.

.

As humans, some argue, we are God in potential

• Man is carrying God in himself as a potentiality. Rajneesh
• I lovingly nurture the god in embryo that lies deep within my soul. I awaken myself to the deep stillness that lies deep within my heart. Deepak Chopra
• We are gods in the chrysalis. Dale Carnegie
• Does God exist? Well, I would say, ‘not yet’. Ray Kurzweil
• When I say that you are gods and goddesses I mean that your possibility is infinite, your potentiality is infinite. Rajneesh
• The purpose of my life is to make immortal Gods of out of every mortal human. Abhijit Naskar
• The purpose of my life is to make Gods out of every human. Abhijit Naskar

.

Our destiny as mankind is to become like Gods

• First, we believe that God is a being with a body in form like man’s; that he possesses body, parts and passions; that in a word, God is an exalted, perfected man. Secondly, we believe in a plurality of Gods. Third, we believe that somewhere and some time in the ages to come, through development, through enlargement, through purification until perfection is attained, man at last may become like God – a God. H. Roberts
• Stop trying to become God; God is becoming you. Here. Mellen-Thomas Benedict
• To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ. George Bernard Shaw
• What is man ? An angel, an animal, a void, a world, a nothing surrounded by God, indigent of God, capable of God, filled with God, if it so desires. Berulle
• By 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory. Michio Kaku
• Infinite power of the spirit, brought to bear upon matter evolves material development, made to act upon thought evolves intellectuality, and made to act upon itself makes of man a God. First, let us be Gods, and then help other to be Gods. Be and Make. Let this be our motto. Swami Vivekananda
• There is no god. I am an atheist. It is up to us to become God. We need to be elevated, to become saints. God alienates people from themselves. Bruno Dumont
• We can accept God becoming Man to save Man, but not Man becoming God to save himself. Vernon Howard

.

We have increasingly conquered famine, war and disease…

• The same three problems preoccupied the people of twentieth-century China, of medieval India and of ancient Egypt. Famine, plague and war were always at the top of the list. For generation after generation humans have prayed to every god, angel and saint, and have invented countless tools, institutions and social systems – but they continued to die in their millions from starvation, epidemics and violence. Many thinkers and prophets concluded that famine, plague and war must be an integral part of God’s cosmic plan or of our imperfect nature, and nothing short of the end of time would free us from them. Yet at the dawn of the third millennium, humanity wakes up to an amazing realisation. Most people rarely think about it, but in the last few decades we have managed to rein in famine, plague and war. Of course, these problems have not been completely solved, but they have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. We don’t need to pray to any god or saint to rescue us from them. We know quite well what needs to be done in order to prevent famine, plague and war – and we usually succeed in doing it. Yuval Noah Harari
• For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined. In the early twenty-first century, the average human is far more likely to die from bingeing at McDonald’s than from drought, Ebola or an al-Qaeda attack. Yuval Noah Harari
• In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder. Yuval Noah Harari
• Famine, plague and war will probably continue to claim millions of victims in the coming decades. Yet they are no longer unavoidable tragedies beyond the understanding and control of a helpless humanity. Instead, they have become manageable challenges. Yuval Noah Harari

.

…but we are far from finished in our quest for progress

• If our ancestors knew what tools and resources stand ready at our command, they would have surmised that we must be enjoying celestial tranquillity, free of all cares and worries. The truth is very different. Despite all our achievements, we feel a constant pressure to do and produce even more. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humans are rarely satisfied with what they already have. The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more. Humans are always on the lookout for something better, bigger, tastier. Yuval Noah Harari

.

Our next project is to attain divinity…

• We want the ability to re-engineer our bodies and minds in order, above all, to escape old age, death and misery, but once we have it, who knows what else we might do with such ability? So we may well think of the new human agenda as consisting really of only one project (with many branches): attaining divinity. Yuval Noah Harari
• So far we have competed with the gods of old by creating better and better tools. In the not too distant future, we might create superhumans who will outstrip the ancient gods not in their tools, but in their bodily and mental faculties. If and when we get there, however, divinity will become as mundane as cyberspace – a wonder of wonders that we just take for granted. Yuval Noah Harari
• We can be quite certain that humans will make a bid for divinity, because humans have many reasons to desire such an upgrade, and many ways to achieve it. Yuval Noah Harari
• Success breeds ambition, and our recent achievements are now pushing humankind to set itself even more daring goals. Having secured unprecedented levels of prosperity, health and harmony, and given our past record and our current values, humanity’s next targets are likely to be immortality, happiness and divinity. Having reduced mortality from starvation, disease and violence, we will now aim to overcome old age and even death itself. Having saved people from abject misery, we will now aim to make them positively happy. And having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus. Yuval Noah Harari

.

…by becoming as powerful and Godlike as the Gods of old…

• And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The Earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the Universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Winwood Reade (1872)
• Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole. William S. Burroughs
• Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light. Ray Kurzweil
• If this sounds unscientific or downright eccentric, it is because people often misunderstand the meaning of divinity. Divinity isn’t a vague metaphysical quality. And it isn’t the same as omnipotence. When speaking of upgrading humans into gods, think more in terms of Greek gods or Hindu devas rather than the omnipotent biblical sky father. Our descendants would still have their foibles, kinks and limitations, just as Zeus and Indra had theirs. But they could love, hate, create and destroy on a much grander scale than us. Yuval Noah Harari
• In seeking bliss and immortality humans are in fact trying to upgrade themselves into gods. Not just because these are divine qualities, but because in order to overcome old age and misery humans will first have to acquire godlike control of their own biological substratum. If we ever have the power to engineer death and pain out of our system, that same power will probably be sufficient to engineer our system in almost any manner we like, and manipulate our organs, emotions and intelligence in myriad ways. You could buy for yourself the strength of Hercules, the sensuality of Aphrodite, the wisdom of Athena or the madness of Dionysus if that is what you are into. Up till now increasing human power relied mainly on upgrading our external tools. In the future it may rely more on upgrading the human body and mind, or on merging directly with our tools. Yuval Noah Harari
• Throughout history most gods were believed to enjoy not omnipotence but rather specific super-abilities such as the ability to design and create living beings; to transform their own bodies; to control the environment and the weather; to read minds and to communicate at a distance; to travel at very high speeds; and of course to escape death and live indefinitely. Humans are in the business of acquiring all these abilities, and then some. Certain traditional abilities that were considered divine for many millennia have today become so commonplace that we hardly think about them. The average person now moves and communicates across distances much more easily than the Greek, Hindu or African gods of old. Yuval Noah Harari

.

