Panel with Byron Belitsos, Jason Xu, and Ted Peters
Byron Belitsos, Jason Xu, and Ted Peters field audience questions on topics ranging from consciousness evolution and the Turing test to the role of the sacred feminine in religious transhumanism. The panelists debate whether transhumanism functions as a replacement for lost religious faith, with Ted Peters describing it as one of several secular movements where "discarded religious beliefs come back in a disguised, scientized form." The discussion also addresses transhumanism's potential elitism and lack of social justice orientation, with Byron Belitsos warning that without outreach to the poor and marginalized, the movement risks being perceived as a tool of technological oppression.
Ted Peters (b. 1941) is an American Lutheran theologian and ethicist widely recognized for his pioneering work at the intersection of theology and the natural sciences, particularly genetics, cosmology, and emerging technologies. He has served as a professor of systematic theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and is the editor of the journal Theology and Science. His prolific scholarly output has made him one of the most influential voices in the religion-and-science dialogue over the past several decades. ¶ Peters is perhaps best known for his extensive engagement with the ethical and theological implications of genetic engineering, human enhancement, and what he terms the “playing God” question. His books, including Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom and Science, Theology, and Ethics, address how Christian theology should respond to advances in biotechnology and the prospect of reshaping human nature. He has also written extensively on the doctrine of God, eschatology, and the relationship between scientific cosmology and Christian hope, notably in works like God—The World’s Future: Systematic Theology for a New Era. His participation in major research initiatives, including the Human Genome Project’s ethical dimensions, cemented his reputation as a theologian deeply conversant with cutting-edge science. ¶ Peters has engaged directly with transhumanism, offering both appreciation and critique. He acknowledges the legitimacy of using technology to alleviate suffering and improve human life, resonating with the Mormon Transhumanist conviction that scientific knowledge and technological power can serve as means ordained by God. However, Peters has raised concerns about what he sees as transhumanism’s tendency toward a purely secular eschatology—a vision of salvation through technology alone that displaces divine grace and the promised action of God in bringing about ultimate transformation. ¶ Peters’s legacy lies in his insistence that theology must engage science and technology seriously and critically, neither capitulating to technological utopianism nor retreating into anti-scientific postures. His work remains an essential reference point for anyone exploring how faith communities can thoughtfully navigate the promises and perils of human enhancement and emerging technologies.
Jason Xu is a transhumanist with a deep interest in the intersection of technology, religion, and culture. Driven by a desire to find meaning and purpose in a world increasingly dominated by what he perceives as morally bankrupt cultural trends, Xu seeks to create art and rituals that celebrate and reinforce transhumanist values. He is passionate about the potential of technology to advance humanity towards a teleological end goal. ¶ Frustrated by the lack of established transhumanist communities and artistic expressions, Xu embarked on a unique spiritual journey. He explored various religious practices, including Christianity, Islam, and Hare Krishna, interpreting their rituals and beliefs through a transhumanist lens—specifically focusing on concepts such as mind uploading and ancestor simulation. This quest ultimately led him to Terasem, an organization whose principles resonated deeply with his own. ¶ Xu’s intellectual journey began in high school with an exploration of transhumanist ideas online. His desire for a deeper connection to these concepts and a community of like-minded individuals eventually led him to seek out organizations and practices that could foster a sense of shared belief and purpose. He has lived in the Bay Area for over 15 years and moved to Florida to join Terasem.
Byron Belitsos is a publisher and evangelist focused on promoting and exploring the Urantia Revelation—also known as the Urantia Papers or Urantia Book, published in 1955. He sees the Urantia Book as a revelatory text with significant implications for understanding human history and the potential for future transhuman evolution. ¶ Belitsos is deeply interested in the intersection of spirituality, transhumanism, and integral perspectives. He argues that a spiritually informed transhumanism is essential for achieving sustainable and desirable human enhancement. He emphasizes the importance of understanding deep history, addressing theological and spiritual poverty, and overcoming the limitations of reductionist and materialist views within the transhumanist movement. ¶ As a publisher, Belitsos is actively working to disseminate information about the Urantia Book and its relevance to contemporary discussions on transhumanism. He also organizes conferences that bring together diverse perspectives—including those from Mormon, Uranian, Raëlian, and Wiccan traditions—to explore the book’s themes and implications.
Transcript
Speaker 1
So does anybody have any questions for these three? Any more questions? I know that some people had a lot of questions for Ted. And, oh, go ahead. Okay, here.
