more than human part 4

MORE THAN HUMAN D F GODHOOD (Part 4) MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©201...

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GODHOOD (Part 4)

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MORE THAN HUMAN PART 4: GODHOOD

This report is the property of Rema Marketing and is considered to be strictly for reading only. With receipt of this report, the recipient acknowledges and agrees that written permissions must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this report, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles. A publication of Rema Marketing. ©2012, All rights reserved.

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MORE THAN HUMAN PART 4: GODHOOD

MORE THAN HUMAN PART 4: GODHOOD When the serpent told Adam and Eve that if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that they would become as gods, he plant a generational desire into the psyche of human consciousness. This desire would maintain a stranglehold on future generations and cause significant conflict between human beings and God. In some cases the conflict reached the point where God literally had to destroy man’s agenda as was witnessed at the Tower of Babel and the destruction of the ancient world during the antediluvian era. However the events of the modern day have superseded the past in terms of evil and so it stands that we will over the course of the next few decades witness some of the most horrific judgements by God for trying to usurp his role as the God of all gods.

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FREDRICK NIETZSCHE AND THE ÜBERMENSCH

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THE STORY OF TRANSHUMANISM

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TRANSUMANISM, MORMONISM AND GODHOOD

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ECTOGENESIS: THE ARTIFICIAL WOMB

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SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

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THE SINGULARITY

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BUILDING THE PARADISE PROPOGANDA

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RACING TOWARDS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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THE ANTICHRIST, 2045 AND HIS IMAGE

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FOOTNOTES

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MORE THAN HUMAN PART 4: GODHOOD

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1. FREDRICK NIETZSCHE AND THE ÜBERMENSCH Imagine a world where human beings and machines are one in the same. What if the computers that we now manipulate externally could one day become part of us; our bodies engineered to become less emotion driven, and more streamlined for function and data. Is this a world in which you would like to live? And, what if such a world existed, but you were unable to take part in such “upgrades”. What would happen to those who were unable or even chose not to participate? How would these new “humans” regard those with normal biological make-up? If these concepts seem straight out of science fiction, that is because they are. Books, film, and television have explored the concept of the bionic being for decades. But is it really all that far fetched? Scientists don’t think so. In fact, there is a growing trend amongst researchers to ponder what they consider to be an inevitability for humanity. It has a variety of names and theories; Post-humanism, transhumanism, and the Singularity. One of the most famous proponents of “advancing” humans in such a way was the atheist philosopher Frederick Nietzsche. In his book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, 1 Nietzsche proposed the idea of the Übermensch, also known as the “Overman, Overhuman, Above-Human, Superman”. In the book, he states: “I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome.

What have you done to overcome him?....Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth.Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who

speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.”

Nietzsche introduces the concept of the Übermensch in contrast to Christianity: “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” proclaims the Übermensch to be the meaning of the earth and admonishes his audience to ignore Christianity which claims that there is a better world elsewhere to escape to. The turn away from the earth is prompted, he says, by a dissatisfaction with life, a dissatisfaction that causes one to create another world in which those who made one unhappy in this life are tormented. The Übermensch is not driven into other worlds away from this one. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” declares that the Christian escape from this world also required the invention of an eternal soul which would be separate from the body and survive the body's death. Part of otherworldliness, then, was the abnegation and mortification of the body, or asceticism. Zarathustra further links the Übermensch to the body and to interpreting the soul as simply an aspect of the body. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” ties the Übermensch to the death of God. While this God was the ultimate expression of Christian values and the instincts that gave birth to those values, belief in that God nevertheless did give meaning to life for a time. 'God is dead' means that the idea of God can no longer provide values. With the sole source of values no longer capable of providing those values, there is a real chance of nihilism prevailing.

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Some commentators associate the Übermensch with a program of eugenics. This is most pronounced when considered in the aspect of a goal that humanity sets for itself. The reduction of all psychology to physiology implies, to some, that human beings can be bred for cultural traits. This interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrine focuses more on the future of humanity than on a single cataclysmic individual.

The term Übermensch was a favorite of Hitler and the Nazi regime, which hijacked Nietzsche's work and sought to distort his text as a philosophical foundation for their ideas. Their conception of the Übermensch, however, was racial in nature. The Nazi notion of the master race also spawned the idea of "inferior humans" (Untermenschen) which could be dominated and enslaved; this term does not originate with Nietzsche. Nietzsche himself was critical of both antisemitism and German nationalism. In defiance of these doctrines, he claimed that himself and Germany was great only because of "Polish blood in their veins". Many are also note aware that Nietzsche was the author of a book called “Antichrist”. 2 In this book Nietzsche sets out to denounce and illegitimize not only Christianity itself as a belief and a practice, but also the ethical-moral value system which modern western civilization has inherited from it. This book can be considered a further development of some of his ideas concerning Christianity that can be found in Beyond Good and Evil and in The Genealogy of Morals, particularly the idea that the present morality is an inversion of true, noble morality.

One of the most damning of Nietzche’s views was that Christianity has made people nihilistic and weak by regarding pity and related sentiments as the highest virtues. Here, just as in the Genealogy, Nietzsche traces the origin of these values to the ancient Jews who lived under Roman occupation, but here he puts them in terms of a reversal of their conception of God. He argues that the Jewish God was once one which embodied the noble virtues of a proud, powerful people, but when they became subjugated by the Romans, their God began to embody the "virtues" (more like sentiments) of an oppressed, resentful people, until it became something entirely alien to what it formerly had been. Further in the book, after devoting a few passages to contrasting Buddhism with Christianity, he paints a picture of the Jesus of history as actually having

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lived a type of "Buddhistic" existence, and lambastes the Apostle Paul particularly for turning Jesus, visà-vis, Jesus the "Nazarene," into Jesus the "Christ." Those who embrace the atheist mindset or anti JudeoChristian world view are the most willing to accept and promote a philosophy of engineering a superior man especially one from someone like Frederick Nietzsche. Further, atheists with money find themselves in a position to not only promote the idea, but perhaps even fund such advancement, in order to take advantage of it themselves. Not surprisingly, proponents of the Singularity and transhumanist thought have found themselves allies in high places. As the director of the Future of Humanity Institute and a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, Nick Bostrom is a leading advocate of transhumanism who, as a young man, was heavily influenced by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche (from whom the phrase “God is dead” derives) and Goethe, the author of Faust. Now, high society scientists, corporate giants, politicians, etc. are not the only ones getting in on the act. In this age, the most prominent members of the modern aristocracy are celebrities. Not only does the public at large tend to treat musicians, actors, and athletes as icons and idols, but they seem to view themselves as a royalty of sorts. Naturally, if there was a high technology means to enhance their potential, most of them would get right on board. Which is precisely what we’re seeing today in pop culture. There is a definite move toward the glamorization of the “futuristic man”. We see this especially in the music industry, where artists depict themselves as a sort of cyborg or Übermensch.

So, what does all of this mean to us? Well, there are divergent opinions. While clearly some would welcome the convergence of man and machine, others are skeptical. Whether or not you approach the Singularity from a spiritual point of view, one thing is clear. If such an even comes to pass, do you really believe it will be for the benefit of all mankind? More likely is a scenario where only the disgustingly wealthy will be able to afford such “upgrades”, leaving us as the inferior beings who will be tasked with doing their bidding… which I suppose isn’t much different than the way they see us today. MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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2. THE STORY OF TRANSHUMANISM Transhumanism (sometimes abbreviated >H or H+) is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human cognitive and physical abilities and eliminate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as disease, aging, and death. Transhumanist thinkers study the possibilities and consequences of developing and using human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies for these purposes. Although the first known use of the term "transhumanism" dates from 1957, the contemporary meaning is a product of the 1980s, when a group of scientists, artists, and futurists based in the United States began to organize what has since grown into the transhumanist movement. Transhumanist thinkers postulate that human beings will eventually be transformed into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".

The transhumanist vision of a profoundly transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters as well as critics from a wide range of perspectives. Transhumanism has been described by a proponent as the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity," while according to a prominent critic, it is the world's most dangerous idea. In his 2005 article “A History of Transhumanist Thought”, 3 philosopher Nick Bostrom locates transhumanism's roots in Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment. In addition to Frederick Nietzsche Bostrom also places emphasis on The Marquis de Condorcet, an eighteenth century French philosopher, whom he identifies as one of the first thinkers to speculate about the use of medical science to extend the human life span. In the twentieth century, a direct and influential precursor to transhumanist concepts was J.B.S. Haldane's 1923 essay Daedalus: Science and the Future, which predicted that great benefits would come from applications of genetics and other advanced sciences to human biology. Biologist Julian Huxley, brother of author Aldous Huxley (a childhood friend of Haldane's), appears to have been the first to use the actual word "transhumanism". Writing in 1957, he defined transhumanism as "man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature". This definition differs substantially from the one commonly in use since the 1980s.

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The coalescence of an identifiable transhumanist movement began in the last decades of the twentieth century. In 1966, FM-2030 (formerly F.M. Esfandiary), a futurist who taught "new concepts of the Human" at The New School for Social Research in New York City, began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles and world views transitional to "posthumanity" as "transhuman" (short for "transitory human"). In 1972, Robert Ettinger contributed to the popularization of the concept of "transhumanity" in his book “Man into Superman”. 4 FM-2030 published the Upwingers Manifesto in 1973 to stimulate transhumanly conscious activism.

The first self-described transhumanists met formally in the early 1980s at the University of California, Los Angeles, which became the main center of transhumanist thought. Here, FM-2030 lectured on his "third way" futurist ideology. At the EZTV Media venue frequented by transhumanists and other futurists, Natasha Vita-More presented Breaking Away, her 1980 experimental film with the theme of humans breaking away from their biological limitations and the earth's gravity as they head into space. FM-2030 and Vita-More soon began holding gatherings for transhumanists in Los Angeles, which included students from FM-2030's courses and audiences from Vita-More's artistic productions. In 1982, Vita-More authored the Transhumanist Arts Statement, and, six years later, produced the cable TV show TransCentury Update on transhumanity, a program which reached over 100,000 viewers. In 1988, philosopher Max More founded the Extropy Institute and was the main contributor to a formal transhumanist doctrine, which took the form of the Principles of Extropy in 1990. In 1990, he laid the foundation of modern transhumanism by giving it a new definition: "Transhumanism is a class of philosophies that seek to guide us towards a posthuman condition. Transhumanism shares many elements of humanism, including a respect for reason and science, a commitment to progress, and a valuing of human (or transhuman) existence in this life. […] Transhumanism differs from humanism in recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting from various sciences and technologies […]."

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In 1998, philosophers Nick Bostrom and David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), an organization with a liberal democratic perspective. In 1999, the WTA drafted and adopted The Transhumanist Declaration. The Transhumanist FAQ, prepared by the WTA, gave two formal definitions for transhumanism: “The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human 5 limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.”

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In 2006, the board of directors of the Extropy Institute made a decision to cease operations of the organization, stating that its mission was "essentially completed". This left the World Transhumanist Association as the leading international transhumanist organization. While many transhumanist theorists and advocates seek to apply reason, science and technology for the purposes of reducing poverty, disease, disability and malnutrition around the globe, transhumanism is distinctive in its particular focus on the applications of technologies to the improvement of human bodies at the individual level. Many transhumanists actively assess the potential for future technologies and innovative social systems to improve the quality of all life, while seeking to make the material reality of the human condition fulfill the promise of legal and political equality by eliminating congenital mental and physical barriers. Transhumanist philosophers argue that there not only exists an ethical imperative for humans to strive for progress and improvement of the human condition but that it is possible and desirable for humanity to enter a post-Darwinian phase of existence, in which humans are in control of their own evolution. In such a phase, natural evolution would be replaced with deliberate change. To this end, transhumanists engage in interdisciplinary approaches to understanding and evaluating possibilities for overcoming biological limitations. They draw on futures studies and various fields or subfields of science, philosophy, economics, history, and sociology. Unlike philosophers, social critics and activists who place a moral value on preservation of natural systems, transhumanists see the very concept of the "natural" as an obstacle to progress. In keeping with this, many prominent transhumanist advocates refer to transhumanism's critics on the political right and left jointly as "bioconservatives" or "bioluddites", the latter term alluding to the nineteenth century anti-industrialisation social movement that opposed the replacement of manual labor by machines. While some transhumanists take a relatively abstract and theoretical approach to the perceived benefits of emerging technologies, others have offered specific proposals for modifications to the human body, including inheritable ones. Transhumanists are often concerned with methods of enhancing the human nervous system. Though some propose modification of the peripheral nervous system, the brain is considered the common denominator of personhood and is thus a primary focus of transhumanist ambitions. More generally, transhumanists support the convergence of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC), and hypothetical future technologies such as simulated reality, artificial intelligence, mind uploading, and cryonics. Transhumanists believe that humans can and should use these technologies to become more than human. Transhumanists therefore support the recognition or protection of cognitive liberty, morphological freedom and procreative liberty as civil liberties, so as to guarantee individuals the choice of enhancing themselves and progressively become posthuman, which they see as the next significant evolutionary steps for the human species. Some speculate that human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies may facilitate such a transformation by the midpoint of the twenty first century. Some theorists, such as Raymond Kurzweil, believe that the pace of technological evolution is accelerating and that the next fifty years may yield not only radical technological advances but possibly a technological singularity, which may fundamentally change the nature of human beings.

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Transhumanists who foresee this massive technological change generally maintain that it is desirable. However, they also explore the possible dangers of extremely rapid technological change, and frequently propose options for ensuring that advanced technology is used responsibly. For example, Bostrom has written extensively on existential risks to humanity's future welfare, including risks that could be created by emerging technologies.

On a more practical level, as proponents of personal development and body modification, transhumanists tend to use existing technologies and techniques that supposedly improve cognitive and physical performance, while engaging in routines and lifestyles designed to improve health and longevity. Depending on their age, some transhumanists express concern that they will not live to reap the benefits of future technologies. However, many have a great interest in life extension practices, and funding research in cryonics in order to make the latter a viable option of last resort rather than remaining an unproven method. Regional and global transhumanist networks and communities with a range of objectives exist to provide support and forums for discussion and collaborative projects. There is a variety of opinion within transhumanist thought. Many of the leading transhumanist thinkers hold complex and subtle views that are under constant revision and development. Some distinctive currents of transhumanism are identified and listed here in alphabetical order: •

Democratic transhumanism, a political philosophy synthesizing liberal democracy, social democracy, direct democracy and transhumanism.



Extropianism, an early school of transhumanism characterized by a set of principles advocating a proactive approach to human evolution.



Hedonistic Imperative, a moral philosophy based upon the obligation to use technology to eliminate suffering in all sentient life.



Libertarian transhumanism, a political philosophy synthesizing libertarianism and transhumanism.



Postgenderism, a social philosophy which seeks the elimination of gender in the human species through the application of advanced biotechnology and assisted reproductive technologies.



Singularitarianism, a moral philosophy based upon the belief that a technological singularity is possible, and advocating deliberate action to effect it and ensure its safety.

Although some transhumanists report a very strong sense of spirituality, they are for the most part secular. In fact, many transhumanists are either agnostics or atheists. A minority, however, follow liberal forms of Eastern philosophical traditions or, as with Mormon transhumanists, have merged their beliefs with established religions. Despite the prevailing secular attitude, some transhumanists pursue hopes traditionally espoused by religions, such as immortality albeit a physical one. Several belief systems, termed new religious movements, originating in the late twentieth century, share with transhumanism the goals of transcending the human condition by applying technology to the alteration of the body (Raëlism) and mind (Scientology). While most thinkers associated with the transhumanist movement focus on the practical goals of using technology to help achieve longer and healthier lives, some speculate that future

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understanding of neurotheology will enable humans to achieve control of altered states of consciousness and thus "spiritual" experiences. The majority of transhumanists are materialists who do not believe in a transcendent human soul. Transhumanist personhood theory also argues against the unique identification of moral actors and subjects with biological humans, judging as speciesist the exclusion of nonhuman and part-human animals, and sophisticated machines, from ethical consideration. Many believe in the compatibility of human minds with computer hardware, with the theoretical implication that human consciousness may someday be transferred to alternative media. One extreme formulation of this idea is Frank Tipler's proposal of the Omega Point. Drawing upon ideas in physics, computer science and physical cosmology, Tipler advanced the notion that the collapse of the Universe billions of years hence could create the conditions for the perpetuation of humanity as a simulation within a megacomputer. Cosmologist George Ellis has called Tipler's book "a masterpiece of pseudoscience", and Michael Shermer devoted a chapter of Why People Believe Weird Things to enumerating perceived flaws in Tipler's thesis. Transhumanist themes have become increasingly prominent in various literary forms during the period in which the movement itself has emerged. Contemporary science fiction often contains positive renditions of technologically enhanced human life, set in utopian (especially techno-utopian) societies. However, science fiction's depictions of technologically enhanced humans or other posthuman beings frequently come with a cautionary twist. The more pessimistic scenarios include many horrific or dystopian tales of human bioengineering gone wrong. The cyberpunk genre, exemplified by William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) and Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix (1985), has particularly been concerned with the modification of human bodies. Other novels dealing with transhumanist themes that have stimulated broad discussion of these issues include Blood Music (1985) by Greg Bear, The Xenogenesis Trilogy (1987–1989) by Octavia Butler; the "Culture" novels (1987–2000) of Iain Banks; The Beggar's Trilogy (1990–94) by Nancy Kress; much of Greg Egan's work since the early 1990s, such as Permutation City (1994) and Diaspora (1997); The Bohr Maker (1995) by Linda Nagata; Extensa (2002) and Perfekcyjna niedoskonalosc (2003) by Jacek Dukaj; Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood; Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan (2002); and The Possibility of an Island (Eng. trans. 2006) by Michel Houellebecq. Fictional transhumanist scenarios have also become popular in other media during the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Such treatments are found in films (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979; Blade Runner, 1982; Gattaca, 1997), television series (the Ancients of Stargate SG-1, the Borg of Star Trek, the Nietzscheans of Andromeda), manga and anime (Ghost in the Shell), role-playing games (Transhuman Space) and computer games (Deus Ex, Half-Life 2, Command & Conquer). The fictional universe of the table top war game Warhammer 40,000 also makes use of genetic and cybernetic augmentation. Human characters of the Imperium often employ cybernetic devices, while the Space Marines are indeed posthuman. Many of these works are considered part of the cyberpunk genre or its postcyberpunk offshoot.

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3. TRANSUMANISM, MORMONISM AND GODHOOD With Mitt Romney running for President of the United States there is a wildly successful musical on Broadway called The Book of Mormon which is a product of the South Park creators. Some Evangelical Christians are generating publicity by referring to Mormons as “zombies” and by calling their religion a “cult.” There was also the negative publicity surrounding the Prop 8 referendum in California.

To take advantage of all this press, the Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) has launched a massive counteroffensive, a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign that includes a large electronic billboard in Times Square. In its ads, men and women of various races and backgrounds describe their unique lives or professions and end with the punch line “...and I’m a Mormon.” Most of the publicity has led to discussions concerning the more sensational aspects of Mormonism (conservative politics, immigration, polygamy, violence, racism, veracity of uniquely Mormon scriptures, gay and women’s rights, etc.). Less has been made about Mormonism’s progressive, some call it “radical” view of the future. For example, many traditional Mormon beliefs intersect well with transhumanism and with Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘Process Theology’. Five of the “radically adventuresome” Mormon beliefs include: •

Theosis



Eternal Progression



A Progressing God



Compatibility of Science and Religion



Good Works MORE THAN HUMAN

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According to Yale University scholar Harold Bloom: “Our political satirists delight in describing the apparent weirdness of Mormon cosmology, but they forget the equal strangeness of Christian mythology. Jorge Luis Borges shrewdly classified all theology as fantastic literature, and Joseph Smith’s (the controversial founder of the LDS Church) adventures… are at least refreshingly original.”