…by upgrading ourselves through the use of technology…

• Ray Kurzweil and others have posited that the confluence of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and genetic engineering will soon produce posthuman beings that will far surpass us in power and intelligence. Just as black holes constitute a “singularity” from which no information can escape, posthumans will constitute a “singularity:” whose aims and capacities lie beyond our ken. Michael E. Zimmerman
• Genetic engineering, robotics, information technology, and nanotechnology (GRIN) will join forces to transform and later to transcend the human species. Michael E. Zimmerman
• Techno-humanism agrees that Homo sapiens as we know it has run its historical course and will no longer be relevant in the future, but concludes that we should therefore use technology in order to create Homo deus – a much superior human model. Homo deus will retain some essential human features, but will also enjoy upgraded physical and mental abilities that will enable it to hold its own even against the most sophisticated non-conscious algorithms. Since intelligence is decoupling from consciousness, and since non-conscious intelligence is developing at breakneck speed, humans must actively upgrade their minds if they want to stay in the game. Yuval Noah Harari
• The upgrading of humans into gods may follow any of three paths: biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the engineering of non-organic beings. Yuval Noah Harari
• Bioengineers will take the old Sapiens body, and intentionally rewrite its genetic code, rewire its brain circuits, alter its biochemical balance, and even grow entirely new limbs. They will thereby create new godlings, who might be as different from us Sapiens as we are different from Homo erectus. Cyborg engineering will go a step further, merging the organic body with non-organic devices such as bionic hands, artificial eyes, or millions of nano-robots that will navigate our blood stream, diagnose problems and repair damage. Such a cyborg could enjoy abilities far beyond those of any organic body. Yuval Noah Harari
• In the twenty-first century, the third big project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus. Yuval Noah Harari
• Homo sapiens is likely to upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process, until our descendants will look back and realise that they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the Bible, built the Great Wall of China and laughed at Charlie Chaplin’s antics. Yuval Noah Harari
• Doctors, engineers and customers no longer want merely to fix mental problems – they are now seeking to upgrade the mind. We are acquiring the technical abilities to begin manufacturing new states of consciousness, yet we lack a map of these potential new territories. Yuval Noah Harari
• It is likely that future upgrades to the human mind will reflect political needs and market forces. Yuval Noah Harari

.

…by taking our evolution into our own hands…

• We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands. Carl Sagan
• Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us…. Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become. Edward O. Wilson
• Up to this point, natural selection had been a random phenomenon, but now, thanks to technology, humans could intervene in this process. Meghan O’Gieblyn
• Our ability to create models—virtual realities—in our brains, combined with our modest-looking thumbs, has been sufficient to usher in another form of evolution: technology. That development enabled the persistence of the accelerating pace that started with biological evolution. It will continue until the entire universe is at our fingertips. Michael E. Zimmerman
• Biology is a software process. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by this process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era. Ray Kurzweil
• Biological evolution is too slow for the human species. Over the next few decades, it’s going to be left in the dust. Ray Kurzweil
• The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction. Ray Kurzweil

.

…thereby upgrading ourselves to Life 2.0

• Life 1.0: life where both the hardware and software are evolved rather than designed. You and I, on the other hand, are examples of Life 2.0: life whose hardware is evolved, but whose software is largely designed. By your software, I mean all the algorithms and knowledge that you use to process the information from your senses and decide what to do—everything from the ability to recognize your friends when you see them to your ability to walk, read, write, calculate, sing and tell jokes. Max Tegmark

.

.

The use of technology to upgrade humanity is encapsulated in the philosophy of transhumanism…

• Transhumanism is a philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies able to greatly modify or enhance human intellect and physiology. Calvin Mercer
• The bold code of the transhumanist will rise. That’s an inevitable, undeniable fact. It’s embedded in the undemocratic nature of technology and our own teleological evolutionary advancement. It is the future. We are the future like it or not. And it needs to molded, guided, and handled correctly by the strength and wisdom of transhumanist scientists with their nations and resources standing behind them, facilitating them. Zoltan Istvan
• Transhumanism is the ethics and science of using things like biological and genetic engineering to transform our bodies and make us a more powerful species. Dan Brown
• Transhumanism is a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values. Max More
• Transhumanism is defined as: The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities; and the study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies. Nick Bostrom
• It is the idea of humanity attempting to overcome its limitations and to arrive at fuller fruition. Meghan O’Gieblyn

.

…a philosophy that shares elements with humanism but also has significant differences

• Transhumanism is a class of philosophies that seek to guide us towards a posthuman condition. Transhumanism shares many elements of humanism, including a respect for reason and science, a commitment to progress, and a valuing of human (or transhuman) existence in this life. […] Transhumanism differs from humanism in recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting from various sciences and technologies. Max More

.

Transhumanism is a fervent belief that we as humans can transcend our human limits…

• Up till now human life has generally been, as Hobbes described it, ‘nasty, brutish and short’; the great majority of human beings (if they have not already died young) have been afflicted with misery… we can justifiably hold the belief that these lands of possibility exist, and that the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted… The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself—not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. D. Lighthall
• Transhumanism literally means “beyond human.” It’s using science and technology to radically change and improve the human species and experience. Zoltan Istvan
• We didn’t evolve through billions of years to remain animals. Zoltan Istvan

.

…to become more than merely human…

• I was born human. But this was an accident of fate – a condition merely of time and place. I believe it’s something we have the power to change. Kevin Warwick
• What is a human being, then?” “A seed” “A… seed?” “An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree.” David Zindell
• To be what you want to be: isn’t this the essence of being human? David Zindell
• Humans have been modifying themselves for centuries, not only by intensive spiritual practices, but also by technological means, including most recently artificial implants and genetic manipulation. In effect, humans are already well along in the process of remaking their original image, not from contempt for the body, but rather from the desire for a body that suffers less, lives longer, has greater vitality, and is capable of more enjoyment. Michael E. Zimmerman
• Leading support to the post-human Singularity, according to the increasingly visible, international transhumanist movement, will be a surge of “new sciences and technologies [designed] to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and [to] ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as stupidity, suffering, disease, ageing and involuntary death. Michael E. Zimmerman
• Like the earlier Gnostics, knowledge and insight are the keys to overcome the deficiencies of the physical. With the accumulation of research in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and neural network interfacing, man will be able to overwhelm the frailty and deficiency inherent in the human condition and transform that which was weak into strength. The ability to repair, replace or enhance the various biological systems in the body allows one to overcome the limits of finitude. Michael E. Zimmerman

.

…and that this is an endeavour well worth taking

• The more we learn about what we are, the more options we will discern about what to try to become. Americans have long honored the “self-made man,” but now that we are actually learning enough to be able to remake ourselves into something new, many flinch. Many would apparently rather bumble around with their eyes closed, trusting in tradition, than look around to see what’s about to happen. Yes, it is unnerving; yes, it can be scary. After all, there are entirely new mistakes we are now empowered to make for the first time. But it’s the beginning of a great new adventure for our knowing species. And it’s much more exciting, as well as safer, if we open our eyes. Daniel C. Dennett

.

