In a secular (and some might add post-Christian) culture, where the Christian vision of the future has been set aside, various imagined futures have emerged, drawing their inspiration from a scientific ethos.
One familiar example is the vision of a classless society sketched out by Karl Marx in Das Capital in 1867 which still captures the imagination of some in the West, although it has undergone several revisions. A more recent example is the Venus Project (1985), founded by Jacque Fresco, the American futurist, social engineer and industrial designer, which envisions a future where technology will replace traditional systems of politics and economics.
While these imagined utopias have to do with fashioning a different social order, the rapid and often mind-boggling advances in bio-medicine and technology have directed the attention of futurists to something even more basic. The future imaginary is now not only focused on changing society, but in augmenting human nature itself.
Some futurists and scientists are now asking: What if we could use our science and technology to accelerate human evolution? What if we can use these tools to help us achieve our fullest potential—as individual human beings and as a species? And more boldly still, what if we can employ them to make us more than human—post-human, trans-human?
Numerous experiments are already underway to see if human lifespan and healthspan can be extended, and for how long. In fact, longevity studies have become something of a booming industry with an increasing number of start-ups, independent researchers and boutique labs.
Some of these studies are based on the transhumanist philosophy which regards human biological death as an aberration that can and must be corrected. This perspective is compellingly articulated by Max More, futurist and former CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation when he asserted, “ageing and death victimises all humans”, adding that it placed an unacceptable “imposition on the human race”.1
Several approaches are currently being explored to try to surmount human limitations and possibly achieve immortality.
The first approach is associated with the English biomedical gerontologist, Aubrey de Grey, who believes that living for 150 or 200 years would soon become routine. De Grey’s research involves tinkering with the length of the telomeres and staving off degenerative mutations in cellular replication and rejuvenation in order to increase the lifespan of humans. Winning the war against ageing and death, he asserts, is simply a matter of efficient engineering.2
Another approach is to explore the possibilities presented by developments in nanotechnology, synthetic biology and robotics to create a bionic human being that is not subjected to current limitations imposed by biology. For example, synthetic blood vessels, skin and muscles can replace their flimsy and short-lived natural counterparts. And nanorobots can course through the human body to detect and repair damaged vessels and organs.
The third approach is perhaps the most fantastical, and it is associated with visionary leaders in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics such as Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec. They think that it is possible to upload the information in the human brain onto a computer attached to a robotic substrate to ensure the individual’s post- human existence and “immortality”.3
What would be an appropriate Christian response to all of this?
The Christian must recognise that the scientific knowledge that we are able to uncover and the technologies that we create are made possible by the providential grace of God. Christians must therefore support the scientific community and their work, and give thanks to God for every new discovery that has the potential to alleviate suffering, cure diseases and serve the common good.
The Christian must recognise that the scientific knowledge that we are able to uncover and the technologies that we create are made possible by the providential grace of God. Christians must therefore support the scientific community and their work, and give thanks to God for every new discovery that has the potential to alleviate suffering, cure diseases and serve the common good.
That said, the quest to be more than human and to achieve “immortality” through science and technology is something quite different and deeply troubling.
Such a quest betrays the basic dissatisfaction with the kind of creatures God has made us to be. To put this differently, the all-consuming and even fanatical desire to go beyond our given nature reveals a sinful revolt against creaturely finitude.
Furthermore, the belief that humans can use their own technologies to transform themselves into something beyond human—beings with enhanced abilities and the potential for everlasting life—is an extraordinary display of hubris. It unveils the desire of human beings to be their own creators and therefore to replace God himself.
This propensity—at once dark and perverse—is as old as humanity itself, and can be traced to the original humans in the Garden of Eden. The primordial sin of Adam and Eve is precisely their refusal to accept their finitude and the limitations associated with it, and their attempt to be like God (cf. Genesis 3:5).
And this is precisely why death is such an apt punishment for such sin.
As theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg explains:
Precisely for this reason they are riveted to their finitude, and this takes place through death. The distinction between finitude and death may be seen here in the fact that it is precisely the sinner’s nonacceptance of their finitude that delivers them up to death.4
Or as another theologian, Helmut Thielicke, puts it: “Death is a limit … set to those who want to be without limits.”5
1 Max More, “On Becoming Posthuman,” Free Inquiry 14, no. 4 (1994): 39.
2 Aubrey de Grey, ed., Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence: Why Genuine Control of Aging May be Foreseeable, Annals of the New York Academy of Science 1019. New York Academy of Science, June 2004.
3 For a more detailed discussion of this theory, see Roland Chia, “Digital Immortality? Mind Uploading and the Quest for Everlasting Life,” Medicina y Etica 34, no. 4 (2023): 1063-1088, https://ethosinstitute.sg/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/1.-01012024-DIGITAL-IMMORTALITY.pdf
4 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3 (Eerdmans, 1998), 561.
5 Helmut Thielicke, The Evangelical Faith, Volume 3: Theology of the Spirit (Eerdmans, 1982), 393.
Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor of Christian Doctrine at Trinity Theological College and Theological and Research Advisor at the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.