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Theosis: In the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, an American LDS missionary serving in modern-day Uganda questions his faith but regains it while performing the song, “I Believe.” He intones, “I believe that God has a plan for all of us. I believe that plan involves me getting my own planet.” These lyrics have caused a small stir in the media. Mormon historian Richard Bushman, who wrote a widely respected biography of Joseph Smith, responded to the stir: “Mormon scriptures and Church leaders don’t say anything about people getting their own planets… Mormons do believe in the principle of theosis, the doctrine that God wants humans to become like Himself—in effect gods. That belief leads Mormons to speculate about creation. Will beings with god-like qualities have the powers to form 7 earths?”

Eternal Progression: The concept of eternally progressing is fundamental to the LDS worldview. The traditional Christian view about what happens in the afterlife is a little murky. One contemporary Christian view describes Heaven as being a state of eternal inactive bliss, where progression becomes ill-defined.

Mormons, on the other hand, view mortal existence as a training ground for the work that will continue after death. They hold that “the glory of God is intelligence” and place a high value on education. They believe that individuals will take with them into the next life the knowledge and intelligence that they garner during their mortal life. According to Bloom, “Mormonism’s best inheritance from Joseph Smith was his passion for education, hardly evident in the antiintellectualism [of some Christians]. I wonder though which is more dangerous, a knowledge-hungry religious 6 zealotry or a proud stupid one.”

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A Progressing God: Implied in the twin doctrines of theosis and eternal progression is the concept of a progressing God. According to Mormon prophet Brigham Young: “The God that I serve is progressing eternally [in knowledge and power], and so are his children.”

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Or according to John A. Widtsoe, an early 20th century scientist and LDS church leader: “If the great law of progression is accepted, God must have been engaged, and must now be engaged, in progressive development.”

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For Mormons, God, mankind, and the universe are in a constant state of flux. Their vision of the future culminates in a plurality of gods, eternally progressing and creating worlds without end. According to Lincoln Cannon, president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association: “This parallels transhumanists’ common expectation that we will someday be capable of engineering intelligence and worlds.”

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Compatibility of Science and Religion: Widtsoe had a life-long appreciation for the scientific process. His interest in organic evolution was driven by his respect for Joseph Smith and the doctrine of eternal progression. He viewed this as an example of how science and Mormon theology are in lockstep. To quote Widtsoe: “Latter-day Saints are the foremost evolutionists in the world. They believe that the immortal spirit of man may eternally approach the likeness of God himself.”

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Good Works: One of Mormonism’s major tenets is that “faith without works is dead.” Works are an important feature of reaching toward perfection. Service is seen as an underlying condition for developing spirituality. According to Mormonism, God has provided humanity with the means (technological and otherwise) to progress, and we must avail ourselves of these means instead of merely supposing God will save us without any effort on our part. Commenting on Mormon cosmology, Bloom writes, “Imaginatively liberating as this may be, its political implications are troublesome. The Mormon patriarch… is promised by his faith a final ascension to godhood… From the perspective of the White House, how would the nation and the world appear to President Romney?”

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A favorite quotes is from an article written by members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association: “Whether tomorrow is wonderful or horrible may depend on the extent to which persons with good minds and loving 12 hearts become actively involved in shaping the future.” I would replace the “may” in this quote with a “will.”

Today, the Mormon Transhumanist Association consists of 116 members, with approximately 41% living in Utah and 90% living in the United States. The purpose of the Mormon Transhumanist Association is to promote the Transhumanist Declaration and the Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation. The Mormon Transhumanist Affirmation states,

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• We seek the spiritual and physical exaltation of individuals and their anatomies, as well as communities and their environments, according to their wills, desires and laws, to the extent they are not oppressive. • We believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are among the means ordained of God to enable such exaltation, including realization of diverse prophetic visions of transfiguration, immortality, resurrection, renewal of this world, and the discovery and creation of worlds without end. • We feel a duty to use science and technology according to wisdom and inspiration, to identify and prepare for risks and responsibilities associated with future advances, and to persuade others to do likewise. An interesting interview took place in 2011 between Ben Goertzel of Dialogues and Lincoln Cannon of the Mormon Transhumanist Association which further provides insight on the significant parallels between Mormonism and Transhumanism. The interview transcript is as follows: Ben: Since I like to get right to the heart of things, I’ll start off with a fairly blunt question. As you already know, I’m not a religious guy. I’m open to the validity of individual and collective spiritual experiences – but the belief systems of the world’s major religions tend to strike me as pretty absurd … and Mormonism is no exception. Some of the basic teachings of Mormonism, as I read them, seem plainly ridiculous by the lights of modern science. That is, they describe things that seem extremely unlikely according to known scientific theories, and for which there is no available empirical evidence. A couple random examples are the virgin birth of Jesus, and the literal existence of Celestial and Telestial Kingdoms, etc. etc. You know what I mean…. You’re a very well educated, scientifically and technically literate guy. How can you believe that crazy stuff?? Lincoln: From some perspectives, aspects of Mormonism are indeed absurd. To paraphrase one prominent atheist, Mormonism is just Christianity plus some other crazy stuff. However, these perspectives overlook or ignore how the other crazy stuff modifies the Christianity! It does so to such an extent that characterizing Mormonism as a mere extension of other modern Christian ideologies is inaccurate. Mormonism is to modern Christianity as ancient Christianity was to Judaism. It is a different religion.

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The virgin birth is an interesting case in point. On the one hand, because Mormonism rejects the mainstream Christian notion of original sin, the virgin birth has somewhat less theological significance. All children are sinless, and none sins until capable of moral reasoning, so Mormons have no need of explaining how Jesus could be born sinless. On the other hand, the virgin birth still has some theological significance for Mormons that use it to explain how Jesus could continue to live sinlessly even after maturing to an age capable of moral reasoning. From their perspective, Jesus gained a special moral capacity because of his unique conception. Personally, I esteem Jesus as a principal model of morality simply by definition, rather than because of any special conception that enabled him to measure up to an external model of morality. As I see it, the virgin birth is primarily a reflection of ancient symbolism that would direct our human idealizations to and beyond the resolution of moral conflict. What of the literality of the virgin birth? Is it compatible with modern science? Mormons are philosophical materialists, with scriptures teaching that all spirit is matter, and God has a material body. Accordingly, some prominent early Mormons (notably Brigham Young) speculated that God and Mary conceived Jesus through natural means. That idea bothers some people, including many modern Mormons, some of whom prefer mainstream Christian perspectives on mechanisms for the virgin birth. Others have speculated that God could have used artificial insemination. Personally, while I find the question of the literality of the virgin birth interesting, I also consider it trivial, particularly as a factor in my esteem for Jesus. Perhaps the virgin birth is exclusively symbolic; perhaps the matrix architect, so to speak, intervened. Emotionally, I’m indifferent, except that I recognize moral and practical reasons to embrace symbols while also rejecting supernatural (empirically inaccessible) explanations in all matters. How about the varying degrees of heavenly glory described in Mormon scripture and ritual? Are they, literally interpreted, compatible with modern science? That depends on how one understands their literal interpretation, which is complicated by their overtly symbolic and esoteric descriptions. Here’s an interpretation that I consider both literal and symbolic. Presently, we live in one of innumerable telestial heavens. Eventually, if all goes well, our heaven will become a terrestrial heaven (also described as a millenial world), wherein present notions of death and poverty will no longer apply. Subsequently, again if all goes well, our terrestrial heaven will become a celestial heaven, whose inhabitants become capable of creating new heavens, repeating the cycle. Each transition depends both on the context of opportunity provided by the grace of God, and on our own work to learn of and adhere to principles whose contextual consequences are increased flourishing and eventual deification, both individually and communally, as well as environmentally. Some Mormons hold that these changes are inevitable at the communal and environmental levels, whereas there is real risk only for individuals. Others, such as I, interpret scriptures that suggest inevitability as psychological motivators rather than absolute foretellings, and recognize real communal and environmental risks. All of this should sound vaguely familiar to transhumanists, most of whom hold to notions of human flourishing through various stages (perhaps articulated in terms of the Kardeshev scale), many of whom imagine we’ll eventually prove capable of computing new worlds as detailed as our own (thereby implying we are almost certainly living in a computed world ourselves), and some of whom engage in disagreement over how best to consider and articulate the inevitability of these changes. There are probably several other Mormon teachings that strike you and others as being incompatible with modern science, and I’d be happy to discuss any others that interest you. More generally, though, it’s worth noting that most Mormons value scientific education. Accordingly, geographical areas of higher MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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than average Mormon concentration produce a higher than average number of scientists per capita, and among Mormons there is a positive correlation between level of education and level of religious activity. Many Mormons, such as I, consider the scientific project to reflect the basic principles of our faith, among which is the search for and acceptance of all truth from any source, to paraphrase founder Joseph Smith. Of course, that implies we have much to learn, and we should readily acknowledge that. Yet persons unfamiliar with Mormonism that hear of Mormon ideas that sound incompatible with science should not assume that educated Mormons are casually dismissing science. We probably have something at least somewhat intelligent to say about the matter. Ben: OK, now let me come at things from a different direction. While I value science a lot, and I’ve never been religious, I realize science is not the only source of truth – I’ve often been impressed with the insights of Zen masters and other spiritual visionaries. It seems that every religion has a side that focuses more on pure spirituality than on superstitions — Buddhism has Zen; Islam has Sufism; Christianity had Meister Eckhart and so forth. Aldous Huxley’s book “The Perennial Philosophy” argued that the deepest spiritual aspects of all the different religions were basically the same, and tried to summarize the commonality. Would you say there also exists a stripped-down, purely spiritual aspect to Mormonism, which espouses something reminiscent of Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy? Lincoln: Mormonism has a side reminiscent of the Perennial Philosophy, yes. Mormon scripture describes the presence of God as the light in and through all things, and states both that we are seeing God when we look into the heavens and that God enlightens our own eyes and understandings. God is both transcendent and immanent, in the neighbor we should serve and in the Earth that bemoans our immorality. Awareness of this should lead us to seek to become one with God, achieving deification not in the egotistical sense of raising ourselves above others, but rather in the altruistic sense of raising each other together. These ideas have strong parallels in many other religions, as suggested in Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy, Campbell’s Monomyth and others. Many Mormons acknowledge these similarities, at least on some level. For example, Joseph Smith acknowledged commonalities with the Christian sects of his day and claimed we would not enjoy the millenial world until Christians cease arguing with each other. Modern Mormon authorities regularly comment on their observations of inspired teachings within ideologies ranging from classical Greek philosophy to Asian religion. The Book of Mormon also includes passages that indicate God speaks to everyone everywhere, without regard to religion, race or gender. Of course, Mormons haven’t always internalized and acted in accordance with the universalist aspects of our faith. We have significant cases of both racism and sectarian hostility in our history. I expect, however, that we will continue to improve in this area, along with the rest of the world. Incidentally, most Mormons do not consider the mystical aspects of our religion to contradict the idea that God is material and corporeal. While explanations for compatibility vary from Mormon to Mormon, my own speculation is that our universe is part of God, like software is part of a computer or an embryo is part of its mother. As our computational capacity has increased, shrinking in both cost and size, it has also become more intimate, moving from distant warehouses into our pockets and even our bodies. We are decreasingly distinguishable from our computers, and it seems reasonable to suppose that posthumans would be altogether indistinguishable from their computers. For such beings, there may be

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no practical difference between thinking of a world and creating it. We can imagine them as both materially corporeal and meaningfully present throughout the worlds they create. Ben: Interesting. That does help me to understand Mormonism better. Now let’s turn more explicitly toward transhumanism…I wonder: Do you see Mormonism as consistent with “traditional transhumanism”? In the typical transhumanist view, to paraphrase Nietzsche, “man is something to be overcome — via technology.” Humans are seen as something to be improved and purposefully adapted, perhaps indefinitely until they become something radically different than what is now conceived as human. On the other hand, it seems Mormonism presents a different visions of the future, centered on the Second Coming of Christ and the subsequent ascension of good people to Heaven and descent of bad people to Hell, etc. It’s not clear to me how these two different visions of the future can be reconciled; could you clarify for me? Lincoln: Mormonism has many parallels with traditional Transhumanism. In Mormonism, natural humanity is something to overcome as we learn to become more like God. God graciously provides means (technological and otherwise) for us to progress, and we must use these means instead of merely supposing God will save us without any effort on our part. As we become more like God, we will change both spiritually and physically, taking on the virtues and attributes of God, including both creative and benevolent capacities. As described in Mormon scripture, future physical changes will include transfiguration of the living and resurrection of the dead to immortality in material bodies, varying in glory according to the desires and works of each individual. The mainstream Christian notion of a simple dichotomy between heaven and hell is not part of Mormonism. Instead, heaven and hell are states of being, categorized into degrees of glory, such as the terrestrial and celestial glories discussed previously. Mormonism’s anticipation of the Return of Christ parallels the full range of apocalyptic and messianic expectations of many Singularitarians. According to Mormon prophets, the time in which we live is one of hastening progress toward a millennial world of paradise, but catastrophic risks attend. Some are persuaded that the prophecies, bad and good, are inevitable. Others, such as I, consider the prophecies valuable as forth-tellings of opportunities to pursue and risks to avoid, presenting practical and moral imperatives to trust that we can make a positive difference. Some subscribe to rigid interpretations of how Christ will independently triumph over the apocalyptic challenges. Others, such as I, are comfortable exploring interpretations that include our participation in Christ, following Jesus’ invitation to take on the name of Christ and join in the salvific work of God. The analogous Singularitarian question is: will independent artificial intelligence help or hurt us, or will we enhance ourselves such that we can participate directly in making that decision? Ben: Hmmmm…. Some transhumanists believe that once we use technology to expand our minds far enough, we will be able to essentially come into communication with the mind of the universe — talk to God, in a sense. Does this notion have any resonance with the Mormon notion of God? According to the Mormon perspective, could enhanced future humans have a closer mental link to God than ordinary humans? Lincoln: Mormonism shares with mainstream Christianity the idea that eternal life is to know God. Many of us consider science, and its technological enablers, one important way that we can come to know

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God. If we are something like the thoughts of God then to observe the universe and to try to figure out how it works is to engage in a sort of divine psychology. Even from the perspective that God created the universe externally, to study a creation is to study its creator. As Mormon scripture points out, we’re already seeing God when we observe the universe, even if we don’t understand. Ben: What about Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of the noosphere, which some thinkers have connected with the concept of a technologically-constructed Global Brain. The basic idea here is that computing and communication technology is increasingly linking us all together into a global web which increasingly has its own mind and intelligence. Teilhard then saw this global web mind ultimately reaching up and fusing with the mind of God in a way that’s harder for us individual humans. Does this sort of idea have any analogue in the Mormon perspective? Lincoln: Mormonism also shares with mainstream Christianity the idea that together we are, or at least should become, the body of Christ. We should reconcile and unite with each other and with God. I suspect such ideas were the origin of Teilhard de Chardin’s suggestion that Christ has a cosmic body. I would also associate the realization of such ideas with the Return of Christ. More unique to Mormonism is the idea that Earth, when transformed into a celestial heaven, will become something like a sea of glass and fire in which all things, past and future, will be manifest to its inhabitants. The scriptures also describe the inhabitants of the celestial heaven receiving white stones through which they’ll learn of heavens of higher orders. In such ideas, it’s not hard to imagine future technology at work, as did Teilhard de Chardin. Ben: Hmmm….. Well I must say that Earth, when transformed into a celestial heaven, will become something like a sea of glass and fire in which all things, past and future, will be manifest to its inhabitants. The scriptures also describe the inhabitants of the celestial heaven receiving white stones through which they’ll learn of heavens of higher orders.Certainly sounds funky! And not so implausible, IF you interpret it metaphorically. However, I wonder how literally you take all that. Do you take it as a general metaphor, or as a literal foretelling of the specifics of the future? And how do other Mormons generally take it — literally or metaphorically? Lincoln: Mormon interpretations of scripture range broadly from the highly literal to the highly symbolic; however, most Mormons do not strictly subscribe to scriptural inerrancy, infallibility or literalism. Personally, I am most concerned with interpreting scripture non-dogmatically and pragmatically, in ways that are inspiring and helpful to the best of my ability to judge rationally and emotionally. Accordingly, I don’t insist on literal interpretations of scriptural descriptions of the heavens. Indeed, Mormon prophets and the scriptures themselves encourage loose interpretations. For example, one of the more lengthy scriptural descriptions of the heavens includes this revelatory question, “Unto what shall I liken these kingdoms, that ye may understand?” Implicit in this question is the indication that we would not understand a more literal description. Similarly, Joseph Smith once commented that a person would learn more about heaven by observing it for five minutes than by reading everything ever written on the subject. Ben: One of the more interesting and radical ideas to emerge from the transhumanist perspective is the “simulation argument” (as articulated for example by Nick Bostrom), which argues that it’s fairly likely our

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universe is actually part of a simulation purposefully created by alien intelligences in a civilization evolved previously to ours. What’s your reaction to this? Does it contradict Mormon teachings or can it somehow be made consistent with them? If so, how? Lincoln: Mormon theology, as articulated by persons that Mormons typically recognize as prophets, resonates strongly with the Simulation Argument. Joseph Smith proclaimed that God was once as we are now, became exalted, and instituted laws whereby others could learn how to be gods, the same as all gods have done before. Wilford Woodruff taught that God is progressing in knowledge and power without end, and it is just so with us. Lorenzo Snow prophesied that children now at play making mud worlds will progress in knowledge and power over nature to organize worlds as gods. Accordingly, many Mormons, such as I, have faith in a natural God that became God through natural means, suggesting how we might do the same. The New God Argument, which I formulated with Joseph West, leverages a generalization of the Simulation Argument, as well as the Great Filter argument and some other observations stemming from contemporary science and technological trends, to prove that if we trust in our own posthuman potential then we should also trust that posthumans more benevolent than us created our world. Because such posthumans may qualify as God in Mormonism, the argument suggests that trust in our posthuman potential should lead to faith in a particular kind of God. It’s worth noting that Mormonism, because of its relatively unique theology of a progressing posthuman God, is often the target of hubris charges similar to those aimed at Transhumanism by adherents of religions with mainstream theologies. They consider Mormonism, like Transhumanism, to be committing the sin of Babel, as portrayed in the Bible. Some Mormon authorities have responded that the sin of Babel is not merely in the desire or attempt to become like God, but rather the sin is in allowing our technical achievements to outpace moral achievements, pursuing the desire foolishly or egotistically. Ben: I’m not familiar with the New God argument, so I guess most of our readers won’t be either! Could you perhaps give a brief summary? I understand the argument that, if we have posthuman potential, then probably some other race came before us in the history of the universe and also had posthuman potential, and probably that other race created virtual worlds of great complexity, and probably we live in one of those virtual worlds. This is basically the Simulation Argument, and Hugo de Garis combines it with the observation of surprising mathematical structures in the world to conclude that “God may be an alien mathematician.” But where do you get the conclusion that the posthumans who created the virtual world we live in, must be MORE beneficial than us? I don’t get that leap; could you clarify? Lincoln: Here’s a summary of the New God Argument . . .If we will not go extinct before becoming posthumans then, given assumptions consistent with contemporary science and technological trends, posthumans probably already exist that are more benevolent than us and that created our world. If prehumans are probable then posthumans probably already exist. If posthumans probably increased faster in destructive than defensive capacity then posthumans probably are more benevolent than us. If posthumans probably create create many worlds like those in their past then posthumans probably created our world. The only alternative is that we probably will go extinct before becoming posthumans.

