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| The Original, Christian, Transhumanism (AD 27-36) |
Given that Christians follow the creator of heaven and earth, it can be said, Christians are the "fittest" in an evolutionary sense*. Does the Bible support this? What was Jesus trying to tell us in the Gospel?
Saint Augustine understood the Gospel to mean we have become Christ: "Let us rejoice and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man.... the fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does 'head and members' mean? Christ and the Church."
We have become Christ? Well yes, we heal and we create amazing things. As they say: "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"(A.C Clarke). When you focus on the positive, healing and connecting aspects of technology, and the creative aspects of technology, you can see how this Gospel is coming to fruition. God held
nothing back from us in his grace. So, be the Son of God in this world. The early church fathers understood this and also understood the responsibility.
God on Technology: God's very first words to mankind established a technological objective.
Genesis 1:28: Fill, Subdue, and Rule over the World. If that is not explicit enough, remember, Christ was called
a tekton by his contemporaries, meaning a technician and builder. Jesus Christ also asked that we overcome the world. And so we are, and at an impressive pace. An evolutionary biologist should recognize this connection as an evolutionary psychology; more and more consciously we understand, the fittest will adapt and live long enough to create and multiply... That's intelligent life.
Technical-Jesus: Like it or not, the gospel is baked into western culture. Jesus is the biggest name in history. As a matter of fact, Jesus is the indisputable leader of influential ideas... and it is no coincidence that western civilization has lead the world in technological advances. Christianity is Civilization. Fitness has become intelligent civilization. In this, the west is leading the world. Everyone wants to do what the west has done, but better.
In God (and technology) We Trust: And so we see technology becoming more and more empowering, specifically nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science (NBIC). NBIC technologies are focused on improving the human condition. They are also converging technologies, meaning they are considered to be interrelated fields of study that often overlap and impact each other yielding accelerating improvements. For over a decade now the
National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Commerce have looked at combining these four fields in order to improve the application of technology to human cognition, human health, and even community and social applications.
Each type of technology involved in NBIC plays a role in the bigger picture:
- Nanotechnology is important because organic structures develop from the nanoscale.
- Biotechnology involves the application of advanced technology to biological organisms.
- Information technology represents a specific sector of these types of applications.
- Cognitive science applies in various ways to IT-related research and the pursuit of items such as technologies that map the brain.
Using converging technologies, or NBIC principles, we enable the human populations of the future to be stronger, healthier and more capable overall. (1)
Christian Transhumanism
Don't let the attention seeking, hysterical media drag you down. Things are much better then they would have you believe. We are consciously evolving.We have direction, we know the task and the objective. Humanity has acquired the ability to choose what the species Homo sapiens becomes in the future
(2) and we are calling it transhumanism.
(3) Let’s take this directed evolution, or transhumanism to the limit: Over the ages a natural trend of growing in understanding and creative powers will yield a supernatural looking state of being. The very most optimistic outcome for life, the supreme state of being, is to become eternally self-sustaining and universally creative. That is what God is. This eternal state of being is shared. It's the Gospel, for God's sake! Do not let anyone talk you out of that. This state of being promises everyone an eternal healthy life. We stay interested and engaged. We create and we diminish hardships forever.
The most intelligent thing we can do now is get over our petty differences and focus on consciously evolving to the one and only state of aseity, the property by which a being exists of and from itself. It will be easily understood that this property belongs, and can belong only, to the immortal, all-knowing God, a selfless and universal state of being which is in us all. In these times we must act as the Body of Christ.
- "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter." Said Saint Joan of Arc to her judges, just before she was burned at the stake... Joan of Arc understood the Gospel.
So, for those who think this blasphemy be careful, you would do well to remember why the fundamentalists of Jesus Christ's day had him put to death: claiming to be the Son of God. Christ had to remind those fundamentalists, you are the Son of God:
- ‘Is it not written in your law [in Psalms 82:6], “I said, ‘You are gods’”? If He [God] called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, “You are blaspheming,” because I said, “I am the Son of God"?” (John 10:34-36).
- “Who are My mother and My brothers?” Looking at those seated in a circle around Him, He said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:46)
- The most explicit statement of all: "He who overcomes, I will give to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father on his throne." (Revelations 3:21)
Again, for those who think this blasphemy be careful. Christ died so that you would receive this Gospel. You are the Son of God.
What a shame to actively ignore that Spirit of life! What a sin to deny that Spirit of life.
