Archive 2013

“Why does the Holy Ghost not have a body?” Someone raised this question in my son’s class during church meetings. And the instructor asked the students to think about it at home during the week. Some of us are repulsed by such questions, either because we consider all theology to ... Read the article →

Available now is my computed comparison of the Book of Jacob to the Bible. It consists of 11 pages of side-by-side text comparisons. This is part of the second edition of As One that Hath a Familiar Spirit. Here are some highlights from and observations about this comparison of the ... Read the article →

Technology is power, which may be used for good or evil. And technological trends increasingly suggest our future will include technology and its associated power beyond our present ability to imagine. The Benevolence Argument of the New God Argument concludes that any posthumanity, radically creative to the point of metacreativity ... Read the article →

Available now is my computed comparison of the Book of Mosiah to the Bible. It consists of 60 pages of side-by-side text comparisons. This is part of the second edition of As One that Hath a Familiar Spirit. Here are some highlights from and observations about this comparison of the ... Read the article →

If mind is consciousness then it may not make sense to talk of mind being replaced by an electro-mechanical computer. It seems it would make more sense to talk of the substrate of consciousness, the brain, as one computational substrate that could perhaps be replaced by another. Is it possible ... Read the article →

Science project time came again, and my youngest son wanted to know what DNA looks like. He read some explanations of genetics and DNA for kids. We also found instructions on how to extract DNA from a strawberry, and they were safe and easy enough that he could do all ... Read the article →

This is a transcript of my opening presentation at the 2013 Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association yesterday, 5 April 2013, in the Salt Lake City Public Library. The conference room filled beyond capacity this year with around 80 in-person attendees and more participating online via the live video stream. ... Read the article →

PZ Myers is a biologist, a self-described skeptic, and apparently an anti-religious zealot. He recently caught my attention because he spoke about Transhumanism at the Skeptech conference and mentioned Mormon Transhumanism. After gracing me with some “kind” interactions on Twitter, he posted a video of his presentation. Here are some ... Read the article →

Kyle Gregg recently attended the Mormon Transhumanist Association conference and wrote an excellent blog post about the conference and the association, entitled “A Mormon Critique of the Mormon Transhumanism Conference”. Kyle says he’s not a Mormon Transhumanist. But he’s been a Mormon his whole life and has “a firm and ... Read the article →

If you would, think with me for a moment about everyone in the room with us. If you’re comfortable, you might even look around. Some are mothers. Some hope to be mothers. Some have lost hope to be mothers. Some live with our mothers. And some don’t remember our mothers. ... Read the article →

Pew Research recently published some brief summaries of religious leaders’ views on radical life extension, in conjunction with the results of a study on Americans’ views on radical life extension. The summaries included one positioned to represent Mormonism (and particularly the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is ... Read the article →

What is the future of religion? Some expect the resurgence and ultimate triumph of this or that fundamentalism. Some expect the religious phenomenon itself to weaken and die, a casualty to the science of our day. Others, observing the history of religion, expect that it will continue to evolve, inextricably ... Read the article →

Some of us seem inclined to understand and speak of morality in terms of some specific set of values (such as those commonly advocated by self-identified conservatives or progressives), rather than in terms of acknowledging and accounting for values generally, including the conflicts and tensions between and among them. When ... Read the article →

Last weekend, I watched the October 2013 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and engaged in discussion of the ideas online. Below are 73 thoughts and highlights, from me and others, about the conference. The thoughts range from affirmations to criticisms, and from questions to ... Read the article →

Soon you’ll have the opportunity to become a wirehead: you’ll be able to experience persistent intense pleasure through direct brain stimulation, perhaps via an implant or even wirelessly. It would be euphoric and, unlike the common pleasures of eating or sex, it could continue indefinitely. No matter how long you’ve ... Read the article →

Technology, and particularly computing, is essential to family history. Without it, we could still tell family stories to our children. But we certainly couldn’t substantiate those stories from billions of historical records into millions of family trees, as web applications like FamilySearch and Ancestry.com do today. In the 1960s, Intel ... Read the article →

Last time I posted, we imagined that one of the things we might do with vast computing resources in the future is run highly detailed family history simulations, to the point of enabling the characters with artificial intelligence and fully immersive consciousness. If something like $150 could purchase more computing ... Read the article →