Speaker 2
Maybe this one is for Ted, about the basics of transhumanism. What’s the role of consciousness evolution in transhumanism? If there is any concept.
Speaker 3
Just give us one second, we’re going to get the volume going here. Testing one, testing two. Who wants to take it?
Ted
You can help me by telling me uh what you mean by consciousness uh evolution. If it’s what I think it is consciousness evolution, part of the coevolution concept, was there before transhumanism entered into the conversation. Right now, I don’t see a connection unless somebody knows more. Tell me what you mean by consciousness evolution.
Speaker 2
Just when we think about it
Ted
Yeah, well I I think that um the consciousness evolution consciousness co-evolution It’s been around for about four decades or so and um uh is shared by New Age spirituality here with some uh components from uh India. Sri Rubindo would be a good example of that, where you have evolution and then what he called involution as matter and spirit again A higher level of emergent holism, and I think that that was just independent of The rise of the transhumanism movement. And the transhumanists are really concerned about intelligence. And not necessarily, I think, what the consciousness movement really had in mind, namely that uh profound inner sense of my uh unity uh with uh with all material things.
Byron
The text, it’s not out there, but I’ll get it. It’s by Ted Chu that we were talking about before. That’s a core premise of his of his idea of transition. And he calls it conscious evolution 2. 0. So, this is the new phase of transhumanism. And as part of this, it’s interesting that Barbara Marks Hubbard, who kind of really coined the term conscious evolution. has teamed up with Ted Chu, and they’re going to be speaking around the country together on evolution of consciousness and conscious evolution as the new phase The next phase of transhumanism.
Speaker 3
Take another question?
Speaker 6
I’m going to touch this afternoon on my Interest in consciousness and what it could mean for transhumanism. I will get into that at 4, 4:30 whenever I end up up there. Related to that question was my question regarding the Turing test. I’m wondering if you see the Turing test as assuming something not exactly established in terms of the the mind-body problem. I have a feeling that there could be something more to us than Newtonian. And if that’s the case, while we’re trying to find out how to enhance ourselves or perpetuate ourselves With technology, if we skip that part, we might find that we have an automaton that looks a lot like us or that is having some of our information characteristics. Might the light may go out for who we are. And I’m not talking about magic, I’m talking about something that might require a deeper physics.
Ted
The point I had intended to make was really a very limited One, namely Noreen Hertzfeldt was advocating that we have an interactive or a relational understanding of the human mind. And she thought, rightly or wrongly, she thought that the very fact that we employ the Turing test to find out whether something is intelligent or not. Fits the relational model. I’m not in a position to judge as to whether or not the Turing test should play this decisive a role within computers.
Speaker 3
Question in the back?
Speaker 7
Hi. I’m real interested in your the radical proposition you put forth that the Christian Trinity now includes the sacred feminine, which sort of historically has not been part of it, and how that might change the narrative in the future?
Ted
This is for Byron, I think.
Byron
We didn’t get to those slides, but the Urancha book states that the divine person, the Creator, is both male and female. Female at the local universe level, at the transcendental central of the universe level, there’s no gender differentiation in deity, but the local space-time. Creators are come in pairs. So Adam and Eve are like a reflection of the pair. And in the Ranch Book, there’s the mother Jesus. There’s a female Jesus and a male Jesus. So the incarnation of Jesus is incarnations are what males can do. Males and females don’t incarnate, they don’t have to incarnate because, in the Urancho theology, all of space is the feminine. So they’re already incarnate. So the males incarnate into that. So there’s two teachings. There’s the feminine Gaia aspect and there’s the masculine aspect of deity. So it’s very much in the theology.
Speaker 3
Couple of questions over here. In the back. We’ll do one, two, three. Is that okay?
Speaker 8
Hi, thank you. Um I’m curious, so um I think a lot of us turn to religion, whether it’s like a personal practice of yoga or an organized religion. Like Islam to make sense of our suffering and hopefully to bring about its end. And I’m just curious if you could speak to what Tarasim and the other philosophers Philosophies being presented, what they kind of offer us in this space-time, what this means for many living humans, given where we are today as a planet.
Jason
So, I mean, first thought I had was, you know, off what does TerraSim have to offer in this space? I mean, I thought you were referring to some type of miracle or something that Terrasim could perform. But I mean, It does I mean terrorism doesn’t offer anything super natural. Like mainly yoga and the truths of terrorism are just for inner Inspiration and for physiological stress relief, and that combined with a belief set about the ultimate destiny of the universe would be more meaningful um you know for people today as opposed to you know um other forms of ancient yoga Based off of ancient traditions, which don’t resonate with modern people’s values as much.
