God, Resurrection And Immortality With Technology

[Confused Ape]

I'm putting this topic in the Religion section because it might give some insight into why Christians cling to their religion. It seems that hope for certain promises within the Christian teachings don't always go away when people stop believing and become atheists. My own hope is that atheists in this forum will post what they think of the following ideas. I'm starting with ideas that are held by some Transhumanists.

Transhumanist Spirituality

Although some transhumanists report having religious or spiritual views, they are for the most part atheists, agnostics or secular humanists.[24] Despite the prevailing secular attitude, some transhumanists pursue hopes traditionally espoused by religions, such as "immortality"

Mind Uploading is seen as the way forward here. What I find personally interesting is that there were some transhumanists on another forum I belonged to. They seemed determined to convert me to their world view although there's no advantage in it for me - I'm nearly 63 so I'll be long dead before the technology becomes available, all supposing it ever does.

Whole brain emulation or mind uploading (sometimes called mind transfer) is the hypothetical process of transferring or copying a conscious mind from a brain to a non-biological substrate by scanning and mapping a biological brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system or another computational device. The computer would have to run a simulation model so faithful to the original that it would behave in essentially the same way as the original brain, or for all practical purposes, indistinguishably.[1] The simulated mind is assumed to be part of a virtual reality simulated world, supported by an anatomic 3D body simulation model. Alternatively, the simulated mind could be assumed to reside in a computer inside (or connected to) a humanoid robot or a biological body, replacing its brain.

There's another aspect of religions which some transhumanists seem to be hoping for.

most thinkers associated with the transhumanist movement focus on the practical goals of using technology to help achieve longer and healthier lives; while speculating that future understanding of neurotheology and the application of neurotechnology will enable humans to gain greater control of altered states of consciousness, which were commonly interpreted as "spiritual experiences", and thus achieve more profound self-knowledge.

I decided to check this out and found The IEET Cyborg Buddha Project

The three of us are launching the IEET Cyborg Buddha Project to combine our efforts and promote discussion of the impact that neuroscience and emerging neurotechnologies will have on happiness, spirituality, cognitive liberty, moral behavior and the exploration of meditational and ecstatic states of mind.

Maybe Cyborg Buddhism will arrive sooner than mind uploading. Should we be scared by the prospect?

Other people seem to hope for resurrection by future technology which is so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic. (One of Arthur Clarke's three laws.) Transhumanist Religion 2 relates to this.

Future magic will permit achieving, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions — and many amazing things that no human religion ever dreamed of. Future God-like beings could resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future.” Perhaps we will be resurrected in virtual reality — and perhaps we are already there.

I sincerely hope we aren't already there.hock:

The above reminds me of Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point.

As the universe becomes smaller, the processing capability becomes larger, due to the decreasing cost of communications as the systems shrink in size.

Tipler's Omega Point occurs when the processing capability effectively becomes infinite, as the processors will be able to simulate every possible future before the universe ends - a state also known as "Aleph".

Within this environment, Tipler imagines that intelligent beings, human personalities, will be run as simulations within the system. As a result, after the Omega Point, humans will have omnipotence, able to see all of history and predict all of the future. Additionally, as all history becomes available, past personalities will be able to run as well. Within the simulation, this appears to be the dead rising. Tipler equates this state with the Christian heaven.

Tipler also identifies the Omega Point with the God who spoke to Moses from a burning bush. From one of Tipler's articles - The Omega Point Theory -

I also argue that the ultimate future state of the universe, the Omega Point, should be identified with God. I have presented my argument in detail in my book The Physics of Immortality, but a main reason for my identification Omega Point = God, comes from Exodus 3:14. In this passage, God is speaking to Moses from the Burning Bush. God gives Moses His Name: EHYEH ASHER EHYEH (in Hebrew, of course). God's Name is best translated into English as I SHALL BE WHAT I SHALL BE. In other words, God is telling Moses that His essence is future tense. If we regard God as something Ultimate, then He is telling us that He is the Ultimate Future.

It's difficult to know what Tipler really believes. I found an online version of the Physics Of Immortality and he insisted he was an atheist at the time. After the book was published he put this article on his website - Famous Theologian Defends the Theology of the OPT and his books are available on Christianbook com. He's also regarded as a Christian now so perhaps he converted to his own version of Christianity.

[Zone]

It seems that hope for certain promises within the Christian teachings don't always go away when people stop believing and become atheists.

No-one becomes an atheist they just stop believing what they have been told to believe without evidence then they revert to the same belief they were originally born with. Seeing as you don't need evidence for that one, it just comes as part of the default package. Atheism is not an alternate religious faith to convert yourself into, there's nothing going on there, no funny business just the world as it is. Not an easy thing to sell but then you're not selling anything to anyone.

