Independent Mormon Transhumanists

I’ve been wondering how many independent Mormon Transhumanists are out there, unaware of or uninterested in groups like the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

The earliest references to Mormon Transhumanism that I’ve been able to find on the Internet come from 2004, a year and a half before the Mormon Transhumanist Association was founded. In July 2004, a Wikipedia editor suggested adding “Mormon Transhumanism” to an article on “Christian Transhumanism”. In October 2004, a participant in Extropy chat commented that imagining a Mormon Transhumanist would be as hard as imagining a hypercube. In November 2004, a Mormon philosopher, Clark Goble, blogged about Transhumanism.

At about the same time, the founders of the Mormon Transhumanist Association began discussing ideas that eventually led to its organization. We were concerned with practical application of our faith in human exaltation. However, we were unaware of the broader Transhumanist movement, having not even heard of the term “Transhumanism”. Had we founded the association right away, its name might have been “Foundation for Immortality and Resurrection Science and Technology” (FIRST), which is a name we tossed around in relation to the idea.

Increasingly, Mormons are coming across Transhumanism and noting its similarities to our faith. For example, today I came across a summary of a Transhumanist-related presentation by Dale Pratt at the recent Mormon Scholars in the Humanities Conference. Another recent example is a post on the Technological Singularity by A Random John at the Mormon Mentality blog. So far as I know, neither of these persons knew about the Mormon Transhumanist Association at the time of their presentations, and both remarked the similarities with Mormon thought independently.

How many more Mormon Transhumanists are already out there?

If you like these thoughts, you might also like “Mormonism Mandates Transhumanism.”