WanderAimlessly:
Definitly sounds like eugenics trying to create a super race. Ummm…where have we heard that before
The problem with eugenics was that it was applied to people against their will. Someone in power decides a certain trait is “undesirable” and then imposes strictures on people who possess that trait, which is clearly immoral by just about any standard, religious or secular.
Transhumanism is a different animal, because it’s a choice undertaken by the individual.
It’s worth noting that the earliest stages of transhuman development have already begun. Take, for instance, cybernetics. Long gone are the days when the best we could do for someone who’d lost a limb was give them a plastic mannequin arm. These days, we can build a robotic limb, wire it directly into the nervous system of the patient, and allow the prosthetic to truly become an extension of the patient’s body.
Or take an experiment that I know of from a friend of mine. His brother has a degenerative eye disease which rendered him blind a few years ago. He was involved in an experiment to restore his sight by wiring cameras directly into the optical centers of his brain. These experiments have had limited success for a number of patients. They still can’t produce anything like normal biological vision – the technology’s just not good enough yet – but we have allowed blind people to see light and shadow, simple shapes, and even read if the print is large.
Another example – we can place computer chips in the brains of paralyzed patients which allow them to control computers by thought, allowing them to think themselves across the room in their wheelchair, open doors, and so forth.
Here’s the thing, though. Technology, barring some sort of total collapse of our civil society, will continue to get better and better. Right now we’re still a long way from cybernetic replacements that even match natural capacity, but we will presumably get there eventually.
And then the technology will continue to improve. If we can improve someone’s eyesight, or give them a better memory, or extend their life an additional fifty years… Why not do it? Where do you draw the line? Do you draw a line?
And then, of course, you get into fields beyond cybernetics, or adjacent to it. If nanotechnology pans out the way they hope it will – and NASA is already working on building an autonomous nanotech swarm – the sky is really the limit. If you can have a colony of trillions of self-replicating microscopic robots living in your bloodstream repairing damage, curing illness, and rebuilding your body to your specifications, it really does redefine human nature as we know it. What are the effects on religion, I wonder, if people no longer die of old age?