Speaker 3
We’ll take one back here, and then we’ve got two there, and then three there.
Wesley Smith
Hi, I’m Wesley Smith. I’m going to be writing about this conference for First Things magazine, which is a more or less conservative religious journal. And I think Jason really hit what I have been sensing all morning is that I’ve always thought transhumanism has been a way of trying to replace What has been lost with the loss of religious faith in a secular world? And Jason has said, we’re going to make up our own religions. and then have subgroups that will interact with each other, which I thought was right on the nose. And I would like to ask Ted, It seems to me that what’s happening in this approach is that rather than having people adhere to the maxims of their faith, they’re having their faith adhere to their own personal maxims. I’d like your comment on that.
Ted
I want to be certain I’ve got your question correct, Wesley. In my description of the religious dimensions of transhumanism, am I saying that? And now could you just repeat that so that I’m sure I got it?
Wesley Smith
Nicely done. That was a good slide. Yeah.
Wesley Smith
It seems what I’m sensing is that rather than having in terms of the transhumanist approach, rather than people fitting themselves into the faith precepts of their faith. They’re having their faith they’re fitting their faith into their own desires, their own beliefs, and so forth. So that it’s really you could end up with If you really went all the way, 300 billion, I’m not 300 billion, 7 billion different religions, if each person creates their own faith and invents their own religion. And their own idea of transcendence, whether it’s material or it’s spiritual, you’re not going, it’s kind of like an anarchy, in a sense. That is, I will make my religion what I want it to be. I will decide what right and wrong is based on what I want, as opposed to, say, the traditional monotheistic face where people fit themselves to the precepts of their faith?
Ted
I think that that would fit what Jason Had described about himself if Jason felt like he needed after trying existing Religious o options, he needed to create his own. If that were to be a generalizable principle, yeah, we’d have seven billion religions. I think there’s a coherence to transhumanism. There’s a handful of fundamental philosophical or doctrinal commitments. Ultimate reality is physical, it’s evolutionary, it’s got a past and a future. You and I are morally obligated to enhance the evolutionary future. So it would seem to be that Even though there are no creeds, although the Transhumanist Manifesto comes close to being a creed, you would either say, Yes, I believe in transhumanism, or no, I don’t. So I don’t see that as a person making up his or her own religion, but it’s actually joining a movement or staying out of a movement.
Ted
I think in the larger context, especially after the Second World War, but it was already going on in the late 19th century. That as Western culture becomes more and more scientized and materialized, And people begin to drift away from classical religious traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and to a lesser extent, Islam. Many of the things that we had gotten from these religious traditions, now we ask science and technology to deliver. We ask actually a number of things in our secular life. For the most part, nationalism and patriotism give us a lot. They give us a substitute religious community, for example. But when it comes to salvation, good health, well being, human fulfillment. Science and technology just look like they can deliver what our religious traditions used to promise, but for s one reason or another, we don’t think we can get from them. I think that’s what’s going on. And transhumanism is not unique in that regard. It’s an example of a number of secular ways of thinking. in which discarded religious beliefs come back in a disguised, scientized form. I think that that’s that’s what I see.
Byron
I just want to add real quick for what it’s worth. The Ranter book is anti-dogma and states very explicitly, no creeds. Everyone is encouraged to create a personal philosophy of religion in their special sections in the Ranch book about that. And it discourages priests. And cults, and states: all of this is a framework, it’s not a belief system, to utilize for your own personal spiritual philosophy, which is God-centered.
Jason
So I think the Unitarian Universalist Church is the best model for allowing a large variety of diverse belief systems. By encouraging everyone to pursue their own spiritual path. And, you know, yes, seven billion people can’t have seven billion different varieties of spiritual Beliefs and also like addressing you know religious transhumanism as being an answer to life’s problems, I like part of my speech was also not just about providing a new answer, but also rebelling against The secularization of popular culture and the apparent nihilism in a lot of the pop culture memes and ideas that we’re supposed to be passionate about, like a lot of the music that’s on the radio today that’s popular. I think, you know, a lot of religious communities feel the same way, that they want to keep their kids away from, you know, listening to Jason Derullo’s songs and And I think there definitely could be the same thing existing within transhumanism.