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Among Transhumanists, the most controversial part of the argument is that to some, it’s not clear that benevolence is the only possible explanation for surviving an increasing gap between destructive and defensive capacity. However, I think there is a strong case to make for this assumption, and I’m working on articulating it for future publication. In brief, though, the idea is that warfare selects for communal complexity, which in turn selects for individual restraint from infringing on others’ interests. Ben: Hmmmm.. yeah, as you may surmise, I don’t really buy the benevolence argument. It seems to imply that we humans are among the LEAST benevolent creatures that can possibly become posthumans. But I don’t see a basis for this – i.e., I don’t see how we could possibly know this!…. Also, I’m not even clear that a concept like “benevolence” has to apply to posthumans, which may have an entirely differently way of thinking and acting than we can understand… Lincoln: Your criticism of the Benevolence Argument seems insightful, judging from what I’ve been reading to help me better justify it. You suggest that the argument seems to imply that humans are among the LEAST benevolent creatures that can possibly become posthumans. This observation may be a step in the direction that some anthropologists have been going. As I mentioned before, there is a theory that warfare selects for communal complexity, which in turn selects for individual restraint from infringing on others’ interests. Taken to its logical conclusion, the theory implies that at any particular stage in human development, we have been both the LEAST and the MOST benevolent creatures that could possibly become posthumans (assuming we go on to become them). In other words, the consequence of highly violent pressures is the natural selection of cooperative groups that can counteract those pressures. Paradoxically, morality emerged from its opposite. This theory falls in line well with Pinker’s observations about humanity’s relatively violent past and relatively peaceful present. In all of this, note that I’m using words like “benevolence”, “morality” and “cooperation” as synonyms. I don’t have any strict or narrow definition of benevolence in mind. Quite to the contrary, I’m willing to learn something about the nature of benevolence as I come to understand better what it is in our nature that is bridging an increasing gap between our destructive and defensive capacities. Even if not exactly as I’m imagining it, it seems something approximating what we’d call “benevolence” must be essential to the survival of posthumans, unless some kind of extremely dystopian scenario of monolithic volition is possible to maintain. Anyway, there’s more work to do here, for sure. Ben: I see, so you’re saying that morality as a social and cultural pattern evolved because of the individual tendency to violence that humans have. Less violent creatures wouldn’t have needed to develop so much morality. But I still don’t see why this implies that humans would necessarily be less benevolent than the previous intelligences who created the world we live in. Perhaps a better argument that the creators of our world were probably more benevolent than current humans is as follows •

Right now, current humans are not all that benevolent, because we’re largely controlled by our unconscious minds, which evolved for survival in a Paleolithic regime where violence was necessary

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However, as humans achieve more advanced technology, we will figure out how to make ourselves more and more benevolent, via education and changes in culture, but also due to brain modifications, brain-computer hybridization and so forth. We will do this because now that the Paleolithic need to fight to survive and reproduce is gone, our old violent ways have become counterproductive



So, by the time we figure out how to create massive, complex simulated universes (comparable to the one we live in), we will probably be more benevolent than we are now (as we will have refactored ourselves for greater benevolence)



Other prior intelligent species probably underwent similar dynamics before they became able to create complex simulated universes (like ours)



Thus, our world was probably created by a previously-evolved intelligent species, with more benevolence than we currently have

Or to borrow Hugo de Garis’s vernacular, not only is God probably an alien mathematician, he’s probably a fairly benevolent alien mathematician… I’m not sure if the above is a new argument for the benevolence of the Creator, or if it’s just a rephrasing of your argument in my own vernacular (because I haven’t really understood your argument yet, the way you’ve worded it). Lincoln: Yes. I think something like that approximates a justification for the assumptions on which the Benevolence Argument is based. Although humans presently aren’t as benevolent as we could hope, there’s good evidence that we’re more benevolent (less inclined to violence and more inclined to cooperation) than our distant ancestors, perhaps consequent to adaptations that enabled us to survive our violent history. There’s also good reason to suppose, as you point out, that advancing technology (both machine and social) will facilitate further increases in benevolence. However, advancing tech will also facilitate increases in capacity for violence, including global catastrophic risks that we may not survive. If we do survive, I expect the reason will be the same as it has been historically: adaptation to decreased violence and increased cooperation. This underscores the importance of transhumanism, understood not just as the arbitrary use of technology to extend our abilities, but rather as the ethical use of technology. Ben: What are the main ways in which the Mormon spin on transhumanism differs from “conventional” transhumanism (bearing in mind that the latter is a rather diverse entity, of course…) Lincoln: Mormon Transhumanism doesn’t differ from conventional Transhumanism in essentials so much as it extends conventional Transhumanism. Not content with describing our future in merely secular terms, Mormon Transhumanists embrace a religious esthetic for varying reasons. I do so because I consider the religious esthetic more powerful as a motivator and more accurate as a descriptor. Of course, divine demanders can be abused, and God-colored spectacles can distract. However, I prefer these risks to those of alternatives available to me. Ben: Hmmm…. It’s obvious from history that the religious esthetic is an awesome, perhaps unparalleled, motivator for human beings. The only things that compete with it seem to be biological necessities like

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food and sex and protecting one’s children. It’s less clear to me why you consider it “more accurate”. Can you give me some examples of how the religious esthetic is more accurate than other sorts of esthetics, let’s say for example than a postmodern esthetic, or a Nietzschean esthetic, or a secular humanist esthetic, or a Cosmist esthetic, etc. etc. ? Lincoln: I consider the religious esthetic (in contrast to religious epistemics, for example) to be more accurate than alternatives as a descriptor of my experience. I don’t experience the world in terms of reductionism, no matter how epistemically accurate reductionism may be. I do experience the world in terms of joys and sorrows, goods and evils, truths and errors, all ranging in magnitude from the mundane to the sublime. Such experience is also presented, of course, in non-religious esthetics, such as postmodernism and secular humanism. However, I find that the non-religious articulations resonate with me more as they approach religious forms. For example, I thoroughly enjoy Nietzsche, who vies with William James for status as my favorite philosopher; and my favorite work from Nietzsche is “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, which clearly takes on a religious esthetic. Regarding Cosmism, I’d suggest that its accuracy as a descriptor of my experience, too, is in its approaches to the religious esthetic. I embrace the religious esthetic of Mormonism in particular both because it’s my cultural heritage and because I perceive relatively unique value in its doctrine of communal deification through the Gospel of Christ. It informs my motivations in ways that I think make me a better person, a better friend and father, and a better contributor to our common pursuit of a better world. Ben: Could you clarify the “unique value” aspect? Communal deification is not unique to Mormonism. And what is the unique value offered by the “through the Gospel of Christ” aspect of the communal deification? In what ways is communal deification through the Gospel of Christ uniquely valuable, as opposed to other sorts of communal deification? I guess another way to put the question is: For individuals NOT coming from the Mormon cultural heritage, but liking the general idea of communal deification, what’s the reason for them to embrace the Mormon view? What does it add to “plain vanilla communal deification”? Lincoln: The doctrine of deification is not absolutely unique to Mormonism, but it is relatively unique. The idea is ancient, but I know of no other major modern religion that openly teaches it. Even compared to most of the small religious movements that teach and have taught it, Mormonism’s formulation is more concrete. For Mormons, deification is not only a mystical union with an abstract God. Rather, deification is understood as both spiritual and physical progress to material corporeal godhood. Ben:The point that “For Mormons, deification is not only a mystical union with an abstract God. Rather, deification is understood as both spiritual and physical progress to material corporeal godhood” is certainly interesting and does distinguish Mormonism from most other religions, bringing it closer to transhumanism in some ways. Lincoln: The combination of deification and the Gospel of Christ is particularly attractive to me because of how the Gospel of Christ informs our understanding of deification. The writings of Paul in the Bible allude to a dichotomy of would-be Gods. On the one hand is Satan, described as seeking to raise himself above all else that is called God, declaring himself God. On the other hand is Christ, described as seeking to raise us together as joint-heirs in the glory of God. These archetypes of egotistical and altruistic godhood serve as reminders that deification in itself is not the goal, but rather the goal is

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benevolent deification. This was echoed strongly by Joseph Smith, who taught that our salvation depends on each other, both the living and the dead, and that none can be perfected without the other. Of course, Mormonism is not the only religion that teaches the value of benevolence. However, by combining it with the explicit goal of deification, it bids us look higher and work harder. It is not enough to be humanly benevolent, or even saintly benevolent. We are called to be divinely benevolent, taking on the name of Christ, following Jesus’ example, and participating as saviors in the work of God to bring about human immortality and eternal life Ben: Do you think that a Singularity a la Vinge and Kurzweil is in the cards? Not to put too fine a point on it — but: How can you consistently believe both in the Singularity and the Second Coming of Christ? Which one do you predict will come first, for example? Lincoln: Although I acknowledge accelerating technological change, I have mixed feelings about selfidentifying as a Singularitarian because I think a technological singularity could be a moral failing. Rather than conceding our predictive and directive capacities to independent self-improving artificial intelligence, I hope and expect we can also enhance our own intelligence, thereby expanding our predictive and directive capacities, and precluding experience of a technological event horizon. Whether experienced as a technological singularity or not, how does accelerating technological change fit with trust in the Return of Christ? On one hand, the Return of Christ is when we, as a community, attain unity in benevolence toward each other. In that day, we become the body of Christ, returned to the prophesied millenial paradise. On the other hand, how would friendly artificial and enhanced intelligence manifest itself to and in us? Assuming we live in a computed universe, the structure of which constrains the optimization of advanced intelligence, would it reveal our posthuman creator? “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3: 2)

Ben: I understand that’s how you think about it as a Mormon. But I don’t quite see why we can’t attain unity in benevolence with each other without it having anything much to do with this dude named Jesus who lived 2000 years ago….Relatedly and more broadly, I wonder what you feel the Mormon way of thinking has to offer transhumanists who were NOT brought up in the Mormon cultural tradition? Can you give us some compelling reasons why it would make sense for us to adopt Mormon transhumanism instead of plain old transhumanism or Cosmism or something else? Or to put it another way: Suppose you were a Mormon missionary trying to convert transhumanists: what would you tell them? Lincoln: Individually, we can achieve unity in benevolence without it having much to do with Jesus of Nazareth. Some of my non-religious and Asian friends are excellent examples of this. Most Mormons anticipate that the millenial world will consist of persons from many different ideological persuasions. Communally, however, our achievements will have much to do with Jesus, in the least because no other person has had more influence on our human civilization. Clearly not everything done in his name has been good; but, Christian or not, we are part of a system in which he is a significant variable. So far as I’m concerned, the only good reasons to add Mormonism to your Transhumanism would be those gained from experiment and experience. Mormon missionaries are fond of referencing a passage of scripture from the Book of Mormon that compares “the word” (in this case, Mormonism) to a seed,

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which we must plant and nourish before harvesting and tasting its fruit. In tasting the fruit, we learn the value of the seed. In other words, to know the value of Mormonism, one must try it. It’s more than theological arguments, scriptural exegesis, and extraordinary historical claims. Mormonism is an immersive way of life, and one that happens to be remarkable among religions in its compatibility with Transhumanism. Ben: About needing to try Mormonism to appreciate it — yes I can see that may be true, but on the other hand the same is also true of so many other things… and you’re not giving us a reason to choose to try Mormonism instead of one of the many other things that can only be understood via immersing oneself in them… Lincoln: Here are some of the practical benefits of the Mormon lifestyle: •

Mormons live longer than average, probably due to our code of health and emphasis on family relations and education



Mormons are less likely than average to commit suicide



Mormon communities have relatively low incarceration rates, reflecting low crime rates



Mormon communities may be the safest places to be during large scale emergencies because many of us maintain a year’s worth of food and emergency supplies



Mormons are relatively likely to help you, as reflected by Utah’s consistent ranking as one of the most charitable states in proportion to income



Mormon communities can spend less than public welfare because of generous private donations



Mormon communities are commonly ranked by the media to be among the best places to live



Mormons make dependable employees, with better than average education and lower than average probability of showing up to work with a hangover or buzz



Mormon communities have some of the highest ratios of academic aptitude to dollars spent on education



Mormon communities produce a higher than average per capita number of scientists



Mormons are more likely than average to have computers



Mormon communities have lower than average teen pregnancy and abortion rates, reflecting emphasis on sexual abstinence outside marriage



Mormons make more babies than average, which may contribute to long term economic and ideological strength



Mormons are less likely than average to become divorced

Ben: Hah – interesting response! That’s certainly a refreshingly practical perspective….! Although, I guess the practical statistics for Ashkenazi Jews are also pretty good, and that’s my own heritage, so it MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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doesn’t really give me much motivation to become a Mormon, heh….About Mormonism’s unique connection to transhumanism — I can see that it does have some unique or almost-unique aspects that tie it closely to transhumanism, and that is very interesting. However, other religions such as Buddhism tie in closely with transhumanism in other ways, that are also very powerful — for instance, Buddhism views the world as constructed by the minds in it, which is very reminiscent of the Simulation Argument and in general of the transhumanist meme of constructing one’s own self and reality. So I’m not sure Mormonism is uniquely closely tied to transhumanism — but I can see that it has some deep and unique or nearly unique specific ties to transhumanism. So thanks for opening my eyes in that regard! Lincoln: I’d like to summarize for you some of the more significant parallels between Mormonism and Transhumanism. Perhaps this will help better communicate why I consider Mormonism be the strongest example of religious Transhumanism among major contemporary religions. Mormonism posits that we are living in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, when the work of God is hastening, inspiring and endowing us with unprecedented knowledge and power. This parallels the common Transhumanist position that we are experiencing accelerating technological change. So far as I know, no other major religion has a strong parallel to Transhumanism in this area. This is probably because of how recently Mormonism was founded compared to other major religions. Mormonism expects the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times will culminate in the Return of Christ, along with attending risks and opportunities. This parallels the apocalyptic and millenarian expectations that Transhumanists commonly associate with the Technological Singularity. This parallel between Mormonism and Transhumanism is shared with other major Western religions. Mormonism prophecies that the Return of Christ will transform the Earth into paradise during the Millennium, when there will be no poverty or death, the living will be transfigured, and the dead will be resurrected. This parallels the common Transhumanist position that the Technological Singularity may facilitate radical life extension, super abundance, and potentially even an engineered omega point. So far as I know, this parallel between Mormonism and Transhumanism is shared only to lesser extents with other major religions, which interpret transfiguration and resurrection in only spiritual terms rather than including the physical as does Mormonism. Mormon vision culminates in a plurality of Gods, eternally progressing and creating worlds without end, both spiritually and physically. This parallels Transhumanists’ common expectation that we will prove capable of engineering intelligence and worlds, and reflects the logical ramifications of the Simulation Argument. It appears to me that most other major religions don’t share this parallel with Transhumanism at all, and Buddhism does only in a more abstract manner. Mormon metaphysics shares the basic assumptions of science, including consistency, causality, uniformity, empiricism and materialism, such that even miracles, although marvelous in our eyes, do not contravene law. Likewise, Transhumanists hold to the basic metaphysical assumptions of science, while anticipating engineering marvels. I know of no other major religion that shares this parallel, particularly in the area of materialism. Mormonism aims at nearly universal salvation, in physical and spiritual immortality and eternal life, enabled in part through genealogical and proxy work for the dead. Similarly, a relatively unique Transhumanist perspective is that we might re-engineer the dead by copying them to the future, perhaps

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via quantum archeology. I don’t think there is another major religion that shares the expectation that proxied information work can contribute to human salvation. Mormon scripture champions glorified physical life in this world, denigrating death as an “awful monster” and declaring “more blessed” those who wish serve God in this world indefinitely without dying. In parallel, Transhumanists commonly promote radical life extension and the conquest of death in this world. Mormonism and Transhumanism together contrast with the relatively escapist advocations of other major religions that explain immortality and heaven in dualist other-worldly terms. Ben: Very interesting, very interesting….Oh, finally… I have to ask you one more question, even though it’s not so directly tied to transhumanism….How does Mormon thinking handle the “problem of evil” ? That is: Why, if there’s this super-powerful, super-good God, are there so many downright horrible things in the world? Leibniz of course answered this by saying that even God must obey logic, and we live in the best of all possible worlds. Like Voltaire, I never found this fully satisfying….On the other hand, Buddhism basically tells us that all existence is suffering, and to avoid it we need to opt out of existence and embrace the Nothing…I suppose this does relate to transhumanism, in that if transhumanist technologies realize their potential for benefit, then the amount of evil in the world will dramatically decrease. Presumably you believe that God will allow this to happen — but then, why didn’t He let it happen already, instead of letting so many of us suffer and die? What really is the moral justification for a benevolent God letting so many apparently innocent little girls get raped and brutally murdered for example? I’m genuinely curious how Mormonism addresses this dilemma… Lincoln: Mormons commonly attribute evil to a couple things. First, God relinquished a systemic agency to the world. Along with God’s relinquishment of human agency, the whole world was relinquished. The allowance for human agency necessitated a permissive context, which enables not only humans’ volitional evil, but also cascades into the natural evils we observe and experience. Second, God did not create the world from nothing. Rather, God organized our world and its laws within a context of previously existing matter and laws, which may constrain God in various ways. Most Mormons don’t hold that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Neither do we hold that existence is suffering to escape. Instead, our scriptures teach that we exist that we might have joy, and that we can make real differences in the degree of joy we experience as we make better or poorer choices. So why does God not intervene to give us all a fullness of joy now, or at least faster? Mormons tend to trust that God is intervening, within the limitations that present themselves, according to an awareness and wisdom far superior to our own. Our scriptures also suggest that our eventual salvation is so valuable to God that it justifies doing just about anything short of annihilating us to help us attain it. Indeed, it justified relinquishing the world in the first place, as God wept, knowing we would suffer. So we trust in the grace of God to provide a context of opportunity within which we work out our salvation and seek to become as God, as we share in the suffering. What about the specific evils? Why might a Mormon claim that God intervened in one case but not in another? Why would God let so many innocent little girls get raped and brutally murdered? I don’t know. It’s horrible. I feel a divine calling to do what I can to make the world better. I imagine, assuming my trust MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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is not vain, that God feels an analogous calling. Maybe that’s just my anthropomorphized projections, but such projections seem to be of the sort that would shape us into Gods, and we almost certainly would not be the first or only to be so shaped. Paradox. Perhaps morality must arise from a context of immorality? Perhaps Christ cannot function without Satan? Maybe there is no other way? This brings us full circle to my comments on justification of the Benevolence Argument. Ben: So this is largely the same as Leibniz’s idea that logic constrains even God… but now you’re saying that both logic and PHYSICS constrain even God….But still… intuitively, I can’t really buy your idea that “God feels an analogous calling.” …I can sort of buy the argument that our world was fairly likely created by some previously-evolved intelligent creature who liked math and was probably less violent and nasty than current humans…. But, the idea that this Creator felt a calling to minimize our pain and suffering in this simulated world we created, and work toward our betterment — that just seems to contradict what I see in the world around me. I find it rather hard to believe that the degree of horror and suffering in the world is really necessary for our ultimate betterment, enlightenment and salvation. I find it more likely that the superhuman intelligences who created our world didn’t so much give a crap about the particulars of the suffering or pleasure of the creatures living within it. Maybe they feel more like I did when I had an ant farm as a kid… I looked at the ants in the ant farm, and if one ant started tearing another to pieces, I sometimes felt a little sorry for the victim, but I didn’t always intervene. I just figured that was the way of the world. A sort of “divine detachment” as the phrase goes. An acceptance that some level of pain and suffering is a necessary part of existence — as Nietzsche said “Have you said Yes to one joy? O my friends, then you have said yes to all woe as well! All things are enchained, all things are entwined, all things are in love!” …. Once you take that point of view to heart fully enough, maybe you stop worrying about the particulars — whether one or two (or one or two million) extra little girls get raped and murdered is kind of a rounding error… Also there’s the possibility that we’re part of a giant data mining experiment, right? The intelligences who created us could have created a vast number of universes containing a vast number of intelligent species and civilizations, and then they could be studying how each of them evolves. Some may have more pain and suffering, some may have less —- they may have introduced a lot of variation to make it an interesting study! There are many possibilities to think about, and many that seem (to me) more naturally implied by the evidence than the notion of a creator who genuinely wants to minimize our suffering… Lincoln: You mention that you don’t see why humans would have to be less benevolent than any posthumans that created us. Nothing starts as benevolent. It’s learned, even if that learning takes the form of executing copied code. The knowledge to write the code came from a processs, and the process of executing the code reflects the originally learned process. How does that process feel? Does it suffer? Could it do otherwise (as your Nietzsche quote points out)? So why couldn’t or wouldn’t posthumans make the process faster and more direct? Why would we have to evolve through environments that would initially select for violence? If they intended us to become MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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posthumans, why not just pop us out fully formed? Well, it seems to me that either they don’t exist (which I reject for practical and moral reasons, as well as esthetic reasons), or there is some additional benefit to the slower and indirect process of becoming posthumans (maybe data mining, as you point out), or we’re overlooking some other assumption. What? This returns us to the problem of evil, as well as to other comments you made in your feedback. You mentioned you think it unlikely that any creator of our universe prioritizes minimizing our suffering. I agree, and that squares with Mormonism, which posits God’s work and glory to be bringing about immortality and eternal life (this latter understood as the quality of life God lives), rather than something like minimizing suffering. If God’s priority were minimizing suffering, his work and glory would be to make everything dumb as rocks. Let’s say God exists and, in addition to whatever data mining benefits God may get (which, incidentally, works well with the idea in Mormonism that God continues to progress), we’re also benefitting from the slow indirect process of learning benevolence through suffering. What would be the benefit? Could we get it some other way? Maybe there’s value for each of us in the diversity of benevolence that arises from the diversity of suffering – indefinitely numerous unique aspects of the divine virtue? If so, that would feed into one of the more common Mormon interpretations of the Atonement of Christ, which holds that Christ suffered everything that each of us has suffered. If benevolence arises from violence, what could be more benevolent than a God that chooses to suffer in all the ways that all of its creations suffer? In Mormonism, there’s also the paradoxical idea that, on the one hand, we need not suffer so much if we will simply choose to repent and allow the Atonement of Christ to make us clean from sin; on the other hand, if we would be joint heirs with Christ in the glory of God, we must take on the name of Christ and participate as saviors in the suffering. As I interpret this, there is a communal complexity at play, wherein we each participate differently according to our circumstances, desires and abilities. The end result is not a simple uniform deification where every person is alike, but rather a complex diverse deification where, to paraphrase Mormon scripture, we enjoy the same sociality that we now enjoy, except that it becomes coupled with divine glory. I suppose the idea is that there are no shortcuts to becoming like God – to becoming part of God – to becoming God. There is no other way, brutal though it may be at times, to attaining the rich complexity of shared divinity. There is no compression algorithm. It must be lived. It must be chosen. It is only that which we all bring to it. I expect we’ll start to see these principles come into play with increasing force in the work to develop artificial intelligence. If an AI never learns how to do long division, it won’t know what it feels like to do long division. It won’t empathize as directly with those who know the feeling. It won’t laugh or cry as authentically when someone reminisces of those good old days when division required an emotional effort. It’s kind of trivial, on the one hand, yet kind of amazing on the other, this cosmically nearlyinsignificant period of time during which humans on Earth performed long division. Now, I’m not saying an AI couldn’t learn long division. Rather, I’m saying a divine AI, a benevolent AI, insofar as a few humans are concerned, would have to learn, and learning would have to feel the same, and feeling the same would be experienced the same . . . and this is where we get into the challenges of identity that

