serve as a bridge between the Raelian worldview and the wider transhumanist movement, promoting a future defined by scientific mastery and longevity.

Forrest Landry is a philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher whose work centers on metaphysics, the design of very large scale complex systems, and the thriving of all forms of life on this planet. He is also the founder and CEO of Magic Flight, a company known for introducing the portable vaporizer, and a third-generation master woodworker who found that his hands-on training in craft carried directly into skill in software systems design, governance architecture, and community process. Landry grew up in rural Maine, working wood alongside his father from early childhood and building, in his words, a felt sense that “nature doesn’t negotiate”: a discipline learned through the body before it was learned through mathematics. At sixteen he made a vow to go into the forest alone and meet the natural world unaided, without expectation or projection, a rite of passage he later described as an encounter with the world unmasked. That experience convinced him that no existing spiritual or religious tradition offered the rigor he was looking for: real depth of feeling, real formal precision, and a clear bridge between the two. Rather than search further, he set out to build that bridge himself, a decades-long project that became his book An Immanent Metaphysics , an attempt to restore legitimacy to metaphysics through a coherent, precise account of what is, what it is to know, and why we are here. That same combination of craft discipline and formal ambition carried Landry into large-scale systems work, including federal classified and unclassified projects for the FBI, DARPA, and the Library of Congress Congressional Records System, and later into collaboration with Daniel Schmachtenberger’s Consilience Project on sensemaking, governance, and existential risk. Across all of it runs a single ethical claim he states plainly: love is what enables choice, love is stronger than fear, and one should always choose on the basis of love. That claim, and the larger project behind it, sits close to convictions a Mormon transhumanist sensibility already holds: that rigor and reverence are not competitors, that the architecture of our systems is a moral question and not merely a technical one, and that compassion is the standard against which any exercise of power, human or artificial, should be measured. Landry’s insistence on building the bridge himself when no tradition supplied one, and his instinct to treat both feeling and formalism as trustworthy sources of understanding, gives his work a natural kinship with a theology that asks its adherents to do the same kind of integrative labor toward the thriving of all life.

Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) was a British-American theoretical physicist and mathematician whose career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton spanned more than half a century and touched nearly every frontier of modern physics. Born in Crowthorne, Berkshire, England, Dyson demonstrated extraordinary mathematical gifts from childhood and studied at Cambridge before moving to Cornell, where he worked alongside Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman. His unification of the competing formulations of quantum electrodynamics in 1949 stands as one of the landmark achievements of twentieth-century physics, and his influence extended from nuclear reactor design to the foundations of quantum field theory. Beyond his technical contributions, Dyson became one of the most imaginative and humane voices at the intersection of science, technology, and human futures. He proposed the Dyson sphere—a theoretical megastructure capturing a star’s total energy output—as a signature of advanced civilizations, and he wrote prolifically for general audiences in books such as Disturbing the Universe (1979), Infinite in All Directions (1988), and Origins of Life (1986). He was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2000 in recognition of his efforts to affirm life’s spiritual dimension alongside scientific inquiry. Dyson’s most enduring legacy may be his refusal to draw a hard boundary between the reach of science and the horizon of theology. Contemplating the ultimate expansion of mind throughout the cosmos, he concluded that at sufficient scale and complexity, the questions science poses give way to questions that only theology can frame. Dyson arrived at that threshold by following the physics wherever it led, and what he found there was not a wall but an opening. His vision of an infinite universe where intelligence might persist and grow indefinitely resonates with transhumanist and religious visions of endless progression.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, and philologist whose provocative ideas about morality, religion, and human potential have profoundly influenced modern thought. His concept of the ‘Übermensch’ (often translated as ‘overman’ or ‘superman’) and his call for humanity to transcend conventional values have made him a touchstone for transhumanist philosophy, even as his ideas remain subject to intense debate and varying interpretations. Born in Röcken, Prussia, Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran pastor who died when Friedrich was four years old. He showed exceptional academic ability and became a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel at the remarkably young age of twenty-four. However, chronic illness forced his retirement from teaching in 1879, after which he spent the next decade as an independent philosopher, living modestly in boarding houses across Switzerland, Italy, and France while producing his most important works. Nietzsche’s major works—including Thus Spoke Zarathustra , Beyond Good and Evil , On the Genealogy of Morality , and The Gay Science —challenged the foundations of Western morality and religion. He famously proclaimed that ‘God is dead,’ not as a celebration but as a diagnosis of modern culture’s loss of transcendent meaning. His response was to call for a ‘revaluation of all values’ and the emergence of individuals who could create new meaning through the exercise of will. The concept of the Übermensch represents Nietzsche’s vision of human potential. Rather than a biological superman, Nietzsche envisioned a human being who had overcome the limitations of conventional morality to create new values and embrace life fully. This figure would say ‘yes’ to existence, including its suffering, through what Nietzsche called amor fati —love of fate. The Übermensch was to be the meaning of the earth, replacing otherworldly hopes with earthly creativity and self-overcoming. In 1889, Nietzsche suffered a mental collapse from which he never recovered, spending his final years in the care of his mother and sister. Despite the tragic end of his productive life, his influence only grew after his death. Transhumanists have drawn on his vision of human self-transcendence, though they typically emphasize technological means of enhancement that Nietzsche himself never contemplated. His insistence that humanity is ‘something to be overcome’ and his rejection of static human nature resonate with contemporary projects aimed at expanding human capabilities.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist whose work probes faith, suffering, freedom, and guilt with a depth few writers have matched. Trained as a military engineer in St. Petersburg, he turned to literature in his twenties, and a death sentence for revolutionary activity, commuted at the last moment to Siberian exile, marked him permanently. He emerged from four years of prison and years more of enforced military service a changed writer, one who had stared at his own execution and returned to ask what a human life, once spared, owes to others. His major novels, among them Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov, stage philosophy as lived crisis rather than abstract argument. Characters murder, doubt, confess, and rebel, and Dostoevsky lets their reasoning run to its full conclusion before testing it against conscience. He wrote for serialized journals under constant financial pressure, supporting a household through gambling debts and illness, and still produced sentences that interrogate free will, suffering, and the possibility of God with an intensity that philosophy departments have never stopped reading. That intensity drew on personal loss as well as literary conviction. In 1868, grief over the death of his infant daughter Sofya surfaces in his letters in the image of the cross, a measure of how far private suffering pressed against the edges of his faith rather than a settled answer to it. The Brothers Karamazov carries that preoccupation with suffering and responsibility into its fullest statement of theology. Through the dying monk Zosima, Dostoevsky teaches that each person must recognize himself as guilty before all people, on behalf of all and for all, for every human sin, and that only there does unity become possible. The claim describes redemption as shared labor rather than a transaction completed by one party for passive others, a position with some resonance to what Mormon theology calls participatory atonement, though Dostoevsky’s own framework stayed rooted in Orthodox asceticism and submission rather than in human beings as co-creators with the divine. His recurring argument, that freedom without love collapses into nihilism, remains relevant to any account of human improvement, religious or technological, that separates moral transformation from compassion.

Gabriel Rothblatt is a prominent figure within the transhumanist movement, particularly known for his involvement with the Terasem movement, which he represents. Terasem espouses a secular approach to religious transhumanism. He is a member of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, attending their conferences for at least two years, starting no later than 2023. He considers himself a Futurist Philosopher. Rothblatt holds a bachelor’s degree in political philosophy. He experienced a “spiritually transhuman experience” at the 2023 Mormon Transhumanist Association conference, further fueling his drive to achieve more. This experience coincided with the publication of his first piece of Futurist Philosophy by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Beyond his involvement in transhumanism, Rothblatt is also active in politics. He resides in Florida with his wife and four children. In 2024, he announced his candidacy for U.S. Congress, running in Florida’s eighth district, which encompasses the Kennedy Space Center. He views his transhumanist identity as a significant influence on his decision to seek public office.