Transhumanism is a steadfast faith in the power of science and technology to ensure massive steps forward to the betterment of life

• Our technology, our machines, is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings. Ray Kurzweil
• Science and technology can solve all the world’s problems, and historically it has been shown to make the world better and better. Zoltan Istvan
• Men are only so good as their technical developments allows them to be. George Orwell
• We create tools to expand our own reach. Ray Kurzweil
• The optimism currently discernible in trans-humanists and posthumanists has long been a potent influence in Western civilization. During the last century in particular, natural science, technology, engineering and industry have made possible truly remarkable achievements, which have altered the social fabric. In Future Shock (1970), sociologist Alvin Toffler insightfully predicted that exponential scientific-technological growth would overwhelm individuals and shake socio-cultural foundations, but even he could not anticipate the mind-blowing changes that are ostensibly on the way. Michael E. Zimmerman

.

Transhumanism is a belief in taking control of our own destiny and forging a utopian future

• I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny. Julian Huxley
• The bold code of the transhumanist will rise. That’s an inevitable, undeniable fact. It’s embedded in the undemocratic nature of technology and our own teleological evolutionary advancement. It is the future. We are the future like it or not. And it needs to molded, guided, and handled correctly by the strength and wisdom of transhumanist scientists with their nations and resources standing behind them, facilitating them. It needs to be supported in a way that we can make a successful transition into it, and not sacrifice ourselves—either by its overwhelming power or by a fear of harnessing that power. You need to put your resources into the technology. Into our education system. Into our universities, industries, and ideas. Into the strongest of our society. Into the brightest of our society. Into the best of our society So that we can attain the future. Zoltan Istvan
• The 21st century will be different.  The human species, along with the computational technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problems … and will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a postbiological future.  Ray Kurzweil

.

Transhumanism is a movement that is rising in prominence and power

• Transhumanists today wield enormous power in Silicon Valley – entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel identify as believers – where they have founded thinktanks such as the Singularity University and the Future of Humanity Institute. The ideas proposed by the pioneers of the movement are no longer abstract theoretical musings but are being embedded into emerging technologies at organisations such as Google, Apple, Tesla and SpaceX. Meghan O’Gieblyn

.

.

We are likely to change the world and ourselves beyond recognition

• By 2010 computers will disappear. They’ll be so small, they’ll be embedded in our clothing, in our environment. Images will be written directly to our retina, providing full-immersion virtual reality, augmented real reality. We’ll be interacting with virtual personalities. Ray Kurzweil
• Homo sapiens is likely to change the world beyond recognition in this century. Scientific research and technological developments are moving at a far faster rate than most of us can grasp. Yuval Noah Harari
• In the early twenty-first century the train of progress is again pulling out of the station – and this will probably be the last train ever to leave the station called Homo sapiens. Those who miss this train will never get a second chance. In order to get a seat on it you need to understand twenty-first-century technology, and in particular the powers of biotechnology and computer algorithms. These powers are far more potent than steam and the telegraph, and they will not be used merely for the production of food, textiles, vehicles and weapons. The main products of the twenty-first century will be bodies, brains and minds, and the gap between those who know how to engineer bodies and brains and those who do not will be far bigger than the gap between Dickens’s Britain and the Mahdi’s Sudan. Yuval Noah Harari
• In this century, not only has science changed the world faster than ever, but in new and different ways. Targeted drugs, genetic modification, artificial intelligence, perhaps even implants into our brains – may change human beings themselves.  Martin Rees

.

Mankind is becoming like a single organism, connected to an increasingly omniscient mind

• The better we could communicate on a mass scale, the more our species began to function like a single organism, with humanity’s collective knowledge tower as its brain and each individual human brain like a nerve or muscle fiber in its body … The Human Colossus began inventing things that no human could have dreamed of inventing on their own — things that would have seemed like absurd science fiction to people only a few generations before. Tim Urban
• This god is a product of our long-running effort to make the world “more open and connected.” The Human Colossus has brought us many amazing innovations with its sprawling server farms and network infrastructure. Tim Urban
• The Human Colossus helps us imagine all 8 billion humans as a single super-organism. It’s inspired by the Colossus of Rhodes — an ancient Greek statue of the sun-god Helios. Standing 108 ft. tall. This metaphor re-imagines the Colossus as a giant person sitting on top of a giant computer. Each one of us is like a little cell in this “body” that we can’t quite see from the outside. Tim Urban
• Simple molecules combine to make powerful chemicals. Simple cells combine to make powerful life-forms. Simple electronics combine to make powerful computers. Logically, all things are created by a combination of simpler, less capable components. Therefore, a supreme being must be in our future, not our origin. What if God is the consciousness that will be created when enough of us are connected by the Internet?!! Scott Adams

.

In the future, we will increasingly augment the body with technology…

• The coming years will usher in a number of body augmentation capabilities that will enable humans to be smarter, stronger, and more capable than we are today. Sarwant Singh
• Wearables will be one form of body augmentation, but they will far surpass the fitness trackers of today. In the future, we can expect the arrival of contact lenses that can take pictures or video, universal language translator earbuds that allow us to communicate anywhere in the world, and exosuits that increase physical strength. We will also see increased use of implants ranging from brain microchips and neural lace to mind-controlled prosthesis and subdermal RFID chips that allow users to unlock doors or computer passwords with the wave of a hand. However, the most powerful body augmentation will come from biological augmentation as a result of increased insight into our genomes, advances in IVF technology that may allow us to select the most intelligent embryos, and powerful CRISPR gene-editing technology which may one day give us the ability to eliminate all heritable diseases. Sarwant Singh
• When you talk to a human in 2035, you’ll be talking to someone that’s a combination of biological and non-biological intelligence. Ray Kurzweil
• We’ll be able to have very intelligent, little robots with computers going inside our bloodstream, keeping us healthy from inside, destroying cancer at the level of one cell. Ray Kurzweil
• So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years. Ray Kurzweil
• If medical hopes are realised, future humans will incorporate into their bodies a host of biometric devices, bionic organs and nano-robots, which will monitor our health and defend us from infections, illnesses and damage. Yuval Noah Harari

.

