Carl Youngblood from the Depths

My friend Carl Youngblood has finally published his long-promised blog, From the Depths. The title comes from Psalm 130: De profundis clamavi ad te Domine – “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” It’s a fitting name for what Carl has been working out over the past two decades.

Carl is a founder and current president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. He and I have been thinking together since before the MTA existed, when a small group of us began asking what it should look like to live a more practical faith, to take seriously the prophetic visions of immortality, resurrection, and worlds without end. Carl has been essential to that conversation from the beginning.

Now, finally, he’s sharing his voice and vision more broadly. As of today, his blog presents articles spanning over a decade, many originally presented at MTA conferences. In them, you’ll read the thoughts of someone wrestling with questions that matter – momentous questions with practical consequence.

How do we navigate faith crisis without losing faith’s power? How do we see Christ in the marginalized when our codes tell us to pass by? How do we redeem our past, not just genealogically but morally, confronting the erased and subjugated? How do we think about resurrection as something we participate in rather than passively receive?

A few highlights:

• “Help Thou Mine Unbelief” draws on Paul Tillich to articulate the postsecular challenge facing Mormonism, calling for “disciples of the second sort” who develop doctrine rather than merely repeat it.

• “Celestial Forensics” is a meditation on quantum archeology and participatory resurrection, rendered as devotional prose – and echoing the haunting vision: “There will come a day when it’s harder to stay dead than alive.”

• “Algorithmic Advent” and “What Is Intelligence?” engage AI through Mormon theology, applying the Grand Council narrative to alignment, and exploring intelligence as eternal, organized, and multifaceted.

• “Religion as Social Technology” provides a theoretical foundation, drawing on Habermas, Bellah, and William James to explain why religion persists and why it matters.

Carl writes with warmth and accessibility. His articles parallel my own with similar ideas, different voices, and complementary emphases. Together, we’ve been building a theology to meet the challenges of our technologically accelerating world.

I encourage you to explore Carl’s blog, subscribe to his RSS feed, and share his work with others. In some ways, the conversation between theology and technology has just begun. But Carl has been contributing to it for over two decades. I’m happy we can finally see more of his work.