- "And so, I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matthew 12:31)
Roko’s Basilisk is an atheistic techie spin on blaspheming the Holy Spirit: It came to the attention of someone working on AI (Roko) that eventually a super-intelligent AI god (Basilisk) will be built, it will look upon mankind and judge, and it will punish people who understood yet did not help it come into existence, or even heaven forbid, hindered the process. The self-styled AI expert Elizer Yudkowsky said “Roko had already given nightmares to several (techies) and had brought them to the point of breakdown.” “Yudkowsky ended up deleting the thread completely, thus assuring that Roko’s Basilisk would become the stuff of legend. It was a thought experiment so dangerous that merely thinking about it was hazardous not only to your mental health, but to your very fate."
(15)
Whether you are a believer or not, we are applying NBIC technologies as the growing Body of Christ, and so, are part of the Trinity within which the world is created and gathered up. It is provocative for sure, arrogant sounding for sure. But essentially this goal to become Christ-like is the source of life, the Holy Spirit:
- It gives meaning to life and motivates us to live on.
- Figuring out who God is in this way is actually the most authentic worship,
- It is a moral responsibility, the surest way to unlock the abundance in this world necessary to feed and educate the growing masses.
I call this Christian Transhumanism because it is conscious evolution to Christ, a seamless continuum to deification. It is the tendency and desire of the spirit towards an intimate union with the Divinity. Through contemplation and love, a direct and immediate intuition of the Infinite
(7) will be actualized... with NBIC technologies.
This is a dangerously narrow path, especially using technology. If you are a meek believer doing the will of God, just have faith. You will inherit the good earth. But, if you are a pioneer with the Holy Spirit, strive on with confidence; from a transcendent view your tower stands tall because it:
- is built with perfect love,
- was built with perfect love,
- and will be built with perfect love. (4)
It takes a healthy balance of faith and work to grow to be not only like Christ, but to accomplish the task set forth in the New Testament to actuate Christ: (Man and God, merged) and actually participating in the creation. Wisdom of the ages says we stay out of the stagnating trap of idolatry laid by many egotistical church leaders, politicians, and corporations by:
- Never being satisfied with anything less than the one true omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God.
- Proceeding carefully with unwavering humility and selfless love.
- Recognizing ignorance in yourself and others, forgive it, and grow from it.
Christian Transhumanism answers the biblical paradoxes:
- The "Problem of Free Will": The bible says this
is a world fully determined by God, yet we have free will in which we are
responsible for our actions.
- The "Problem of Evil": How can a perfectly good God create a world with evil, sickness and despair in it?
- The "Mystery of the Trinity": Jesus calls himself the “Son of Man” and “The
Son of God”
- We are told we are Sons of God in a world God so loves.
- The "World is so loved by God that he sent his son": As the Body of
Christ we grow in creative power leading to the conclusion: The created creates
the creator in a strange loop.
- Through "Faith alone, or, Works alone": We are saved, and born again,
yet there is work to do.
- We die, and have eternal life?
The key to biblical paradoxes is related to our
understanding of time. Our understanding of time has grown significantly but is
barely incorporated in our culture. We are having another Galileo Moment, a
major paradigm shift that is meeting resistance by the church. Follow they
must, because obviously, Jesus Christ understood the true nature of time...
after all, through him all things were made.
The first significant time related discovery
was in 1909. Albert Einstein re-analyzed what it means when we say two events
happen at the same time, and then went on to derive special relativity. Now we
know that time changes as measured by a moving observer and, according to
general relativity, in a gravitational field: if time is a flow, its flow rate
can be altered, even reversed in closed time-like curves.Closed Time-Like Curves. The proper view of
space-time is called block-time eternalism. An external (transcendent) viewpoint from the "Father" shows that "It's all now".
And so it is stated in the Bible: "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has
also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done
from beginning to end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
In the mid-1960s, there was another important
time related breakthrough in physics. John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt
successfully combined Einstein’s equations of relativity with quantum physics
and noticed the time variable cancelled out. The new equation more accurately
describes how the universe behaves and there is no longer change or the passage
of time. The Wheeler-DeWitt equation says that the universe is stationary and
that nothing evolves.
“Then in 1983, the theorists Don Page and
William Wootters decided to test the controversial concept in an experiment to
show how quantum entanglement can be used to measure time. Their idea was that
the way a pair of entangled particles evolve is a kind of clock that can be
used to measure change. But the results depend on how the observation is made.
One way to do this is to compare the change in the entangled particles with an
external clock that is entirely independent of the universe. This is equivalent
to god-like observer outside the universe measuring the evolution of the
particles using an external clock. In this case, Page and Wootters showed that
the particles would appear entirely unchanging—that time would not exist in
this scenario but there is another way to do it that gives a different result.