…including the brain

• Both wearable and implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are in development from organizations that include Elon Musk’s Neuralink, Facebook, and DARPA. These devices will dramatically alter the ways in which we communicate with each other, as well as digital devices.  Today, when I speak with others, I am limited by the speed with which I can speak and the words on the tip of my tongue. When I interface with a computer, I am limited by the speed that I can type.  BMIs will change all of this… to enabling communication at the speed of thought in its full, unfiltered state.  Elizabeth Lopatto
• Once we know what we need to do, our nanotechnologies should enable us to construct replacement bodies and brains that won’t be constrained to work at the crawling pace of “real time.” The events in our computer chips already happen millions of times faster than those in brain cells. Hence, we could design our “mind-children” to think a million times faster than we do. To such a being, half a minute might seem as long as one of our years, and each hour as long as an entire human lifetime. Marvin Minsky
• By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate. Ray Kurzweil

.

Genetic engineering, nanotechnology and brain–computer interfaces will lead to a cognitive revolution

• A second cognitive revolution might give Homo deus access to unimaginable new realms and make them lords of the galaxy. Yuval Noah Harari
• Whereas Hitler and his ilk planned to create superhumans by means of selective breeding and ethnic cleansing, twenty-first-century techno-humanism hopes to reach that goal far more peacefully, with the help of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and brain–computer interfaces. Yuval Noah Harari
• Maybe a few additional changes to our genome and another rewiring of our brain will suffice to launch a second cognitive revolution. Yuval Noah Harari

.

We will make a serious bid for immortality

• We have achieved two of the three alchemists’ dreams: We have transmuted the elements and learned to fly. Immortality is next. Max More
• There is nothing in transhumanism but the same common sense that underlies standard humanism, rigorously applied to cases outside our modern-day experience. A million-year lifespan? If it’s possible, why not? The prospect may seem very foreign and strange, relative to our current everyday experience. It may create a sensation of future shock. And yet – is life a bad thing? Could the moral question really be just that simple? Yes. Eliezer Yudkowsky
• We have the means right now to live long enough to live forever. Existing knowledge can be aggressively applied to dramatically slow down aging processes so we can still be in vital health when the more radical life-extending therapies from biotechnology and nanotechnology become available. But most baby boomers won’t make it because they are unaware of the accelerating aging process in their bodies and the opportunity to intervene. Ray Kurzweil
• In the twenty-first century humans are likely to make a serious bid for immortality. Yuval Noah Harari
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN after the Second World War – which is perhaps the closest thing we have to a global constitution – categorically states that ‘the right to life’ is humanity’s most fundamental value. Since death clearly violates this right, death is a crime against humanity, and we ought to wage total war against it. Yuval Noah Harari
• Modern science and modern culture have an entirely different take on life and death. They don’t think of death as a metaphysical mystery, and they certainly don’t view death as the source of life’s meaning. Rather, for modern people death is a technical problem that we can and should solve. Yuval Noah Harari
• Humans don’t die because a figure in a black cloak taps them on the shoulder, or because God decreed it, or because mortality is an essential part of some great cosmic plan. Humans always die due to some technical glitch… And every technical problem has a technical solution. We don’t need to wait for the Second Coming in order to overcome death. A couple of geeks in a lab can do it. If traditionally death was the speciality of priests and theologians, now the engineers are taking over. Yuval Noah Harari
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not say that humans have ‘the right to life until the age of ninety’. It says that every human has a right to life, period. That right isn’t limited by any expiry date. Yuval Noah Harari
• An increasing minority of scientists and thinkers consequently speak more openly these days, and state that the flagship enterprise of modern science is to defeat death and grant humans eternal youth. Yuval Noah Harari
• The breakneck development of fields such as genetic engineering, regenerative medicine and nanotechnology fosters ever more optimistic prophecies. Some experts believe that humans will overcome death by 2200, others say 2100. Yuval Noah Harari
• Kurzweil and de Grey are even more sanguine. They maintain that anyone possessing a healthy body and a healthy bank account in 2050 will have a serious shot at immortality by cheating death a decade at a time. …unlike us mortals, their life would have no expiry date. So long as no bomb shreds them to pieces or no truck runs them over, they could go on living indefinitely. Which will probably make them the most anxious people in history. We mortals daily take chances with our lives, because we know they are going to end anyhow. So we go on treks in the Himalayas, swim in the sea, and do many other dangerous things like crossing the street or eating out. But if you believe you can live for ever, you would be crazy to gamble on infinity like that. Yuval Noah Harari
• Even if we don’t achieve immortality in our lifetime, the war against death is still likely to be the flagship project of the coming century. Yuval Noah Harari
• When you take into account our belief in the sanctity of human life, add the dynamics of the scientific establishment, and top it all with the needs of the capitalist economy, a relentless war against death seems to be inevitable. Our ideological commitment to human life will never allow us simply to accept human death. As long as people die of something, we will strive to overcome it. Yuval Noah Harari
• The scientific establishment and the capitalist economy will be more than happy to underwrite this struggle. Most scientists and bankers don’t care what they are working on, provided it gives them an opportunity to make new discoveries and greater profits. Can anyone imagine a more exciting scientific challenge than outsmarting death – or a more promising market than the market of eternal youth? Yuval Noah Harari
• The fear of death ingrained in most humans will give the war against death an irresistible momentum. Yuval Noah Harari
• A large part of our artistic creativity, our political commitment and our religious piety is fuelled by the fear of death. Yuval Noah Harari
• If a reasoning human being loves and values life, they will want to live as long as possible—the desire to be immortal. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to know if they’re going to be immortal once they die. To do nothing doesn’t help the odds of attaining immortality—since it seems evident that everyone will die someday and possibly cease to exist. To try to do something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical conclusion. Zoltan Istvan
• Kurzweil claims he is a “patternist”, characterising consciousness as the result of biological processes, “a pattern of matter and energy that persists over time”. These patterns, which contain what we tend to think of as our identity, are currently running on physical hardware – the body – that will one day give out. But they can, at least in theory, be transferred onto supercomputers, robotic surrogates or human clones. A pattern, transhumanists would insist, is not the same as a soul. But it’s not difficult to see how it satisfies the same longing. At the very least, a pattern suggests that there is some essential core of our being that will survive and perhaps transcend the inevitable degradation of flesh. Meghan O’Gieblyn
• One camp of transhumanists have argued that true resurrection can happen only if it is bodily resurrection. They tend to favour cryonics and bionics, which promise to resurrect the entire body or else supplement the living form with technologies to indefinitely extend life. Meghan O’Gieblyn

.

…though it may take longer than we expect

• My own view is that the hopes of eternal youth in the twenty-first century are premature, and whoever takes them too seriously is in for a bitter disappointment. It is not easy to live knowing that you are going to die, but it is even harder to believe in immortality and be proven wrong. Yuval Noah Harari
• In truth, so far modern medicine hasn’t extended our natural life span by a single year. Its great achievement has been to save us from premature death, and allow us to enjoy the full measure of our years. Even if we now overcome cancer, diabetes and the other major killers, it would mean only that almost everyone will get to live to ninety – but it will not be enough to reach 150, let alone 500. For that, medicine will need to re-engineer the most fundamental structures and processes of the human body, and discover how to regenerate organs and tissues. It is by no means clear that we can do that by 2100. Yuval Noah Harari

.