[Ryantology]

I've read a couple of Ray Kurzweil's books talking about futurism and the Singularity. I think he's extremely optimistic about it, and some of the things he talks about are way too far out there for me (he wants to resurrect his dead father from memories and DNA), but the implications of the Singularity, some of them at least, have an appeal I can't deny.

I don't think it's really fair to compare the transhumanist idea of immortality with that sold by dogmatic religion, as there is (at least, hypothetically) a sound, physical basis for it. Unfortunately, there is a lot of the transhumanist platform which does get close to dogmatic itself, and Kurzweil himself gets lost talking about the spirituality of the whole thing. I don't care about having a spiritual awakening, but having an indefinite life span? Having a body which is like mine but far more durable and powerful? Putting my consciousness into rich virtual reality situations? Yeah, I'll take five, if you can make 'em.

[Confused Ape]

Atheism is not an alternate religious faith to convert yourself into, there's nothing going on there, no funny business just the world as it is. Not an easy thing to sell but then you're not selling anything to anyone.

I wasn't saying that atheism is an alternate religious faith. I was just showing that some atheists still hope for things like immortality by mind uploading or resurrection by some kind of super computer in the future. A lack of belief in deities doesn't mean that atheists can't believe in other things which don't involve deities.

I'm asking what atheists here think of the Transhumanits' ideas seeing as most Transhumanists appear to be atheists and secular humanists. Many atheists have the view that once we're dead it's the end. Other atheists, however, don't seem to be happy with that idea but they can't hope for resurrection through believing in Jesus for obvious reasons. They believe that technology is going to be the answer instead.

Frank J Tipler's God isn't a supernatural being - the Omega Point is -

a term Tipler uses to describe a cosmological state in the distant proper-time future of the universe that he maintains is required by the known physical laws. According to this cosmology, it is required for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent that intelligent life take over all matter in the universe and eventually force its collapse. During that collapse, the computational capacity of the universe diverges to infinity and environments emulated with that computational capacity last for an infinite duration as the universe attains a solitary-point cosmological singularity. This singularity is Tipler's Omega Point.[6] With computational resources diverging to infinity, Tipler states that a society far in the future would be able to resurrect the dead by emulating all alternate universes of our universe from its start at the Big Bang.[7] Tipler identifies the Omega Point with a god, since, in his view, the Omega Point has all the properties claimed for gods by most of the traditional religions.[7][8]

What I find particularly interesting about Tipler's idea is that he then went on to believe that this is what Christianity is all about. He doesn't believe in the traditional monotheistic deity of the Christian religion, though, because his Omega Point singularity just has all the properties claimed for gods by traditional religions. Why would someone who was an atheist come up with such a scenario for the distant future?

What I find even more interesting is that his books are available via a Christian books website. Is it possible that some Christians can no longer believe in a supernatural deity who resurrects people but they don't want to give up their hope for resurrection and immortality? If so, Tipler's version of Christianity would appeal to them because they no longer have to believe in supernatural stuff. They see it as science although Tipler's critics call it pseudo-science.

PS: Someone posted at the same time as me.

I don't think it's really fair to compare the transhumanist idea of immortality with that sold by dogmatic religion, as there is (at least, hypothetically) a sound, physical basis for it.

I wasn't saying that the transhumanist idea of immortality is the same as the one sold by dogmatic religion. It just seems that a hope for immortality is a human species thing which can be shared by atheists and religious people.

Putting my consciousness into rich virtual reality situations? Yeah, I'll take five, if you can make 'em.

Have to admit that it sounds fun.

[Ryantology]

I wasn't saying that the transhumanist idea of immortality is the same as the one sold by dogmatic religion. It just seems that a hope for immortality is a human species thing which can be shared by atheists and religious people.

My apologies, I got a little cross-pollinated. It's somewhat common for skeptics to criticize the whole thing as the 'rapture for nerds'. And, perhaps for some of them, it's not an invalid criticism. Insofar as I have an interest in transhumanism, I think the spiritual part of it is played up too much and is distracting.

Have to admit that it sounds fun.

What I want to be when I grow up, is a cloud.

[Confused Ape]

My apologies, I got a little cross-pollinated. It's somewhat common for skeptics to criticize the whole thing as the 'rapture for nerds'. And, perhaps for some of them, it's not an invalid criticism. Insofar as I have an interest in transhumanism, I think the spiritual part of it is played up too much and is distracting.

I'm guessing that the spirituality aspect is another human species thing - wanting to experience something beyond ordinary, everyday reality. After all, many people use psychoactive drugs and plants for this purpose. Neurotechnology could provide the same thing without any nasty side effects.

What I want to be when I grow up, is a cloud.

I love that idea. No more housework and cooking.

Seriously, though, it seems to be dreams and longings which drive humans to invent things. We can't fly like birds but we now have machines for flying etc.