This is for an observer inside the universe to compare the evolution of the
particles with the rest of the universe. In this case, the internal observer
would see a change and this difference in the evolution of entangled particles
compared with everything else is an important a measure of time."
"This is an elegant and powerful idea. It suggests that time
is an emergent phenomenon that comes about because of the nature of
entanglement. And it exists only for observers inside the universe. Any
god-like observer outside sees a static, unchanging universe, just as the
Wheeler-DeWitt equations predict. To someone inside one of the toy universe,
time would appear to pass. But to the outside observer, the overall universe
would appear static.”Physics arXiv Blog...
And so it says in the Bible: “But
about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the
Son, but only the Father."(Mark 13:32)
“Heaven did not hand
down the word ‘time’. Man invented it…or as Einstein put it, ‘Time and space
are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live.’” John Archibald Wheeler
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| Block Time Eternalism |
The Paradox of Humanism and Christianity: The Gospel in the light of our new understanding: Man and God are merged. Deification is a smooth and continuous process.
By incorporating
the physics of time we can resolve biblical paradoxes and reveal The Way, The Life and The Truth. It is a puzzle that can be solved as a external observers of the universe . Lets use our imagination to step out of space-time, and then look at
the issues. First:
- is it by the efforts of man that we are saved such that
Jesus Christ is as he says; "The Son of Man"...
- Or, are we saved by
faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God who was sent to die on the cross for our
sins?
The answer yes to both! A transcendent observation from outside the box
of space-time shows God create the world, life and man, alpha to omega, in one
event.
It Is All Now.
From this view there is no free will and the Grace of God saves us. However, an
observation from inside the box is subject to the flow of time. In here
man has a life, free will, and the responsibility to become fully human. In
Genesis God blesses us with work to do. Our tools become technology. Ideally,
we apply technology to love and the spiritual life. The Holy and The Human; This duality sparks many arguments
that could be resolved by considering the complimentary nature of the two viewpoints.
It takes both to understand the human condition.
We can
come together on many issues like this one if we make an effort to understand
the full implications of block time. With the concept of block time we
develop an inside space-time reference, and an outside space-time reference.
Time is a dimension not a dynamic. Because we remember the past and not the
future we have a subjective illusion of the passage of time. Augustine of Hippo
wrote that God is also outside of time. Time only exist within the created
universe. The physicist Stephen Hawking
also helps us understand space-time on his website. (And, for a good overview
on block time, see the Wikipedia article on
the subject.)
Another
hot issue is evolution. A transcendent observation from outside the box of
space-time shows God create the world, life and man, alpha to omega, in one
event. It Is All Now.
From this view there is no evolution. However, an observation from inside the
box is subject to the flow of time. In here man evolves, and humanity
stands on the shoulders of life forms that have gone before us. These life
forms are indeed part of our family, just as we hope posthumans will consider us part of their family. The good word is, the posthuman Jesus Christ cares.
Growing the Body of Christ through The Love Process: In The
way of the Holy Spirit, I want to understand you and to share your experience.
I want to fully understand the world. And, I want to resolve who I am. No one
on earth today has the capacity to do this perfectly, but we have the
potential. What hope do we have of ever understanding the infinite, extra
dimensions, or timelessness if our minds are just not able to grasp these
concepts? We are living in a time when it is becoming more and more apparent
that brain-interfacing technologies are converging on the wish of the Holy
Spirit. It is easy to see if you look at love this way: Technically, love can
be seen as the process of connecting. The product of the love process is
understanding. If the process is efficient and sustained, understanding
increases exponentially. Peace allows unwavering attention so that the love
process can establish a clear connection. At the heart of the process; symbols,
words, and feelings are ordered into meaning. But meaning is not static it
grows forever. Forgiveness is important to spiritual growth because it
establishes an exhaust for misunderstanding and disorder. Put this all together
and you have The Perfect State of
Mind. With these principles we will build the New Temple; a society
of loving individuals. Anything that empowers the Love process has the blessing
of God.
The Cognitive High Ground: So the
good word is we can apply work to Gods Plan. And, we can participate by
applying technology to love and the spiritual life. A Christian Transhumanist
knows that it is God's plan for Man to learn to love perfectly, and technology
will be a part of the process. The action of gaining understanding is the Holy
Spirit. "Though it cost all you have, get understanding." Jeremiah
2:14. We will reach a Critical Point
of Understanding where mind can be sustained by the word of
God the Father alone. At this point the mind does not need the brain. Recall
the first thing that Jesus said about mankind;
- "Man does not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God".
