The Original Sin of Christian Fundamentalism

Christian fundamentalists can be obtuse, particularly when expressing their opinions about Transhumanism. Shocker, I know. The latest to catch my attention is Matija Štahan, who writes about “The Original Sin of Transhumanism: The Desire to Be Like God.”

Ah, Matija, how carefully have you read your Bible? According to the good book, the desire to be like God actually isn’t a sin. To the contrary, it’s encouraged. Arguably, it’s even commanded.

Jesus, as usual, says it best. “Be ye therefore perfect.” How’s that Jesus? “Even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

You might want to think it says that we should be perfect in some way less or other than Godhood. That would work with the first sentence. But then you have to deal with the second sentence. That’s perfect as God is perfect, which is of course Godhood.

Now maybe you could do some mental gymnastics to interpret this text some other way. But then you still have to deal with the remainder of the Bible, in which theosis is advocated repeatedly, over and again, until Jesus and his disciples and all the prophets are blue in the face. It’s like they knew you wouldn’t want to believe them. And yet here we are.

Christian Transhumanism

Matija tells us that the spirit of Transhumanism is anti-Christian. That would make the thousands of Christian Transhumanists anti-Christian. You’d like that, I imagine. But you’d be wrong.

Ironically, despite the “anti-Christian” charges, Christian Transhumanists actually take Jesus more seriously than Christian fundamentalists. You know that part of the Bible where Jesus commands his disciples to console the sad, heal the sick, and raise the dead? I’ve never met a Christian fundamentalist who takes that last part seriously in any practical way. But I know many Christian Transhumanists who strive to do so.

Yes. We’re that crazy serious about our Christianity. We actually think that Jesus was serious when he charged his disciples to raise the dead. So we’re working on that, whether you think it strange or arrogant or whatever.

Repentance Is Change

Matija has concerns with the word “Transhumanism” because it includes the prefix “trans,” which he understands to mean that we aspire to constant change. He’s right. We do. And that, too, is advocated and even commanded by Jesus.

All throughout the Bible, Jesus and the prophets talk about the principle of repentance. It’s a core principle of the Gospel of Christ. And it’s change. It’s trusting in, changing toward, and fully immersing both our bodies and our minds in the role of Christ, as exemplified and invited by Jesus.

That change to which we’re invited, and which Jesus exemplifies, isn’t superficial. It’s not partial. It’s not just being nicer. Rather, it’s a holistic change, of the sort that’s described as loving God with our entire souls.

Repentance is the change through which the old person dies and the new rises. The transformation would make us one in Christ, as Jesus is one with God. And it would extend from the spiritual to the physical. In the end, Paul writes, we shall not all die, but we shall all change from mortality to immortality.

So many Christian fundamentalists want that immortality to be an escapist abstraction. But unfortunately the Bible doesn’t back them up. You know the story of Jesus’ resurrection? When he appears to his disciples after resurrection, he consoles them by pointing out that spirits don’t have flesh and bone as they see he has.

Matija says Transhumanists want to dehumanize humans before making us Gods. Well, is God human? If not, we certainly aren’t content remaining as we are in our mortal state. But if God is somehow a fullness of superhuman potential, then we have absolutely no interest in dehumanizing anyone.

Sex and Gender

But what about that bogey man “trans”? What about the transgender and the transsexual, and whatever other “trans” is scary to you or whoever you’re trying to impress? “Transportation,” “transaction,” “translation,” and “transistor” are also “trans.” Are you equally opposed to automobiles, money, communication, and computers – most of which you used to publish your opposition to “trans”?

How about “transformation” and “transcendence”? Are you opposed to those too? That would seem strange, given that they’re functional descriptors for the core message of Christianity. So maybe it’s really just the sex that gets you going.

As it turns out, Transhumanists have many different perspectives on most of these “trans,” and particularly the controversial ones. In my experience, very few Transhumanists, Christian or otherwise, claim to want to be post-gender. Most of us recognize the practical challenges of the controversies related to changes in sex and gender. And many of us, hopefully most of us, attempt to approach these challenges with both wisdom and compassion.

But, Matija, weren’t you just complaining about dehumanization? What do you think you’re doing when you implicitly characterize transgender persons as dehumanized? Have you met a transgender person? Have you concluded that person isn’t human?

Old Time Transhumanism

You tell us that Transhumanism isn’t a new idea. You’re right. It’s as old as humanity. But you get your explanation for that observation only partly right.

You associate Transhumanism only with the parts of humanity you don’t like, such as “philosophers of modernity.” But what about the parts you like? Go back to the good book. The Bible teaches Transhumanism implicitly from beginning to end.

