TransHuman
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What's so great about being human, anyway? The transhumanist movement -- epitomized by organizations like Humanity+ and blogs like Accelerating Future -- advocate the pursuit of technologies to fundamentally change the human condition, tinkering with our brain, bodies and genomes to make ourselves smarter, stronger, happier, and longer-lived. But many people worry that tampering with human nature could have dire consequences for individuals and society alike. In Our Posthuman Future , political theorist Francis Fukuyama sums up the position of the bioconservatives when he warns that new technologies may "in some way cause us to lose our humanity -- that is, some essential quality that has always underpinned our sense of who we are and where we are going," he writes. In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Massimo and Julia ask, first, are the goals of transhumanism realistic, and second, are they desirable?
Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS17 - Transhumanism
Should We Fear Transhumanism And Identity Copying?
On the Marginal Revolution blog Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen are debating transhumanism. Tyler discusses how much will people be willing to genetically engineer their children when doing so makes the children be less like their parents. Most people want their children to look like themselves, and to some extent to think like themselves. We invest many thousands of dollars and many months of our time to acculturate our children. Now let's say your children could be one percent happier throughout their lives, but this would mean they were totally unlike you, the parent. In fact your children would be turned into highly intelligent velociraptors and flown to another planet to live among their own kind.The Mormon DaVinci Code — Logos Apologia
The recent debate which ensued over my Christian Transhumanism research attracted the attention of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Mr. Lincoln Cannon seemed to feel slighted that they only merited a passing mention because I do not consider Mormons to be Christian.
Humanity+ | Technology & the Future
Our Humanity+ conferences explore innovations of science and technology and their relationship to humanity. Recent conferences have been held at Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Parsons The New School for Design in New York City, California Technology Institute, and Harvard University. H+ Magazine covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing humans in fundamental ways.A Questionable Editorial Decision
I love reading H+ Magazine , even though it often veers off of science and into the magical thinking that is endemic among Singulatarians. Still, when I checked them out today, I’m not going to lie — I laughed at their juxtaposition of stories. Alex Knapp writes about pretty much everything under the sun, including politics, art, religion, philosophy, sports, music, culture, and science.
Transhumanism: A Christian Sub-Cult
Christians believe in the Prophets who foretold of a time when God’s Providence would bring forth the Messiah who would usher in the Rapture leading us all to Heaven. Transhumanists believe in Kurzweil, Drexler and De Grey who predict Inevitable Technological Progress which will bring forth the Strong A.I. who will allow us to Upload Our Brains into the Cosmic Computer.
Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities . The movement regards aspects of the human condition , such as disability , suffering , disease , aging , and involuntary death as unnecessary and undesirable. Transhumanists look to biotechnologies and other emerging technologies for these purposes.
Transhumanism - Wikimedia
Medevac troops from the American 451st air expeditionary wing look out from their Pavehawk helicopter while heading to pick up casualties in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian Soldiers could have their minds plugged directly into weapons systems, undergo brain scans during recruitment and take courses of neural stimulation to boost their learning, if the armed forces embrace the latest developments in neuroscience to hone the performance of their troops. These scenarios are described in a report into the military and law enforcement uses of neuroscience, published on Tuesday, which also highlights a raft of legal and ethical concerns that innovations in the field may bring.
Transhumanism | Aftermath News
Christian Transhumanism is an ancient idea, and yet it is the most advanced form of Christianity. Theologian Paul Tillich points this out in a compilation of his lectures titled A History of Christian Thought . He traces Christian Transhumanism back 1800 years to the early anti-Gnostic theologian Irenaeus of Lyons ; "Irenaeus called salvation recapitulation. He was pointing to Ephesians 1.10 which speaks of all things in heaven and earth being gathered up in Christ." "It means that the development which was broken in Adam is resumed by Christ and fulfilled in him.
Christian Transhumanism
via NYTimes.com . ON a Tuesday evening this spring, , the co-founder of , became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a campus for a nine-day, $15,000 course at Singularity University, saw it happen. While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr.
Technofascism blog » transhumanism
Transhumanism - the proposition that human beings should use technology to transcend the limitations of the body and brain - is a product of the Enlightenment humanist tradition. As a consequence most avowed transhumanists are secular, and many religious are skeptical or hostile towards the transhumanist project. However there are also many religious transhumanists who find the project of human enhancement at least consistent with, and sometimes a fulfillment of, their metaphysics, soteriologies and eschatologies. Transhumanism appears to be especially compatible with religious traditions that emphasize human agency and evolution to a transcendent state, such as Buddhism, or that have incorporated Enlightenment values, such as liberal Christianity. But elements of the transhumanist worldview and enhancement technologies are compatible with one element or another of most world faiths, even the most fundamentalist.
The Compatibility of Religion and Transhumanism
British Petroleum's (BP) Liberty offshore oilfield is located four miles off the northern coast of Alaska in Foggy Island Bay in the Beaufort Sea. The estimated recoverable reserves of the oilfield are approximately 100 million barrels of oil and 78 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The oilfield is expected to produce more than 40,000bpd. O bamacare: Court Leans Toward All-or-Nothing Solution Today’s oral argument at the Supreme Court focused on two specific issues: the so-called Medicaid mandate and the question of severability – that is, whether the Court can strike down the individual mandate or Medicaid mandate and “sever” the rest of the bill so that it survives. (CBS/AP) WASHINGTON - Several Supreme Court justices seemed receptive Wednesday to the idea that portions of President Obama's health care law can survive even if the court declares the centerpiece unconstitutional.
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I occasionally check out the David Bentley Hart Appreciation Page to see what has surfaced. This is a splendid review of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, with a focus on the Trans-humanists in our midst (elsewhere I call them Diabolists, recalling G.K. Chesterton’s view of the situation ) As is my custom, I have added paragraphs and bolded portions for those of us who read (or is browse?)
Transhumanism « Paying Attention To The Sky
If EDR were accepted, speculations about infinite scenarios, however unlikely and far‐fetched, would come to dominate our ethical deliberations. We might become extremely concerned with bizarre possibilities in which, for example, some kind of deity exists that will use its infinite powers to good or bad ends depending on what we do. No matter how fantastical any such scenario would be, if it is a logically coherent and imaginable possibility it should presumably be assigned a finite positive probability, and according to EDR, the smallest possibility of infinite value would smother all other considerations of mere finite values. Suppose that I know that a certain course of action, though much less desirable in every other respect than an available alternative, offers a one‐in‐a‐million chance of avoiding catastrophe involving x people, where x is finite. Whatever else is at stake, this possibility will overwhelm my calculations so long as x is large enough.