We will make a bid for eternal bliss…

• On the biological level, both our expectations and our happiness are determined by our biochemistry, rather than by our economic, social or political situation. We are happy when we feel pleasant sensations and are free from unpleasant ones. Yuval Noah Harari
• As the biochemical pursuit of happiness accelerates, so it will reshape politics, society and economics, and it will become ever harder to bring it under control. And drugs are just the beginning. In research labs experts are already working on more sophisticated ways of manipulating human biochemistry, such as sending direct electrical stimuli to appropriate spots in the brain, or genetically engineering the blueprints of our bodies. Yuval Noah Harari
• Homo sapiens was not adapted by evolution to experience constant pleasure, if that is what humankind nevertheless wants, ice cream and smart-phone games will not do. It will be necessary to change our biochemistry and re-engineer our bodies and minds. So we are working on that. You may debate whether it is good or bad, but it seems that the second great project of the twenty-first century – to ensure global happiness – will involve re-engineering Homo sapiens so that it can enjoy everlasting pleasure. Yuval Noah Harari

.

…and eternal leisure…

• Transhumanists argue that the same exponential rate of innovation that makes possible increased longevity will also put an end to the need for work. Nanotechnology will allow people to produce almost anything in their counter-top fabricators. As products become vanishingly inexpensive, people will find far more interesting and challenging things to do than to earn a paycheck. By ending polluting and wasteful forms of production, transhumanists say, we will avoid creating new environmental problems, while we use astonishing new technologies to mitigate existing environmental problems. Michael E. Zimmerman

.

…as well as enlightened states of mind on demand

• Many pre-modern cultures believed in the existence of superior states of consciousness, that people might access through meditation, drugs or rituals. Shamans, monks and ascetics systematically explored the mysterious lands of mind, and returned laden with breathtaking stories. They told of unfamiliar states of supreme tranquillity, extreme sharpness and matchless sensitivity. They told of the mind expanding to infinity or dissolving into emptiness. Yuval Noah Harari
• In all probability there is an infinite variety of mental states that no Sapiens, bat or dinosaur ever experienced in 4 billion years of terrestrial evolution, because they did not have the necessary faculties. In the future, however, powerful drugs, genetic engineering, electronic helmets and direct brain–computer interfaces may open passages to these places. Just as Columbus and Magellan sailed beyond the horizon to explore new islands and unknown continents, so we may one day embark for the antipodes of the mind. Yuval Noah Harari
• Modern Western culture is therefore unique in lacking a specialised class of people who seek to experience extraordinary mental states. It believes anyone attempting to do so is a drug addict, mental patient or charlatan. Yuval Noah Harari
• The humanist revolution caused modern Western culture to lose faith and interest in superior mental states, and to sanctify the mundane experiences of the average Joe. Yuval Noah Harari
• Just as the spectrums of light and sound are far broader than what we humans can see and hear, so the spectrum of mental states is far larger than what the average human perceives. Yuval Noah Harari
• We fail to appreciate that we are living on a tiny island of consciousness within a perhaps limitless ocean of alien mental states. Yuval Noah Harari
• Techno-humanism seeks to upgrade the human mind and give us access to unknown experiences and unfamiliar states of consciousness. Yuval Noah Harari

.

We will create artificial intelligence with Godlike intelligence

• A posthuman God is a hypothetical future entity descended from or created by humans, but possessing capabilities so radically exceeding those of present humans as to appear godlike. One common variation of this idea is the belief or aspiration that humans will create a God entity emerging from an artificial intelligence. Another variant is that humanity itself will evolve into a posthuman God. Tim Urban
• The Singularity is probably the god in our pantheon that’s closest to spawning a full-blown organized religion. The techno-utopian deity has many faithful followers in Silicon Valley who believe that artificial intelligence will soon become smart enough to vanquish Moloch once and for all. All we have to do is keep on improving our AI systems, and eventually they will start improving themselves. This god already has a number of prophets going mainstream. Ray Kurzweil, a well-known leader of the movement, says that “a historical achievement known as the Singularity will allow humankind to ascend to the next level of evolutionary existence: its inseparable union with artificial intelligence … It will liberate humankind from the organic prison of carbon-based bodies.” Tim Urban
• Much like Medieval Christians, the Singulitarians make a sharp dualistic distinction between the divine and the merely human — between AI “stuff” and non-AI “stuff” like organic biology and inanimate tools. Adherents are convinced that there will be a moment in the future when humanity is “saved” by a power that’s beyond our comprehension. But we must demonstrate our faith through good works. Singularity believers worship at the altar of their own technological prowess, praying that the AI will be benevolent when their soul is uploaded to Heaven. Tim Urban
• By the time we get to the 2040s, we’ll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that’s singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter. Ray Kurzweil
• By the time of the Singularity, there won’t be a distinction between humans and technology. This is not because humans will have become what we think of as machines today, but rather machines will have progressed to be like humans and beyond. Technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step in evolution. Ray Kurzweil

.

We will allow algorithms to make our decisions, trusting that they know us better than we know ourselves

• The new technologies of the twenty-first century may thus reverse the humanist revolution, stripping humans of their authority, and empowering non-human algorithms instead. Yuval Noah Harari
• Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves. Yuval Noah Harari

.

We will increasingly break out of the organic realm

• After 4 billion years of wandering inside the kingdom of organic compounds, life will break out into the vastness of the inorganic realm, and will take shapes that we cannot envision even in our wildest dreams. After all, our wildest dreams are still the product of organic chemistry. Breaking out of the organic realm could also enable life to finally break out of planet Earth. For four billion years life remained confined to this tiny speck of a planet because natural selection made all organisms utterly dependent on the unique conditions of this flying rock. Not even the toughest bacteria can survive on Mars. A non-organic artificial intelligence, in contrast, will find it far easier to colonise alien planets. The replacement of organic life by inorganic beings may therefore sow the seed of a future galactic empire, ruled by the likes of Mr Data rather than Captain Kirk. Yuval Noah Harari

.

.

Transhumanism is likely to lead to significant economic and social challenges…

• What will happen to the job market once artificial intelligence outperforms humans in most cognitive tasks? What will be the political impact of a massive new class of economically useless people? What will happen to relationships, families and pension funds when nanotechnology and regenerative medicine turn eighty into the new fifty? What will happen to human society when biotechnology enables us to have designer babies, and to open unprecedented gaps between rich and poor? Yuval Noah Harari

.