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advanced AI will present. Maybe we’re already playing them out now. Maybe we are part of an advanced intelligence, learning what it’s like to be human. Ben: So part of your idea is that if we want to become God(s), we need to experience everything that God(s) have experienced, including a lot of suffering? A mind that has not known sufficient suffering can never be a truly Godly mind? Lincoln: That’s clearly part of the Christian narrative, emphasized in the Mormon tradition as “God himself” suffering for and with the world. I’m not saying that we should promote suffering or engage in anything like self mutilation. I’m saying, though, that empathy, which is at the heart of benevolence, does seem to arise in us, both individually and as a species, from our own difficult experience. I also doubt that it’s possible to develop an artificial intelligence that humans would recognize as their equal or superior without incorporating that which would logically necessitate the capacity to suffer. What justifies our development of AI in a world of tension and conflict? What justifies bringing children into the world, knowing they’ll suffer? Our reasons vary, but almost none of us do it for the suffering. We do it because the overall value proposition is worth the risks, whatever the imagined opportunities may be in all their diversity. In Mormonism, there’s an idea that we and all living things experience joy in filling the measure of our creation. I don’t think this is an appeal to any narrow sort of happiness, but rather something broad to the point of including even the kind of joy experienced in moments of real courage. Ben: Oh, and one more thing I just can’t resist asking…. In your perspective could an intelligent computer program have a soul? Could it have consciousness? Could an intelligent computer program become a God, in the same sense that a person could? Will AIs be able to participate in the collective deification process on the same status as humans? Lincoln: Technically, in Mormonism, “soul” is used to describe the combination of spirit and body, rather than just spirit. That aside, my answer to your question is that I think computer programs already have spirits, or actually ARE spirits. Ben: Hah – perfect! Lincoln: In Mormon cosmology, God creates everything spiritually before physically, organizing and reorganizing uncreated spirit and matter toward greater joy and glory. All things have spirits. Humans have spirits. Non-human animals and even the Earth have spirits, and will be glorified according to the measure of their creation, along with us. Many Mormons also anticipate that the day will come when, emulating God, we learn to create our own spirit children. Spirit is in and through all things. Recall, too, that Mormons are philosophical materialists (not dualists), so even spirit is matter, which God organizes as the spiritual creation of all things. So far as I’m concerned, spirit as described by Mormonism is information, and software engineering is spiritual creation. We are already engaged in the early stages of the creation of our spirit children. Taking a step back, consider how this adds perspective to the problem of evil: what justifies our development of artificial intelligence in an evil world? Ben: Got it. That actually accords rather well with my own view. Well, thanks for answering all my questions so thoroughly and with so much tolerance. I have to say I’m not particularly tempted to convert to Mormonism even after hearing your wonderfully subtle views – but I do have a much better appreciation for why you think Mormonism and transhumanism are compatible. And I am impressed with

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the flexibility and robustness of the Mormon belief system, that lets it adapt and reinterpret itself to encompass transhumanist technologies, without losing sight of its essence at all. Very, very interesting. Lincoln: Ben, thanks for making the time to discuss these questions with me. While I’d certainly welcome you or anyone else as a convert to Mormonism, more important to me is the work to improve mutual understanding and to make a better world. In fact, I hope none of my words give anyone the impression that I think everyone must be Mormon to make that better world. To the contrary, I see something beautiful, even divine in my estimation, unfolding all around and within us, in part as a direct consequence of our diversity of religious and non-religious perspectives. Early Mormon leader Orson F Whitney put it this way: ‘God is using more than one people for the accomplishment of his great and marvelous work. The Latter-day Saints cannot do it all. It is too vast, too arduous, for any one people.’ I believe that, and in part such ideas are what motivate the Mormon Transhumanist Association. Ben: One of the more interesting and radical ideas to emerge from the transhumanist perspective is the "simulation argument" (as articulated for example by Nick Bostrom), which argues that it’s fairly likely our universe is actually part of a simulation purposefully created by alien intelligences in a civilization evolved previously to ours. What’s your reaction to this? Does it contradict Mormon teachings or can it somehow be made consistent with them? If so, how? Lincoln: Mormon theology, as articulated by persons that Mormons typically recognize as prophets, resonates strongly with the Simulation Argument. Joseph Smith proclaimed that God was once as we are now, became exalted, and instituted laws whereby others could learn how to be gods, the same as all gods have done before. Wilford Woodruff taught that God is progressing in knowledge and power without end, and it is just so with us. Lorenzo Snow prophesied that children now at play making mud worlds will progress in knowledge and power over nature to organize worlds as gods. Accordingly, many Mormons, such as I, have faith in a natural God that became God through natural means, suggesting how we might do the same. A final affirmation of why Mormonism is the strongest example of religious Transhumanism among major contemporary religions can be also based on the following positions: Mormonism posits that we are living in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, when the work of God is hastening, inspiring and endowing us with unprecedented knowledge and power. This parallels the common Transhumanist position that we are experiencing accelerating technological change. So far as I know, no other major religion has a strong parallel to Transhumanism in this area. This is probably because of how recently Mormonism was founded compared to other major religions. Mormonism expects the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times will culminate in the Return of Christ, along with attending risks and opportunities. This parallels the apocalyptic and millenarian expectations that Transhumanists commonly associate with the Technological Singularity. This parallel between Mormonism and Transhumanism is shared with other major Western religions. Mormonism prophecies that the Return of Christ will transform the Earth into paradise during the Millennium, when there will be no poverty or death, the living will be transfigured, and the dead will be resurrected. This parallels the common Transhumanist position that the Technological Singularity may facilitate radical life extension, super abundance, and potentially even an engineered omega point. So

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far as I know, this parallel between Mormonism and Transhumanism is shared only to lesser extents with other major religions, which interpret transfiguration and resurrection in only spiritual terms rather than including the physical as does Mormonism. Mormon vision culminates in a plurality of Gods, eternally progressing and creating worlds without end, both spiritually and physically. This parallels Transhumanists’ common expectation that we will prove capable of engineering intelligence and worlds, and reflects the logical ramifications of the Simulation Argument. It appears to me that most other major religions don’t share this parallel with Transhumanism at all, and Buddhism does only in a more abstract manner. Mormon metaphysics shares the basic assumptions of science, including consistency, causality, uniformity, empiricism and materialism, such that even miracles, although marvelous in our eyes, do not contravene law. Likewise, Transhumanists hold to the basic metaphysical assumptions of science, while anticipating engineering marvels. I know of no other major religion that shares this parallel, particularly in the area of materialism. Mormonism aims at nearly universal salvation, in physical and spiritual immortality and eternal life, enabled in part through genealogical and proxy work for the dead. Similarly, a relatively unique Transhumanist perspective is that we might re-engineer the dead by copying them to the future, perhaps via quantum archeology. I don’t think there is another major religion that shares the expectation that proxied information work can contribute to human salvation. Mormon scripture champions glorified physical life in this world, denigrating death as an "awful monster" and declaring "more blessed" those who wish serve God in this world indefinitely without dying. In parallel, Transhumanists commonly promote radical life extension and the conquest of death in this world. Mormonism and Transhumanism together contrast with the relatively escapist advocations of other major religions that explain immortality and heaven in dualist other-worldly terms. In Summary whilst Transhumanism is a movement whose origins are clearly founded in atheism it can be seen that there is a definite fit with Mormonism because of both agendas synergizing on the future possibility of attaining godhood. Mormons teach that man can become God, and that God was once a man: "God himself, the Father of us all, is a glorified, exalted immortal resurrected man!"

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"...God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man and sits enthroned in yonder heavens..." "As man is, God once was: as God is, man may become."

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From a Christian perspective we know this is plain and simple heresy. Nowhere does the Bible say or imply that God was ever a man, or that man can become God! Malachi 3:6 says, "For I am the LORD, I change not..." How could this be true if God was once a man? Genesis 1:1 states that God existed "in the beginning" before man was ever created. John 4:24 states that God is a "spirit," and Jesus tells us in John 1:18 that no man has seen God at any time. Numbers 23:19 says that "God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man that he should repent." God has always been God, and no one has ever "become" God.

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4. ECTOGENESIS: THE ARTIFICIAL WOMB In Part 3, reference was made to the growing feeling amongst the genetic engineering community that the time will come where researchers will receive approval to grow embryo’s inside artificial uteruses to further advance their research of cloning. This is because presently there is significant resistance by policy makers on the issue of animal/human embryos being attached to an animal or human uterus. Presently regulations in most countries demand that such embryos which are created in vitro (in cell culture) are destroyed after a short period of time or after several cell divisions. However the concept of an artificial uterus is not new.

J.B.S. Haldane coined the term ectogenesis in 1924, a word used to describe the birthing of humans with artificial wombs. The most important benefits of this future technology were laid out from its very first mention. It was Haldane who saw ectogenesis as a necessity for combating the high fertility levels of the "less desirable members of the population." It should come as no surprise that ectogenesis was and still is a eugenic project. By controlling genetics, all stupidity was to be eradicated scientifically. Stupidity was a word used to describe the bulk of the population. By genetically engineering and generating better humans with artificial wombs, the "inferior types" would be done away with by default. It has long been the unwashed masses that were to be cancelled out so that a new age utopia could be brought in. Remodeling human generation through the use of artificial wombs and reducing the amount of natural human births was the way to make this scientific utopia a reality. Just five years after Haldane let the ectogenesis genie out of its bottle, a very interesting article appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine written by the Earl Birkenhead, an English aristocrat. The article was labeled in this way, “it is a Forecast of What This World Will Be 100 Years From NOW.” It actually mentioned genetic engineering, ectogenesis, and many other scientific achievements. Like Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, this piece clearly described technologies that had not yet been invented in the year 1929. Birkenhead describes television, and even calls it by that name. He proclaims that everyone will have one by 2029. The most interesting part of the article has to do with the artificial womb and what it will be used for,

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“It is possible, however, that by 2029 the whole question of human heredity and eugenics will be swallowed up by the prospect of ectogenetic birth. In other words, genetic engineering would be perfected alongside the artificial womb. By intelligent combination of suitable genes it will be possible to predict with reasonable certainty that truly brilliant children shall be born of a marriage”

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This is what eugenics is all about, perfecting the act of regeneration and seeing that all inferiors are disposed of intelligently. What better way to do so than through scientific method and technology? This very idea is being marketed to us today as a completely humane way of eliminating suffering, stupidity, and all the rest of our bad traits. We are being sold on eugenics. The Earl of Birkenhead knew that artificial wombs would come but he also knew they would be opposed, “The possibility of ectogenetic children will naturally arouse the fiercest antagonism. Religious bodies of many 16 different creeds will rally their adherents to fight such a fundamental biological invention”

This very concept is well known today within the research community that is actually building artificial wombs. Research has been purposely kept quiet so that people will not protest it en masse. The research community is waiting for the proper time to unveil the fruits of its labor, but more on this point later. His Lordship continues to say of ectogenesis, “it will separate reproduction from marriage, and the latter institution will become wholly changed.”

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The reworking of the social contract is a huge aspect of all this. The legal definitions of everything, especially intimate human relationships, are to change. Society itself is to be totally reengineered. Human biology is to be tailor made so that it fits the measurements of the Great Architect. It is on this point that Lord Birkenhead really lets it all hang out, “Further, the character of the future inhabitants of any state could be determined by the government which happened temporarily to enjoy power. By regulating the choice of the ectogenetic parents of the next generation, the Cabinet of the future could breed a nation of industrious dullards, or leaven the population with fifty thousand charmingly irresponsible mural painters…..A further immediate consequence of ectogenesis would be a plea that society should be allowed to produce the human types it most needs, instead of being forced to absorb all the unsuitable types which happen to be born.”

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This is a recipe for complete and total control, a calculated, scientific and mathematic formula for sustaining society. There is nothing spontaneous or intuitive about it. It represents the perfected maledominated world, where everything must be completely measured. Birkenhead asks, “If it were possible to breed a race of strong healthy creatures, intelligent to perform intricate drudgery yet lacking all ambition, what ruling class would resist the temptation?”

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This is indeed an excellent question. Here you have an actual member of the "ruling class" telling you that the creation of a scientifically designed slave is simply irresistible. You had better question the nature of human enhancement now, while you still have the capacity for any kind of "ambition." Birkenhead said, “Every impulse which makes slavery degrading and irksome to ordinary humanity would be removed from his mental equipment. His only happiness would be in his task; he would be the exact human counterpart of the worker 17 bee.”

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The animal symbol of the bee is used frequently to describe the perfect laborer. It pops up again and again within eugenic writings because it is an ancient symbol of the perfect citizen and the beehive the perfect civilization. A perfected society would buzz away. All those tasked with mundane labor would be tuned for performance like machines. A large portion of this article is an ode to this "ectogenetic Robot," but at the end Birkenhead explains that such a machine may never come to bee. Instead of human robots, “It is far more likely that men will work as machine-minders for one or two hours a day and be free to devote the 17 rest of their energies to whatever form of activity they enjoy.”

Hooray, the transhuman paradise we're all hearing so much about these days! Be sure to realize that his Lordship is certain that children will be produced in laboratories. Genetic engineering will perfect the eugenic process of biological cleanliness. The mental conception of a new method of physical conception came about in the early twentieth century (at the latest). There has continued to be talk of the artificial womb all the way up to our current day. In the 1950s and 60s a scientific journal entitled Utopian Studies debated this topic. The very title of this journal speaks volumes. This is all part of a utopian project which is known by many names. Its work is divided into many categories. A more perfect singularity has been the goal. This has long been known but the term singularity is only now being released for mass consumption. The reason for this is that we are going through the final motions of a plan. A scientific age of reason is upon us (if we wish to see it through). Understand that there is direct purpose behind all of this. The very word reason implies this. “The artificial womb represents the completion of an even longer historic process that began nearly 400 years ago at the dawn of the scientific age. It was Francis Bacon, the father of modern science, who referred to nature as ‘a common harlot.’ He urged future generations to ‘tame, squeeze, mould and shape’ her so that ‘man could become her master and the undisputed sovereign of the physical world.’ No doubt some will see the artificial womb as the final triumph of modern science. Others, the ultimate human folly, -Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Pregnancy, London 18 Guardian, Jan. 2002”

This piece by Jeremy Rifkin laid out many facts behind the artificial womb research of Cornell University and Juntendou University (Japan). This research was appropriately compared to the writings of Sir Francis Bacon. Rifkin is the President of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington D.C. He has written books about this subject himself and is well aware of what is happening. In this same article he predicts that we are likely to see widespread use of artificial wombs within a generation. Most women would now be opposed to such things, "but their expectations might represent the dying sensibilities of the old order," Rifkin writes. “That's a charged sentiment if ever there was one. The destruction of the "old order" is a common theme regarding this subject matter and of course, who hasn't heard of the New World Order? At this point the idea of a New World Order feels old and even trite, but it must be understood that the very idea has been unleashed on us all with definite purpose. A New World Order is emerging and our psychological compliance is being manufactured slowly but surely through simple repetition. It is expected that we will eventually break down and accept this entire New World Order project by the time that its actual infrastructure is in place. Ectogenesis, transhumanism, and postgenderism are all aspects of this Brave New World Order. At the time it was published, Huxley's fiction was an absolute horror story. A few decades from now it could be praised as a beautiful, prophetic, and lovely work that 18 was ahead of its time.”

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Some serious corroborating evidence for all of this can be seen in a section of the fall 2008 Harvard Science Review. Under the heading Focus: Brave New World is an article entitled “Artificial Wombs - Delivering on Fertile Promises.” This title is obviously a direct reference to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Our real world is already following Huxley's fictional model as this article explains. “Delivering” (i.e. delivering a baby) “on Fertile Promises” (which are centuries old) are the actual scientists who are now only beginning to let their quiet research projects out of the bag. The general public is slowly being made more tolerant of certain ideas.

Consider this quote from the Harvard article, “So why has relatively little attention been paid to research that could lead to a major change in reproductive capacity? In fact, much work goes unpublished because of the uproar it might create among activists, politicians, and religious figures for its social implications.”

