Although the terms "transhumanism" and "futurism" seem simply bizarre and irrelevant to most people, these movements are front and center internationally involving much of the controversial medical and scientific genetic engineering and nanotechnology research being performed today -- not to mention their intrusion into economics, art, politics, etc. These "isms" are very well funded and very powerful politically.
Nor do people usually see how these "isms", so currently active, actually go back many millennia in history, long before the first Pre-Socratic philosophers or the post-Christian Gnostic cults (all of whom were also deeply influenced by them), grounded ultimately in ancient Gnostic cosmogonies and dogmas of various sorts that date from 5000 B.C. at least -- all obviously forms of paganism and pantheism, with obvious negative consequences to Christian and other "theologies" and "philosophies". Most of what Gnosticism would condone and promote would seriously contradict Christian teachings and Western principles. As any teacher or professor knows, our kids and young adults are familiar with ancient and post-Christian Gnosticism already -- though they're not sure what "names" goes on those faces.
To help people at least identify the current expression of these radical and influential "isms" in popular genetic engineering and nanotech research, the following is a very very short list of some of the URLs for major transhumanism and futurism websites, followed by an excellent and insightful article by Linda Kimball, "Bus ride from hell" [http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/120904], where she connects the dots and explains the significance of some of the ancient Gnostic roots of these dogmas (citing C. S. Lewis and others) -- and why we should deeply care. See also Irving, "GNOSTICISM, the Heretical Gnostic Writings, and 'Judas'" (April 9, 2006), at: http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irv/irv_121gnosticism1.html, providing the insights into historical Gnosticism by world expert Hans Jonas; also, "Historic roots of human genetic engineering: REASON, Duke, and parahuman reproduction - 1972" (July 11, 2004), at: http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/irvi/irvi_34winstonduke.html, documenting the involvement of futurism/transhumanism in politics by Californian Winston Duke decades ago (names, organizations, even tactics recognizable today very interesting). Or, simply Google "gnostic" yourself -- both "web" and "news".
I would also add, e.g., that both ancient and post-Christian Gnosticisms are, in their own words, also the historical and dogmatic source of population control, homosexuality, anti-Semitism, and the deconstruction of the physical laws of nature. There is no "ethics" or "freedom of choice" since all "truth" and information about "reality" on which we are supposed to base our informed consciences and "decisions" comes from and is infused (secretly) into human brains by various deities or semi-deities above mortal man. "Salvation" is defined as ultimately (physically and spiritually) fusing back into the ultimate god (from whence they emanated), also called "the In-gathering of the Light" -- and are thus, as Hans Jonas explains, inherently and necessarily "a-cosmic" (requiring the destruction of all that has existed below the ultimate god. These are thus also some of the ultimate goals and dogmas of transhumanists and futurists. Read their words and connect the dots yourself, starting with visits to the following websites.
H+ Magazine, at: http://hplusmagazine.com; Humanityplus.org, at: http://humanityplus.org/; Nick Bostrom (Oxford University, "posthumanism"), at: http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html and at http://www.posthumanism.com/; Ray Kurzweil (American, The Singularity), at: http://www.kurzweilai.net/; Extropy Institute, at: http://www.extropy.org/; The Singularity "University" in Silicon Valley, California, co-founded by NASA and Google [http://singularityu.org/], who are gurus for the Singularity Institute (for Artificial Intelligence) [http://singinst.org/; IEET (Institute for ETHICS and Emerging Technologies), at: http://www.ieet.org/; Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News: http://www.genengnews.com/; "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science" sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce [http://wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_report.pdf]; European version in 2004 conference in Brussels, "Converging Technologies for a Diverse Europe", sponsored by Converging Technologies Bar Association [http://www.convergingtechnologies.org/default2.asp], etc. -- DNI]
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/120904
Renew America
September 4, 2012
Linda Kimball
Transhumanism is a powerfully influential planetary 'elite' movement that believes man can begin a radical transfiguration of himself by merging his brain with technology with the long term goal of eventually transferring his 'essence' out of his decaying body and into a highly advanced robo-machine. A Daily Mail article reported that,
'...inserting technology into human brains is not the only thing going on. Some scientists also want to insert human brains into technology" ("Hitler would have loved The Singularity: Mind-blowing benefits of merging human brains and computers," Ian Morris, 6 February 2012, dailymail.co.uk)
In July 2012, transhumanism officially came out of the closet and into the arena of politics when Italy, a longtime stronghold of the Catholic Church, became the first major Western nation to elect an active transhumanist to congress. (Italy elects first transhumanist MP, Giulio Prisco, Aug. 26, 2012, kurzweilai.net)
Though it lauds itself as thoroughly scientific, enlightened and forward looking, transhumanism is merely the pantheist counterpart of scientific materialism's secular humanism. In his book, The Abolition of Man (1947), C.S. Lewis observed that pantheist or cosmic humanism and materialist secular humanism and similar variants appeared in Western history in the heart of Christendom during the Renaissance. [[Actually, Gnosticism in the West and East goes back at least to 5000 B.C. and the ancient myth of "Okeanus". - DNI]] The Renaissance reawakened a magic view of the world closely connected with pagan Gnostic sectarianism, Eastern pantheism as well as Hermetic and alchemical-scientism. Along with Eastern pantheism came spiritual evolution, reincarnation, karma and occultism while for its' materialist counterpart there eventually came Darwinism and determinism rather than karma.
