The New Atlantis is likely the #1 source online for deathist, anthropocentric vitriol. The President’s Council on Bioethics, with a habit of booting off anyone who isn’t a bible thumper, is another (in 2008, see you guys later!) These are being joined by the slowly Luddite-leaning Templeton Foundation, which actually at one point awarded Nick Bostrom with a large grant, and does support worthy discussions such as those surrounding multiverse physics, but nonetheless seems to be decaying. Apparently the new top dog, the founder’s son, is a born-again. Anyway, here’s a selection from the New Atlantis article:

Obviously one is dealing here with a sensibility formed more by comic books than by serious thought. Ludicrous as it seems, though, transhumanism is merely one logical consequence (if a particularly childish one) of the surprising reviviscence of eugenic ideology in the academic, scientific, and medical worlds. Most of the new eugenists, admittedly, see their solicitude for the greater wellbeing of the species as suffering from none of the distasteful authoritarianism of the old racialist eugenics, since all they advocate (they say) is a kind of elective genetic engineering—a bit of planned parenthood here, the odd reluctant act of infanticide there, a soupçon of judicious genetic tinkering everywhere, and a great deal of prudent reflection upon the suitability of certain kinds of embryos—but clearly they are deluding themselves or trying to deceive us. Far more intellectually honest are those—like the late, almost comically vile Joseph Fletcher of Harvard—who openly acknowledge that any earnest attempt to improve the human stock must necessarily involve some measures of legal coercion. Fletcher, of course, was infamously unabashed in castigating modern medicine for “polluting” our gene pool with inferior specimens and in rhapsodizing upon the benefits the race would reap from instituting a regime of genetic invigilation that would allow society to eliminate “idiots” and “cripples” and other genetic defectives before they could burden us with their worthless lives. It was he who famously declared that reproduction is a privilege, not a right, and suggested that perhaps mothers should be forced by the state to abort “diseased” babies if they refused to do so of their own free will. Needless to say, state-imposed sterilization struck him as a reasonable policy; and he agreed with Linus Pauling that it might be wise to consider segregating genetic inferiors into a recognizable caste, marked out by indelible brands impressed upon their brows. And, striking a few minor transhumanist chords of his own, he even advocated—in a deranged and hideous passage from his book The Ethics of Genetic Control—the creation of “chimeras or parahumans…to do dangerous or demeaning jobs” of the sort that are now “shoved off on moronic or retarded individuals”—which, apparently, was how he viewed janitors, construction workers, firefighters, miners, and persons of that ilk.

Blah blah eugenics blah blah gene pool blah comic books blah blah infanticide JESUS CHRIST. This is the most dense and cheap-shot-filled anti-transhumanist smearing I’ve seen in my 10-long years of being on this side of the fence.

Transhumanism is thoroughly related to everything genomic research promises, and how is extended life or increased capacities fabulous? We’ve been on this road since putting on clothes and using hand axes. This guy goes on to quote John Paul II:

Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase.

The idea that man has a “supernatural vocation” set forth by God has been responsible for numerous atrocities throughout the last two millennia, including a little incident known as the “Dark Ages”. The new proposal for our “supernatural vocation” is to become god, and this I am comfortable with, numerous caveats notwithstanding.

Obviously none of this would interest or impress the doctrinaire materialist. The vision of the human that John Paul articulates and the vision of the “transhuman” to which the still nascent technology of genetic manipulation has given rise are divided not by a difference in practical or ethical philosophy, but by an irreconcilable hostility between two religions, two metaphysics, two worlds—at the last, two gods. And nothing less than the moral nature of society is at stake

Not really. In retrospect, I think that most religionists will be capable of fully enjoying a transhuman world. Also, people that believe in dying have a tendency to select themselves out of the discussion. Meanwhile, their children read Dawkins and Kurzweil and dream of living forever in this, our real world.

If, as I have said, the metaphysics of transhumanism is inevitably implied within such things as embryonic stem cell research and human cloning, then to embark upon them is already to invoke and invite the advent of a god who will, I think, be a god of boundless horror, one with a limitless appetite for sacrifice.

Stem cell research and cloning, apparently all that the author of this article is aware of, is child’s play. Advanced nanotechnology and AI will allow evolution by choice, that is, confer the power to make modifications in realtime, rather than depending on embryogenesis to enact the desired upgrades. We will be able to rearrange our atoms at will, and make ourselves faster, smarter, wiser, and by gum, if we can manage it, more compassionate. After all, God seems to have messed up in designing us, and we must correct his errors.

And it is by their gods that human beings are shaped and known. In some very real sense, “man” is always only the shadow of the god upon whom he calls: for in the manner by which we summon and propitiate that god, and in that ultimate value that he represents for us, who and what we are is determined.

God is an equation.

“Alas for those who turn their eyes from zebras and dream of dragons! If we cannot learn to take joy in the merely real, our lives shall be empty indeed.”

The materialist who wishes to see modern humanity’s Baconian mastery over cosmic nature expanded to encompass human nature as well—granting us absolute power over the flesh and what is born from it, banishing all fortuity and uncertainty from the future of the race—is someone who seeks to reach the divine by ceasing to be human, by surpassing the human, by destroying the human.

Destroying the human is not what we desire. I don’t mind seeing humans around for thousands of years to come, as long as they don’t continue to murder and torture one another, or suffer from diseases. What we wish is the expansion of morphological choice beyond this limited shell that is merely a fleshy waterbag. Rather than banishing fortuity and uncertainty through genetic manipulation, we wish to expand them through nanotechnological and post-nanotechnological self-reengineering and recursive self-improvement. In fact, the societal sphere could get so unpredictable as a result, that some artificial narrowing of possible worlds might be desired.

It is a desire both fantastic and depraved: a diseased titanism, the dream of an infinite passage through monstrosity, a perpetual and ruthless sacrifice of every present good to the featureless, abysmal, and insatiable god who is to come.

“Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from that doomed and accursed farm a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glance of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our universe must needs disown. Through quickly reclosing vapours they followed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too.”
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Nameless City

For the Christian to whom John Paul speaks, however, one can truly aspire to the divine only through the charitable cultivation of glory in the flesh, the practice of holiness, the love of God and neighbor; and, in so doing, one seeks not to take leave of one’s humanity, but to fathom it in its ultimate depth, to be joined to the Godman who would remake us in himself, and so to become simul divinus et creatura.

True holiness will be achieved beyond humanity. I have fathomed the human, and it is boring. Sign me up for one order of simul divinus et creatura, thanks.

It may well be that the human is an epoch, in some sense.

An epoch coming to a close. Not destructively, but creatively.

John Paul II, who is constantly quoted throughout this article, is indirectly responsible for millions of instances of sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancies, through his refusal to condone the use of contraception. Really someone we should be looking up to.