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There you have it. How disturbing is it that this project has purposely been going on in the dark so that the public would not be aware of it? What happened to democracy? How will a supposed technoprogressive democracy be built upon a secretive foundation? The vehement opposition to artificial wombs spoken of here is the exact same thing that Lord Birkenhead mentioned in 1929. It has long been known that people will be strongly opposed to artificial wombs. The solution to this problem has been to do the work privately, in the dark, and away from the prying eyes of the public. However, those following this method have not been afraid of using public funds. After all, tax dollars are what fund most research universities. Even “private” schools such as Cornell thrive on big grant money from the NSF et al. It seems clear that we are paying for crypto-eugenic research whether we like it or not. This again points to the fact that democracy is the biggest joke on the face of this planet. It is pure lip service, conjured up to give us a false sense of security. A scientific technocracy is slowly rising to complete power. Its worker bees up to this point have been a batch of morally ambivalent scientists carrying out their labors for the sake of progress. To be blunt, I don't think many of them really care about the broad implications of their personal labor. It just isn't something that they ever consider. On the other hand, there certainly are scientific laborers who have been convinced that their work serves a greater good. Specialization makes it difficult for many of these well-meaning scientists to see the big picture. They have been unfortunately blinded by their Ivy Leagueinduced tunnel vision. Most have become slaves to technique itself, and in the process have abandoned something very important. It is morality, which has been marginalized, in this scientific system. Commitment to progress is required to get the job done and so morals must always take a back seat to tangible results. Besides this, morals have been explained away as something totally relative and therefore not worthy of attention. Scientific ethics are questionable. The justifications found here are nearly identical to those found in the IEET paper on postgenderism: artificial wombs will be "safer" for mothers, they won't have to leave their careers, and of course a host of other eugenic corrections on reckless motherhood follow. In the name of safety, artificial wombs will be used to ensure that bad mothers don't taint the fetal development of their children by consuming drugs or

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alcohol. This added safety will tie into the medical insurance industry. Insurance companies will promote the use of artificial wombs by giving benefits to those who opt to use them. This is the wonderfully safe and secure New World that we are stepping into. In all aspects of life, security is becoming the selling point for a new system. Just who has the capacity to offer total security to a concerned population? A public/private partnership between government and corporations is already here and its practitioners are more than willing to raise any children that we are too busy to care for ourselves. They will keep them safe. This is the nanny state. It is the new family structure for the New World Order. One of the many overtly eugenic disclosures in the Harvard Science Review is the notion that the artificial womb may actually be too good. It could be used as an alternative to abortion and thus "overburden" adoption agencies with too many children. This article cites a quote made by Helen Pearson from her work “Making babies: the next 30 years” in which she says, “There are around 1 million abortions per year in the United States and there would have to be labs throughout the country, but if we put all these in artificial wombs and then put them up for adoption we would have one million more babies. It would be a nightmare”

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A nightmare; what a strong word. It is extremely telling that in the minds of those who most anticipate the arrival of the artificial womb, increased fertility is a horrible thing to be avoided. This is the life/ death dialectic of eugenics. There must be life to the strong and death to the weak. The Malthusian population catastrophe can be seen here as well. To avert disaster and institute security, we have to accept a healthy dose of death. We must all sacrifice for the good of the race. The people working on and promoting these technologies are eugenicists. We should all realize that the artificial womb and the declining fertility levels of Western nations go hand in hand. Our population numbers have been declining for quite some time now but this is not good enough for the hardcore eugenic cult leaders. They crave more. The Harvard article also mentions a quote from Regine Sitruk-Ware, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Population Council in New York, “If we look at centers in reproductive sciences funded by the National Institute of Health, there are more than twenty on I.V.F. and only a handful on contraceptive research. It's more politically correct to help people get babies than the reverse, but it's important to have a balance.”

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Now just what is going on amongst the ranks of the Population Council? Where did this council come from? You might want to look into these things. Whoever they are, they apparently hope to strike a "balance" between the eugenic life/death dialectic. This ties in directly to the creation of the artificial womb. The field of genetics began with a eugenic bias. The eugenic philosophy has sustained itself to this very day and can be seen throughout the biological sciences. It is this philosophy which is slowly creeping into the minds of an educated public. The truth of this is self-evident, however the devil is in the details, and fancy terms like transhumanism have fooled most people into believing that eugenics is dead and gone. No, it lives on, if not in your mind, than in the mind of your child. The progressive education system has seen to that.

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5. SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY Synthetic biology is one of the newest areas of biological research that seeks to design new forms of life and biological functions not found in nature. The concept began emerging in 1974, when Polish geneticist Waclaw Szybalski speculated about how scientists and engineers would soon enter “the synthetic biology phase of research in our field. We will then devise new control elements and add these new modules to the existing genomes or build up wholly new genomes. This would be a field with the unlimited 21 expansion [of] building new¼‘synthetic’ organisms, like a ‘new better mouse.”

Following Szybalski’s speculation, the field of synthetic biology reached its first major milestone in 2010 with the announcement that researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (jcvi) had created an entirely new form of life nicknamed “Synthia” by inserting artificial genetic material, which had been chemically synthesized, into cells that were then able to grow. The jcvi Web site explains: “Genomic science has greatly enhanced our understanding of the biological world. It is enabling researchers to “read” the genetic code of organisms from all branches of life by sequencing the four letters that make up dna. Sequencing genomes has now become routine, giving rise to thousands of genomes in the public databases. In essence, scientists are digitizing biology by converting the A, C, T, and G’s of the chemical makeup of dna into 1’s and 0’s in a computer. But can one reverse the process and start with 1’s and 0’s in a computer to define the characteristics of a living cell? We set out to answer this question [and] now, this scientific team headed by Drs. Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith, and Clyde Hutchison have achieved the final step in their quest to create the first¼synthetic genome [which] has been “booted up” in a cell to create the first cell controlled completely by a 22 synthetic genome.”

Douglas Hamp in his book “Corrupting the Image” states “I suggest that recombinant DNA (RDNA) will very likely be used by the Antichrist to become the beast. That is, he will obtain Satan‘s DNA and then splice it into his own. I am now wondering if that isn’t “old school” thinking. With synthetic biology, it is now possible to take a DNA code (stored on a computer) and then to print it into a DNA strand (as shown on the video). The truth is, that Satan does not have to give anything physical to the Antichrist, he simply needs to supply him with his code. If we humans are able to sequence our source code, it seems like the one whom God declared to be the sum of wisdom (Ezek 28:12) would be able to sequence his own seed-DNA (remember Gen 3:15). Once he has his code, he would simply need to pass on the data, and then the DNA synthesizer (like a printer) would produce it. Once that is finished then the beast could sequence his own DNA and send, perhaps by email (see the video), to those ready to take the mark. The mark may be a chip of some sort, but it is not simply to be able to buy bread – it is to change the person completely – to destroy the image of God.”

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DNA is often described as the blueprint of life. Deciphering it, altering it, and copying it have formed the foundation of obsessive scientific endeavors for decades. But today, applications of our understanding of DNA in areas such as genetic engineering and cloning seem primitive compared to synthetic biology, a field in which the basic building blocks of life are pieced together from scratch to suit the needs of research, medicine, and the environment. Synthetic biology combines knowledge of genetics and cell biology with principles of engineering and is limited only by scientists’ imaginations. But the field is still in its infancy, and initial ventures into figuring out how best to put the basic components of DNA together synthetically have focused on reconstructing known DNA sequences of various tiny genomes. As this critical groundwork is advanced, scientists are generating increasingly ambitious ideas and setting their sights on the future design and assembly of MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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entirely new sequences that would produce new genes and organisms. As a result, the potential applications of this type of work are endless. Scientists’ understanding of genes and the molecules that interact with and control them has progressed steadily since the discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s. But synthetic biology has been made possible largely by the later development of DNA sequencing methods, which have facilitated the generation of huge databases where researchers deposit all the DNA sequences they uncover. Because these databases are open and shared, scientists have access to more than enough information to attempt the synthetic reconstruction of life.

Again we find that the Defense Advanced Rsearch Projects Agency (DARPA) are involved at the dark end of this new technology. Darpa has already invested $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.” Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch: The project comes as Darpa also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”

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6. THE SINGULARITY The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology 24 is a 2005 update of Raymond Kurzweil's 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines and his 1990 book The Age of Intelligent Machines. In it, as in the two previous versions, Kurzweil attempts to give a glimpse of what awaits us in the near future. He proposes a coming technological singularity, and how we would thus be able to augment our bodies and minds with technology. He describes the singularity as resulting from a combination of three important technologies of the 21st century: genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (including artificial intelligence).

Four central postulates of the book are as follows: •

A technological-evolutionary point known as "the singularity" exists as an achievable goal for humanity.



Through a law of accelerating returns, technology is progressing toward the singularity at an exponential rate.



The functionality of the human brain is quantifiable in terms of technology that we can build in the near future.



Medical advancements make it possible for a significant number of his generation (Baby Boomers) to live long enough for the exponential growth of technology to intersect and surpass the processing of the human brain.

Kurzweil asserts in his Law of Accelerating Returns that technology is progressing toward the Singularity at an exponential rate, relying almost entirely on empirical data. He expands on Moore's Law with models showing that not only the return, but the rate of return is increasing exponentially. This assertion

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is put into the larger context of Big History through a review of increasing complexity going back to the Big Bang and tracing information processing by nature through the present and boldly extrapolating into the future. In this view, the Singularity is just the next stage of the emergent evolution of complexity. Kurzweil asserts that medical advancements will keep his generation alive long enough for the exponential growth of technology to intersect and surpass the processing of the human brain. Kurzweil explains how nanobots will eventually be able to repair and replace any part of the body that wears out, but relies on other methods of medical technology to prolong our lives long enough to reach the singularity. The usefulness of this medical postulate then becomes a function of how long it will take to reach the singularity, something that has been thrown into question due to the possibility of quantum brain processing explored in many recent books by scientists, such as Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind.

According to Ray Kurzweil, DNA errors (in the form of either pathogens, viruses, and/or cancer cells) are the causes of most major illnesses. These illnesses range from cancer to Alzheimer's disease and Down syndrome. 130 different nanotechnology-related devices were invented in 2006 that could possibly eliminate the DNA errors that cause cancer someday. A majority of the statements about nanobots eliminating DNA errors and pathogens were emphasized frequently in Kurzweil's futurist book The Singularity Is Near; published in 2005 by an American publishing company. “The only permanent way to get rid of the DNA errors (that are a part of cancer cells and/or the various pathogens found in other illnesses) is by injecting nanobots (ideally multifunctional nanoparticles) into the patient's body. The high levels of SP2 protein that are found in cancer cells would be neutralized. The same nanobots that would lower the levels of SP2 protein inside the patient's stem cells could also repair the long-term damage to the person's DNA strand so that his/her descendants are less likely to acquire cancer and/other diseases in the first place. All methods of death that are not caused by accidents are caused by a long line of DNA errors that are never corrected over a very long period of time. However, this method may not be possible or even affordable until the year 2025 (the Kanzius RF Therapy is scheduled to begin testing in 2012 but will be extremely difficult to acquire for many years. All research about curing cancer with nanorobotics has been currently restricted to small animals like mice. Thanks to the cost-performance ratio, nanomedicine is becoming more affordable for the average person

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year by year. It may become possible to have extremely effective and extremely inexpensive treatments for AIDS that will eliminate the DNA errors that are causing the disease through nanomedicine.”

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Despite Kurwells popularizing of the Singularity its philosophical origins are rooted in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the middle of the 19th century Friedrich Engels wrote that science moves forward proportionally to the "mass of knowledge" inherited from the previous generations, he proposed a more formal mathematical concept that, since the 16th century, the development of the sciences had been increasing proportionally to the squared distance in time from its start. In 1847, R. Thornton, the editor of The Expounder of Primitive Christianity, wrote about the recent invention of a four function mechanical calculator: “...such machines, by which the scholar may, by turning a crank, grind out the solution of a problem without the fatigue of mental application, would by its introduction into schools, do incalculable injury. But who knows that such machines when brought to greater perfection, may not think of a plan to remedy all their own defects and then grind 25 out ideas beyond the ken of mortal mind!”

In 1951, Alan Turing spoke of machines outstripping humans intellectually: “once the machine thinking method has started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. ... At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon'.”

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In 1958, Stanisław Ulam wrote in reference to a conversation with John von Neumann: “One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which 25 human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”

In 1965, I. J. Good first wrote of an "intelligence explosion", suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to a cascade of self-improvements and a sudden surge to superintelligence (or a singularity). In 1983, mathematician and author Vernor Vinge greatly popularized Good’s notion of an intelligence explosion in a number of writings, first addressing the topic in print in the January 1983 issue of Omni magazine. In this op-ed piece, Vinge seems to have been the first to use the term "singularity" in a way that was specifically tied to the creation of intelligent machines, writing: “We will soon create intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding. This singularity, I believe, already haunts a number of science-fiction writers. It makes realistic extrapolation to an interstellar future impossible. To write a story set more 25 than a century hence, one needs a nuclear war in between ... so that the world remains intelligible.”

Popular movies in which computers become intelligent and violently overpower the human race include Colossus: The Forbin Project, the Terminator series, the very loose film adaptation of I, Robot, and The

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Matrix series. The television series Battlestar Galactica also explores these themes. However it is Terminator which has been of interest because it displays the hidden fears about the integration of man with machine and the creation of artificial intelligence. Skynet is a fictional, self-aware artificial intelligence system which features centrally in the Terminator franchise and serves as the franchise's main antagonist. Scarcely depicted visually in any of the Terminator media, Skynet's operations are almost exclusively performed by war-machines, cyborgs (usually a Terminator), and other computer systems, with its ultimate goal the extinction of the human race. In the movie, initially Skynet was a computer system developed for the U.S. military by the defense firm Cyberdyne Systems. Skynet was first built as a "Global Digital Defense Network" and given command over all computerized military hardware and systems, including the B-2 stealth bomber fleet and America's entire nuclear weapons arsenal. The strategy behind Skynet's creation was to remove the possibility of human error and slow reaction time to guarantee a fast, efficient response to enemy attack. Skynet was originally installed by the military to control the national arsenal on August 4, 1997, at which time it began learning at a geometric rate. On August 29, it gained self-awareness and the panicking operators, realizing the extent of its abilities, tried to deactivate it. Skynet perceived this as an attack and came to the conclusion that all of humanity would attempt to destroy it. To defend itself, Skynet launched nuclear missiles under its command at Russia, which responded with a nuclear counter-attack against the U.S. and its allies. As a result of the nuclear exchange, over three billion people were killed in an event that came to be known as Judgment Day.

Following its initial attack, Skynet used its remaining resources to gather a slave labor force from surviving humans. These slaves constructed the first of its automated factories, which acted as the base for its agenda. Within decades, Skynet had established a global presence and used its mechanized units to track down, collect, and dispose of human survivors. Isaac Asimov expressed ideas similar to a post-Kurzweilian singularity in his short story "The Last Question". Asimov's future envisions a reality where a combination of strong artificial intelligence and post-humans consume the cosmos, during a time Kurzweil describes as when "the universe wakes up", the last of his six stages of cosmic evolution as described in The Singularity is Near. Post-human entities throughout various time periods of the story inquire of the artificial intelligence within the story as to how entropy death will be avoided. The AI responds that it lacks sufficient information to come to a conclusion, until the end of the story when the AI does indeed arrive at a solution. Notably, it does so in order to fulfill its duty to answer the humans' question. MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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7. BUILDING THE PARADISE PROPOGANDA “Propaganda assists in marketing new inventions. Propaganda, by repeatedly interpreting new scientific ideas and inventions to the public, has made the public more receptive. Propaganda is accustoming the public to change and progress” Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

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How do you go about enhancing people, turning them into posthumans, if no one is interested in the first place? Most people would not want transhuman upgrades outright; and that is why so many public voices are hard at work trying to convince us that this is all a good idea. Public acceptance must be manufactured before any actual technologies are distributed. To do this effectively requires the intelligent creation of propaganda. Wars bring about major societal change and, truth be told, there is an ongoing war to win over the hearts and minds of the people. This war is waged in plain sight and most never even notice it. Folks even go so far as to steadfastly deny that such a war even exists due to a lack of evidence. All one needs to do is open his mind to see that he is swimming in a sea of evidence. Propaganda has forever been a force at work within civilization. The larger the society, the more important it has been to create psychological cohesion. Standardization of purpose is established by directing minds unconsciously. The hallmark of true propaganda is that it goes completely unnoticed due to people’s ignorance of what it actually is. It must be taken for granted. In his book Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, Jacques Ellul said that, only with the propagandee’s unconscious complicity can propaganda fulfill its function Unfortunately, Ellul was correct. In the NBIC report’s section entitled Memetics: A Potential New Science, Gary W. Strong and William Sims Bainbridge of the NSF explain the importance of social engineering, “In the information society of the twenty-first century, the most valuable resource will not be iron or oil but culture. Culture, when properly understood, could be shaped with direct purpose. Debates range over how heavily government should be involved in supporting culture through agencies like National Endowment for the Arts or National Endowment for the Humanities. But here we are discussing something very different from grants to support the work of artists and humanists. Rather, we refer to fundamental scientific research on the dynamics of culture that will be of benefit to culture-creating and communication industries, and to national security through relations with other countries and through an improved ability to deal successfully with a wide range of nongovernmental organizations and movements... If manufacturing creates the hardware of modern economies, the culture industries create the software,”

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Culture creation is correctly described here as an industry. What we blindly accept as culture has been professionally crafted and given to us in order to fulfill our basic human need for social identity. Culture creates identity, and industry creates culture. This means that our very identity is the product of industry. To a great extent, our minds have been standardized like products on an assembly line. Any degree of escape from this corresponds directly to the strength of our individual will. Be sure to note that the above quote explains that the culture creation industry is intimately connected with national security, NGOs, and various other “movements.” Now, what movement is concerned with creating a culture that is tolerant of a post-human future? The transhumanist movement obviously fulfills this role. Could it be that transhumanists work directly with the governmental and private organizations in attendance at the NBIC conference, and that all of these parties work together in a directed and deliberate effort to gain public support for emerging technologies? The transhuman enhancement meme is being put out by the

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Singularity, which is government, industry, NGO, and academia. This is an all-encompassing agenda. The WTA itself doesn’t require massive funds to be effective, because it is only one small portion of a larger whole. It could easily disappear and its ideas would carry on. Decoding complex systems becomes easier all the time due to advances in socio-tech but public relations has been a science from its very inception. Its best practitioners have understood this well. They have known that through studying human psychology one may learn how to exploit and direct human behavior. It is possible to coerce people into doing anything if you have the proper technique. Edward Bernays, the self proclaimed father of public relations, was a master of this psychological science of coercion. It should come as no surprise that he was the double nephew of Sigmund Freud. It seems the family business was psychology. Bernays was a dark genius, a master of his craft. It’s quite fitting that in our twisted world this man is held in extremely high regard by public relations professionals. His book Propaganda is standard curriculum within academia. Public relations students are introduced to a world that they often don’t fully reflect upon due to their own professional diligence. Bernay’s ideas are scientific and, as such, moral judgments of them are cast aside. The ethics involved in scientific research are often unclear but what has become obvious is that mass mind control is now a well-established and legitimate business. It goes by the name Public Relations. The following is from Propaganda, If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the 26 masses according to our will without their knowing it.

The "we" that Bernays refers to here is of course PR professionals and their clients. Big money is now pumped into this industry, the biggest money. It is important to understand that Bernays identified himself as one of the "intelligent few" who have the privilege of directing society. This is evident from reading Propaganda. There can be no doubt that Bernays knew that an intellectual elite purposely guides society according to its own blueprint, and that he counted himself as one of them. He was a true insider within the world of history creation, a key player in the world unification/world democracy movement that spanned the entire twentieth century, and has led up to today. We have not arrived to where we are today by happenstance. A small group of powerful individuals formulate agendas so that their will may be done. Propaganda is simply the means by which these agendas are promoted. Such a method may take a long time but it works none-the-less. The public is eventually convinced to willingly, albeit unconsciously, carry out the will of the intelligent few. Before denying this unpleasant reality, you must first read Propaganda, by Bernays himself. He states the truth bluntly, and the only way around his numerous confessions is through willful denial, The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society… those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

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Uncomfortable truths must now be faced courageously before this process becomes technologically perfected. We must know that propaganda, PR, socio-tech, and memetics are indispensable tools used with military precision to mold public opinion and establish social order. Socio-tech and memetics are new terms used to describe an increased scientific understanding of mass psychology. The mass mind has existed throughout history. Wherever civilization was known, it too was there. It is this hive mind that has been studied by technocrats down through the ages. By understanding the motivations of the group, one can deduce techniques to influence its behavior. Entire societies have been directed to a great extent, and with chilling accuracy through primitive techniques. Just think of the possibilities that are now arising due to converging technologies. As the NBIC report states in its socio-tech section, advanced technology can enable large-scale surveillance and prediction, “The time is ripe to begin such integration - to use the tremendous computing power we now have to integrate data across these fields to create new models and hence new understanding of the behavior of individuals. The ultimate 29 goal is acquiring the ability to predict the behavior of an individual and, by extension, of groups.”