…and could lead to significant social and economic inequality…

• The creation of a new superhuman caste that will abandon its liberal roots and treat normal humans no better than nineteenth-century Europeans treated Africans. Yuval Noah Harari
• In order to compete with Japan, Brazil might need a handful of upgraded superhumans far more than millions of healthy ordinary workers. Yuval Noah Harari
• What would the Indian, Brazilian or Nigerian elites prefer to do in the coming century? Invest in fixing the problems of hundreds of millions of poor, or in upgrading a few million rich? Yuval Noah Harari
• The state and the elite may lose interest in providing the poor with healthcare. In the twentieth century medicine benefited the masses because the twentieth century was the age of the masses. Twentieth-century armies needed millions of healthy soldiers, and economies needed millions of healthy workers. Yuval Noah Harari
• Just as humans would be a laughing stock for the Overman, so too un-enhanced humans will be a laughing stock for post-humans, who will be millions or even billions of times more intelligent than are humans. Michael E. Zimmerman
• Upgrading the healthy is an elitist project, because it rejects the idea of a universal standard applicable to all and seeks to give some individuals an edge over others. Yuval Noah Harari
• Twentieth-century medicine aimed to heal the sick. Twenty-first-century medicine is increasingly aiming to upgrade the healthy. Yuval Noah Harari
• As of early 2016, the sixty-two richest people in the world were worth as much as the poorest 3.6 billion people! Yuval Noah Harari
• Most humans will not be upgraded, and will consequently become an inferior caste dominated by both computer algorithms and the new superhumans. Yuval Noah Harari
• These superhumans will enjoy unheard-of abilities and unprecedented creativity, which will allow them to go on making many of the most important decisions in the world. Yuval Noah Harari
• Some people will remain both indispensable and undecipherable, but they will constitute a small and privileged elite of upgraded humans. Yuval Noah Harari
• Critics doubt, however, that promised enhancements will be equally distributed. Presumably, only those who can afford enhancements will be able to purchase them. Hence, liberal democracy may be replaced by a kind of enhancement-based caste system. Michael E. Zimmerman
• One can certainly envision the prospect, however, of at least some humans attaining such exalted status that they will inspire awe, fear, and jealousy on the part of “naturals,” that is, the un-enhanced. Michael E. Zimmerman

.

…and also greater power imbalances between nations

• Whoever creates an artificial intelligence first has such a distinct military advantage over every other nation on the planet that they will forever, or they will at least indefinitely, rule the planet. It’s very important that a nice country, a democratic country, develops A.I. first, to protect other A.I.’s from developing that might be negative, or evil, or used for military purposes. Zoltan Istvan
• Bostrom and many others also believe that the most likely scenario is that the very first computer to reach advanced super-intellence (ASI) will immediately see a strategic benefit to being the world’s only ASI system. And in the case of a fast takeoff, if it achieved ASI even just a few days before second place, it would be far enough ahead in intelligence to effectively and permanently suppress all competitors. Bostrom calls this a decisive strategic advantage, which would allow the world’s first ASI to become what’s called a singleton—an ASI that can rule the world at its whim forever, whether its whim is to lead us to immortality, wipe us from existence, or turn the universe into endless paperclips.  Tim Urban

.

Transhumanism will mean the extinction of what it means to be human

• In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human. Yuval Noah Harari
• Transhumanism would shatter human exceptionalism. The moral philosophy of the West holds that each human being is possessed of natural rights that adhere solely and merely because we are human. But transhumanists yearn to remake humanity in their own image—including as cyborgs, group personalities residing in the Internet Cloud, or AI-controlled machines. Wesley Smith
• Once technology enables us to re-engineer human minds, Homo sapiens will disappear, human history will come to an end and a completely new kind of process will begin, which people like you and me cannot comprehend. Yuval Noah Harari

.

Upgrading our brains may cause us to lose our minds

• We may successfully upgrade our bodies and our brains, while losing our minds in the process. Indeed, techno-humanism may end up downgrading humans. For millions of years we were enhanced chimpanzees. In the future, we may become oversized ants. Yuval Noah Harari
• Overusing the attention helmet may cause us to lose our ability to tolerate confusion, doubts and contradictions, just as we have lost our ability to smell, dream and pay attention. Yuval Noah Harari

.

Transhumanism, especially the rise of artificial intelligence, will make humans more and more irrelevant

• Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. J. Good
• Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. Vernor Vinge
• Due to similar humanist beliefs, in the twenty-first century we are likely to push humankind as a whole beyond its limits. The same technologies that can upgrade humans into gods might also make humans irrelevant. For example, computers powerful enough to understand and overcome the mechanisms of ageing and death will probably also be powerful enough to replace humans in any and all tasks. Yuval Noah Harari
• In the twenty-first century the majority of both men and women might lose their military and economic value. Yuval Noah Harari
• In the past there were many things only humans could do. But now robots and computers are catching up and may soon outperform humans in most tasks. Yuval Noah Harari
• Some economists predict that sooner or later unenhanced humans will be completely useless. Yuval Noah Harari
• We should remind ourselves of the fate of horses during the Industrial Revolution. Yuval Noah Harari

.

Transhumanism could lead to the eventual downfall of humanism, liberalism and democracy

• The rise of humanism also contains the seeds of its downfall. While the attempt to upgrade humans into gods takes humanism to its logical conclusion, it simultaneously exposes humanism’s inherent flaws. If you start with a flawed ideal, you often appreciate its defects only when the ideal is close to realisation. Yuval Noah Harari
• Why might attempts to fulfil humanism result in its downfall? How would the search for immortality, bliss and divinity shake the foundations of our belief in humanity? What signs foretell this cataclysm, and how is it reflected in the day-to-day decisions each of us makes? And if humanism is indeed in danger, what might take its place? Yuval Noah Harari
• When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives, tape cassettes, Islam and communism. Yuval Noah Harari
• Liberals uphold free markets and democratic elections because they believe that every human is a uniquely valuable individual, whose free choices are the ultimate source of authority. In the twenty-first century three practical developments might make this belief obsolete: 1. Humans will lose their economic and military usefulness, hence the economic and political system will stop attaching much value to them. 2. The system will continue to find value in humans collectively, but not in unique individuals. 3. The system will still find value in some unique individuals, but these will constitute a new elite of upgraded superhumans rather than the mass of the population. Yuval Noah Harari
• In the economic sphere too, the ability to hold a hammer or press a button is becoming less valuable than before, which endangers the critical alliance between liberalism and capitalism. Yuval Noah Harari

.