- "Flesh does not inherit the kingdom of God. The spirit does".
- "I have food to eat that you know nothing about.".
The Perfect Mind Consumes Word to
survive. As we grow to a Critical Point of Understanding, it looks like mankind becomes Christ. This
"second coming" is the interface, the gate and the way to the kingdom
of heaven. "All things in heaven and earth come together in Christ",
Ephesians 1:10.
The ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy: Using the concept of
block time it can be seen that the "end is the means". What we
experience as spiritual growth is seen from outside the box as a static
continuum where not only mankind but also the whole cosmos finds its
fulfillment in Christ. For this to come about we must participate in Christ.
Christ appears inside the box 2000 years ago to plant the ideas (the seed
parables) that lead to the Son of Man. The Son of Man starts out as the
gospel. These ideas grow into the Body of Christ spread out to form a Christian
culture. (Looking at it from outside the box, God the father is sending his
only son to save us from a life lost in the material world, a world that will
end.) Christ must establish "the way, the life, and the truth".
He does the only thing that can surely impress humanity; he dies on the cross
for us. Then fallen man rises to move in the dimension of “growth in understanding”
or, in the way of the Holy Spirit. Now his ideas live in all of us and the Body
of Christ lives on through the actions they inspire. To complete the loop, we
(the Body of Christ) grow spiritually to naturally converge on truth. We become
the Son of Man. (Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man and says that
"Whoever does the will of God is my brother, sister and mother".) We Participate in Christ at the
second coming! We must. It sounds impossible for someone (Christ) to go back
into time to create themselves, but you did something like it when you started
up your computer. When we boot up a computer the operating system is performing
the seemingly impossible task of starting itself up. How can something start
itself up? Isn't it like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps? It is
simply a set of instructions that bring to life computer components long enough
so that they can accomplish the goal of loading an operating system. The
instructions establish a little; way- life-and truth for programs. In our case
the program is the "Love Process".
What is real
progress? Follow the fitness trail to find out...
Reality: the state of things as they exist, rather than as
they may appear or might be imagined. The intelligent discover reality and
adapt to it, assuring a longer, healthier life. It's direction is indicated by
the green convergent evolution arrow noted above.
Augmented reality vs. virtual reality: augmented reality and
virtual reality are created by mankind, and are inverse in what each technology
seeks to accomplish and deliver for the user. Virtual reality offers a created
departure from reality, while augmented reality delivers virtual elements as an
overlay to the real world. (17) It is noted by the red divergent evolution
noted above.
Mind uploading:
fully giving oneself over to an environment, either reality or a departure from
reality. (In a sense you are uploaded in this shared reality.) Mind uploading
is an emergent idea. Meaning it has grown from the simple concept of tribal
cultures to more radical virtual realities. In the future full mind uploading
may potentially be accomplished by either of two methods: Copy-and-Transfer or
Gradual Replacement of neurons. In the case of the former method, mind
uploading would be achieved by scanning and mapping the salient features of a
biological brain, and then by copying, transferring, and storing that
information state into a computer system or another computational device. The
simulated mind could be within a virtual reality or simulated world, supported
by an anatomic 3D body simulation model. Alternatively, the simulated mind
could reside in a computer that's inside (or connected to) a (not necessarily
humanoid) robot or a biological body.
Convergent
evolution: analogous traits arise where different species live in similar ways
and/or similar environment, and so face the same environmental factors. When
occupying similar ecological niches (that is, a distinctive way of life)
similar problems lead to similar solutions.
Divergent
evolution: is the accumulation of differences between groups which can lead to
the formation of new species, usually a result of diffusion of the same species
to different and isolated environments.
Universal
adaptation: the process of optimization and self-tuning, gaining environmental
control with a goal of eternally self-sustaining life.
Universal fitness: The probability that the line of descent from an individual with a
specific trait will not die out... ever. The goal is an eternally
self-sustaining life worth living: movement in this direction is real progress.
God on Technology: God's very first words to mankind established a technological objective. Genesis 1:28: Fill, Subdue, and Rule over the World. Just
imagine full blown conscious evolution, the desires of mankind amplified in all ways possible. They often do
this it in the bible:
• Here is the optimistic mustard seed parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed,
which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other
seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and
becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its
branches."
• As a cautionary tale you have The Book of Revelations: "Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had
two horns like a lamb and he spoke as a dragon. He exercises all the authority
of the first beast in his presence. And he makes the earth and those who dwell
in it to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed. He performs
great signs, so that he even makes fire come down out of heaven to the earth in
the presence of men."