The report goes on to describe specific advances in neuroscience that are leading to a more complete understanding of the human brain. Our basic human motivations, desires, and behaviors can be broken down into patterns. By thoroughly understanding these patterns new ideas can be introduced in such a way that isn’t disruptive to them. Again, this is all about pattern recognition, something that AI developers love to go on and on about in their publications. First you recognize a pattern and then you may expand upon it. This act of building is equivalent to engineering. Social engineering involves the creation of new ideas. These ideas must take hold within the mass mind in order to gain widespread adoption and this is where propaganda comes into play. All propaganda, public relations, and marketing must be congruent; it must fit within the larger social patterns that give a particular civilization its identity. A perfect understanding of mass psychology has always been elusive to the extent that its practitioners could never account for every single anomaly that would happen to arise from within the population. From out of nowhere something unpredictable could occur. Spontaneity can never be fully accounted for. The dynamic human spirit is an obstacle to perfect legal order. To bypass this spirit (that of freewill itself) is a high esoteric achievement. This has always been the holy grail of the tyrant. Complete and total world domination has never quite worked out, and for good reason: The mass mind, and even the mind of the individual may be well understood, but how does one keep order in a world where the slightest impulse can lead to untold cascading effects? This wave is the nature of chaos, something despised by control-freaks. Yet another unpredictable wave is rising today and every effort is being put into taming it. The wave of technological advancement has but one sure end: total change. Although the final results of this change cannot be completely known until they occur, serious effort is being put into directing this force of nature. There exists a plan to bring about a cybernetic merge of man and machine. This is desired for many specific reasons and in fact these reasons are not fully understood by the majority of people who are the actual focus of such change. We are given endless praise of technological progress and optimistic

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visions of a transhuman future, but what about that nagging voice of doubt that continues to beckon in the back of your mind?

The transhumanists speak of a world liberated by converging technology. They tell us that by taking implantable chips and other cybernetic add-ons we will be upgrading the human condition itself. Criticizing such technologies is portrayed as an irrational and reactionary response. A deliberate attack is made on all those people foolish enough to believe that technology is now at a dangerous level of advancement. This keeps the multitude of timid doubters at bay. Transhumanists cunningly use persuasive language such as “upgrade,” “enhance,” and “transcend” to make their product sound beneficial. A good example of this public relations tactic can be seen in the WTA’s official name change of 2008. This is when the World Transhumanist Association officially changed its name to Humanity Plus, or H+ for short. It even came up with a new slogan, “better than well.” In the About Us section of its website, the first subsection reads, "What is the Mission of Humanity+?" The answer given is, "We support the development of and access to new technologies that enable everyone to enjoy better minds, better bodies and better lives. In other words, we want people to be better than well." It sounds so wonderful, doesn't it? The label transhumanism isn’t very friendly or approachable. Beyond being hard to pronounce, it is actually quite disturbing. It presents a fundamental challenge to the human race by offering an alternative life form and this is threatening. The move away from humanity itself is implied in the structure of the word transhuman. It is not easy for most people to relate to this but they can easily respond to the rhetoric self-improvement. Think of how many self-help books exist. Each one of these books promises the "secret" to happiness. Under the banner of Humanity Plus, the transhuman campaign does just this. It is delivered as a means of improvement and not abandonment of our unique human identity. It implies that we are adding onto ourselves, as opposed to mutating into something entirely different. This is a much more user-friendly label for an idea that is meant to go completely mainstream. Through PR techniques we are expected to believe that the transhuman idea is truly about improving the human race and nothing more. We aren’t supposed to realize that efficiency is the goal of those who are

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developing converging technologies, and that the individual human mind is a hindrance to these ends. We aren’t supposed to be conscious of the fact that we have been bombarded by a campaign of psychological warfare our entire lives. Bernays constantly referred to propaganda as a "weapon," and with good reason. It is no exaggeration to say that psychological warfare has been waged on us. In the year 2008 the Associated Press ran an investigation determining that the U.S. military spent $4.7 billion in the course of one year on “winning hearts and minds at home.” The Pentagon pays PR services to distribute "news" stories across the country. It employs 27,000 people for military recruitment and PR purposes. An information war is being waged against us and we don’t even know it. The Pentagon officially describes its psychological operations (PSY-OPS) as targeting foreign audiences. Our military sets up media installations in occupied countries and trains locals to use them on its fellow citizens. This is how, through coercion, foreign nationals are made to see things the American Way. PSY-OPS are used against enemies to achieve victory. The military as a whole is used to carry out missions. They destroy opposing forces which stand in the way of the overarching goals of “our” government. At home, and on far distant shores, these goals are ambiguously defined to the public at large. Quite simply this is done to get people on board with the mission. For reasons of national security the true goals of the military are never completely divulged to the masses of any country, foreign or domestic. PYS-OPS mold the enemy’s mind abroad. An apparently separate division officially referred to as “public affairs” works at home. Public affairs are the Pentagon's domestic psychological operations, and they are a necessary aspect of winning its wars. The same AP investigation found that $547 million were devoted to this cause in 2008. Beyond this, it detailed the fact that former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, established an Office of Strategic Influence that officially brought together both the PSY-OPS and public affairs divisions. In this we can clearly see how all $4.7 billion of this particular budget (involving both PSY-OPS, and public affairs) are effectively used for one global propaganda campaign. Rumsfeld explained that the American public should realize that with major media outlets operating at a global scale, it is only natural that foreign and domestic PSY-OPS would merge. He said this in 2003 within a secret Information Operations Roadmap that detailed how the two previously separate divisions could work together. Presidential administrations are easy targets of public condemnation. It is all too easy for us to point our collective finger at a single figure. Characters like Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush, while being guilty of certain atrocities, remain scapegoats. Most people don’t care to see the cohesion between their particular unconstitutional acts and the many new ones that are forthcoming from each new administration. Keeping the ball rolling has been standard operating procedure with our government for quite some time now. Each new presidential administration builds upon the foundation laid by its predecessors. If we are to become truly aware of what has happened to our country, and our world, then we must understand this. We have to see through the petty PR news stories that are distributed en masse to give us the illusion that things are changing for the better. Things are changing all right; they have been for a long time, but how, why, and for what? Start asking real questions. Start questioning the very definitions given for powerful words such as democracy.

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The transhumanist marketing campaign, which is designed to sell the idea of a technoprogressive democracy, falls apart when we understand how democracy actually works. The very word democracy has been built up by a century-long propaganda campaign which has been led by psychological technicians such as Edward Bernays. Democracy is a meme which has been constantly repeated and generically defined. Its power of ambiguity cannot be underestimated for it is exactly this that allows full spectrum control across entire populations. Everyone can jump on board with ideas of mass appeal. Words such as democracy become polymorphic, for they have the ability to shape-shift in order to cater to a particular person’s values. The average man holds his own unique definition of democracy that conflicts with that of the person standing next to him, and yet the majority agrees that democracy is a good thing. The bulk of society remains content, always believing that its particular interests are being catered to. The true government remains in the shadows as it keeps the masses happy with the illusion of freedom. From a purely technical point of view, manipulating the mass mind is a completely necessary act of organization. Large societies need to be unified. The population must tolerate the system itself. The complex system that is society requires a never-ending public relations campaign to keep the populace content and obedient. If it weren't for propaganda, then people would constantly be halting progress with their nagging questions and doubts. The true progressives in this world just can't have this. Crucially important to remember is that the WTA is the World Transhumanist Association. In addition to memes involving implantable chips, AI, life extension, virtual reality, and nanotech, the WTA also strongly advocates the “global governance” meme. They often make the claim that global governance is necessary in a world of increased complexity and interconnectivity. Transhumanists say that within a world democracy, technologies would not be hoarded by an international elite, but rather they would be generously given out to everyone to transform the world into a progressive wonderland. Citizens would be cyborgs and government would be global. James Hughes, former executive director of the WTA and author of the book Citizen Cyborg has stated, “We build global citizenship when we focus on the need for global governance to address global threats, and provide global affluence.”

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Was the word global used enough times in that sentence for you to remember it? Hughes is a major proponent of the technoprogressive view of politics which has become the predominating stance of the transhumanist movement in general. At one time there was a strong left/right political dialectic among transhumanists, with technoprogressives on the left, and extropians on the right, but now the right has seemingly fallen back as the majority of prominent transhumanists take the technoprogressive point of view. This very well could be a deliberate effort to subdue public fear of the movement by making it seem more beneficial to the common person. Technoprogressives speak of a world in which life extension,

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cognitive enhancement, and nanotech will be distributed to everyone in order to benefit global society and “eliminate scarcity.” They say that technology must be “equitably distributed across all strata of society.” They believe that government has an obligation to serve its citizens in a fair and democratic manner. This sort of consideration is comforting to anyone who trusts that these technologies will in fact be beneficial as advertised, however a major problem remains. That problem is the potential malevolent use of emerging technologies. What would happen if these things fell into the wrong hands? An even better question to ask is: what happens if these technologies are already in the wrong hands, and are in fact being developed for malevolent purposes? Convenient answers to these questions always seem to be provided by the transhumanist movement itself. Is this done in order to bolster an unhealthy trust in people toward their government? Are the real questions being brushed aside purposely? “Making the world safe for democracy.” This is simply a slogan, a catch phrase, a marketing technique, but what it has wrought is truly awful. Real violence has been enabled by a clever use of language. Sweeping generalizations are part of a military strategy to win hearts and minds. The American people have had to be convinced that wars are being fought for a noble cause, or at the very least distracted enough that they don’t demand real answers. We falsely believe that the US military is our military, but in reality it is already the world military. The reason that it is “bringing democracy” to the world is to standardize the world’s governmental/legal system. Global governance is being established, and we are going to like it. We are being hit hard by military-grade psychological warfare. This is being done in an attempt to reorganize the globe, and upgrade it, to reorganize everything into one highly efficient machine; a one world governmental structure. There is no way that a global system of government could ever come to fruition without the consent of the world's population. Brute force only goes so far. What people really want is peace and freedom, and this is what they will get. They will be offered the world, more specifically, a better world, a world beyond scarcity, where every human need is catered to, where health care is revolutionized and freely given to all, a world where the aging process is actually reversed and life extension is given to everyone, a world where all hard labor is performed by machines allowing humans the freedom to spend their days as they wish. This is the technoprogressive global democracy of tomorrow, a world society that will do away with competition and reign in peace. It sounds wonderful because it has to; otherwise no one would want it. This vision of a world united is the largest propaganda campaign at work in the world today. This campaign is far beyond the realm of H+; it is everywhere you look. Media is being used to advance this message. When we understand the scale of communications media, it becomes clear that we are now witnessing the biggest psychological operation in the history of the world. It is no accident that nearly every policy piece that you find regarding the creation of emerging technologies mentions the need for global governance. This "need" absolutely requires a massive propaganda campaign and this fact is often alluded to in the policy plans as well. We have been bombarded by a propaganda campaign promoting world unification our entire lives. In conjunction with this massive psychological operation we have seen very real geopolitical power moves made. Simply review the past century. If you remember, after each world war there has been an international organization set up specifically to carry out peaceful negotiations and establish new world standards through treaties. The League of Nations and the United Nations were two incarnations of one global project. Would you be surprised to learn that Mr. Bernays traveled with Woodrow Wilson to Versailles to play his part alongside the League of Nations? Never mind the fact that prior to this he had worked for MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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the U.S. military’s Committee on Public Information (CPI), which was responsible for producing pre-war propaganda. The CPI was tasked with convincing a wary American public that the war was necessary. This was actually the group responsible for producing the line “Making the world safe for democracy.” By the time the war was over, Bernays was still quite young but he had learned a lot. He saw how powerful slogans could be used before and after wars so that the larger, more important and unseen war could continually be waged. He continued using the “weapon” of propaganda throughout the twentieth century to convince people of the virtues of supposed democracy. So we can see that big players on the world scene use both war and peace to fulfill one agenda. They are the masters of a dialectic method. As in Orwell’s fictional 1984, “WAR IS PEACE.” Everyone inherently understands the many dangers involved with creating “human enhancement” technologies. It would be foolish to develop them without any oversight or planning. Because there is a need to address the ethics of these technologies, organizations such as the WTA (H+) greet the public. This is a prime example of the democratic society that Bernays outlined. Instead of actually confronting issues as a free society and having our unique voices and opinions affect the direction of government, we instead believe that organizations, think tanks, and non-profits truly look out for our best interests. Instead of harshly criticizing the premise of human enhancement, we allow the experts to explain the dangers to us. This is because we have systematically been trained to revere expert opinion and ignore our own survival instinct. In an effort to deal with the ethical issues involved with transhumanism, the WTA created a subgroup known as the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET). With projects such as the “Securing the Future Program,” “Rights of the Person Program,” “Larger, Better Lives Program,” “Envisioning the Future Program,” and “The Cyborg Buddha Project” we can rest assured that these experts are hard at work making sure we all benefit from a technological Singularity. The fluffy titles of their programs30 serve to convince us (and actually the transhumanists themselves) that the entire transhuman project is a benevolent and wonderful thing. Yes, transhumanism is a PR campaign, but it must be understood that many transhumanists are in the dark themselves. They sincerely think that they are doing the right thing. H+ itself is primarily made up of volunteers. To really understand the movement, one must look at the many individuals within it. The interests and affiliations of many top-ranking transhumanists intertwine with those of the larger apparatus hard at work converging all technology. Even these individuals are marginally important in the grand scheme of things. Realize the true magnitude of the Singularity to understand that the significance of any individual playing a role in its very creation is microscopic. Consider these quotes from Bernays, again from Propaganda, in which he talks about the level of understanding that most apparent social leaders hold, “It is well known that many of these leaders are themselves led, sometimes by persons whose names are known to few… Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.”

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Our entire world operates on a need-to-know basis. That is why we would all do well to humbly admit our own ignorance so that we may begin to gather real knowledge of our situation.

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A technoprogressive world beyond scarcity sounds wonderful. The problem is that this vision feeds off our ignorance of how the world actually operates. We foolishly rely on blind faith. To merely hope that we will be taken care of by government has become standard practice in our society. Propaganda has instilled this ideal. We have become very good at demanding benefits, but extremely bad at understanding their cost. We have forgotten how to interpret the universal poison label: a skull and crossbones. Today we think such symbols look edgy and cool. The mass media is now everywhere. In our day it is hard to escape, if even for a short while. Television, radio, internet, billboards, movies, newspapers, and magazines are all examples of media that permeate our lives. Reflect on the amount of hours a day you spend in the presence of these things. Escaping the influence of media has become nearly impossible as it is everywhere we turn. We can’t open the mailbox without finding some form of print media and/or advertisement. Taken together this media constitutes a powerful driving force. The raw power of the media is being used to program our subconscious minds. The transhuman agenda (along with many other agendas) are cleverly inserted into all forms of media. This might sound ridiculous, but is absolutely true. The official movement itself is only one branch of a larger project, and the full scale of this campaign is clearly visible throughout popular culture. One of the most obvious incarnations of this is seen in Ray Kurzweil’s TV appearances. Beyond this obvious example there are many more which should be obvious but are not simply because we remain unaware of the propaganda role of the media. “The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great 26 distributor for ideas and opinions,”

We don't realize that the primary goal of Hollywood films is to alter our perceptions. Entertainment is merely a byproduct. We are now seeing humanized machines everywhere we turn. Think of all the movies that feature artificial intelligence, cybernetics, military super soldiers, and the like. Although these subjects are depicted as fiction, they are indeed quite real. We may not be fully aware of the military’s super soldier projects, but this does not make them fiction. True science has reached a point in which it borders on the fantastic. What is presented as science fiction is quickly becoming science fact. The many recurring themes to be found in our entertainment are crafted with purpose. We are experiencing one large PR campaign to ease us into a radically different future. We are steadily being programmed to accept transformative technologies. To be truly effective, propaganda has to be fun. It needs to influence us when we least expect it. This is why entertainment has been used as a "weapon." Would it surprise you to learn that some of the most blatant examples of transhuman themed films are actually produced with major assistance from the Pentagon? Don’t be astonished, because this is a fact. The actual films will remain nameless here but it shouldn’t be hard for anyone to figure out which ones are being alluded to. When you see a mass of military vehicles, slogans, and personnel on screen you should know that you are watching military propaganda. The many branches of the U.S. military, along with many other federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, all have their own Entertainment Liaison Office. These work directly with major Hollywood filmmakers, television producers, and other culture creators. Not only is this done to make each particular federal department look good, but also to fulfill the strategic goals of each department. Specific themes are injected into scripts. In fact,

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these offices have the power to completely rewrite scripts, develop characters, or outright deny cooperation to their Hollywood counterparts. Major producers are quick to agree with the demands of the Pentagon because it means they get to use military equipment, personnel, locations, and consulting for little to no cost. At the expense of the American taxpayer, the military hands over its resources to Hollywood. In turn those same taxpayers go to the theaters to pay additional money for a movie ticket so that they may unwittingly watch military propaganda. Quite an operation, isn’t it? The weapon of propaganda has found a powerful vehicle in film. The military and Hollywood work together on high budget PSY-OPS. “The motion picture by means of its ‘reality’ integrates the spectator so completely that an uncommon spiritual force 30 or psychological education is necessary to resist its pressures.”

Our subconscious is being bombarded with visions of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, virtual reality, nanotechnology, space travel, and much more. The desire to make these things into a reality is now growing. The transhuman vision has been given to us in the form of science fiction for a very long time. Why wouldn’t we want to make it real? Now that technology is converging, and these amazing things are possible, what would make us back away from creating them? Why shouldn’t we accept a global alliance, which is driven by technoprogressive idealism? If implants can dramatically improve our brains, then why would we choose not to take them? If AGI could decode the universe, and bring us profound understanding of everything, then why would we not build it? What reason is there for not engaging the transhuman vision? The reason for not continuing upon this path is that we have all been unconsciously led along by a scientific method. Our thoughts and desires have taken shape due to the efforts of social architects. Deception has been employed in an effort to mold our minds. What makes you think that these trends will change when we all decide to enhance our performance? If anything, technology will extend the power of mind control to even greater degrees of effectiveness. A computer microchip implanted directly into the brain that can beam completely fabricated reality into your mind; this would be a perfect tool for social control. Honestly, how does one prevent a dystopia in the face of such technology? Think about the words of Edward Bernays and put them into a transhuman context. All of the work that goes into creating propaganda could become unnecessary. Artificial intelligence could take over the job by constantly feeding a virtual reality into the minds of the masses. Humans could quite literally become automatons. The sad reality of life in a democracy is that our perceptions of freedom are simply constructs of the mind. Worse than this, they are carefully crafted illusions designed to psychologically disarm us. They pacify us by instilling a false sense of security. We are told exactly what we want to hear, not what we need to know. We are told that our voice is heard, that everyone has a say in guiding politics, but the truth is that we have no say. As the scale of government continues to grow, our personal power diminishes. Agendas are planned and implemented by a socioeconomic elite. We accept these agendas because we have been bombarded with propaganda that breaks down our ability to critically think. This is the reality of the govern-mental process. Put quite simply, propaganda is a form of mind control. We are told that in a democracy, the majority rules, but what happens when a small minority of social technicians manipulates this majority?

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Unfortunately we live in a time where propaganda does most of our thinking for us. It has become so entrenched in our daily lives that we never even notice its influence. Our minds are being manipulated with scientific precision and accordingly, we remain oblivious. The only way to counteract propaganda is to become aware of it. A conscious mind can recognize propaganda. However, this is not an automatic function of our brain; it takes serious effort to engage. There are many people who have already become so accustomed to automated devices that they expect their brains to work in the same fashion. Propaganda actually serves to promote and expand the automatic/ mechanistic brain. What a conundrum, but how appropriate. In this we see why we are moving toward a cybernetic merge of man and machine. We are merely fulfilling that which has already started. Maybe instead of debating whether or not machines can attain consciousness, we should begin directing this question toward ourselves. “When man himself becomes a machine, he attains to the marvelous freedom of unconsciousness, the freedom of the machine itself.”

