It’s been a while since anything related to religion and transhumanism passed across my radar (or I’ve been working on other things and just haven’t been paying attention). However, here’s a recent interview on Changesurfer Radio where James Hughes interviews Brent Waters about his slant on Christianity and Transhumanism. See: Do Christians Need Bodies?.

Hat tip to io9 : How should Christians feel about Transhumanism?

And here’s a list of related books by the conversation partners.

"This Mortal Flesh: Incarnation and Bioethics" (Brent Waters)

"From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology And Technology in a Postmodern World (Ashgate Science and Religion Series)" (Brent Waters)

"Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond To The Redesigned Human Of The Future" (James Hughes)

Waters also has an essay “Whose Salvation? Which Eschatology ? Transhumanism and Christianity as Competing Salvific Religions” in

"Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement" (Georgetown University Press)

Just checked the letterbox on the way back from a walk with the kids and found my copy of this book in it. Was wondering when it would arrive.

Transhumanism and Transcendence | Georgetown University Press.

From the blurb:

Transhumanism and Transcendence
Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement
Ronald Cole-Turner, Editor
The timeless human desire to be more beautiful, intelligent, healthy, athletic, or young has given rise in our time to technologies of human enhancement. Athletes use drugs to increase their strength or stamina; cosmetic surgery is widely used to improve physical appearance; millions of men take drugs like Viagra to enhance sexual performance. And today researchers are exploring technologies such as cell regeneration and implantable devices that interact directly with the brain. Some condemn these developments as a new kind of cheating—not just in sports but in life itself—promising rewards without effort and depriving us most of all of what it means to be authentic human beings. “Transhumanists,” on the other hand, reject what they see as a rationalizing of human limits, as if being human means being content forever with underachieving bodies and brains. To be human, they insist, is to be restless with possibilities, always eager to transcend biological limits.

As the debate grows in urgency, how should theology respond? Christian theologians recognize truth on both sides of the argument, pointing out how the yearnings of the transhumanists—if not their technological methods—find deep affinities in Christian belief. In this volume, Ronald Cole-Turner has joined seasoned scholars and younger, emerging voices together to bring fresh insight into the technologies that are already reshaping the future of Christian life and hope.

Essays include:

1. Introduction: The Transhumanist Challenge
Ronald Cole-Turner

2. Contextualizing a Christian Perspective on Transcendence and Human Enhancement: Francis Bacon, N. F. Fedorov, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Michael S. Burdett

3. Transformation and the End of Enhancement: Insights from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
David Grumett

4. Dignity and Enhancement in the Holy City
Karen Lebacqz

5. Progress and Provolution: Will Transhumanism Leave Sin Behind?
Ted Peters

6. The Hopeful Cyborg
Stephen Garner

7. Artificial Wombs and Cyborg Births: Postgenderism and Theology
J. Jeanine Thweatt-Bates

8. Taking Leave of the Animal? The Theological and Ethical Implications of Transhuman Projects
Celia Deane-Drummond

9. Chasing Methuselah: Transhumanism and Christian Theosis in Critical Perspective
Todd T. W. Daly

10. Human or Vulcan? Theological Consideration of Emotional Control Enhancement
Michael L. Spezio

11. Whose Salvation? Which Eschatology? Transhumanism and Christianity as Contending Salvific Religions
Brent Waters

12. Transcendence, Technological Enhancement, and Christian Theology
Gerald McKenny

13. Transhumanism and Christianity
Ronald Cole-Turner

Sentient Developments posts the trailer for the upcoming “transhuman” series from Brian Singer. See Sentient Developments: Trailer for “H+” web series

More details over at Bryan Singer’s Post-Apoc, Webjacked Web Series ‘H+’ Debuts at Comic-Con | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

See also: Bryan Singer beams the internet straight into your brain, in the trailer for H+.

Josh McDowell vs. Kevin Kelly | Jesus Creed points to these two opinions about the internet and its potential for harm or health respectively.