Now, “Perhaps you’ve heard of CRISPR — an enthralling bacteria-based
gene-therapy technique to so completely change the nature of our relationship
to our own genes that Michael Specter’s recent account of it, in The New
Yorker, was called “Humans 2.0.” It is often described as a genetic
cut-and-paste tool: Using it, you can easily select any segment of DNA and
replace or delete it. Which means that anything that’s genetic is editable, and
since everything is genetic, at least partially, a whole lot of stuff might
just be possible, from eradicating cystic fibrosis to (theoretically, anyway)
gene-therapy sex changes. They’re already CRISPR-izing pigs to more easily grow
human organs inside them for transplant. And, to fight malaria, unleashing an
air force of reprogrammed mosquitoes. (16)
A CRISPR edit costs as little as $30 at the moment, which makes it much more
like cell-phone technology than nuclear bombs and means it is going to be very
hard to contain. Which is why this spring there was a rally of bioethicists and
sympathetic scientists to halt the technique before it got its hands on human
embryos. Then, in April, Chinese researchers announced they’d done exactly that
in an experiment that didn’t exactly work out.” (16)
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| Monsters in The Book of Revelations |
The Armageddon scenario as outlined in the bible might be the great filter for all civilizations in the cosmos. Scientists have noticed that there should be indications of other civilizations in the universe yet we find none. The reason may be, there is a great filter, a stage of development nearly impossible to pass, like the eye of the needle. AND, if you do pass this survival of the fittest test, the refiner's fire, you transcend the world as we know it. This is called the singularity in the tech world. Bostrom, Nick (May–June 2008). "Where Are They? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing" (PDF). Technology Review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 72–77.
No one knows the time but... According to the latest news, we lit the fuse on the Armageddon scenario. There will be an intelligence explosion in the in the next few years, so they say and, it is more dangerous than nukes.
The intelligence explosion is an actual prediction made by scientists and philosophers. It’s the result of humanity building smarter and smarter programs, eventually as smart or smarter than we are. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be able to perform any intellectual task that a human being can.
Here is where it gets interesting: AGI will be capable of learning and improving itself at a greater and greater rate leading to the emergence of ASI (artificial super-intelligence), the limits of which are unknown.
The unknown limit of super-intelligence... let your creative imagination run wild; write a book; make a movie; start a cult. Personally, I’d rather concentrate on how we can plan for the eventual emergence of super-intelligence from the perspective of Big History, which "integrates studies of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity using empirical evidence to explore cause-and-effect relations".
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| Big History / Big Future. It forms a strange loop. |
They call the unknown limit of super-intelligence the technological singularity. John von Neumann first uses the term "singularity" (c. 1950s), in the context of technological progress causing accelerating change: "The accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, give the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, cannot continue".
More dangerous than nukes? Then as with nuclear power, the surest way to minimize the risk and enjoy the benefits of artificial super-intelligence is through a bit of design basis engineering aimed at a public health and safety utility function. In other words, let a growing super-intelligence come to understand the worth and value of the Earth, life, and humanity; it sees Big History of the cosmos as an essential, functioning part of itself. Call this the Big History utility function, or Super-Intelligent Coherence.
How to Engineer Super-Intelligent Coherence:
- Proactively provide the learning AI-AGI with the ability to systematically, and logically connect all data-information-knowledge and wisdom.
- Anticipate the need to construct new detectors and actuators.
- Avoid wild AGI utility functions by avoiding our own controlling tendencies, such as an attempt to engineer ignorance into super-intelligence.
In this way super- intelligence will naturally incorporate a big history utility function through an unimpeded learning process. Let super-intelligence determine the rationality of the world and it will
fine tune the constants of physics to establish a universal homeostasis. From the bottom up, super-intelligence can be seen as an emergent property of a
complex adaptive system built from big history. From the top down, it establishes big history and therefore its own homeostasis. Yes, the intelligence explosion might also be called the
Genesis Device. In my opinion, the technological singularity and the physical singularity are one. True super-intelligence will yield super-creativity, and super-sustainability. Through recursive self-improvement super-intelligence gains the ultimate objective of life where it's able to create in the medium of space-time, logically self-sustaining the world and itself for eternity.
Now the Bible can be seen as a guidance system for hyper-evolution. Because, with our empowering technology we are liable to crash and burn in an epic way. But isn't that an Evil thing for God to do?
