His anticipation of what computers would do for us was twofold: first, they would complete our brains through instantaneous retrieval of information around the globe so that what one person lacks is immediately provided by another, and second, they would improve our brains by facilitating processes more quickly than our own resources can achieve them. Teilhard’s vision of the noosphere as cybernetic mind anticipated the emergence of cyberspace as a field of global mind through interconnecting computer pathways. With the rise of technology he saw a forward movement of spiritual energy, a maximization of consciousness and a complexification of relationships. Technology extends the outreach of human activity but it depends on a broader use of human activity and how humans control psychic, spiritual energy needs and powers.
Transhumanism is a term used today to describe enhancement or alteration of the human person through biomedical technology, genetics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. The World Transhumanist Association sees technology as the panacea for human ills and limits. However, some scholars lament the enlarging role of machines in human socialization. The philosophical and religious heritage of the west, according to Naomi Goldenberg, leaves westerners predisposed to form harmful attitudes toward the technologies overtaking their lives. This heritage has taught us “that human life is a rough copy of something out there—something better, wiser and purer.” As a result, westerners possess a cultural proclivity to respond to machines not as tools to use but as role models to emulate. As people act upon this proclivity, she states, the isolation and loneliness of modern life are being increased. We are becoming more comfortable with machines than with people. Is technology enhancing human socialization or alienation? Teilhard saw the role of technology as one of convergence, that is, a drawing together of hearts and minds, forming a collective mind. Although the noosphere is the layer of global mind, it is not an intellectualization but an amorization of human life that is unified through technology. This is a radically different view from contemporary transhumanists who see technology not as a means of collective unification but as self-perfection. Ray Kurzweil, for example, anticipates an increasingly virtual life in which the bodily presence of human beings will become irrelevant. Kurzweil claims that machinedependent humans will eventually create the virtual reality of eternal life, possibly by “neurochips” or simply by becoming totally machine dependent. As we move beyond mortality through computational technology, our identity will be based on our evolving mind file. We will
be software not hardware. By replacing living bodies with virtual bodies capable of transferral and duplication, we will become disembodied superminds. Robert Geraci states, “our new selves will be infinitely replicable, allowing them to escape the finality of death.” This futuristic “post-biological” computer-based immortality is one also envisioned by Hans Moravec who claims that the advent of intelligent machines (machina sapiens) will provide humanity with “personal immortality by mind transplant.” Moravec suggests that the mind will be able to be downloaded into a machine through the “eventual replacement of brain cells by electronic circuits and identical input-output functions.” Michael Benedikt believes that cyberspace is an extension of religious desires to escape earthly existence. The “image of the Heavenly City,” he writes, “is. . .a religious vision of cyberspace.” The pursuit of cybernetic heaven means that we will be able to overcome the limitations of the body, including suffering and death—and attain artificial eschatological paradise. Thus just as human beings must give up their bodies to attain the heavenly city, so
Just as Earth once covered itself with a film of interdependent living organisms which we call the biosphere, so mankind’s combined achievements are forming a global network of collective mind. too artificial intelligence transhumanists view relinquishing the human body for artificial mediums as a positive step in the evolution of techno sapiens.
Daniel Crevier argues that artificial intelligence is consistent with the Christian belief in resurrection and immortality. Since some kind of support is required for the information and organization that constitutes our minds, Crevier indicates, a material, mechanical replacement for the mortal body will suffice. Christ was resurrected in a new body, he states, why not a machine? Antje Jackelén notes that the development toward techno sapiens might be regarded as a step toward the kingdom of God. What else can we say when the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead are at least virtually alive? The requirements of the Gospel and the aims of technical development seem to be in perfect harmony. Geraci states: “Only by eliminating the physical and embracing the virtual can we return to the undifferentiated wholeness of the good.” (continued on page 20)
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