Transhumanism, False Reenchantment, and Rage against the Given

by Paul M. Gould

The reality police tell us that there is no extra-mundane reality. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is divine. There is no deep meaning to the world. There is just one little bit of matter colliding with another bit of matter in a vast sea of nothingness. Yet this disenchanted and rather boring picture of the world is betrayed by our longings. We long for a world full of deep mystery, magic, and meaning. We long for a story that matters and understands us. These longings can lead to reenchantment. They can set us on the path that ends, if faithfully followed, to God. But success along the way is not guaranteed. False reenchantments are possible. One false reenchantment that many today find alluring is transhumanism.

What Is Transhumanism?

According to one of the movement’s thought leaders, Nick Bostrom, who teaches philosophy at Oxford University, transhumanism is the view that human nature is a “work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways.”[1] And the transhumanist vision, according to Bostrom, is eternity itself, although on man’s terms: “Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become posthumans, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have.”[2] We will achieve this utopian vision through physical and intellectual enhancements and the uniting of biological thinking and existence with technology. Bostrom summarizes the Transhumanist Vision: “The vision, in broad strokes, is to create the opportunity to live much longer and healthier lives, to enhance our memory and other intellectual faculties, to refine our emotional experiences and increase our subjective sense of well-being, and generally to achieve a greater degree of control over our own lives.”[3]

Why Not Transhumanism?

I’m struck with how attractive the transhumanist vision initially sounds. Why not improve our minds or bodies? Who wouldn’t want to live longer? Don’t we all want to be a better self? Lurking beneath the surface, however, is a posture taken, a presumption adopted, and a wager made that, in the end, lead to idolatry, foolishness, and despair. Let’s unpack this claim.

First, the transhumanist posture can be described as a kind of rage against the given. This posture, according to Joel Thompson, amounts to a “boundless bid for mastery and domination”[4] that is morally problematic, since it fails to cultivate, according to Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, an “ethic of giftedness,” an ethic that encourages humility, reverence, and gratitude.[5] The transhumanist ethic, with its boundless drive toward perfection and mastery, constitutes an idolatrous attempt to become like God.

Second, transhumanism is driven by the Enlightenment idea of progress. The idea is that man can perfect his nature, this life, and the future of the world through science. Man will create a heaven on earth where pain, suffering, inequality, and death will all be eradicated. When we place our hope in man instead of God, we fall into the error of presumption, a kind of pride. This hubris is vividly portrayed in Zoltan Istvan’s book The Transhumanist Wager, an imaginative attempt to capture the transhumanist hope and influence others toward its cause.[6] In the story, the protagonist, Jethro Knights, steps on a defective land mine while hiking in the jungle. Shaken by this brush with death, he decides to take his destiny into his own hands. Jethro thinks to himself, “What happened today is unacceptable. Death must be conquered. From now on, that is my first and foremost aim in life. That is the quintessential first goal of transhumanism.”[7] This brush with death begins Jethro’s journey to achieve omnipotence and eternity through science, technology, and self-determination. Such hubris and presumption, unfortunately, can only end in despair. Death cannot be avoided, our bodies will eventually succumb to the ravages of age and disease, and suffering cannot be eliminated this side of eternity. There is no utopian future for man on man’s own terms. Rather, man’s future in a disenchanted world ends in destruction.

The Transhumanist Wager

Istvan spins the transhumanist vision as the only rational option for humans in a disenchanted world. Here is his discussion of the wager made by the transhumanist, through the voice of the protagonist Jethro Knights:

The Wager is the most logical conclusion to arrive at for any sensible human being: We love life and therefore want to live as long as possible—we desire to be immortal. It’s impossible to know if we’re going to be immortal once we die. To do nothing doesn’t help our odds of attaining immortality, since it seems evident that we’re going to die someday and possibly cease to exist. To attempt something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical solution.[8]

The transhumanist wager can be summarized as follows:

Humans long for immortality. It is impossible to know if there’s life after death. If we don’t take the search for immortality into our own hands, we do not increase the odds that we’ll achieve immortality. Therefore, we must wager on ourselves and science—it’s the only (prudentially) rational way forward for humans.