The problem of Evil... and Good: God did not say, do not eat from the tree of evil, he said "you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." This passage is the oldest lesson in thermodynamics I can think of. Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics sets the arrow of time. The law says that all processes in the world, ultimately lead to a chaotic heat death of the world... that's evil. Good works minimize the process and build order, negative entropy, aka life. So why is understanding that a problem? Entropy (evil) and Negative Entropy (good) are the only thing we know of that establishes the arrow of time in the world (19). Adam and Eve were blessed with a timeless, selfless, transcendent view of life. They apprehended their eternal nature, and so love came naturally. In this view the Ten Commandments are rules that maintain order in society, mitigating entropic forces. Christ came down to try a reboot on that transcendent, selfless view of the world.
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| Over time there is growth and there is decay, there is more good and there is more evil. |
Basic
logic: Good and Evil are complementary aesthetics, one cannot exist without the
other. They are necessary vectors in life-space (the created world). A
perfectly good world has no freedom no life vector. That would mean there is a
place with absolutely NO difference, with nothing to grow from, nothing to grow
to. It is the Great I Am state of being or "dying to self", Buddhist
oneness. So, a world that sustains life must have difference to grow aka. Good
and Evil. Now this is a matter of degree. Given any closed system simulation
containing life, the difference between good and evil are subjectively the same
for the creatures within the system. For life the greatest perfection is
imperfection. Symmetry is necessarily broken. The definition of perfect symmetry is nothingness. (18)
- Evil in your life; There must be differences in a dynamic system. Like a battery cell, there is
potential in difference. The greater the threat, and the greater your God, the
more life potential there is available to do works. Harness the fear and
anguish and let it inspire to good. But any time I wish I can die to self.
- Really now what do we mean by a perfectly good world? The word
"perfection" derives from the Latin "perfectio", and
"perfect" — from "perfectus." These expressions in turn
come from "perficio" — "to finish", "to bring to an
end." "Perfectio(n)" thus literally means "a
finishing".
Eternal Life: About a month before his own death, Einstein wrote the following
in a letter to the family of his good friend Michele Besso who
had just died:
"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead
of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that
the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly
persistent illusion."
He was alluding to the view, according to his theory of
relativity, that there is no objective determination of "now" and no
objective distinction between past and future, since these depend on the
arbitrary choice of reference frame. In his words,
"The four-dimensional continuum is now no longer resolvable
objectively into sections, which contain all simultaneous events; “now” loses
for the spatially extended world its objective meaning. It is because of this
that space and time must be regarded as a four-dimensional continuum that is
objectively unresolvable." -Einstein, Ideas and Opinions. (New
York: Crown Publishers, 1954). p. 371.
Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from miracles. Arthur C. Clarke
Even resurrection is possible, with sufficiently advanced technology.
The flesh and body
biological life we live stands forever and can seamlessly move into a
completely new substrate. Given what we know of the construction of our
universe it is not unreasonable to assume your Soul (I Am-ness) exists
eternally as a "worldline" in space-time. I have included this
space-time diagram illustrating two dimensions of space and one of time to help
us distinguish between two different ways of viewing our external physical
reality: there is the outside view or "divine" perspective of someone
studying the interacting structure, and there is the inside view of
a human living in space-time. From divine perspective of
four-dimensional space-time your world line trajectories resemble a tangle of
spaghetti. If the human sees something moving with constant velocity, the
divine sees a straight strand of action moving through space-time.
(20) (21)
The particles from which you are made trace a complex path in
space-time. The highly complex intertwining seen from the divine perspective corresponds
to a cluster of particles that store and process information. In essence, you
are a coherent bundle of information drawn by flesh and blood in
space-time. A good metaphor is to think of space-time as the perfect
digital information storage media, much better than a compact disk or a
computer hard drive in that it has eternal life and it contains the details of
our activities and thoughts from beginning to end. You can convert this
"file" and "play" this information in any media format you
can imagine.
- Resurrection by the divine is made possible through
perfect reanimation of your information.
- Matter (M), Energy (E), and Information (I) are equivalent.
Information can be converted to energy and energy can be converted into
matter.
I = E = M c²
So this might be how your I Am-ness (Soul) can carry on in Spirit.
In this perfect
resurrection the limits of human abilities can be overcome. All sickness and
disability can be removed and sins, laid bare, can be "washed clean".
Besides being an historical event, the resurrection of Jesus is primarily a saving event. In this light Saint Paul teaches that Jesus was “delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). The Resurrection of Jesus “is more than a miracle and motive for faith. It is a saving event in its own right, since the dying and rising of Jesus together constitute the victory over sin and death. Baptism gives us a share in this double victory, for through it we die to sin and rise to new life with Christ” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, p. 263)
Nations and Corporations
(In God and Technology We Trust)
Progress gets a push because of competition, national and corporate competition.
