Authors

Brigham Henry Roberts (1857–1933) was a historian, theologian, and General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely regarded as one of the most rigorous and intellectually ambitious thinkers Mormonism has produced. Born in Warrington, England, and emigrating to Utah as a child, Roberts rose from a difficult, impoverished youth to become a missionary, editor, congressman-elect, and a member of the First Council of the Seventy from 1888 until his death. Roberts’s career bridged ecclesiastical leadership and serious scholarship. He served missions in the American South and presided over the Eastern States Mission, and he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1898, though he was denied his seat in a national controversy over plural marriage. He devoted decades to writing and editing, producing the six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church , editing the seven-volume History of the Church , and authoring theological works including The Mormon Doctrine of Deity , The Truth, The Way, The Life , and Studies of the Book of Mormon . In these works he engaged geology, biology, biblical criticism, and comparative religion with a candor unusual for his time and office. Roberts’s legacy resonates deeply with themes of human potential, intelligence, and the entanglement of faith with progress. He read the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—railroads, electric light, wireless telegraphy, aviation, the spread of liberty—as “collateral rays” of the same light that opened the heavens to Joseph Smith, suggesting that the millennium might already be quietly underway in the works of human hands. He insisted that scientific research, including evidence of life and death long before Adam, belongs on the side of “development” rather than “contraction,” and that to engage such inquiry is “to link the church of God with the highest increase of human thought and effort.” Equally striking is Roberts’s generosity toward other traditions and his impatience with mental laziness. He refused to identify any particular church—Catholic, Protestant, Greek, Buddhist, Muslim, or even the societies of deists and atheists—as the “church of the devil,” reserving that phrase for the kingdom of evil wherever it appears, and affirming that wise teachers and prophets are raised up among all peoples. Against “simple faith” understood as ignorant acquiescence, he championed an intelligent, rational faith that strives “up to the very limit of man’s capacity” to know. In his confidence that intelligence is the glory of God and of humanity, that revelation invites rather than forecloses inquiry, and that the children of men are “moving up to a higher and truer conception of the things of God,” Roberts remains a vital voice for those who see in technology, science, and expanding moral imagination the natural shape of a divine future.

Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) was one of the most influential and theologically deliberate leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Born on September 10, 1924, in Brigham City, Utah, the tenth of eleven children, he overcame childhood polio, served as a bomber pilot in World War II, and earned a doctorate in education from Brigham Young University before dedicating his life to religious service and teaching. Called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1970, he served as its acting president from 1994 to 2008 and as its president from 2008 until his death on July 3, 2015. Packer’s career spanned more than five decades of general authority service. He worked extensively within the Church Educational System, overseeing seminary and institute programs, and served as a mission president in New England. He served on the scripture revision committee that produced the landmark 1979–1981 LDS editions of the Bible and standard works. He dedicated temples and missions across multiple continents and was a prolific author and teacher. He was also a gifted visual artist, known for his paintings and sculptures of birds—a dimension of his character that reflected a disciplined attention to the natural world and a belief that beauty and truth are inseparable. Packer’s theological legacy is marked by a deep reverence for the eternal sweep of Mormon cosmology. In one memorable interview, he cited the hymn ‘If You Could Hie to Kolob’—that most expansive of Mormon texts, celebrating eternal progression, a plurality of Gods, and worlds without end—and connected it to Brigham Young’s conviction that learning is not a process approaching a terminus but one that opens onto ‘an eternity of knowledge.’ That orientation—toward an unending, ever-expanding intelligence—runs beneath much of Packer’s teaching about the relationship between mortality and eternity, between what we now see and what God sees.