Early on Lewis understood that Cosmic and Secular Humanism were merely two sides of the same revival of pagan monism. Thus he argued, Cosmic and Secular Humanism are not enemies in principle but rather cooperating philosophies of naturalism united against the Creator Who exists outside of the time-space universe, His Revelation to mankind, Original Sin, His moral law, Christian theism, and Christian-based civilization.
During Lewis's lifetime, cosmic and secular humanist ideas and philosophical systems were growing in acceptance and popularity throughout academia, within seminaries, universities and among the masses.
Among common points of departure for both types of humanism are the following ideas:
The dangers of holding erroneous views are profound and in his book, "The Great Divorce," Lewis attempted to address them by presenting us with a masterful study of the psychology of the hell-bound versus the psychology of the Paradise-bound.
As Lewis fleshes out his view of hell, he relies in part on his mentor George MacDonald, a Scottish preacher and writer who believed there might be a final opportunity for the unrepentant on earth to repent after their death. Building off this idea, Lewis depicts the damned as taking a bus ride from hell to heaven, where they come in contact with "real" reality.
Heaven is a place of matter, of weight and mass and the blessed inhabitants are the beautiful "bright solid people" as opposed to the self-idolizing dirty shades without mass, or matter. N.T. Wright explains,
"...there will be a new mode of physicality, which stands in relation to our present body as our present body does to a ghost....a Christian in the present life is a mere shadow of his or her future self, the self that person will be when the body that God has waiting in his heavenly storeroom is brought out...and put on...over the self that will still exist after bodily death." (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p. 154-155)
The bus finally arrives in heaven having arisen from what turns out to be a mere crack in the ground for Lewis sees all Hell as
"....smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World." (The Great Divorce, An Essay, Allen Adams, cslewis.drzeus.net)
As the hell-bound depart the bus they are shocked by the realization that not only are they dirty ghosts but they cannot abide the matter, the fleshiness of heaven because in life, like the pagan sages, the Gnostic Arnobius and contemporary secular and cosmic transhumanists, they were dissatisfied with their own bodies and created condition as either male or female for example, as well as with the finiteness of their own minds. In "Adversus nationes" (2.37) Arnobius complains,
"If souls were of the Lord's race...They would never come to these terrestrial places (and) inhabit opaque bodies and (be) mixed with humors and blood, in receptacles of excrement, in vases of urine." (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)
Molnar explains that from Plato to Plotinus, it was held as axiomatic that from being as one with or an aspect of the Divine Substance souls had inexplicably fallen into the material realm, a place of misery, suffering and binary, which means for example, two distinct sexes rather than a two-in- one, the androgynous being called 'gay' in modern terminology. Salvation was secured through the mystery cults which,
"...afforded their devotees the opportunity to erase the curse of mortality by direct encounter with the patron deity or in many instances by actually undergoing an apotheosis, a transfiguration of human into divine. The process of 'initiation' in the mystery religions, therefore, had as its objective the liberation of the soul from its earthly...chains" (C.K. Barrett cited in "The Interruption of Eternity," Carl A. Raschke, p. 28)
Carl Teichrib, author of "The Rise of Techno-Gods: The Merging of Transhumanism and Spirituality" writes that transhumanists believe they are on the verge of evolving into deity. They are no longer mere humans but post-humans. Theirs is the technical quest for the Holy Grail, ascension through engineering. Transhumanism is modern-day alchemy and magic, the contemporary manifestation of the Secret Doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus Thoth: "All is One, and that One is Divinity."
Transhumanist Mark Pesce, a co-inventor of 3-D interfacing for the worldwide web and a panelist and judge on ABC's show The New Inventors, puts it this way,
".... we seek... a transcendence of transience, translation to incorruptible form. An escape if you will, a stop to the wheel. We seek, therefore, to bless ourselves with perfect knowledge and perfect will; To become as gods, take the universe in hand, and transform it in our image - for our own delight. As it is on Earth, so it shall be in the heavens. There is no God but Man." (Carl Teichrib, www.forcingchange.org)
At the root of the rejection of the living God by the hell-bound is the rebellious assertion that man has not been created by Him, that he is not dependent upon Him for his own life, thus he is not created in His spiritual image. He is not dependent upon the living God but is rather a man-god, the creator of God, and the master of time, being, and the world who through his own powers will save himself.