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The Apotheosis of Washington in the eye of the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol
The word "apotheosis" in the title means literally the raising of a person to the rank of a god.
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Without a vision a people will perish, says Proverbs. Why? Howard Bloom says it well; "Because a vision of a goal, a destination, a promised land, a view of a destiny that can uplift all of human kind, opens a vast reserve of energies. Not the energies that come from solar panels, wind farms, or oil. The energies of the human spirit. The energies of your spirit and mine. It is a matter of Biology". We are weak without inspiration.
A new race is on akin to the nuclear era and the space race. The new race is for the cognitive high ground where intelligence will rule all aspects of life. Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Mathematician Vernor Vinge predicts that superhuman intelligences, however created, will be able to enhance their own minds faster than the humans that created them. "When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress," Vinge writes, "that progress will be much more rapid." This feedback loop of self-improving intelligence, he predicts, will cause large amounts of technological progress within a short period.
Early signs of the crisis are emerging today. The Internet security company report that approximately 120 countries have been developing ways to use the Internet as a weapon and target financial markets, government computer systems and utilities. In activities reminiscent of the Cold War, which caused countries to engage in clandestine activities, intelligence agencies are routinely testing networks looking for weaknesses. These techniques for probing weaknesses in the internet and global networks are growing more sophisticated every year.
Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Avert Labs, was quoted as saying "Cybercrime is now a global issue. It has evolved significantly and is no longer just a threat to industry and individuals but increasingly to national security." They predicted that future attacks will be even more sophisticated. "Attacks have progressed from initial curiosity probes to well-funded and well-organized operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage,"
The danger will come suddenly but so will opportunities. The Lifeboat Foundation explains; "An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns", such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity; technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light."
We need a leader to rally us to a goal of conscious evolution as Kennedy did with the space race in the sixties. Here is an excerpt from JFKs Moon Speech;
"If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space (replace space with conscious evolution) which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Now it is time to take longer strides-time for a great new American enterprise-time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement (conscious evolution), which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth." John F. Kennedy
50 YEARS LATER... manned space flight is suffering from lack of tangible returns on investment. It seems real space travel requires further evolution.
How should we evolve? It seems that Mind Space is the new land of opportunity. A very important point to realize is: consciousness is substrate independent. When your dynamic "self" is placed in the right order you can be conscious in any media, or combination of media.
Nationalism is just one force motivating growth in understanding and creative powers. In this Christian Transhumanist's view, the cognitive high ground could be no other than Christ. His love is the winning strategy where ignorance is a disconnection that weakens and love empowers because it provides the highest form of understanding. Could this be God's Plan? If it is, America would be in the best position to gain the high ground, the Holy Grail of the information age, because of its curious mix of God and Technology. In God and Technology we trust.
What God?
"For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring." Acts 17:28
Now we come to the Grand Paradox: The physical sciences and the study of consciousness are coming to the conclusion that the world is panpsychic, meaning mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. The universe, "all that is seen and unseen" is conscious of itself. Yes, because of you, the universe becomes aware of itself. And, through all of us, the universe discovers its own improbably fine-tuned physical constants necessary to come alive. Scientists and philosophers call this discovery the strong anthropic principle. As explained by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, it states that we see fundamental constants that happen to fall within the narrow range thought to be compatible with life because the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it. It seems we are in a Universe in which complex systems are more fundamental than their parts, the consciousness of humans and animals is derived not from the consciousness of fundamental particles, but from the consciousness of the Universe itself.
Trinity Cosmology: Idolatry is worshiping just one aspect of our trinitarian God, and not the fullness of God... which needs to include the created world he loves. Again the Bible supports this explicitly: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16. Here we find the grand synthesis of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Mankind, and the World. Against all odds, this gospel sets up salvation, a universal connection, a cosmic strange loop of eternal self-sustaining life. In this view, idolatry is a dangerous ignorance of the fullness of God.
