Transhumanism: The Oldest Trick in the Book

Its temptations can be traced to the Garden of Eden.

“My view is that the advance of transhumanism is inexorable.”

That’s the opinion of Grayson Quay, a writer whose recent book on the subject is titled The Transhumanist Temptation: How Technology and Ideology are Reshaping Humanity—and How to Resist. Quay argues that thanks to new technologies that give mankind the illusion of control over nature, we are faced with a new serpent in the garden, coaxing us to believe that we can be like gods and transcend our human nature. The question of whether we can resist the lures of transhumanism, it seems, is one humanity has struggled with since the beginning of time—and we may well fall for the devil’s tricks again. Those who are overly optimistic about the future of technology would do well to read this book.

Julian Huxley (the brother of Aldous, who wrote Brave New World) is sometimes credited with coining the term “transhumanism” in his 1957 essay of the same name. He used it in the way we often mean, but not as ruthlessly as the Silicon Valley giants do now. Quay quotes Huxley’s definition of the term: “man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.” This is a way of putting it that most people could live with. But it’s too tame for what goes by the name today. There’s no more talk of “man remaining man” or even “human nature.” Instead, transhumanism reduces man to Silly Putty, something that can be stretched and shaped into whatever we wish. Nature isn’t fixed; its laws can be leveraged in order to remake ourselves into whatever we please. A better definition of today’s transhumanism comes from the journalist and entrepreneur Zoltan Istvan in his book The Transhumanist Wager:

Our biology severely limits us. As a species we are far from finished and therefore unacceptable. The transhumanist believes we should immediately work to improve ourselves via enhancing the human body and eliminating its weak points. This means riding ourselves of flesh and bones, and upgrading to new cybernetic tissues, alloys, and other synthetic materials, including ones that make us cyborg-like and robotic. It also means further merging the human brain with the microchip and the impending digital frontier. Biology is for beasts, not future transhumanists.

Modern ideologies are often Christian heresies with all of Christianity’s redeeming qualities bled out. It is not difficult to see here yet another attempt to create heaven on earth in transhumanism. In fact, even the term “transhumanism” is Christian in origin. Long before Huxley, it was coined by Dante in Paradiso when his pilgrim narrator admits his inability to “trasumanar significar per verba”: translators have rendered “trasumanar” as “transhumanise” (Longfellow) or “trans-human” (Ciardi). And T. S. Eliot used the term shortly before Huxley in his play “The Cocktail Party.” But there’s an essential difference: The agent of change in Dante and Eliot isn’t a mad scientist but God himself transhumanizing the faithful—Dante ascends past human understanding as he comes to know God on the path to Heaven. Transhumanists, on the other hand, repeat the serpent’s temptation to Adam and Eve that they, through their efforts alone, can make themselves like gods.

Quay’s book is broken down into five parts: Bodies, Reality, Politics, Work, and God. And each part is further divided into chapters—part one, for example, contains chapters entitled: “Sex and Reproduction,” “Transgenderism and Body Modification,” “Life Extension and Assisted Suicide,” and “The Procrustean Bed.”  Transhumanism is not only older than many think; it is broader. It is a disposition towards our bodies and a bifurcation—even a divorce—between them and our minds. My body isn’t me, on this view; it is property, and I can have it modified or tinkered with as much as I like.

Quay doesn’t begin with body-altering technologies. While he takes readers on a tour of technological blasphemies (genetic engineering, for example, and others still on the drawing board, such as linking our brains to the Cloud), his approach is philosophical and theological. Along the way he tries to answer the question “How in the world did we get here?” And as that question suggests, he believes the transhumanist age is already here. Technology is merely catching up to a way of thinking that has been around for a while. Science fiction is becoming fact.

There are larger powers at work in today’s push for transhumanism than multinational corporations in Silicon Valley. There are ideologies that have been with us for centuries, and the inner logic of each school of thought is playing out. One of those goes by the name “liberalism,” and it appears to be on good terms with transhumanism. Quay dedicates the third part of his book to politics, focusing especially on liberalism. There has been debate about the origins of liberalism and whether its struggles were inherent or if it has merely lost its way. Liberalism in those schools is dedicated to maximizing freedom, not directing it toward a common good. Quay doesn’t think liberalism can save us, and I think he’s right. Something more is called for.

Humanity stands no chance against the predations of transhumanism if we can’t even define what it means to be human. For that we need teleology: We need to know what people are for. Are we making ourselves like gods, or are we subject to Him? Liberalism says, “It’s up to you.” Which is another way of saying that transhumanism will win, since the choice is ours, not God’s.

Part five says out loud what we all know. Transhumanism is committed to making human beings into gods. Quay digs into the theological dimensions of transhumanism in the book’s final part with chapters entitled “The Nephilim and Theosis,” “Transhumanist Spiritualities,” “How Transhumanism Subverts Christianity,” and “Digital Christianity.”

At least we no longer struggle with an adversary who has a hidden agenda. Transhumanism puts us back in the Garden of Eden, as the cover of Quay’s book illustrates. We’re given a choice: It’s either eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or eat the fruit of the Tree of Life—it’s apotheosis or theosis. Which will it be?

The book ends with a sobering survey of possible futures, nearly all bad, the most hopeful being the redirection of humanity’s creative energies into outer space. Rather than envision them himself, Quay presents various options artfully described by science fiction authors and filmmakers—everyone from Frank Herbert to Orson Scott Card. It makes sense to end there. Science fiction is eschatology—an exploration of the meaning of man’s life and his destiny—perhaps the only teleology permitted in the empire of liberalism. But most of the stories Quay references end badly. They don’t envision heaven coming to earth; instead, in one form or another, man either transcends his limits and humanity is abolished or he succeeds in imposing limits on transhumanism, but only temporarily. Quay doesn’t think we can delay the march of transhumanism indefinitely. Pandora’s box is already open. Of course, things could just end; he does grant that. Civilization might exhaust itself when the earth’s resources run out. After that, barbarism returns. Or maybe mankind would simply go extinct.

Only God knows what comes after those potential outcomes because human agency would be at its end. I can’t help feeling that Quay, in his disgust for what we’re making of ourselves, thinks God will do nothing, abandoning us to our own devices.

I confess, in my darker moments, I agree with him. It’s what we’d deserve. Quay quotes Heidegger’s claim that “Only a god can save us.” Heidegger didn’t have the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in mind. But we should. There’s no telling what He will do because He already transcends everything. And even the mighty works of the transhumanists are no match for him. And as Tolkien implied in his essay “On Fairy Stories,” when God tells a story, a sudden, joyous turn may come just when all seems lost. So don’t lose hope, reader, and don’t lose hope, Mr. Quay: We’re promised the story of humanity will end gloriously.

Source: https://modernagejournal.com/transhumanism-the-oldest-trick-in-the-book/253278/