Some assert that transhumanism doesn’t know where it’s going yet is determined to break a speed record getting there

• Transhumanism encapsulates a long-lived error among the headliners of science: in a world without a destination, we cannot even break ground on our Tower of Babel, and no amount of rush and hurry on our part will change that. That we are going nowhere is not a curable condition; that we must go nowhere at the fastest possible velocity just might be curable, though probably not. And what difference would it make to retard our progress to nowhere? Thomas Ligotti
• ‘What would people with minds like ours do with biotechnology?’ Yet there are no good answers to the question, ‘What would beings with a different kind of mind do with biotechnology?’ Yuval Noah Harari
• At present it might seem that immortality, bliss and divinity occupy the top slots on our agenda. But once we come nearer to achieving these goals the resulting upheavals are likely to deflect us towards entirely different destinations. Yuval Noah Harari

.

Some argue transhumanism is a modern form of eugenics

• Transhumanism goes so badly wrong by hubristically claiming that we have the ability — not to mention, the wisdom — to remake ourselves into something “better,” that we can somehow “improve” on what evolution, intelligent design, or Creation — take your pick — produced. That is eugenics, plain and simple. The movement’s fatal flaw can be found in its rigid mechanistic beliefs, that sees us basically as the sum of our materialistic parts. Wesley Smith

.

Some argue transhumanism is a form of technological laziness

• Transhumanists don’t seem much interested in such real improvements in the human condition. They want quick, easy technological fixes; a gene edit here, a brain implant there. They dream of becoming extraordinary, with the physical prowess of fictional super heroes, all without having to actually work for it. Sad. Wesley Smith

.

Of course, transhumanism also potentially holds existential threats to life on earth

• Moore’s Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point. Eliezer Yudkowsky
• In the next century, we will be inventing radical new technologies – machine intelligence, perhaps nanotech, great advances in synthetic biology and other things we haven’t even thought of yet. And those new powers will unlock wonderful opportunities, but they might also bring with them certain risks. And we have no track record of surviving those risks. So if there are big existential risks, I think they are going to come from our own activities and mostly from our own inventiveness and creativity.  Nick Bostrom
• It’s unlikely that any natural hazard will do us in within the next 100 years if we’ve already survived 100,000. By contrast, we are introducing, through human activity, entirely new types of dangers by developing powerful new technologies. We have no record of surviving those. Nick Bostrom

.

It’s probably true to say that this century will be a defining turning point in determining whether our technological leaps turn out to be a force for good or ill

• This brief century of ours is arguably the most significant one in the history of our universe. We’ll have the technology either to self-destruct, or [to] seed our cosmos with life. The situation is so unstable that I doubt we can dwell at this fork in the road for more than another hundred years. But if we end up going the life route instead of the death route, then in a distant future our cosmos will be teaming with life, all of which can be traced back to what we do-here and now. I don’t know how we’ll be thought of, but I’m sure that we won’t be remembered as insignificant. Max Tegmark
• The greatest existential risks over the coming decades or century arise from certain, anticipated technological breakthroughs that we might make in particular, machine super intelligence, nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Each of these has an enormous potential for improving the human condition by helping cure disease, poverty, etc. But one could imagine them being misused, used to create powerful weapon systems, or even some kind of accidental destructive scenario, where we suddenly are in possession of some technology that’s far more powerful than we are able to control or use wisely. Nick Bostrom

.

.

Many religious believers regard transhumanist ideology as illegitimate

• Many traditional Christians regard trans- and post-humanism as dangerous and illegitimate efforts to redesign humankind, which was created in the image of God. Michael E. Zimmerman

.

They argue man is far from God and never meant to be God

• He who begins by seeking God within himself may end by confusing himself with God. B. Warfield
• We can never be gods, after all–but we can become something less than human with frightening ease. N.K. Jemisin
• A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it. Gilbert K. Chesterton
• Man is a fallen being, incapable of good, unless united to the Divine Light. Robert Barclay
• Can we be gods, good Christian friends, with all of our selfishness and pride, our fears and suffering and violence? Heaven help us if you and I are the feeble and dying deities who alone are in charge of this world! Elizabeth Achtemeier
• Only a loving and covenant-making personal God can provide humans with unique dignity, worth, and rights. Blind nature cannot do that. So, for the Christian, “secular humanism” is an oxymoron. Roger E. Olson
• There is nothing new about humanism. It is the yielding to Satan’s first temptation of Adam and Eve: “Ye shall be as gods.” (Gen. 3:5) Billy Graham

.

On the other hand, some religious believers argue that God wants us to become all we can be

• If changing our world is playing God, it is just one more way in which God made us in His image. Aubrey de Grey

.

Many transhumanists regard themselves as non-religious…

• No more gods, no more faith, no more timid holding back. Let us blast out of our old forms, our ignorance, our weakness, and our mortality. The future belongs to posthumanity. Max More

.

…and some even regard religion as a primary threat to technological progress

• The greatest threat to humanity’s continuing evolution is theistic opposition to Superbiology in the name of a belief system based on blind faith in the absence of evidence. Simon Young

.

Some argue that in a world of rapid technological progress, traditional religion has become largely a spent and reactionary force

• Islam, Christianity and other traditional religions are still important players in the world. Yet their role is now largely reactive. In the past, they were a creative force. Christianity, for example, spread the hitherto heretical notion that all humans are equal before God, thereby changing human political structures, social hierarchies and even gender relations. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus went further, insisting that the meek and oppressed are God’s favourite people, thus turning the pyramid of power on its head and providing ammunition for generations of revolutionaries. Yuval Noah Harari
• The Vatican was the closest thing twelfth-century Europe had to Silicon Valley. Yuval Noah Harari
• Monasteries were the first institutions to use clocks, and for centuries they and the cathedral schools were the most important learning centres of Europe, helping to found many of Europe’s first universities, such as Bologna, Oxford and Salamanca. Yuval Noah Harari
• Today the Catholic Church continues to enjoy the loyalties and tithes of hundreds of millions of followers. Yet it and the other theist religions have long since turned from creative into reactive forces. They now mostly agonise over the technologies, methods and ideas propagated by other movements. Yuval Noah Harari
• Billions of people, including many scientists, continue to use religious scriptures as a source of authority, but these texts are no longer a source of creativity. Yuval Noah Harari
• The Bible is kept as a source of authority, even though it is no longer a true source of inspiration. Yuval Noah Harari

.

