Transhumanism and the Christian Story

Speaker 1

We’ll now hear from Micah Redding on Transhumanism and the Christian Story. Micah is a writer, musician and instigator of troubling thoughts. He’s traveled three continents, has a degree in computer science, was raised as a preacher’s kid, and once slept on the tarmac of an airport in a third world country. He loves Oklahoma, Seattle, and the fictional state of Kansas. Mostly, he’s in pursuit of life on the edge of the transhuman wilderness. Micah.

Micah Redding

Thank you guys for having me here. I was telling somebody earlier, I think I’m the token non-Mormon here, so I appreciate you inviting me.

Micah Redding

But what I want to talk about is the connection between Christianity and transhumanism and the ways I’ve seen that done in the past or attempted in the past and the way that I think makes the most sense out of that. So when I was young and I first was taught about humanism, I was thrilled because here someone had captured the essence of many of the core concepts of Christianity and packaged it for a secular world. And then, when I was a little bit older and I discovered transhumanism, I felt the same thing because the essence of what I valued most about my religion had finally been. Captured in a philosophy.

Micah Redding

I soon figured out that other people did not see that the same way I did. And I was shocked that not only did most transhumanists not consider themselves religious. but actually considered Christianity and transhumanism to be antithetical. And even humanists, as one humanist told me, humanism Is the bastard stepchild of Christianity and the two haven’t been on speaking terms since humanism left home. So

Micah Redding

I think, and I hope that there’s a better way to frame that historically and sociologically. And the way I do that myself is I think that I suspect that all cultures periodically have to send off expeditions to explore subsets of their ideas in a way that the mother culture cannot really Fully do. And the hope being that if they’re successful, they can come back with stories of these vast unconquered territories and the tales of the dangers. on the way there and the safe pathways to get there.

Micah Redding

And so I think this is what has happened in our history with Christian Europe sending people off to explore the ideas that became known as humanism. And they returned, and that return was so successful that the world has changed to the point that many of us now live in liberal secular democracies fueled by worldwide capitalism. And so now humanism has sent off its own expedition to explore the ideas of transhumanism. And I think that it’s time to come back to the mother culture and explain what we found.

Micah Redding

But unfortunately, I think a lot of times when that happens, the people who have gone on these explorations have been so profoundly affected by what they’ve seen and the ideas they’ve they’ve encountered that they are no longer recognizable. And they may speak in ways that are so foreign that they are never fully accepted back. And so a work of translation is necessary.

Micah Redding

But for many of the people I think who’ve originally tried to translate, do that work of translation between religion and transhumanism And connecting the two, their relationship with their own religion was different than that of the mainstream. And so their their work of translation looked a little bit like taking a list of transhumanist ideas and a list of religious concepts and playing connect the dots based on superficial similarities.

Micah Redding

And for example, Erich von Daniken Has compared the ascension of Elijah with the whirlwind and the fiery chariot to vertical liftoff and space flight. I think that misconstrues both the impulses of those who are interested in space travel and the impulses of most religious people who probably don’t see the significance of a great prophet’s ascension as having something to do with UFOs.

Micah Redding

So, I think that we can do a better work of translation than that, and I think that the proper place to start is with the beginning of the Jewish story. And my understanding of that is that Judaism was born into a world which had a lot of creation myths that looked a little bit like Here were a lot of gods, and they were sick and tired of their work, and so they created human beings to do their menial tasks. And so humanity was created to be slaves. Judaism is a revolt against that understanding, and so right at the beginning of the Jewish story, you have some of the most significant words in literature.

Micah Redding

God created man in his image and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And so humanity wasn’t created to be slaves, but was created to actually embody the essence of the creativity of God himself. I think that’s what you see throughout the Jewish narrative.

Micah Redding

And so when you get to Abraham, you have a man born into a world in which time is viewed as cyclical. And there is no true past or future because everything simply repeats, and there’s no personal significance or identity because no true change can happen. And in that world, Abraham walks out into the wilderness in pursuit of a future he cannot yet see. And in doing that, he writes his identity into history and, in a sense, creates history itself. This is why Abraham is known as the father of faith. The father of forward-looking and is significant to Jews and Christians and Muslims.

Micah Redding

And so I think that continues on, that idea, Of human significance and individual change moves and grows bigger as you move along. And so when you get to the Christian Scriptures, you don’t have a rejection of what comes before, but an intensification of it. And just like consciousness is not a rejection of life, But an acceleration of the idea. I think Christianity tries to be an exponential return on some of the concepts developed in the Jewish scriptures. And so.

Micah Redding

Right at the beginning, you have the story of this human who is really living out what it means to be in the image of God, what it means to be a true human being, and who is always inviting other people into that humanity with him. And as that’s carried out throughout the New Testament, what you see is the anticipation and the bringing into being of a new kind of humanity, a humanity no longer defined around geography or the situations of one’s birth. Because I think I would call these people the first transhumanists. They were looking forward and calling out. a humanity and a meaning to humanity that was fluid and dynamic and always changing. And I think that is the proper connection.

Micah Redding

The Apostle Paul said that there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, breaking the boundaries of identity. along every dimension of the ancient world. And so I think the connection between transhumanism and Christianity is not in superficial speculations about the future or superficial similarities between different concepts or in the rapture of the nerds, but actually in an understanding of what it means to be human. that is fluid and dynamic and always changing and always requiring the moving of boundaries and redefinition of terms. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much. I love the metaphor. You are not the only non-Mormon speaker. There are quite a few others. I love the metaphor of going and exploring this territory and bringing things back, and also the fact that we got so changed by it that we are unrecognizable. That is beautiful. I want to ask you.

Speaker 3

how you’ve what your sojourn these brief days in Mormon Land has been like and what you’re going to bring back to your community from doing it, maybe also from your prior experiences with us. I feel we have a lot to learn from you, and I’m grateful that you came out.

Speaker 3

I was remarking to my colleague here that In the church, in the LDS church in Mormonism, we don’t have good preaching. And you are obviously the son of a preacher, man. And I really wish we could cultivate that skill of public speaking and of delivering a good sermon. And I hope I at least try to do it when I can. Anyway, thank you very much. Thank you.

Micah Redding

Yes, to address your question, what I’ve learned and gathered. You know, I’ve only been here since last night, so there’s a lot for me to learn. But, you know, one of the reasons that I got. Involved with some of you initially and struck up the conversation. And it was because I was looking for someone who was really aggressively Interested in talking about the intersections of these types of ideas between spirituality and the future and transhumanism and singularity type issues, those kind of things. And I really found very, very little of that. And I think I want to commend you guys for not only having that, but doing that in a sustained And very mature way. So I appreciate that.