You say the technological aspect is new. It’s not. In the Old Testament, inspired persons repeatedly leverage technology like arks and tabernacles to save and improve humanity. And in the New Testament, Jesus uses products of technology, bread and wine, to represent his own flesh and blood, while his disciples describe the end of the world in terms of a holy city – in contrast to the holy garden with which the Bible begins.

Descartes “radically separated the spirits from the body,” you say. But isn’t that what you would do too, if you’re like so many fundamentalist Christians who would escape to an immaterial heaven. In contrast, though, most Transhumanists are thorough materialists. With Jesus, we’re quite excited by the prospect of flesh and bone resurrected bodies.

Nietzsche would heartily approve of your choice to include him in your list of implicit bad guys. That self-declared anti-Christ didn’t want anything to do with the escapist and nihilistic versions of Christianity that surrounded him. God is dead, he said. And yet he would wish the superhuman to life!

Maybe it takes a Christian Transhumanist to recognize that God dies and rises again. That’s what Jesus does. For the joy set before him, he endures the cross, as the good book says. And he invites us to do the same.

What kind of people should we be? Perfect as God is. What does that entail? Unity with God, joint heirs with Jesus in that glory, if we join with him in suffering through the work together.

I’m not making this up. It’s all there in your Bible, if you’ll read it. Jesus would have us become superhuman, as God is superhuman. And he’d have us do it in ways that are as real as flesh and bone.

God Is Technology

Then, Matija, you characterize the Godhood to which Transhumanists aspire as being “more like the Greek gods than the Abrahamic vision of God.” To some sad extent, you’re right. Like Christian fundamentalists, Transhumanists have things to learn. We, too, must learn better conceptualizations of God.

But that doesn’t somehow make us all guilty of worshipping devils. Some of us haven’t figured out the value of aspiring to more than strength. But many of us have learned that superhumanity is more about courage, compassion, and creation. Whether or not you like Harari’s account of Godhood, many of us aspire to potentials consistent with Abrahamic conceptions.

Transhumanism, you say, is worse than worshipping technology because it would unite humanity with technology as God. Consider, though, that the Bible teaches functionally the same idea. In the beginning was the word (explicitly Greek “logos”), which created (implicitly Greek “techne”) the heavens and the Earth. In other words, God existed and functioned as logos techne, or technology, with which Jesus invites our unity.

Understanding Liberalism

Next, Matija, you express concern that Transhumanism is a product of “liberalism.” And you immediately describe liberalism as “extreme self-love, egoism, and hedonism.” That’s a disastrously poor definition of “liberalism.” But, in fairness, many people these days use “liberalism” in meaningless ways.

For what it’s worth, classical liberalism actually entails something quite different. It’s about individual liberty, rule of law, limited government, and free markets. And it espouses such things for precisely the opposite reasons of those you suggest. Love and altruism would lead the liberal to generosity toward all, the self and others, esteeming their agency as one’s own.

Arguably, liberalism grew out of Christianity. It inherited concepts of natural rights and human dignity, consonant with being created in the image of God. And it inherited notions of limited governance and social tolerance, reflecting Christian solutions to the tensions of reformation.

Maybe, as you suggest, liberalism is characterized by the idea of a “new man.” And you associate this idea further with Communists and Nazis, and of course Transhumanists – lions, tigers, and bears, oh my. So everything you don’t like is characterized by the idea of a “new man.” Well, everything except the Bible.

You do acknowledge that the Bible explicitly teaches the idea of a “new man.” But, as Christian fundamentalists are wont to do, you say that the liberals, the Communists, Nazis, and Transhumanists, have perverted the idea. The idea is evil, unless you speak it. How convenient for you.

If you want to transform and transcend into a “new man” then that’s good. If Transhumanists want to do that then it’s evil. You’re good Christians. We’re perverts and parasites, as you say.

Christ and Antichrist

You say we’re turning Christianity upside down. Have you considered the possibility that you’ve already turned Christianity upside down? So we’re right side up. And you’re looking at us the wrong way.

We could, of course, argue about that for a long time. But it probably wouldn’t make a practical difference. After all, you can’t even decide whether it’s good or bad to mix God and humanity. When Transhumanists do it, we’re pagans. But when Jesus does it, he’s divine.

You attribute to Satan the idea that humanity can become like God. But the serpent was just quoting God, who recognized our capacity to become like them. Read your Bible more carefully.

Again, you attribute to Satan the idea that humanity can become like God. But the son of perdition would raise itself above God, whereas Christ would raise us together in God. Read your Bible more carefully.

The antichrist, the many antichrists, are not Transhumanism and Transhumanists. The antichrist is the “god” that would raise itself above you, above us, and above all others. Instead of rejoicing in the Christian invitation to partake of divine nature and become joint heirs in the glory of God, your “god” would damn us to the darkness of eternal subjugation.

“Ye shall not surely change.”

Get thee hence, Satan.