Then there are those that argue that the ideology of transhumanism actually has its roots in traditional religion…

• There has also persisted a tradition of Christians who believed that humanity could enact the resurrection through science and technology. Meghan O’Gieblyn
• Was it possible there were now Christian Transhumanists? Actual believers who thought the Kingdom of God would come about through the Singularity? I had thought I was alone in drawing these parallels between transhumanism and biblical prophecy, but the convergences seemed to have gained legitimacy from the pulpit. Meghan O’Gieblyn
• I argue that technological posthumanists, whether wittingly or unwittingly, draw upon the long-standing Christian discourse of “theosis,” according to which humans are capable of being God or god-like. From St. Paul and Luther to Hegel and Kurzweil, the idea of human self-deification plays a prominent role. Hegel in particular emphasizes that God becomes wholly actualized only in the process by which humanity achieves absolute consciousness. Kurzweil agrees that God becomes fully actual only through historical processes that illuminate and thus transform the entire universe. The difference is that for Kurzweil and many other posthumanists, our offspring—the posthumans—will carry out this extraordinary process. What will happen to Home sapiens in the meantime is a daunting question. Michael E. Zimmerman
• This theory was carried into the 20th century by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit priest and palaeontologist who, like Fedorov, believed that evolution would lead to the Kingdom of God. In 1949, Teilhard proposed that in the future all machines would be linked to a vast global network that would allow human minds to merge. Over time, this unification of consciousness would lead to an intelligence explosion – the “Omega Point” – enabling humanity to “break through the material framework of Time and Space” and merge seamlessly with the divine. Meghan O’Gieblyn
• Although two millennia separate St. Paul and Ray Kurzweil, they share two important convictions. First, humankind is not destined forever to remain in bondage to mortal flesh. Second, either redeeming (St. Paul) or forsaking (Kurzweil) the human body would eventually deliver the entire cosmos from its current condition of suffering and limitation. Michael E. Zimmerman

.

…and in western philosophy

• Post-humanism draws upon and extends a long-standing theme in Western philosophy and theology, according to which humans have the capacity to become virtually divine… technological innovation allows their proponents to believe they are helping to bring forth extraordinary beings, akin to Nietzsche’s Overman, but with powers bordering on he divine. Michael E. Zimmerman
• Frederick Nietzsche was important to me, in teaching that it’s okay to strive to improve the human being. Zoltan Istvan
• I teach you the Overman! Mankind is something to be overcome. What have you done to overcome mankind? Friedrich Nietzsche
• [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel gives us a picture of a self-glorifying humanity striving compulsively, and at the end successfully, to rise to divinity. Zoltan Istvan
• Dramatically re-interpreting Martin Luther’s theology, G.W.F. Hegel depicted humankind as the instrument through which absolute Geist (spirit) achieves total self-consciousness. Michael E. Zimmerman
• For Hegel, substance becomes subject when nature becomes self-consciousness in the form of humankind. The true subject of world history is not humankind, but rather Geist at work in and through humankind. David Zindell

.

In many ways, religion and transhumanism appeal to the same existential longings and fears deep in the human psyche

• I had disavowed Christianity, and yet I had spent the past 10 years hopelessly trying to re-create its visions by dreaming about our postbiological future – a modern pantomime of redemption. What else could lie behind this impulse but the ghost of that first hope? Meghan O’Gieblyn
• What makes the transhumanist movement so seductive is that it promises to restore, through science, the transcendent hopes that science itself has obliterated. Meghan O’Gieblyn
• Death is a great tragedy…a profound loss…I don’t accept it…I think people are kidding themselves when they say they are comfortable with death. Ray Kurzweil
• As we gradually learn to harness the optimal computing capacity of matter, our intelligence will spread through the universe at (or exceeding) the speed of light, eventually leading to a sublime, universe wide awakening. Ray Kurzweil
• Does the mind-as-computer metaphor appeal to us because it allows for the possibility of mind-uploading, fulfilling an ancient, religious desire for transcendence and eternal life?  Donald Hoffman
• He sees the need for transhumanism to resolve a significant problem of the Enlightenment, which was based on a scientific worldview that deprived many people of the feeling of purpose. Giulio Prisco

.

Some transhumanists see their movement as a deeply spiritual one with spiritual ideals

• Evolution moves towards greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably towards this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking. Ray Kurzweil
• Buddhism is a faith tradition and set of spiritual practices whose core idea is that human beings can become more than human by application of mental technology and self-discipline. As such it is probably the most compatible of the older faiths with transhumanism. But it is also quite challenging for many transhumanists in its insistence that there is no discrete, continuous ego that could be protected and perpetuated. Many of the immortalists, for instance, find that a threatening idea, but I think we will increasingly see the truth of the emptiness of the self as we apply neuro-technologies and life extension. James Hughes
• Eventually, humans will evolve beyond themselves by generating modes of consciousness and technology that will make possible a cosmic self-realization that has something in common with St. Paul’s hope “that the Creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. “ In Kurzweil’s universe story, the cosmos is not only life-friendly and even consciousness-friendly, but also God-friendly. Post-human divinity will take charge of its own destiny and “spiritualize” everything in the universe, including supposedly “dumb” matter/energy. Michael E. Zimmerman
• God intended for man to become one with God. We are going to become one with God. We are going to have almost as much knowledge and almost as much power as God. Richard Seed
• The cosmos has brought itself to self-awareness through humankind. Zoltan Istvan
• Universal History is the exhibition of Geist (God) in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. David Zindell
• World history is the autobiography of God-in-the-making. Robert C. Tucker
• Every time someone cries out in prayer and I can’t answer, I feel guilty about not being God. – That doesn’t sound good. – I understand that I have a problem, and I know what I need to do to solve it, all right? I’m working on it. Of course, Harry hadn’t said what the solution was. The solution, obviously, was to hurry up and become God. Eliezer Yudkowsky
• Transhumanism offered a vision of redemption without the thorny problems of divine justice. It was an evolutionary approach to eschatology, one in which humanity took it upon itself to bring about the final glorification of the body and could not be blamed if the path to redemption was messy or inefficient. Meghan O’Gieblyn

.

• I close with a few questions: Many centuries from now, will intelligent beings look back upon human history as an episode in the biography of cosmic Geist? If so, what means are justifiable in pursuit of this extraordinary end? Because people have so often committed terrible atrocities when convinced that they were carrying out God’s will, should we not keep in mind the possibility that trans- and posthumanists are themselves deluded in what is behind their visions for the future? Does the drive to leave behind mortal flesh divert human energy that might otherwise go to restoring the life- and human-friendly features of a planet that has been ravaged by the very science and industry that unwittingly paved the way for trans- and posthumanists? Ought there be international forums in which these portentous questions can receive serious and lengthy hearings? Or will technological innovations develop so rapidly that little time will remain for inquiry into the potential implications of trans- and posthumanism? Will the future envelop us before we even have the chance to think whether we ought to embrace it? Or will environmental problems bring about a grimmer future, one that precludes the possibilities—both grand and terrifying—that we have been discussing here? Michael E. Zimmerman