Blaming the true God for their misery the hell-bound say to Him, "you are not my father:"
"I am I, I come out of myself, and in choice and action I make myself." (Daniel Bell, quoted by Herbert Schlossberg in "Idols for Destruction," p. 43)
Having transferred onto Him the reasons for their wrong choices and dissatisfaction with self, the hell-bound long for eternal nothingness, absorption into the void, apotheosis, or some spiritual conception of afterlife, but when as dirty shades they step onto the "solidness" of heaven it is tremendously painful to them. The grass is sharp on their feet, the rain goes go through them like bullets from a machine gun. They can't even pick flowers as the stems are far too strong for them.
Here Lewis contrasts the psychology of the hell-bound over and against the psychology of the heaven-bound. He does so by clearly depicting just how repugnant heaven is to the hell-bound. To them, paradise is a place of pain and suffering because during life, they freely chose unwisely based on selfish motives.
Enormously proud, resentful and covetous, the hell-bound are subjectivists who hold that any direction, but particularly their own direction, will come out fine in the end, but Lewis sees the real danger to society as a result of this belief. The common good said Lewis, is only maintained by the common morality. Societies that embrace subjectivism are doomed to decay and death. Lewis put it this way, [[note, for Gnostics, opposites ARE THE SAME; e.g., for Heraclitus "the road up is the same as the road down". - DNI]]
"...some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found, that mere development of adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. This belief I take to be a disastrous error." (ibid, The Great Divorce, An Essay, Allen Adams)
So holding that any direction is fine, especially their own, the hell-bound have their own ever-unfolding menu of privileges which they called 'rights,' their own version of the Golden Rule and of what constitutes good, such as their 'choice' to deny life to the inconvenient, to practice their own pansexual 'love,' and to live parasitic lives at the expense of the productive. As they were morally-perfect and autonomous they traveled their own sovereign roads and expected the God of Revelation and everyone else to accept and tolerate them - to put up and shut up. This being the case, they resent the living God and blame Him for not accepting them just as they are, for not jumping through hoops for them, for not seeing things their way.
On the other hand, the heaven-bound think that anyone would be delighted to live in heaven at first, and then one day on the renewed earth, Paradise. Yet the things of heaven and Paradise that bring unspeakable joy to its' bright, beautiful, eternally youthful inhabitants bring immense pain to the envious hell-bound as can be seen in the way that even the grass of heaven hurts the feet of the ghosts.
Lewis shows that heaven is a place of eternal joy, of unbelievably beautiful happy people, colors, music, flowers, singing birds, delicious food, and never-ending light unencumbered by misery. This last was an especially good insight, for the hell-bound love misery and demand that others share their misery, which in the end means spending eternity in hell. In fact, the paradise-bound often feel that their joys and blessings must be constrained, denigrated and even hidden from the burning gaze of the envious, that they ought to share the miseries of the envious lest they be accused of hate, narrow-minded intolerance, selfishness, and bigotry. Yet Lewis, speaking through the voice of George MacDonald, reveals that hatred of the good underlies the demands of envious self-idolaters:
"That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it?" "What?" "The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be allowed to veto Heaven." ( ibid, The Great Divorce)
In his "Journey to the Celestial City," Wayne Martindale similarly describes the hell-bound as haters of good people. Self-centeredness, hate, and envy twist their hearts, thus they prefer evil thoughts, evil words, evil companions and evil acts, though it makes them wretched and miserable. Thus when they encounter good people they,
"...condemn them, perverting their reason by rationalizing evil and finding ways to blame the good or God or religion for their problems and the problems of the world. They already hate goodness because it implicitly condemns the evil they have chosen. They wouldn't like heaven if they could have it. They are, in a sense, already in hell, preferring darkness to light." (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p 76)
In a further discussion with McDonald, Lewis speaks of the issues of the dirty phantoms and the reality of heaven and hell. The question of choices comes up and Macdonald says this,
"Milton was right," said my Teacher. "The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, 'Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven'. ..... There is always something they prefer to joy - that is, to reality." (ibid, The Great Divorce, Allen Adams)
Lewis sees the importance of free moral agency, for the living God ultimately honors our choices, whether for good or evil, as demonstrated by the unwise choices of contemporary secular and cosmic transhumanists, apostatizing Christians and others of that persuasion.
Choosing pride and self-centeredness they are unwisely rejecting the God of Revelation and His offer of Paradise, and like a dog returning to its' own vomit, are returning to the vomit of ancient paganism revamped, revised and made palatable for modern Western consumption. Thus their envy and self-idolatry lead to the conceptual murder of God and the rejection of His work on the cross, which means that by their own choice, they shut themselves out of paradise. So Lewis makes this point, saying that Hell is of their choosing:
"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell chose it.