• In the negative corner: Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians, Christian News
• While in the optimistic corner, Kevin Kelly: Geek Theologian | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

I read Kelly’s blog The Technium from time to time. An interesting mixture of futurism, spirituality, and commentary on technology through an optimistic lens. In a course I teach I get students to read the following and respond in class to it: Kelly, Kevin. “Nerd Theology.” Technology in Society 21, no. 4 (1999): 387-392.

There’s also an interview in “Science and the Spiritual Quest: New Essays by Leading Scientists” (Phillip Clayton, Mark Richardson, Robert J. Russell, Kirk Wegter-McNelly), followed by a similar essay.

Kelly’s ideas on technology as a third-culture are also a good discussion starter. See: Kelly, Kevin. “The Third Culture.” Science 279 (1998): 992-993.

And related to digital life, Paul has some recent thoughts over at:

• fishers, surfers and casters » Coming of age in the digital era
• fishers, surfers and casters » Sherry Turkle has Carr syndrome

And I’ve been concerned with other things over the past year or so, but here’s a couple of transhuman/posthuman links to note:

• Singularity: Kurzweil on 2045, When Humans, Machines Merge – TIME
• Posthumanity stories – io9

Just had word that Transhumanism and Transcendence edited by Ron Cole-Turner is now being displayed on the Georgetown University Press web site. Looking forward to getting a copy later in the year.

Annalee Newitz on why technological change always bring unexpected (and potentially negative) consequences, in spite of the optimistic narratives woven about technological progression. Here she comments on the optimism of the singularitists: Why the Singularity isn’t going to happen

All I’m saying is that if you’re looking for a narrative that explains the future, consider this: Does the narrative promise you things that sound like religion? A world where today’s problems are fixed, but no new problems have arisen? A world where human history is irrelevant? If yes, then you’re in the fog of Singularity thinking.

But if that narrative deals with consequences, complications, and many possible outcomes, then you’re getting closer to something like a potential truth.

See also:

• What Is The Singularity And Will You Live To See It?
• Millennialism at the Singularity: Reflections on Metaphors, Meanings, and the Limits of Exponential Logic :: William Grassie :: Global Spiral

Nick Bostrom’s question – are we living in a simulation? – gets another airing over here: Clay Farris Naff: Sims, Suffering and God: Matrix Theology and the Problem of Evil

Bostrom’s original article “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” is over here: http://www.nickbostrom.com/

It’s been a while since I looked at anything related to cryonics, having been more preoccupied lately with things related to religion, popular culture and/or new media, so I was interested to see this article on cryonics in the NY Times. Discussion about cryonics has tended to get subsumed in the hype about super-longevity research or bypassed stories of potential cybernetic immortality, but it apparently still continues to function as both a though experiment and a business.

Anyway, the article Until Cryonics Do Us Part – NYTimes.com comments on how the partners of cryonics proponents are not always as keen on the idea as the proponents. In the article, one of the interviewees comments:

“Cryonics,” Robin says, “has the problem of looking like you’re buying a one-way ticket to a foreign land.” To spend a family fortune in the quest to defeat cancer is not taken, in the American context, to be an act of selfishness. But to plan to be rocketed into the future — a future your family either has no interest in seeing, or believes we’ll never see anyway — is to begin to plot a life in which your current relationships have little meaning. Those who seek immortality are plotting an act of leaving, an act, as Robin puts it, “of betrayal and abandonment.”

One of the things I look at in my research is how the stories of technological salvation parallel those of religious salvation, and that comment above could equally applied to families of those who have a member ‘convert’ to a religion or ideology.

Related link: Greenflame · Death as an engineering problem – which has a number of links to documentaries on super-longevity.

From the io9 posthuman newsfeed is a brief article looking a this form of muscle/nerve prosthetic. I’m constantly amazed by this kind of thing, and can’t imagine what it will look like in 10-15 years time. See Portraits In Posthumanity: Claudia Mitchell – Posthumanity – io9

This is a nice list. I’ve read a number of these (and there are some obvious ones missing) but this will give me some more options when I head to the library looking for something like this to read on the train.

See The Essential Posthuman Science Fiction Reading List – Posthumanity – io9

As an aside I’m currently reading ‘Devices and Desires’ by K. J. Parker on my brother’s recommendation. So far, so good but I hope it speeds up a little. (I like engineers as protagonists)