Brigham Young (1801–1877) was the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the architect of the Mormon migration to the Great Basin, and the founding governor of Utah Territory. As the organizing genius behind the settlement of the American West, he directed the colonization of more than 300 towns, established institutions of commerce and education, and shaped a distinctive religious civilization from the desert floor. Born in Whitingham, Vermont, Young converted to the restored church in 1832 after years of searching among the Methodist and Reformed faiths. He rose quickly through the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, led the harrowing evacuation of Nauvoo following Joseph Smith’s martyrdom in 1844, and guided an exodus of tens of thousands across the plains to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. As church president for thirty years, he presided over the construction of the Salt Lake Temple, founded the University of Deseret, championed the Perpetual Emigration Fund to gather converts from Europe, and negotiated—not always successfully—the church’s uneasy relationship with the federal government. What the historical record reveals, and what Young’s own sermons confirm at every turn, is a mind constitutionally unwilling to divide the sacred from the natural. He taught that God operates by law, that miracles are simply “results or effects of causes hidden from our understandings,” and that every discovery in science and art has been “given by direct revelation from God.” The telegraph, the steam engine, the plow—all were, in his view, eternal principles progressively disclosed to a humanity climbing upward from its infancy. Science and religion were not rivals in his theology but two names for the same structured reality: “there is no true religion without true science, and consequently there is no true science without true religion.” This integration carried moral weight. Young urged the Saints to become a thinking people, warning against the spiritual danger of surrendering judgment to leaders rather than seeking personal revelation—a remarkable insistence on epistemic independence from a man who wielded considerable institutional authority. His vision of human destiny was correspondingly expansive. He affirmed that God “was once a man in mortal flesh as we are” and that humanity is “organized to become Gods,” called to exercise creative authority over matter across eternal worlds. He taught that identity—the preservation of the self through resurrection and exaltation—is “the greatest gift that God can bestow,” and he framed mortality as the school in which that self is forged through trial, independent thought, and disciplined living. His counsel to “prepare to live” rather than merely to die, and to extend healthy life by understanding natural law, anticipates a tradition of practical, body-affirming faith that takes seriously both the present body and its glorified future. Young remains a towering, complicated figure whose earthly administration included serious moral failures; yet his theological instinct—that intelligence, technology, and theosis belong to a single continuous story—endures as one of the most generative ideas in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

Cameron Dayton is an American video game creative director, novelist, and writer known for his work in the gaming industry and speculative fiction. He has held prominent creative roles at several major studios, contributing to well-known franchises and original intellectual properties. Dayton served as creative director at Certain Affinity and has worked in narrative and creative leadership positions across the video game industry. He is also the author of the novel Etherwalker , a science-fantasy work set in a far-future world where technology and myth have intertwined, exploring themes of lost civilizations, human potential, and the rediscovery of powerful ancient technologies. His fiction often inhabits the intersection of epic fantasy and science fiction, imagining futures in which humanity’s relationship with technology is both perilous and transformative. Dayton has roots in the Latter-day Saint community, and his creative work reflects an imagination shaped by themes resonant with Mormon Transhumanist thought—particularly the idea that humanity’s trajectory involves the responsible stewardship of extraordinary power, and that the boundaries between the mundane and the transcendent are more porous than they appear. His speculative worlds frequently explore the tension between knowledge and wisdom, technological mastery and moral responsibility, echoing the Mormon Transhumanist conviction that scientific and technological progress are inseparable from ethical and spiritual development. His storytelling invites readers to consider what it means for ordinary individuals to inherit or rediscover capacities that border on the divine—a narrative arc that parallels the Latter-day Saint doctrine of theosis and the transhumanist aspiration toward radical human flourishing.

Carl Youngblood co-founded the MTA in 2006 and has served as its President and CEO since 2021. He is engaged with the Association’s efforts to explore the intersection of Mormon theology and transhumanist philosophy. Among the many initiatives that Carl has been involved with, he has designed and built the Association’s current website, which unifies all prior content in a single location using inspiring visuals and animations. Youngblood’s professional career spans more than two decades of full-stack software development at the intersection of Silicon Slopes and Silicon Valley. He was an early employee at Omniture (acquired by Adobe), a founding engineering leader at Divvy (a Utah-based unicorn startup), co-founder of Blockscale LLC (a blockchain services firm eventually contracted into Coinbase), and Senior Solutions Architect for Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS. His technical fluency ranges from scalable web architecture to blockchain infrastructure—the kind of deep engineering experience that grounds his theological speculation in working knowledge of the systems he writes about. Under his leadership, the Association has developed its mission of promoting abundant human flourishing through the compassionate use of science and technology, fostering dialogue across secular and religious audiences and arguing that each has something essential to learn from the other. His writing, collected on his blog From the Depths , spans over a decade of conference presentations and theological essays: meditations on participatory resurrection, the alignment of artificial intelligence read through the Grand Council narrative, intelligence as eternal and multifaceted, and religion as social technology. He writes, as a colleague has observed, with warmth and accessibility on questions of momentous practical consequence—how to navigate faith crisis without losing faith’s power, how to think about resurrection as something we actively participate in rather than passively receive. Youngblood’s distinctive contribution to transhumanism is the integration of serious technical expertise with serious theological reflection. He embodies the Mormon transhumanist conviction that scientific and spiritual development are not parallel tracks but a single path—that the learning required to build better systems is continuous with the exaltation Mormon theology envisions, and that human ingenuity, rightly oriented, is itself a divine imperative.