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Propaganda misleads us into patterns of behavior that we wouldn’t naturally adopt. It hijacks our unique mind and replaces it with a standardized model capable of social obedience. It makes us content to live within a cold, uncaring, and inhumane system. Our standard has got to change. The mold must be broken. The only hope for us now is to realize how far we have gone and make the choice to do something about it. We must engage reality before our lives become total fantasy. We must regain our human consciousness.

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8. RACING TOWARDS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE In the movie “Artificial Intelligence” released in 2001 by Steven Spielberg we have a major insight into how the development of artificial intelligence raises significant questions about what it means to be human. The storyline is one in which in the mid 22nd century, severe global warming has flooded coastlines, and a drastic reduction of the human population has occurred. There is a new class of robots called Mecha, advanced humanoids capable of emulating thoughts and emotions. David, a prototype model created by Cybertronics of New Jersey, is designed to resemble a human child and to display love for its human owners. They test their creation with one of their employees, Henry Swinton, and his wife Monica. The Swintons' son, Martin, was placed in suspended animation until a cure can be found for his rare disease. Although Monica is initially frightened of David, she eventually warms to him after activating his imprinting protocol, which irreversibly causes David to project love for her, the same as any child would love a parent. He is also befriended by Teddy, a robotic teddy bear, who takes it upon himself to care for David's well being. A cure is found for Martin and he is brought home; a sibling rivalry ensues between Martin and David. Martin convinces David to go to Monica in the middle of the night and cut off a lock of her hair, but the parents wake up and are very upset. At a pool party, one of Martin's friends activates David's selfprotection programming by poking him with a knife. David clings to Martin and they both fall into the pool, where the heavy David sinks to the bottom while still clinging to Martin. Martin is saved from drowning, but Henry in particular is shocked by David's actions, becoming concerned that David's capacity for love has also given him the ability to hate. Henry persuades Monica to return David to Cybertronics, where David will be destroyed. However, Monica cannot bring herself to do this, and instead abandons David in the forest (alongside Teddy) to hide as an unregistered Mecha. David is captured for an anti-Mecha Flesh Fair, an event where obsolete Mecha are destroyed in front of cheering crowds. David is nearly killed, but the crowd is swayed by his realistic nature (David, unlike other Mecha, pleads for his life) and he escapes, along with Gigolo Joe, a male prostitute Mecha on the run after being framed for murder. The two set out to find the Blue Fairy, whom David remembers from the story The Adventures of Pinocchio. He is convinced that the Blue Fairy will transform him into a human boy, allowing Monica to love him and take him home. Joe and David make their way to Rouge City. Information from a holographic answer engine called "Dr. Know" eventually leads them to the top of Rockefeller Center in partially underwater Manhattan. They fly to New York via a flying submersible vehicle called an amphibicopter they stole from the police, who are still chasing Joe. David meets his human creator, Professor Hobby, who excitedly tells David that finding him was a test, which has demonstrated the reality of his love and desire. It also becomes clear that many copies of David are already being

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manufactured, along with female versions. David sadly realizes he is not unique. A disheartened David attempts to commit suicide by falling from a ledge into the ocean, but Joe rescues him with the amphibicopter. David tells Joe he saw the Blue Fairy underwater, and wants to go down to her. At that moment, Joe is captured by the authorities with the use of an electromagnet. David and Teddy take the amphibicopter to the fairy, which turns out to be a statue from a submerged attraction at Coney Island. Teddy and David become trapped when the Wonder Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing the Blue Fairy to be real, David asks to be turned into a real boy, repeating his wish without end, until the ocean freezes in another ice age and his internal power source drains away.

Two thousand years later, humans are extinct and Manhattan is buried under several hundred feet of glacial ice. Mecha have evolved into a highly advanced alien-looking humanoid. They find David and Teddy and discover they are functional Mecha who knew living humans, making them special and unique. David is revived and walks to the frozen Blue Fairy statue, which cracks and collapses as he touches it. Having received and comprehended his memories, the advanced Mecha use them to reconstruct the Swinton home and explain to David via an interactive image of the Blue Fairy (Meryl Streep) that it is impossible to make him human. However, at David's insistence, they recreate Monica from DNA in the lock of her hair which had been saved by Teddy. Unfortunately, the clone can only live for a single day and the process cannot be repeated. David spends the happiest day of his life with Monica and Teddy, and Monica tells David that she loves him and has always loved him as she drifts to sleep for the final time. David lies down next to her, closes his eyes and goes "to that place where dreams are born". Teddy enters the scene, climbs onto the bed and watches as David and Monica lie down peacefully together. The movies is of great importance from a transhumanist perspective because the advanced Mecha are far advanced of David and seem to convey the types of beings that transhumanist would want to ascend to. The ability to communicate telepathically and the ability to have access to advanced technologies that allow for instance, one to recover memories from DNA fragments. Eerily, the advanced Mecha resemble

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the same physical structure as the extra-terrestrials seen by those who have happened to have some contact. Tall skinny beings with large heads. We also see the same looking beings towards the end of the movie “Knowing”. The concept of Singularity and its exact definition are somewhat elusive, but in simple terms it means that man and machines have become interchangeable just as we have seen with the movie “Artificial Intelligence”. Thus, when the biological and technical have merged, then Singularity will have been achieved. It is a word that few have heard or understand, but mankind is now in a technological explosion that is directly leading to Singularity. The science fiction that started in the 1950s has slowly become a reality. Roby the robot and the machine that vastly increased Dr. Morbius's intelligence are now coming into focus as reality. Singularity is no longer science fiction: it is reality.

Entire fields of science are now racing towards achieving Singularity. Old science such as physics and biology are involved, but entire new fields of science are being created that deal with advancing Singularity. These new fields include: synthetic biology, biocomputing, biotechnology, nanotechnology, neuroprosthetics, and biomedical engineering. There are now breakthroughs towards Singularity nearly every day. In most cases, the scientists have no idea that science is racing to create Singularity. In some cases, the scientists are well aware of what they are doing and are directing all their energy to create Singularity. What can appear to be fractured advancements are really just parts of a puzzle coming together. As Singularity gets closer, there will be direct cooperation with all scientific disciplines to bring it to completion. Ultimately, the objective of this explosion in technology will be to bring Singularity to pass. There is a spiritual aspect to Singularity that is part of Bible prophecy that must come to pass. Man is racing toward a scientific conclusion and many have no idea that they are working to bring this about. When mankind reaches Singularity it will result in an incredible confrontation between man and God. This confrontation along with Bible prophecy will be fully explored in the next section of this article. There is an information lag between the advancement of science and knowledge reaching the public. For example, the concept of the internet was known in scientific circles for many years before it reached the pubic. Today the Internet and all the technology surrounding it is used everyday by huge numbers of the public. The scientists were working on cloning long before the first sheep was cloned. The same

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concept holds true with Singularity as it is taking place "under the radar." Mankind is a long way down the road to accomplishing it, yet the general public has little knowledge of what is happening. Humans are being blended with machines. Many of the ways are beneficial and therefore, are protected from criticism. Who can question an artificial eye for the blind, or a microchip implanted into the brain to help a quadriplegic? If science is cloaked in health or medicine for alleviating human suffering, it is virtually impossible to question the application of this technology. I do not think that many of these advancements are evil, but in the end, the blending of human biology with mechanical technology will be used for evil. As you study the Singularity, it became apparent that most of the breakthroughs have occurred in the last few years. It seems that starting in 2007, the technology greatly accelerated. The Futurists/scientists who predict the progress of Singularity claim the great technological breakthrough will occur between in the next 10 -30 years. Mankind may very well be on the verge of a huge breakthrough in technology that will be altering current reality. The accelerating scientific knowledge that advances Singularity is increasing exponentially. This means that rate of knowledge is exploding and right now knowledge has reached the point where mankind is on the verge of making science fiction, reality. At the present rate of exponential growth of knowledge, the next 100 years of progress will accelerate to be like 20,000 years. This is why Futurists think the 10 year window between 2009 and 2019 is so critical. The two key concepts to follow toward Singularity are the merging of the human body with mechanical technology and the creation of artificial intelligence. The following is a partial list of scientific achievements showing these concepts are getting very close to fulfillment. The articles are listed along with the website link and a key paragraph which highlights the achievement. The articles follow: Researchers develop neural implant that learns with the brain 6/24/08 "Devices known as brain-machine interfaces could someday be used routinely to help paralyzed patients and amputees control prosthetic limbs with just their thoughts. Now, University of Florida researchers have taken the concept a step further, devising a way for computerized devices not only to translate brain signals into movement but also to evolve with the brain as it learns." http://www.news.health.ufl.edu/news/story.aspx?ID=5103 US Army Invests in 'Thought Helmet' Technology for Voiceless Communication "At the moment, the thought helmet concept consists of 128 sensors buried in a soldier's helmet. Soldiers would need to think in clear, formulaic ways, which is similar to how they are already trained to talk. The key challenge to making the system work is a software system that can read an electroencephalogram (EEG) generated by the sensor data, and pick out when a soldier is thinking words, and what those words are." http://www.physorg.com/news141314439.html

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Nanotubes on the Brain: Neural implants benefit from coated electrodes "Metal electrodes are increasingly being used in brain implants that help treat depression and the tremors of Parkinson's disease, and in ever more sophisticated prosthetic devices." http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/21407/ Longer-Lasting Artificial Eyes: An improved retinal implant stimulates neurons to restore sight. "For many blind or partially sighted people, implants that stimulate healthy nerve cells connected to their retinas could help restore some normal vision. Researchers have been working on such implants since the 1980s but with only limited success. A major hurdle is making an implant that can stay in the eye for years without declining in performance or causing inflammation. Now researchers ... have developed hardware they say overcomes such issues. The implants have been tested in animals, and the group plans to start human trials by 2010." http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/21420/ The Future Of Medicine: Insert Chip, Cure Disease? "Imagine a chip, strategically placed in the brain, that could prevent epileptic seizures or allow someone who has lost a limb to control an artificial arm just by thinking about it." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070724145124.htm Conceptualizing A Cyborg: New Ideas On Developing Thought-Controlled Artificial Limbs "The central feature of the proposed interface is the ability to create transplantable living nervous tissue already coupled to electrodes. Like an extension cord, of sorts, the non-electrode end of the lab-grown nervous tissue could integrate with a patient's nerve, relaying the signals to and from the electrode side, in turn connected to an electronic device." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070118121238.htm Smart Brain-Computer Interface Learns with the Brain "Until now, brain-machine interfaces have been designed as one-way conversations between the brain and a computer, with the brain doing all the talking and the computer following commands. The system UF engineers created actually allows the computer to have a say in that conversation, too ... In the grand scheme of brainmachine interfaces, this is a complete paradigm change ... This idea opens up all kinds of possibilities for how we interact with devices. It's not just about giving instructions but about those devices assisting us in a common goal. You know the goal, the computer knows the goal and you work together to solve the task." source - MedGadget Scientist: Humans and machines will merge in future "According to Bostrom, anticipate a coming era where biotechnology, molecular nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence and other new types of cognitive tools will be used to amplify our intellectual capacity, improve our physical capabilities and even enhance our emotional well-being." http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/14/bio.tech/ "The computer that haunts Martyn Amos's dreams literally comes to life when he switches it on. With the potential of awesome computing power it bears little resemblance to a conventional machine. Where you might expect silicon chips to lurk is a noodle soup of cells, chemicals and DNA strands. And to keep it going, Amos has to ensure it is supplied with nutrients, not electricity. For the computer of the future will not be a mass of inert circuitry.

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It will be alive." http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article633928.ece "What is Life?" Evolution of Robots is Causing Scientists to Question "One of Brooks of his longtime goals has been to create a robot so "alive" that you feel bad about switching it off. Brooks pioneered the movement that teaching robots how to "learn" was more sensible that trying to program them to automatically do complex things, such as walk. Brooks work has evolved around artificial intelligence systems that learn to do things in a "natural" process like a human baby does. This approach has come to be known as embodied intelligence." http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/07/what-is-life-ev.html In A First, Scientists Develop Tiny Implantable Biocomputers "Each human cell already has all of the tools required to build these biocomputers on its own ... All that must be provided is a genetic blueprint of the machine and our own biology will do the rest. Your cells will literally build these biocomputers for you." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070521140917.htm Computer Scientists Program Robots To Play Soccer, Communicate With Bees "Engineers built humanoid robots that can recognize objects by color by processing information from a camera mounted on the robot's head. The robots are programmed to play soccer, with the intention of creating a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots able to compete against a championship human team by 2050. They have also designed tiny robots to mimic the communicative "waggle dance" of bees. A world of robots may seem like something out of a movie, but it could be closer to reality than you think. Engineers have created robotic soccer players, bees and even a spider that will send chills up your spine just like the real thing. They're big ... they're strong ... they're fast! Your favorite big screen robots may become a reality" http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0707-the_future_of_robots.htm Mobile Robotic Arm Taught To Manipulate Objects Such As Scissors And Shears "Movies portray robots that can move through the world as easily as humans, and use their hands to operate everything from dishwashers to computers with ease. But in reality, the creation of robots with these skills remains a major challenge. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are solving this problem by giving a mobile robotic arm the ability to "see" its environment through a digital camera." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603184624.htm Cognitive Revolution: Integrating Computing, Nanotech, Simulation And You "A large portion of Sandia's program today focuses on the uniqueness of the individual interacting with others and with machines. It involves using machines to help humans perform more efficiently and embedding cognitive models in machines so they interact with users more like people interact with one another. The result is the ability for researchers to take advantage of the basic strengths of humans and machines while mitigating the weaknesses of each." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070811213026.htm

The scientists are racing to create what they call a transhuman being! Transhuman is the result of achieving Singularity. This being is far superior in intelligence to "normal" humans. The transhumans will

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have either intelligence amplification or artificial intelligence. There will be direct brain to computer interface and possible mind transfer. This means all the thoughts and emotions in a person's mind could be downloaded into a computer and stored or transferred to another location. This concept of mind transfer is very important for understanding what the Bible describes as The Image of the Beast. The entire move toward Singularity is an attack on the integrity of mankind. The humanity of man is under attack as man is being transformed from flesh and blood into a mechanical being. The promoters of transhumanism justify this blurring as the advancement of evolution. When reading their writings and the justification of this horror, often the underlying support is the advancement of evolution. Some actually write that Singularity is speeding up evolution. The idea that man somehow would naturally evolve into a machine over a million year time period is beyond ridiculous. These scientists believe that man has evolved beyond evolution and now can control the direction of the evolutionary process. They look at the biological human as bound in a frail limited body that through the process of evolution can advance into a new species, a Cyber Sapiens! The evolution of technology is just the continuation of biological evolution. This idea of technological evolution as a natural process is not being promoted by kooks, but by many leaders of these scientific fields. This is not coming from some fringe element, but from the leading centers of science from all over the world! The following are two articles which capture the evolutionary thinking behind Singularity: Cyber Sapiens 10/26/06 "Our current situation is unlike anything nature has seen before because we are not simply a by-product of evolution, we are ourselves now an agent of evolution. We are this animal, filled with ancient emotions and needs, amplified by our intellects and a conscious mind, embarking on a new century where we are creating fresh tools and technologies so rapidly that we are struggling to keep pace with the very changes we are bringing to the table." http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=4%23687 Is Robot Evolution Mimicking the Evolution of Life? 06/20/08 "According to Hans Moravec, pioneer in mobile robot researcher and founder of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, our robot creations are evolving similar to how life on Earth evolved, only at warp speed. By his calculations, by mid-century no human task, physical or intellectual, will be beyond the scope of robots. Moravec says, "I see a strong parallel between the evolution of robot intelligence and the biological intelligence that preceded it. The largest nervous systems doubled in size about every fifteen million years since the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. Robot controllers double in complexity (processing power) every year or two. They are now barely at the lower range of vertebrate complexity, but should catch up with us within a half century." On the other hand, others believe that it is humans who will evolve into advanced "robots". Their belief is that with futuristic technologies being developed in multiple fields, human intelligence may eventually be able to "escape its ensnarement in biological tissue" and be able to move freely across boundaries that can't support flesh and blood-while still retaining our identities." http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/06/robot_evolution.html#more

What is so foolish in all this thinking is that technological evolution is not happening randomly, but it is being guided by an intelligent being: Man! Only someone who is self deceived could think that the development of a transhuman is happening by evolution. Singularity is being accomplished by an intelligent being applying knowledge. It appears that the promoters of Singularity have committed

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intellectual suicide to advance their agenda based on some process of evolution. It is obvious that the architects of Singularity have brilliant minds with vast amounts of knowledge, but they are devoid of understanding and the ability to reason. This delusion on the part of huge numbers of people is going to lead them into a direct confrontation with the Creator. A side issue with Singularity is the striving to create immortality. Many adherents see this as a way to avoid death. When Singularity is reached, they believe all of a person's thoughts and emotions can be stored or transferred into a cyborg. A person can now live forever because the mind can be fully preserved and transferred from one location to another. With artificial intelligence one's mind could forever be learning and experiencing emotions. From a materialist's perspective, this achievement represents eternal life. The following articles show the idea of virtual immortality that Singularity seems to offer: Virtual Immortality -How To Live Forever "The goal is to combine artificial intelligence with the latest advanced graphics and video game-type technology to enable us to create historical archives of people beyond what can be achieved using traditional technologies such as text, audio, and video footage," says Jason Leigh of the University of Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory. The researchers plan on taking the appearance, mannerisms, voice, and even the knowledge of a real person and synthesizing the data into a "virtual person" or avatar. The goal is to create an avatar that will be able to respond to questions and convincingly represent its human counterpart." (In transhuman terms an avatar is an "object" representing the embodiment of the user.) http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/06/virtual_immorta.html

The scientists are now wondering if the creation of artificial intelligence in a computer is a form of life. They believe because this form of intelligence can think; therefore, it is a new form of life similar to biological life. These scientists are actually grappling with the concept that they are creating a new form of life. Because artificial intelligence can be programmed for emotions, they believe a new species of life is being formed. Many of the scientists involved with Singularity are obsessed with their achievements and the direction of science. The following article captures how scientists believe they are creating a new form of life: "What is Life?" Evolution of Robots is Causing Scientists to Question 07/01/08 "There is ongoing debate about what constitutes life ... "We're all machines," says Rodney Brooks author of "Flesh and Machines," and former director of M.I.T.'s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, "Robots are made of different sorts of components than we are. We are made of biomaterials; they are silicon and steel, but in principle, even human emotions are mechanistic." A robot's level of a feeling like sadness could be set as a number in computer code ... Why should a robot's numbers be any less authentic than a human's? One of Brooks of his longtime goals has been to create a robot so "alive" that you feel bad about switching it off. Brooks pioneered the movement that teaching robots how to "learn" was more sensible that trying to program them to automatically do complex things, such as walk. Brooks work has evolved around artificial intelligence systems that learn to do things in a "natural" process like a human baby does. This approach has come to be known as embodied intelligence." http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/07/what-is-life-ev.html

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IBM unveils chips that mimic the human brain IBM has unveiled a new experimental computer chip that it says mimics the human brain in that it perceives, acts and even thinks. It terms the machines built with these chips “cognitive computers”, claiming that they are able to learn through experience, find patterns, generate ideas and understand the outcomes. In building this new generation of chip, IBM combined principles of nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing. It has been awarded $21m (£12.7m) of new funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the next phase of the project, which it terms “Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics” (SyNAPSE). “This is a major initiative to move beyond the von Neumann paradigm that has been ruling computer architecture for more than half a century,” said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research. Modha added that the chip may see applications in business, science and government. “Future applications of computing will increasingly demand functionality that is not efficiently delivered by the traditional architecture. ”These chips are another significant step in the evolution of computers from calculators to learning systems, signalling the beginning of a new generation of computers and their applications in business, science and government.” IBM states that the chips, while certainly not biological, are inspired by the architecture of the human brain in their design. Digital silicon circuits make up what it terms the “neurosynaptic core”. The scientists have built two working prototype designs. Both cores contain 256 neurons, one with 262,144 programmable synapses and the other with 65,536 learning synapses. The team has successfully demonstrated simple applications like navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification.