The error is not difficult to spot. The claim that it is “impossible to know if there’s life after death” is false. If God exists and has revealed man’s end, as Christian’s believe, then we can know our fate. This option is not open to Istvan’s protagonist, unfortunately. Religious belief is characterized by the transhumanist Jethro Knights as “blind” and “irrational” and “superstitious.” Religious believers are the enemy. They are the chief hindrance, according to Istvan’s character, in the fulfillment of the transhumanist vision, and thus must not be tolerated. As Knights puts it in his discussion with his love-interest, Zoe Bach, “How people and institutions act based on their likes or dislikes—when it’s stupid and irrational, when it’s biased by heritage and cultural positions, when it’s steered by centuries-old religious tenets, when it’s so obviously anti-progress—should not be tolerated anymore.”[9] Bostom’s initial characterization of transhumanism begins to sound a lot more sinister as expressed through Zoltan Istvan’s story, written, as Istvan shares in a concluding “Author’s Note,” with the hope of changing “people’s ideas of what a human being is and what it can become.”[10] In reality, the transhumanist vision, with its rage against the given, commitment to the myth of progress through science and technology, and its wager can only lead, in the end, to despair.

While the posture, presumption, and wager of the transhumanist are wrong, I can’t fault the intuition and longing that drives this vision. God has put eternity in the hearts of man (Eccl. 3:13). We do long to live forever. But this longing for eternity is not to be understood in non-relational terms as a longing to merely extend human life. Rather, we long to be united for eternity to everlasting love. We long to be united to our Creator. As many theologians and philosophers have noted, part of what it means to be human is that we are homo viators, creatures “on the way” toward fulfillment.[11] Humans are pilgrims who journey “between the shores of being and nothingness.”[12] We long for human fulfillment of all our desires, yet we journey through the “not yet” of life on earth. If we place our hope in man or science or technology, we will fall into despair. The transhumanist sin, rooted in pride, is the denial of our creatureliness and our status as pilgrims on the way to God. But, part of the good news of the gospel is that one day all of our longings—for God, eternity, meaning, and purpose—will be fulfilled. For those who walk the path of faith, our status viatoris will one day change; we will attain status comprehensoris, as we enter into full and permanent and comprehensive union with God and everlasting life.[13] In the meantime, we must “press on toward the goal to win the prize” (Phil. 3:14) as we live in hope.[14]

Notes

[1] Nick Bostrom, “Transhumanist Values,” Ethical Issues for the Twenty-First Century (2005): 3–14.   

[2] Ibid., 4.   

[3] Ibid., 4.   

[4] Thompson, “Transhumanism: How Far is Too Far?” The New Bioethics 23:2 (2017): 169.

[5] Michael J. Sandel, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); cited in Thompson, “Transhumanism: How Far is Too Far?”, 169.  

[6] Zoltan Istvan, The Transhumanist Wager (San Francisco: Futurity Imagine Media LLC, 2013).    

[7] Ibid., 19.   

[8] Ibid., 58–59. 

[9] Ibid., 59.   

[10] Ibid., 298.   

[11] Joseph Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 91–92.   

[12] Ibid., 96.   

[13] Ibid., 91–93.   

[14] Joseph Pieper describes the sin of despair as follows: “In despair, the nature of sin per se becomes especially clear, namely, that it is in conflict with reality. Despair is a denial of the way of fulfillment—and this before the very eyes of him who is preeminently ‘the way’ to eternal life” [in Faith, Hope, Love, 116]. 

— Paul M. Gould is an Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Director of the M.A. Philosophy of Religion program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. He is the author or editor of ten scholarly and popular-level books including Cultural Apologetics, Philosophy: A Christian Introduction and The Story of the Cosmos. He has been a visiting scholar at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School’s Henry Center, working on the intersection of science and faith, and is the founder and president of the Two Tasks Institute. You can find out more about Dr. Gould and his work at Paul Gould.com and the Two Tasks Institute. He is married to Ethel and has four children.

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