Ted
Jason, let me ask you about your own existential working this through what dissatisfies you about the secular interpretation of things is it’s meaningless, it is nihilistic. And to some extent, transhumanism Risks that, but transhumanism finds meaning in evolutionary direction. Now, when you created your own religion, did you have to invent your meaning or were you able to find meaning?
Jason
In short, I did both. I looked for similar ideas in Nikolai Fyodorov, Shri Arubindo, and also Tarasen when I found out about it. you know, to the extent that people’s ideas are always the same but always evolving, um I I didn’t create my own religion, I just you know h created a hybrid version of previous traditions, just like the Hegelian dialectic, but in a sense I did create my own tradition in that the exact same thoughts were not thought of before.
Speaker 3
Got about two minutes. One here, and then if we have time, one in the front.
Speaker 11
Yeah, hi. I’m new to transhumanism, so my first exposure to it was the very first conference in San Francisco. San Francisco. So I could be wrong in my assumption, but what it seems in my exposure to it, there’s a lot of emphasis on, for example, human extension. There’s lots of talk about an ind the individual, and there’s lots of talk about humankind. There’s really not a lot of addressing of actual groups within societies and cultures. Groups that are typically discriminated against. We could cut that up by looking at race, gender, and class in America. So I guess my question is, is if there are these great technologies that can achieve life extension So on and so forth. What’s the stop there from that of groups historically not able to access things like even health in the United States. What does transhumanism, I guess, have to I haven’t heard anything that transhumanism has to offer philosophically. In addressing these kinds of inequalities and inequal access to these new technologies. So, I guess I was wondering. particularly to Ted and Jason, but perhaps also you as well. For one, what can religion or historical religions offer in terms of some kind of social justice? Aspect, what can they offer to transhumanism? And also, what can TerraSem offer to address inequalities and access to these potential life-enhancing technologies?
Ted
I’ll start. Actually, this is probably a better question for Hank than it is for me because I have to be descriptive. But if I were a transhumanist, I would answer you this way. That the fundamental structure of the transhumanist thought is from the individual to the whole. And you’re talking about groups in between, dominant groups, subordinate groups, rich groups, poor groups. discrimination, injustice. A transhumanist is going to say, look, with our technology, we’re going to improve the climate, the environment, we’re going to improve what happens in the inner life. There is nothing that would lead directly to changing the injustices between groups and segments. Of society. Traditional religions can be very concerned about injustice. Why? Well, they came out of tribalism for the most part. They’re used to one group and relating to another. Group. So issues of social justice are going to be much more on the minds of traditional religions. Than they will on the minds of transhumanists. That doesn’t mean transhumanists are immoral. I’m just saying that happens to be where I think the vision is at work. And Jason, I don’t know if you think like I do or differently.
Jason
Well, actually Terrasim has a ritual that’s exactly what you described. There’s in March there’s something called the Freedom Seder based on the Jew Jewish Passover Seder, and in that Seder, we in Terasim recount tales of freedom from slavery and also connect that to how society is currently advancing through. um telecommunications and more interconnectedness and uh more awareness of each other and more boundaries being broken, such as those in the tram Transgender community. And that’s part of how we can connect the past to the future as far as past religious traditions and a new synth. Religion, which is becoming popular today.
Byron
I was putting on my transhumanist hat. I think of transhumanism as unsustainable. Because it does not have this outreach in the sense of social gospel Christianity to the masses, to the poor. It is nothing like that. And I think it’s hopeful that you guys are thinking about that. But otherwise, it is in the future, the elitism of transhumanism will become more and more salient. And if you want to see an example of that, at the ThriveMovement. com web Website is a pretty big attack against my author, Ted Chu, by Foster Gamble, because this is an elitist ideology. Will be imposed on the masses, and there’s nothing in it for the poor, for the oppressed. In fact, it’s going to be a tool of oppression. So I think it’s really a highly volatile situation with trans humanists in the future as there’s a global upsurge against technological elitism, which is the way it’s going to be Perceived outside of forums like this. Ted Chu speaks of the worship of evolution itself, cosmic evolution should be worshipped. So it’s post-human because evolution goes beyond the human. So this is easily misunderstood and I I I want to tell you that he is a humanist. But you don’t get that unless you do your homework. So he’s now being depicted as an oppressor. And um I think there’s a big correction that has to come in Transhumanism. And this conference is an example of that correction, actually. Tr