In the blink of an eye on the evolutionary timescale, humans climbed down the trees, changed the landscape of this planet like no species before, and left their footprint in space. At each stage in the evolution of modern humans, we have strived to break free from the limits imposed upon us by biology. A major part of the human journey has been the development of new technologies, a phenomenon that has grown exponentially over the last century.

Transhumanism is an intellectual and technological paradigm that seeks to leverage this progress to further enhance the human condition. It cultivates a belief wherein by freeing the human body and mind of their biological limitations, humanity will transcend into a future unconstrained by death.

What does transhumanism look like? Its proponents promise a world where lifespan-extending breakthroughs allow us to live longer. Transhumanism will push research toward anti-aging treatments that let us stay healthy for a greater proportion of our longer lives. Mind-controlled prosthetics will offer disabled people the opportunity to regain control of their limbs.

Indeed, much of this is already happening. For instance, cochlear implants restore a sense of hearing, and pacemakers can add decades to patients lifespans. Recently, surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center transplanted a pig heart into a patient. Through genetic engineering, the scientists subdued the immune responses that would have otherwise made the patients body reject the organ. (Unfortunately, he later died.) In the future, transhumanists claim, we may be able to regenerate our organs, including hearts and brains, such that they never grow old.

But transhumanism proponents often go far beyond these breakthroughs. Many in the movement suggest that a singularity is the inescapable outcome of exponential technological progress. In such a future, they claim, it would be possible for humans to upload their minds to a computer and live forever in the digital realm. Some are signing up now to be frozen until such a time arrives that they can be revived.

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So, on the one hand, we have technologies that are lengthening and improving the quality of our lives. But on the other hand, we are promised a techno-optimistic future where humans are immortal. History is rife with con artists promising the elixir of life. Is transhumanism any different? Is transhumanism the savior of humanity or a false prophecy?

Credit: Glenn Harvey / Big Think

In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fanfiction novel by Eliezer Yodkowsky, Professor Quirrell tells Harry of a distant future when humanity would migrate from one solar system to another. He says that humans then wont tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until theyre old enough to bear it; and when they learn theyll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed!

Death, indeed, is the most profound of limitations that biology imposes on us. While immortality is more fiction than fact at the moment, radical improvements in longevity are already underway.

Over the last few decades, the growth of omics technologies has made it possible to understand how genes contribute to phenotypes. Research in various model organisms has revealed that several genes involved in stress resistance, the length of telomeres (the ends of chromosomes that shorten with aging), and cellular division are linked to the aging process. In the last few years, longevity companies have begun exploring their mechanisms of action to develop anti-aging drugs.

Indeed, some of this research shows promise. But the underlying assumption is that aging is simply a disease like any other that can be cured. Is that true?

One important limitation to keep in mind is that much of this research is being done in mice. Thats fine, but unlike mice in laboratory settings, humans dont live in highly protected spaces, a luxury that is arguably a major factor in increasing lifespans. Also, the physiology of mice and men are too different to claim that any effects seen in the former will be seen in the latter. Poor translation from mice to humans remains a challenge for nearly all anti-aging drugs under development, as well as biomedical research in general.

Longevity researchers often see aging as a disease that can be cured. The hypothesized cures often involve restoring vitality by reversing the biological clock. Regenerative medicine technologies are generating a lot of interest, especially following Shinya Yamanakas work in inducing specialized cells to turn back into stem cells upon the introduction of a few transcription factors, molecules that regulate gene expression.

However, this area too is filled with overhyped studies. Telomeres are unreliable aging clocks, and finding a cure for aging is tricky if it cannot be accurately measured. After all, anti-aging drugs are tested by their ability to slow down these aging clocks. Likewise, research on stem cells ability to rejuvenate our bodies is benchmarked by how well they rewind the biological clock. But, if these clocks arent true indicators of biological age, then studies based upon them are not producing reliable information. Worse, unproven stem cell therapies can lead to serious side effects, including blindness and cancers. One womans botched stem cell treatment led to bone fragments growing around her eye.

The Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR technique, which allows researchers to make precise edits in the genome, is incredibly powerful. Undoubtedly, it will make scientific research faster and lead to world-changing breakthroughs. Last year, the technology was used to cure a patient of sickle cell anemia, an inherited blood disorder that was previously incurable.

However, diseases that are caused by single genes, such as sickle cell anemia, are incredibly rare. For example, cardiovascular diseases that constitute the leading cause of death globally are shaped by a complex interplay of multiple genetic and environmental factors. Most likely, genetic engineering will not be able to cure diseases with complex etiologies. For the same reason, this is why the concept of designer babies with pre-selected traits like athletic ability and high intelligence are mostly a fantasy. Many of the characteristics we care about are controlled by hundreds, if not thousands, of genes.

Genetic engineering is also unlikely to be used to cure babies of various illnesses or conditions before they are born. If the objective is to avoid birth defects, pre-implantation screening and embryo selection can achieve that without the need for genetic manipulation.

Credit: Glenn Harvey / Big Think

Ensuring our bodies survive indefinitely through regeneration isnt the only route to immortality. As many sci-fi enthusiasts will vouch, one day, we might upload our minds into vast supercomputers. And like many other technologies touted by transhumanists, there are genuine advances in brain-computer interfaces. For example, some patients in a vegetative state can now communicate thanks to advances in neuroscience. Thus, transhumanists see uploading our minds as the zenith of a trend already underway. But this argument is dominated by hype rather than science.

A major and necessary milestone on the pathway to replicating the human brain in silico is understanding how the brain works. Indeed, we cannot build a conscious entity from scratch if we dont know how consciousness originates. We currently do not and can barely even define it. As most neuroscientists (but perhaps few AI engineers) will admit, we know astonishingly little about how the human brain works. It is still mostly a black box.

Why? The human brain has 1,000 trillion connections between neurons. Properly replicating a brain in other words, you would require precisely reproducing these connections and the information that they contain. (How the brain actually stores information is yet another basic thing we dont understand.) The sheer amount of information needed to reproduce one brain is roughly equivalent to the size of the internet (the 2016 version of the internet, anyway). And the computing power necessary to operate a single computerized brain in real-time is unimaginable at the moment.

Even if we had the necessary computing power, scientists have no idea how the brains structure and function translate to subjective, conscious experience. The sensation of eating chocolate is not something we can reproduce.Additionally, the entire notion that the brain or consciousness is uploadable is dubious. It stems in large part from the belief that our brains are like computers. However, that comparison is not correct. The brain as a computer is just a useful metaphor comparing the complexity of brains to that of humanitys most sophisticated invention; it is not biologically accurate. The brain does not operate like a computer.

Ultimately, all these objections to transhumanism are rooted in a critique of reductionism. Biological systems cannot be reduced to interactions between cells and genes. Cellular systems cannot be reduced to interactions between chemicals. Chemical systems cannot be reduced to interactions between atoms. And quantum mechanics shows us that even atoms cannot be reduced to simple interactions between protons and electrons. But transhumanists seem to believe that this is how the Universe operates, a view that is increasingly out of step with 21st-century science, which is holistic and systems-oriented.

Today, we know that many phenomena are emergent in nature. This means that their properties arise as a consequence of the interactions between their parts. For instance, the biological law of natural selection is not the direct result of the laws of physics. Instead, it emerges from the interactions of countless organisms. Simply knowing how protons and electrons interact does not yield any insight into the emergent phenomenon of biological evolution. Similarly, imitating the interactions of a quadrillion neurons in a computer almost certainly will not allow us to reproduce the emergent phenomenon of the mind. As Susan Lewis writes in her book Posthuman Bliss? The Failed Promise of Transhumanism, The viability of transhumanists dream depends on a compartmentalization of the mind and brain that scientific findings increasingly supersede.

