Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. One of the clearest proofs that Christianity addresses the fundamental problems of humanity is the bizarre lengths to which non-Christians go to address those very same problems but without Christ. For example, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, former CEO of PayPal, recently went on Ross Douthett's Interesting Times podcast. to discuss AI, Mars, immortality, and other light topics.
The conversation was fascinating, especially when Dalthat asked Teal, should the human race continue? Teal paused and then said, um and I don't know quite a few times. Laughing nervously, Douthut then observed, That is a long hesitation.
Well, finally, Teal explained that he did believe humanity should survive, but that there are problems in need of solving. Chief among those, he said, death. And transhumanists have long hoped to conquer that via a, and I quote here, radical transformation. of the human body into an immortal body. The problem, he said, with efforts like transgenderism is Isn't that they change bodies too radically?
but that they're not radical enough. Quote, we want more transformation than that. We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body, end quote. Till then pointed to Christianity and its doctrines of redemption and resurrection as precedent for the transhumanist idea of total self-transformation and conquest of death. Maybe, he hinted, the two philosophies aren't all that different.
Douthett, a Roman Catholic, pushed back, pointing out that according to Christianity, God does the transforming. The person, Douthett said, who tries to do it on their own with a bunch of machines, is likely to end up a dystopian character. Do it yourself immortality is, he said, at best a heretical form of Christianity. Thiel's fundamental assumption here, which is foreign to the Bible and to Christianity, but common among tech futurist and transhumanist Is that our minds are far more important and fundamental than our bodies. In other words, our true selves are our minds and actually separable from who we are physically.
Not only is this assumption a rehashed version of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, But it creepily resembles the philosophy of the evil National Institute of Coordinated Experiments, or NICE, in That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis. In that story, Dr. Philostrado hopes to cleanse the world of organic life.
replacing trees and birds and even human bodies with machines. He even proposes something akin to uploading human consciousness.
Now, that's not to say that transhumanists like Teal are somehow involved in an intergalactic conspiracy run by demons speaking through a disembodied head, like in the book.
Well, at least not knowingly. But the transhumanist urge to overcome human limits, to become more machine-like, to live forever, that's eerily similar. as is the rhetoric they employ. It's also notable that unlike anti-humanists on the left, transhumanists assume the human race is indeed worth preserving. Elon Musk, for example, thinks it's our duty to have as many babies as possible.
and by any means necessary. He also thinks that humans should be the ones to colonize other planets. In a sense, all of this acknowledges humans are exceptional. in a way that's at least similar to how Scripture describes human beings. And yet his view of human exceptionalism comes with a you will be like God promise, a sense that all human problems are technical glitches that can be overcome by innovation and engineering.
And so our mortality can be solved through the radical transformation of our bodies. Our fragile fertility can be solved through IVF, our lack of knowledge solved through AI, and our limits overcome by the technologies pioneered by Teal and others like him. In fact, Teal's company Palanter is named, without any apparent irony, after the seeing stones in the Lord of the Rings, stones that corrupt any who gaze into them. Humans were made in the image of God, and as such, we were made to be like him. And live forever.
Death is an enemy, the last enemy, and our longing for immortality is actually core to who we are. Perhaps that's why the transhumanist promises are so compelling to so many.
However, we were made to do and receive all this through God, not our own ingenuity. As it turns out, transhumanism is indeed a Christian heresy, an ideology that rightly identifies the problems of a fallen world. but then seeks to overcome them through a false gospel, gospel of technological godhood. not the true gospel of salvation through Christ. God willing, Teal's openness to Christianity and his conversations with Christians will move him closer to accept his need for Christ.
Until then, believers should be fully aware that the transhumanist gospel is a false one. Only Christ is able to change our hearts, change our minds, and change our whole bodies, not a tech billionaire. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
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