Third Reflection Paper, HUM 610, Peter Moons 1
God and Man in the Machine: Religion in the Transhumanist Environment By Peter Moons
Transhumanism, and beyond that, Posthumanism, will impact man’s relationships to other beings, his community, and his religion. Owing to the increase in intellect, reasoning, and logic, man may sense that he has reached a superior level. What will really launch a discussion about religion, particularly, if there will any longer be a need for religion, is when technology permits the immortality of man, at least an intellectual eternal existence. At that point, humans will wonder if they themselves are not godlike, because their hyper-connected brains will have access to all the information man has created and they will be able to live forever, either being part human-part machine, or more machine than human. Thus, religion and the concept of spirituality will change when man can live forever in the Transhuman and Posthuman environment.
This paper will ask many questions, for which there likely no answers, as of yet. Necessary for this discussion is a definition of Transhumanism, which, simply enough, is "the power of technology to transform humanity."1 Posthumanism is likely the point at which the human brain is the center of reasoning in a non-human body. Most importantly for this discussion, Transhumanism is not therapy but enhancements.2 Both of these possibilities -- Transhumanism and Posthumanism -- prompt a central question: when humans are transformed through technology, will they think they can become God or will they think they are God? They, meaning our future selves, may come to think thusly.