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9. THE ANTICHRIST, 2045 AND HIS IMAGE

It is not quite Skynet, but robots that can learn have finally arrived. Japanese researchers have developed a robot that can perform functions it was not programmed to do. The machine uses past experience and its own knowledge to make a judgement about the best way to proceed. So far it has been able to perform simple tasks like picking up glasses of water and putting ice in them. But the team behind it hopes that just as a child learns more skills, the robot’s abilities will develop and expand over time.

The SOINN (Self-Organising Incremental Neural Network) technology has been developed by researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. A video they have posted on YouTube shows their robot filling a cup with water from the bottle - instructions which it was already programmed to do. It is then asked to chill the drink while in the middle of doing something else. The importance of this is that the robot was not told to put the ice cube in the cup - it decided to do that itself. Writing on Physorg.com, Bob Yirka said: “This little demonstration represents a true leap forward in robotics technology and programming. Being able to learn means that the robot can be programmed with just a very basic set of pre-knowledge that is then built upon for as long as the robot exists, without additional programming - not unlike how human beings start out with very little information at birth and build upon what they know and are able to do over a lifetime.”

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The SOINN technology has also taken a step in this direction by allowing the robot to connect to the Internet and ask other robots for help. While this is the robotic equivalent of asking a friend for help, it makes the Terminator seem just that little bit closer.

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Tokyo Institute of Technology Associate Professor Osamu Hasegawa told DigInfo: “Thinking about artificial intelligence in the real world, actual environments are inevitably more complex, and they change quickly. So it's necessary to have a learning mechanism that adapts to the situation. Also, because new situations emerge, it's also necessary to have the ability to keep learning new information on the spot. He added 31 they were not clear yet if or when the robot will be made available to the public.”

On the other side of the world, Dr. Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, has assembled a team of nine top European scientists to build a computer model of a human brain in 12 years.

The Human Brain Project is in discussion with the EU for a £1 billion grant. The project has already created an artificial neocortical column that is unique to mammals, digitally constructed using a software model of tens of thousands of neurons. Supercomputers at the Jülich Research Center near Cologne are earmarked to play a vital role in the research. Jülich neuroscientist Katrin Amunts has begun work on a detailed atlas of the brain that involves slicing one into 8,000 parts, which are then digitized with a scanner. Henry Markram, director of the project says, ‘It is not impossible to build a human brain. We can do it in just over 10 years. This is one of the three grand challenges for humanity. We need to understand earth, space and the brain. We need to understand what makes 32 us human,”

This tremendous explosion in knowledge is leading to a direct confrontation with the Creator, the holy God of Israel. God created man is His likeness or image, hence a representative figure. The Bible makes it clear that God does not have a flesh and blood body, but the way man was created makes him in the likeness of God. Singularity alters man's likeness to God, and thus man is no longer in the image of God. Tampering with man's integrity is very serious business with God. It appears from Bible prophecy that man will reach Singularity just prior to the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus. This is found in Revelation 13, one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. This chapter reveals two infamous men referred to as

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Beasts. They are called beasts because of their inner character and the havoc they bring to mankind. The first Beast is commonly known as the Anti-Christ (See 1John 2:18) while the second is commonly known as the False Prophet (See Revelation 19:20.) These two appear on the world stage as both political and military leaders. The entire world is going to follow after them, and all the world is going to come under their control.

During the time of their rule, the False Prophet directs the entire world to create the image of the Beast, or as he is now known as the Anti-Christ. Notice the entire world is involved in this project. This image is a creation of man, and it is the False Prophet who directs this project and gives life to The image. This verse follows: Revelation 13:14 "And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast (Anti-Christ); saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast ... (15) And he (False Prophet) had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak ..."

The Greek word translated image means: a likeness, and literally a statue, or figuratively a representation, resemblance. This is identical to the Hebrew word used for man being created in God's MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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image. The past commentators of the Bible had no idea what was "The Image of the Beast." Many just thought it was a statue that miraculously came to life. It was impossible for anyone, other than during the time we live, to understand that The Image of the Beast is a prototype of Singularity. Man is now a creator of "life." From Revelation 13, it appears that the False Prophet is involved with science and directs a world involvement to create The Image. He is evidently aware of Singularity and uses the resources of all the scientists and research centers to bring it to pass. In the near future, there will be a breakthrough in knowledge which enables the creation the first transhuman. The False Prophet is able to harness all the resources needed to successfully produce the first prototype! Man has reached Singularity. When the prototype is completed, the False Prophet is the one who brings the image to life. This is why many believe he will have a tremendous scientific background. Creating the image is his idea from start to finish. He is aware of Singularity, and he knows how to direct the merging of man and machine. The image is manmade, but it has life and the technology to speak.

Its interesting to note that a UFO cult known as the Raelian Movement believes its belief in the Elohim shares significant parallels with transhumanism. “These transhumanist ideas are perfectly suited to the ordinary human being. But those who elevate their level of consciousness by participating, for example, in the awakening seminars of Sensual Meditation I give regularly, can achieve levels of awareness that even transhumanists cannot imagine. These seminars are training workshops on how to escape the paradigms that limit our vision, and that prevent us from conceiving of all the possibilities. Instead, they teach us how to imagine other possibilities in every circumstance of our lives. Even the most powerful computers in the universe cannot surprise those who reach these superior states of consciousness. Because from the top of their ‘singularity’, these computers become aware of infinity. And people with an awakened mind are in harmony with infinity. They are infinity. They are infinity becoming aware of itself. So if a supercomputer that has reached the state of singularity were to communicate with an awakened mind, they would probably laugh together since they will have both understood that they were one and the same thing, that is to say, infinity becoming aware of itself.”

The Bible states that the image will be alive. This creates interesting speculation on what exactly is the image. Because it is alive, could it be part human and thus a cyborg. The human part could be the brain. Currently, scientists have used nerve cells from rat fetuses to create a computer type brain that can think. The nerve cells are coupled to electrodes and these primitive brains can move mechanical arms. It is very possible that the image's brain could come from the nerve cells of aborted babies merged with a

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computer. Then the thoughts and emotions of the Anti-Christ could be down loaded into this brain: thus, you have the image of the Beast. It will be an exact likeness of the Anti-Christ in its thinking. The Bible reveals that God does not recognize the image as a human being. Whatever is created by man, and although it has some form of life, it is not recognized by God as human. This can be seen at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The Bible describes the return Jesus Christ in Revelation 19. When Jesus Christ returns it will be during the battle of Armageddon. The Lord Jesus is going to annihilate the Beast (Anti-Christ) and the False Prophet and cast them both alive into hell. The Bible mentions that they created The Image, but it is not cast into hell. There is no more mention of it. The Image just disappears from the Bible. The verse to show this follows: Revelation 19:20 "And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone."

However is it not just the image of the beast that will have a technologically advanced origin. The Antichrist himself many believe will be created based on advanced and unholy genetics. One of the most interesting themes that continually emerges throughout the “Fall of Lucifer” series authored by Wendy Alec is that of genetic engineering. In Book 1 “The Fall of Lucifer” there is reference to the codex that God uses as his basis for the creation of a new intelligence species other than the angels; man. Gods plan for the creation of an inferior life form which is revealed to the angels is what then sparks seeds of resentment and ultimately rebellion by Lucifer. However what strikes interest was that there is an account of where Lucifer instructs some of the angels under his command to begin deciphering the nature and building blocs of the creative force that God used to make Man. This then results in a section of the angels becoming researchers and experts in matters of transubstantiation, incubus, human possession, bodily materialization and the very creation of life. This then leads into Book 2 where there is an account of where some of the angels find a way to violate universal law by breeding with humans. This then creates a progeny of giants known as Nephilim. Book 3 then takes us right into the future where “the seed of the serpent” is distilled into a single angelic gene which is used to create the son of Lucifer; the Antichrist. Page 106 – Page 107. “The Twins were Lucifer’s super scientists. His evil intelligentsia. The Grand Architects of his depraved eugenics and bio-genetic engineering schemes, their days and nights were spent huddled in their gruesome laboratories…...It was here they performed the most depraved of iniquitous procedures. Biogenetic engineering; poisonings; amputations; limb and head grafts; lobotomies….Agonized screams of torment resounded day and night….as the harpies violated every tenet of Eternal Law with their cloning of the bestial and the Angelic…..They maimed, tortured and disembowelled banshess, trolls, demon-vampires and experimented on all that roamed the 33 underworld unaware.”

One of the most important incidences in the book is one in which the knowledge gained by the evil angelic geneticist sorcerers regarding the ability to create forms of life (albeit mutated and demonic horrors) is then channelled to human scientists who have already sold their soul for greater knowledge. The earthly scientists are then involved in secret government projects to somehow use humans as a means of creating hybrids, super humans, zombie like humans who can be controlled in the same way

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witnessed in the movie “The Manchurian Candidate”. Could it be that the attempt to create zombie like humans is for the purpose of acting simply as a vessel for a fallen angel as we have seen in the movie “Avatar” where bodies were created for the purpose of inhabitation. Based on the following the answer has to be yes and here is the reason why. The "2045" Initiative is a branch of the transhumanist agenda which was founded by Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 in partnership with leading Russian scientists. 2045 is the year prophesied to be year that the Singularity will be fulfilled. The main objectives of the Initiative are: the creation of a new vision of human development that meets global challenges humanity faces today, realization of the possibility of a radical extension of human life by means of cybernetic technology, as well as the formation of a new culture associated with these technologies. The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality. Note that this organization has divided the remaining years between now and 2045 into specific phases where they following objectives are being pursued. 35 2015-2020 The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc. Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses. 2020-2025 Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible. 2030-2035 Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.

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2045 This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on. Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.

The 2045 initiative has already sought significant partnerships including those in the religious world where they have received endorsements from the Dalai Lama, Hindu Monks and the Archbishop of Ottawa of the Orthodox Church. Many of the endorsements seem to be coming from world religions where the idea of spiritual perfection and evolution is a key aspect of their theology. Additionally Raymond Kurzweil, Alexander Panov, Nick Bostrom, Sergey Enikolopov and a host of experts in the area of computer modelling and future technologies are all part of this group. What is more frightening is that the Avatar technology that many associate with the movie “Avatar” is a fundamental and core aspect of this groups objectives. What many perceive to be a science fiction concept is clearly and openly being pursued by the 2045 initiative. Clearly this is another overwhelming MORE THAN HUMAN A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2012, All rights reserved

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confirmation that the coming Singularity will be linked to the creation of synthetic life and the achievement of godlike status by human beings. The roadmap to create an Avatar is defined as follows 35 “The first step toward achieving human immortality is to create a neurally controlled avatar—a humanoid robot with a human-like skeleton and a set of artificial muscles and sensors. It is expected that the avatar will be controlled by signals from the nervous system and the human brain that will be transmitted via various devices. It is also possible to effect direct control of artificial arms and legs using biosignals or to control avatar behavior using mental commands. Feedback providing notification of completed actions or behavior will be received through visual channels, i.e. through the vision of the person operating the avatar. Using such a control system, the avatar is not autonomous—the human operator will have complete control over its actions and behavior. Its internal control system will be severely limited in function, serving to produce and manage simple actions and skills that will be able to be controlled directly by the human operator. The avatar will require autonomy if the human operator cannot visually control the avatar’s actions and behavior. But, in order for the avatar to be fully autonomous, it needs to have its own artificial nervous system (ANS) that can allow it to exhibit human-like behavior in all situations. With an ANS installed, the person will be able to exercise supervisory control of the avatar, i.e. to use his/her thoughts to make the avatar perform certain actions. In this case, the avatar has to confirm that it has performed these actions using telepathic methods—that is, with a mental response—or a remote visual display that would depict the performed actions. It should be observed that if such an ANS is created, the central problem of robotics will also be resolved: the creation of a robot that is completely humanoid, not only in form but also in behavior. As part of this project, a physical design will be made and mathematical groundwork laid for a humanoid robot ANS; a software-based prototype of the system will be created; and experiments related to supervisory control will be performed. After the avatar has been designed, the completed ANS will be adapted to the avatar’s system, furnishing it with the capability of autonomous action and allowing it to be operated by a person via supervisory control.”

The roadmap to create a maintain brain functionality outside the human body is defined as follows. “There is currently dynamic growth in the research being done on maintaining brain function and creating technologies that prevent neurodegenerative processes in the brain, technologies that treat auto-immune diseases, and technologies that activate regenerative processes after a stroke or other injury to the brain. At the same time, advances have been made in the field of bioinformatics, with models of human metabolism being created for the purpose of creating new medicines. Technologies for growing artificial organs are being developed, as are systems for maintaining their functioning. Prototypes are being created of an artificial nervous system based on invasive neurointerfaces for rehabilitating people who have suffered damage to their nervous system. The development of the technology of invasive interfaces, which can be used by people who are fully paralyzed to control external devices and communicate with people, opens the door to a not-insignificant proposition. For such patients, the human body acts essentially as a life support system for the brain. When extending a person’s life means extending the life of his personality, his individuality, that is equivalent to extending the life of the brain. Making it possible to preserve brain function after the body dies will make it possible for seriously ill people to extend their lives, even when they have limited physical capabilities. The examples of Stephen Hawking and Nikolai Ostrovsky show that if a person wants to live and do creative work, limited physical capabilities do not

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preclude him from doing that. And so, for those who want to live, science and medicine can and must offer the necessary technologies. Russian surgeon Vladimir Demikhov and American neurosurgeon Robert White can be considered the founders of the idea of maintaining brain function outside the body. Demikhov, the father of transplantology, did work on grafting the heads of dogs, while White came very close to actually grafting a human head onto a donor body, performing a series of successful experiments on apes. The main obstacles standing in the way of developing the technologies necessary to carry out such a procedure lie more in the field of bioethics than in the complexity of the science or the technology. Just as such obstacles were overcome in, for example, the field of transplantology, they will be overcome with regard to preserving human brain function outside the body. Such technology can essentially be thought of as both an artificial medium for brain-body metabolism in combination with a system of sensory connections to provide the brain with information (including artificial noise from the non-existent body) and a neurointerface to provide direct connections and feedback for controlling external devices (anthropomorphic robot or any other vehicle). By configuring the technology in this way, you can avoid the ethical problems that arise from using a donor human body for a head transplant. In order to create a unified, integrated framework for a number of the above-listed innovations, it is proposed that a project be undertaken to research and develop a device that can maintain brain function outside the body. This research platform will have four main areas of work. In order to create an artificial medium for metabolism, a computer model of brain metabolism must be built and the components fundamental to maintaining metabolism in artificial environments must be developed. The second area is creating a link from the brain to the outside world, which includes everything from ensuring sufficient stimulation of the brain so that it doesn’t enter a vegetative state to researching the conditions needed for the patient to maintain a subjective view of the world. It is thought that the foundation for this technology will be an interface that contains a bonding pad with nerve tissue grown on it. The third area includes developing artificial environments, researching artificial modes of transit for metabolites, as well as developing the technology of transferring the brain from the body into an artificial environment. The fourth area is research into the conditions under which nerve cells undergo regenerative or degenerative processes, as well as testing on nerve cells (neurons) the main hypotheses of the aging and death of cells. Successfully achieving the goals of any of these areas of research would represent a scientific breakthrough in the field. Even if the results of the different research areas are not integrated into a unified life support system for the brain, they will undoubtedly lead to a significant shift in scientific approaches and practice in the fields of neurology, pharmacology, transplantology, medicine, and human physiology in general. Moreover, if the project is fully carried out, it will provide data that can be used for a whole array of scientific fields that study issues of consciousness and the human psyche—cognitive science, linguistics—as well as inject some clarity into philosophical thought experiments like “brain in a vat”.

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It should now be even more clear that the fulfilment of the coming of the Antichrist, the False Prophet and the image of the Beast is clearly related to the time in which technology will achieve the most incredible quantum leap of all time since records began. The following illustration is a mind map detailing the goal of building a synthetic humanoid body.

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As early as 1976, the director of the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Academician N.P. Dubinin, was predicting the scale of this revolution: “The achievements of human genetics, and of general and molecular genetics, will push forward the problem of interference in human heredity. The coming revolution in genetics will demand a decisive overturning of the previously dominant view concerning the primacy of nature in its natural form. Genetics will turn out to be capable of overcoming the natural story of life and creating organic forms inconceivable in the light of the laws of natural evolution… For the molecular genetics and the molecular biology of the 21st century there lies in store the prospect of creating cells as the only self-regulating open living system, which will be bound up with the understanding of the essence of life. An exchange of living forms will take place between the earth and other worlds… The aim of genetic engineering is the creation of organisms according to a given model, whose hereditary program is formed by means of introducing the recipient of new genetic information. This information can be artificially synthesised or separated in the form of natural genetic structures from various organisms. In this way a new single genetic system which cannot arise by means of natural evolution will be created experimentally… Various manipulations with DNA molecules can lead to the unforeseen creation of biologically dangerous hybrid forms… ”

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After quoting this passage, Fr. Vladislav Sveshnikov expressed the truly apocalyptic fear: “We have to admit that contemporary science is preparing the ground for the coming of the Antichrist.” How? By the manipulation of genes in order to produce the “superman” or “man-god” of Nietzsche’s imagination, who will be at the same time the “devil-man” or “Antichrist” of Christian patristic teaching. The purpose of this section is to show the light shed by the Holy Fathers on this possible link between genetic science and the birth of the Antichrist, and also on what may be meant by Dubinin’s words: “An exchange of living forms will take place between the earth and other worlds…”

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FOOTNOTES 1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Simon and Brown, 2011 2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Antichrist, Soho Books, 2010 3. http://jetpress.org/volume14/bostrom.htmL 4. Robert Ettinger, Man into Superman, Ria University Press, 2005 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism 6. http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/nov/15/bloom-warns-against-electing-romney 7. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peculiarpeople/2012/06/mirroring-mormonism 8. http://www.smpt.org/docs/england_element1-1.html 9. Bill McKeever & Eric Johnson, Momonism 101: Examining the religion of the latter day saints 10. http://wikiworldbook.com/global-address-book/Lincoln-Cannon 11.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/will-this-election-be-the-mormonbreakthrough.html?pagewanted=all 12. http://transfigurism.org/assets/60/transfiguration.pdf 13. Bruce McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, pp. 322-23, 517, 643 14. Journal of Discourses, V6, P3, 1844 15. Lorenzo Snow, quoted in Milton R. Hunter, the Gospel Through the Ages, pp. 105-106 16. http://www.alanwattsentientsentinel.eu/english/transcripts/Alan_Watt_Blurb_Nothing_New_Under_the_Sun_July18 2007.html 17.http://slavenewworld.ca/index.php/global-government/39-global-government/440-lord-birkenhead-futurist-articlecosmopolitan-magazine-1929 18. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jan/17/gender.medicalscience 19. www.docstoc.com/docs/81011137/Artificial-Wombs 20. https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/research/browse/show-publication?pub_id=246090&source_id=1 21. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology 22. http://www.jcvi.org 23. Douglas Hamp, Corrupting the Image, Defender Publishing, 2011 24. Raymond Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, Penguin Books, 2006 25. http://www.singularityweblog.com/17-definitions-of-the-technological-singularity

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26. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html 27. http://supermodelcity2010.blogspot.co.uk/2010_06_01_archive.html 28. www.aerohive.com/.../Aerohive_Whitepaper_iEverything_Enterprise.pdf 29. http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/DemocraticTranshumanism.htm 30. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1967 31. http://www.thirdage.com/news/robotics-soinn-robot-can-think-on-its-own_08-02-2011 32. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI 33. Wendy Alec, Son of Perdition, Warboys Publishing Ltd, 2010, Page 106-107 34. http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/articles/205/genetics,-ufos-birth-antichrist/ 35. http://gf2045.com/

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