Connie Packer has previously served as the Vice President of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. As a leader within the MTA, she played a key role in guiding the Association’s activities and affairs, focusing on the publication of quality content related to transhumanism and Mormon Transhumanism. Packer helped to facilitate important processes like board member elections and charitable endeavors through initiatives like Kiva Micro Loans, which have collectively funded hundreds of loans to help lift people, improve their conditions, and help them reach their goals.

Cynthia Bailey is a lecturer in computer science at Stanford University. A dedicated educator, her research focuses on best practices in computer science education, with a particular emphasis on promoting inclusiveness in the tech industry. She is known for her thoughtful and well-researched contributions to discussions surrounding women in technology and the queer community. Beyond her work in computer science, Cynthia Bailey has been actively engaged in exploring the intersection of Mormonism and modern life. For a time she blogged about Mormon life on By Common Consent , providing insights and perspectives on faith in a contemporary context. Her presentation at the Sunstone West 2016 highlighted her interest in bringing together her professional expertise and her engagement with Mormon themes, specifically addressing the underrepresentation of women in technology within the Mormon community and exploring the potential of gospel principles in empowering girls’ coding initiatives. Cynthia resides in Palo Alto. She is esteemed for her quiet dedication to life-altering ideas, community building, and insightful contributions to discussions related to technology, social issues, and faith.

Elvira Stevens Barney (1832–1909) was a physician, missionary, and advocate for women’s rights in early Utah. Born in Gerry, New York, to a merchant father and schoolteacher mother, she was baptized in 1844 and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley with the Brigham Young pioneer company in 1848. In 1851, Barney was called on a mission to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), where she taught the gospel and basic education while learning the Hawaiian language. She later pursued her long-held dream of becoming a doctor, studying at Wheaton College in Illinois and serving a mission to Philadelphia, where she continued her medical studies. She graduated as a doctor of medicine in 1883. Barney practiced obstetrics and taught medicine classes to women in Utah. She served as a visiting physician at Deseret Hospital and spoke at mass meetings defending Latter-day Saint women’s voting rights. Active in the Utah Woman Suffrage Association, she also authored The Stevens Genealogy , published in 1907.

Dr. Emile Alexandrov is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and visiting scholar at Waseda University, Tokyo. His research focuses on metaphysics across Eastern and Western traditions. He earned his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame Australia, and has extensive research and teaching experience in areas ranging from contemporary American and post-Kantian German philosophy to classical metaphysical traditions in the Graeco-Arabic world, Buddhism, and Daoism. Dr. Alexandrov has held academic appointments at the University of Erfurt in Germany, Novosibirsk State University and the University of Tyumen in Russia, and National Taiwan University in Taiwan. He is the author of The Other Platonist Beginning — Heidegger and Neoplatonism and the forthcoming Metaphysics and Ineffable . With Dr O’Neill, he co-directs the biennial International Symposium on Buddhism and Neoplatonism . Alongside Dr. Steve Stakland, he also co-leads the American Philosophy Series at Routledge.

Eric G. Swedin is an American historian, novelist, and professor whose work bridges the gap between the history of science, technology, and Latter-day Saint theology. A member of the faculty at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, Swedin serves as a professor in the History Department, where he teaches courses on the history of science and technology, as well as classes in computer science and information systems. Swedin’s academic contributions are particularly relevant to the dialogue between faith and modernity. His 2003 book, Healing Souls: Psychotherapy in the Latter-day Saint Community , explores the historical tension and eventual integration between Mormon theology and secular psychology. In this work, Swedin documents how the LDS community navigated the rise of the mental health professions, ultimately melding theological doctrines with mainstream psychiatry—a historical precedent that mirrors contemporary discussions regarding transhumanism and the integration of emerging technologies with religious practice. Beyond his work on religious history, Swedin is a recognized voice in the history of computing. He co-authored Computers: The Life Story of a Technology (2005) and edited Science Fiction and Computing: Essays on Interlinked Domains (2011), investigating how speculative fiction has influenced the development of real-world technologies. Through his dual focus on the history of technology and the rigorous imagination of alternate history, Swedin offers a unique perspective on human progress, the fragility of civilization, and the enduring role of belief in a technological age.