# The Urgent Need for Christian Transhumanism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKbjD9SiGN0

*Recorded: 2015*


The speaker contrasts "horizontal progress"—spreading current technologies and lifestyles globally—with "vertical progress," the creation of genuinely new solutions through human creativity and innovation. Drawing on Peter Thiel’s work, he argues that horizontal progress alone is unsustainable and that humanity needs orders of magnitude more people engaged in the kind of long-term, creative thinking that transhumanism represents. However, he observes that transhumanism faces a perception problem: some view it as wanting to eradicate humanity. Meanwhile, Christianity faces its own challenge of potentially becoming reactionary rather than engaging with scientific and technological change. Christian transhumanism, he proposes, can bridge these worlds—helping two billion Christians engage with the serious challenges of the next century while grounding transhumanism in an appreciation for the full breadth and depth of human life.

## Transcript

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Thank you guys very much. I think this is the fourth year I’ve been here, and it’s been inspirational and thought-provoking to me every time. A lot of you have. Have provided me a lot to think about, and so I appreciate that.

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So, recently, I read Peter Thiel’s book. Zero to One, which is purportedly a book about business, about how to create a startup. But in it, he takes the opportunity to kind of explore and lay out how he views the world.

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And one of the things that he describes is two different kinds of progress. So the first kind of progress he describes, he calls horizontal progress. And it’s the idea that every year we get more McDonald’s, we get more Pizza Huts, we get more big screen T V’s, we get more people wearing Levi’s and drinking Coca-Cola and watching Hollywood movies. This is kind of the dream of globalization. And it’s essentially just the idea that we take what we’re doing here, what we think works here, and we spread it out to more and more people. We take what’s working in the first world and we spread it to the third world, to the developing world.

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And the huge assumption that is in that, that shows up in the language we use. We talk about the developing world and the developed world. The assumption is that we have arrived at some sort of end of history Some sort of culmination or pinnacle of human experience, and all we have left to do is wait for the rest of humanity to catch up. So this is how progress is kind of conventionally conceived.

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And the problem with this is that it’s completely unsustainable. If all we do over the next century is take the American lifestyle and export it to the rest of the world, we’ll need four earths to supply the resources needed for that level of consumption.

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So, it’s not surprising, maybe, if we think about that and we think about heading into that sort of a future. We can easily imagine that leading to economic and ecological and social crises of violence and war that could easily lead to the sort of end of history that is dramatically more literal than the one the First World Nations believe they’ve already accomplished.

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And I think it’s that sense that this is what we mean by progress That has caused many people to feel as if progress is this great myth, this profound illusion that’s leading our civilization into self-destruction. Because if that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about progress, it’s not hard to think that they might be right.

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So Peter Thiel, in looking at the challenges facing us over the next century, says It would take a miracle for us to survive. Maybe even hundreds or thousands of miracles. But he goes on to say. Fortunately, human beings are the one species that has proven itself capable of creating miracles.

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And what he means by that, of course, is technology, the creation of something genuinely new, the creation of new systems, new processes. new options and new possibilities and new alternative futures, the opportunity to genuinely transform the way we live and the way our societies function. He calls this vertical progress, and it’s based around a leap from zero to one, from nothingness to somethingness, from the old to the new, and it’s built on that creative leap, that creative insight.

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And the problem is that that kind of magic that bubbles up within the human spirit is something we don’t understand. We don’t know how to completely capture.

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David Deutsch, in his book, The Beginning of Infinity, talks about this problem in the context of artificial intelligence. He talks about how artificial intelligence We have no problem creating intelligence. We have no problem creating systems that figure out things. What we have a problem with is creating a general intelligence. A general system that can solve problems creatively, that can address its own sorts of new solutions.

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And he sees this, the problem of artificial intelligence As not being a technical one, but as a philosophical one. We simply don’t understand how this works. We don’t know how to bottle it and package it. And pull it out on demand.

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So, if this is what we need to move forward and survive the next century, then we might be facing some serious trouble. We need more creativity, and we don’t know exactly how to get it.

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But I think the solution to me is that while we cannot bottle that act of creation, what we can do is encourage it. And we know how to encourage it. We encourage it with focus, with attention, and with enthusiasm and with passion. When we pour ourselves into facing the challenges that are ahead of us, then that’s when these grand new ideas and bold new solutions start to bubble up, start to come into existence.

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But if Teal is right about the scale of the problems and challenges that we’re facing, then we need orders of magnitude more people doing these things. We need orders of magnitude more enthusiasm, more passion, more focus.

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The people who are doing this the most right now would seem to be in the transhumanist world. The transhumanist world is where we see people really looking out At the long-term future of humanity and identifying risks and threats and opportunities that are far beyond what are talked about in kind of conventional society.

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Oh, losing my life. Yeah, that’s right. Um, so

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So it would seem like we need more transhumanists. We we need more people working on those sorts of things from that sort of perspective. Who can look at that sort of scale.

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But the problem is, as I see it, is that transhumanism itself faces a significant challenge And that challenge is that when many people come into the transhumanist world, begin to look at the transhumanist world, they turn around and walk away saying, these people want to eradicate Humanity or destroy something essential to being human.

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There are a lot of reasons why people might say that, why people might feel that. But one of those reasons has to be that some transhumanists talk this way. And it’s not all transhumanists, probably not even that very many transhumanists, but it’s a sentiment. That’s present enough in transhumanism that people can say those sorts of things without fear of too much contradiction.

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A recent work of transhumanist fiction Talked about the main character very openly stated his lack of interest or concern about anything that humans had done in the past. He was not interested in learning from the past. He only wanted to essentially wipe the slate clean and move forward with a grand new vision that he had created. And that vision. Involved destroying every religious icon and statue in the world.

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So I think we see people who encounter This sort of thing, and develop a sense that transhumanists are lacking in dimensionality, that they’re lacking in an appreciation for the breadth and the depth of human life. And so they turn around and they walk away, and they say, Not only can I not be a part of this, maybe I need to stand up and stop these people So, I think that’s a severe problem that’s facing the transhumanist world that will only get stronger as we go on.

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In the meantime, Christianity is facing challenges of its own. Those challenges are coming from technological change, from cultural change, from growing scientific awareness and knowledge. And those sorts of things disrupt traditional communities. They disrupt the traditional way religion has operated. They present. Real challenges.

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And it’s a popular idea that in the first world, maybe this marks the end or the decline of Christianity. But the real threat, the real danger, is not that Christianity will end or go into decline, but that it will become an increasingly reactionary voice. That will turn and become more and more fundamentalist, cutting itself off from the broader world.

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So I think that transhumanism and Christianity are both facing these profound challenges, these profound problems.

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And the solution to both of these is obvious to me. The solution is that transhumanism needs to develop a sense of the real nuance and character of human life, of appreciation for our history For all the things that we’ve done, all the things that we’re doing, all the things that we might do in the future. And Christianity needs to be able to turn to science and technology and embrace them with open arms. And say, this is part of what it means to be made as a human in the image of God.

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And so that’s what Christian transhumanism, as I see it, is about. It’s about creating a bridge. Between those two worlds, so that two billion people can begin to engage with the serious challenges and questions of the next century.

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And I think if we do that, then we have a real chance of overcoming those things, of facing them head on. and moving forward into a future of profound thriving and growth, and one that uplifts and upholds every value that humans have ever cherished.

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Thank you.