In an essay on emergence, 13.8 columnist Adam Frank wrote:

If you know the fundamental entities and their laws, you can, in principle, predict everything that will or can happen. All of future history, all of evolution, is just a rearrangement of those electrons and quarks. In the reductionist view, you, your dog, your love for your dog, and the doggie love it feels for you are all nothing but arrangements and rearrangements of atoms. End of story.

Obviously, nobody really believes that. Yet, this sort of thing has to be true for the biggest promises of transhumanism to work. The problem is that it isnt true.

Therefore, instead of focusing on a distant future where sci-fi somehow becomes reality, transhumanists ought to redirect their energy to improving the human condition today. Many of the technologies upon which transhumanists base their aspirations can make a real difference here and now.

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Transhumanism: Savior of humanity or false prophecy?

Public Theology for the Common GoodA public theology for the common good relies upon an image of a just, sustainable, participatory, and planetary future. How about Isaiah 11? Is the Peaceable Kingdom only a heavenly dream? Or, is it Gods promised future?

The public theologian offers discourse clarification and worldview construction for the sake of the global common good (Peters 2018). Just to be clear, public theology is not a disguised form of evangelization or an attempt to usurp the public square for religious influence.

Built into the worldview of a public theology for the common good today is the assumption that the public theologian contributes one voice among many. Many voices are sounding for attention, to be sure. This includes a variety of religious voices. If anything, the post-colonial public theologian within the liberation theology camp admonishes the world to listen to all voices, especially those voices previously muffled or ignored.

There is no global choir. No unison. No harmony. Only cacophony. What the public theologian intones will be heard solely by ears listening for charity of heart, sound reasoning, and wise judgment.

Public theology is conceived in the church, critically refined in the academy, and offered to the wider culture for the sake of the global common good. Maybe even the galactic common good.

Are we talking about three different publics: church, academy, and wider culture? Not exactly. Hak Joon Lee refines the notion of public. Public refers not so much to a locale as a posture of doing theology, namely, the dialogical openness to everybody in pursuing the common good of a society. Because social media provides the same media through which both church and academy communicate, all theology is already and unavoidably public theology.

Our point here is this: the public theologian speaks as one voice among many on behalf of a single common good. So says Jayme Reaves, a Baptist from Americas Deep South with a theology doctorate from Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland.

If theology in its most basic sense is the study of God, then,also in its most basic sense,public theology is the study of God done by or for the public,or as it pertains to issues in the public sphere. Public theology is theologyaboutandforthe public. If something is a public issue, public theology has something to say about it.[1]

Then Jayme Reaves hits our nail on the head with a sledgehammer.

A concern for the common good cannot be based in the denomination or supremacy of the Christian faith. We cannot achieve common good unless we are willing to question our own power and be willing to share it with others whose voices are not heard.

Pope Francis embraces in different terms a vision of a just, sustainable, participatory, and planetary society. He makes clear that the public theologian speaks with one voice among others, even though what is said has universal application.

100. I am certainly not proposing an authoritarian and abstract universalism, devised or planned by a small group and presented as an ideal for the sake of levelling, dominating and plundering, says Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti (2020). For the future is not monochrome; if we are courageous, we can contemplate it in all the variety and diversity of what each individual person has to offer. How much our human family needs to learn to live together in harmony and peace, without all of us having to be the same!

The number of concerns we could register in a public theology for the common good would make a list longer than s decimal points. Like a circle with a center, at the center of the common good we find the flourishing of Gods creation, especially human flourishing for each individual as a benefit of the collective. Todays public theologian works out of a futuristic vision of a just, sustainable, participatory, and planetary society.

Even if such a vision is conceived in the church and critically refined in the university, it is offered to the planet as a whole. Susan Codone, on the faculty of Mercer University, writing in Christianity Today (August 7, 2020), says

public theology is a purposeful effort to place our faith in the public square and make room for others to join us.we can challenge the systemic social problems of racism, sexual abuse, misogyny, and domestic violence with couragehoping for change, not retribution.

Secular ears are wary when listening to religious voices. Public theology also understands and accepts that 1) we live in a diverse, multi-faith society and 2) there are many people who are wary of religion, Codone warns.

This public wariness borders on the hostile. We are moving into a post-Christian society and this is reflected in increased expressions of anti-Christian bigotry, writes George Yancey in a Patheos post.

Myresearchhas confirmed that those with this bigotry are more likely to be white, male, wealthy, and well-educated. So, it is very well connected and powerful individuals who have the type of anti-Christian prejudice that will continue to trouble Christians.

Yancy adds advice for us. This loss of cultural power is critical as Christians consider how to prepare to operate politically in a post-Christian world.

Concern over hostility toward religion in general and Christianity in particular has risen to the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito has issued an ominous warning: Theres growing hostility to religion or at least the traditional religious beliefs that are contrary to the new moral code that is ascendant in some sectors.

Justice Alioto added his concern that our stable and successful society in which people of diverse faiths live and work together harmoniously and productivity while still retaining their own beliefs is under threat.

Channeling the lateRichard John Neuhaus, the justice cautioned against a privatizing of religious belief and practice where the cultural expectation is that when you step outside into the public square in the light of day you had better behave yourself like a good secular citizen.

While Alito is right to worry about the erosion of religious liberty, his speech partially misdiagnoses the problem. Although he referenced multiple faith traditions, he revealed his real concern to be opposition to traditional religious beliefs by those subscribing to the new moral code. This depiction sets up an antagonism between supposedly secular progressive ideas and conservative religious understandings, with the latter needing special protection from the law and the government.Public theologians tend to be supportive of the more progressive ideas.

Public theology, says contemporary Dutch scholar, Toine von den Hoogen, is that it is the form of theological investigation which is aimed at the modern media mediated complexes of meaning which arise in the construction of world views and cultural zones from the fusions between religion and culture, religion and economics, and religion and politics(Hoogen 2019, 10).

Little more than a century ago, another Dutch theologian and statesman introduced a nascent form of public theology to Europe. That was Abraham Kuyper, Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. The government, too, is the servant of God, Kuyper reminded us(Kuyper 2022, 251). The public theologian continues to remind us of this.

Kuyper spoke to a Christian society. We do not. Ours is a pluralistic society. Todays post-colonial or liberation theologian will publicly raise one voice among many for the common good of the many. When offering to the public square discourse clarification and worldview construction, the public theologian must be careful to speak with charity of heart, sound reasoning, and wise judgment.

Ted Peters pursues Public Theology at the intersection of science, religion, ethics, and public policy. Peters is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union, where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA. His book, God in Cosmic History, traces the rise of the Axial religions 2500 years ago. He previously authored Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom? (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2002) as well as Science, Theology, and Ethics (Ashgate 2003). He is editor of AI and IA: Utopia or Extinction? (ATF 2019). Along with Arvin Gouw and Brian Patrick Green, he co-edited the new book, Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics hot off the press (Roman and Littlefield/Lexington, 2022). Soon he will publish The Voice of Christian Public Theology (ATF 2022). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.

This fictional spy thriller, Cyrus Twelve, follows the twists and turns of a transhumanist plot.

The Public Theology of Rudolf von Sinner

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The Drumbeat African Public Theology of Mwaambi G Mbi

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The Public Theology of Jennifer Hockenbery

Karen Bloomquist: Another Worldview Must Be Enacted Today

Global Network for Public Theology (GNPT)

Center for Public Theology

Ebo Lectures in Theology and Public Life

Center for Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago

Lutheran World Federation, Open Access Public Theology Resources

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International Journal of Public Theology

Hoogen, Toine von den. 2019. Public Theology and Institutional Economics. Cambridge UK: Cambridge Scholars Press.

Kuyper, Abraham. 2022. On Charity and Justice. Bellingham WA: Lexham.

Peters, Ted. 2018. Public Theology: Its Pastoral, Apologetic, Scientific, Politial, and Prophetic Tasks. International Journal of Public Theology 12:2 153-177; https://brill.com/abstract/journals/ijpt/12/1/ijpt.12.issue-1.xml.

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