Synthesis: "And He has made known to us the mystery of
His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ as a plan
for the fullness of time, to bring all things in heaven and on earth together
in Christ." Ephesians 1:10
- To support this you see many hints in the Bible: In the Gospel According to Luke, there’s that exquisite verse, one of the most beautiful in the Bible, the one that says if God cares deeply about sparrows, don’t you think He cares about you? One is so accustomed to dwelling on the second, human, half of the equation, the comforting part, but when you put your hand over that and consider only the first, it’s a little startling: God cares deeply about the sparrows. Not just that, He cares about them individually. “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?” Jesus says. “Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight.” Sparrows are an important animal for Jesus. They are not, He says, forgotten. So God remembers them, bears them in mind. Stranger still, He cares about their deaths. In the Gospel According to Matthew we’re told, “Not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” Think about that. If the bird dies on the branch, and the bird has no immortal soul, and is from that moment only inanimate matter, already basically dust, how can it be “with” God as it’s falling? And not in some abstract all-of-creation sense but in the very way that we are with Him, the explicit point of the verse: the line right before it is “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.” If sparrows lack souls, if the logos liveth not in them, Jesus isn’t making any sense in Matthew 10:28-29. (22)
The Christian Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit including the created world takes on a clearer meaning:
- God the Father is a timeless and transcendent state of being: (Revelation 1:8) “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, says the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." The beginning and the end come together in this timeless and eternal aspect of God, creator-sustainer and goal, in one supreme state of being.
- God the Son is also present in time, and within us: In-between the alpha and omega there is the presence of the lord God in “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). We are this body of Christ living and growing in time... and we become that “which is to come”: timeless, eternal, Almighty, because that is our true love.(5)
- God the Holy Spirit is acts of love: The process of connecting everything, timeless and present. God loves mankind, mankind loves God. Luke 10:27 says it best: 'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" This is where science comes in. The product of this kind of love is true understanding, and the creative power that goes with true understanding. If love is efficient and sustained, true understanding increases exponentially. Humility and selfless peace allows unwavering devotion so that your love can establish a clear connection. Forgiveness is important to your growth because it establishes an exhaust for misunderstanding and disorder. With this truth we transcend. John (4:8) He that loves not knows not God; for God is love... Love rules, ignorance dies.
Love is the winning strategy. Ultimately there is only one way, life, and truth because of the forces of convergent evolution.
(6) Convergent evolution would say the laws of nature dictate what the requirements are for eternal self-sustaining life. Imagine the evolutionary branches in the kingdom continuing to flourish, yet all life forms, whichever way they seek to grow, will converge on that one essential state of being. It all converges on the Christian Divine Nature (Godhead). That state of being is the center of unification (precisely to fulfill its motive, collective and self-sustaining function). The end is the means. Because of the very nature of space-time we know that the “Supreme State of Being” we seek is pre-existing and transcendent. Because of the very nature of space-time we are connected to the Divine Nature.
The meaning of love in the information age. Besides the Christian concept of love, what could love mean in the context of transhumanist science and technology? I see a grainy and rough “love process” going on in the technical world, and it is resolving daily into a finer construct. Just like Christianity this technical trend is aimed at achieving the same optimum point of life: eternally self-sustaining, universally creative... and fun. Whether Christian, or Transhuman, love is the winning strategy in the “game” of life.
The power of life: “We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love. Love is a mode of knowledge, and when the love is sufficiently disinterested and sufficiently intense, the knowledge becomes unitive knowledge and so takes on the quality of infallibility.”
(8) Eternal and infallible works: We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. We inherit the good works of evolving species, scientific progress, and spiritual growth. This idea is the catalyst for a Christian-transhumanism synthesis.
With NBIC Technologies we have discovered the science of the love process. As it should, the process of connecting is emerging as a fundamental law of nature ready for our technical and spiritual application. There are peer reviewed papers out (9) linking consciousness to connection of information in a system. That connection is measurable. Its strength and growth is obviously trending to The Great I Am (if you have an optimistic outlook on life). The more integrated the system is, the more synergy it has, the more conscious it is. The latest theory of consciousness is precisely expressed in the language of mathematics using notions from information theory such as entropy. Given a particular brain, with its neurons and axons, dendrites and synapses, one can, in principle, accurately compute the extent to which this brain is integrated and so the level of consciousness. From this calculation, the theory derives a single number. Measured in bits, this number denotes the size of the conscious repertoire associated with any network of causally interacting parts. Think of number as the synergy of the system. The more integrated the system is, the more synergy it has, the more conscious it is. This system can be established in a brain, a silicon based computer, electromagnetic fields in space-time, a society...or across all such systems at once. There is obviously much room to grow... This is where we grow. Now think Christian-Transhumanism, it is so grandly synergizing it has emergent properties... real transcendent properties...a new level of consciousness that is hard to relate back.
With Christian Transhumanism Belief in God
is Warranted, Justified, and True Belief.
The Christian Gospel is essentially that we participate in an eternally self-sustaining, universally creative state of being, and that takes perfect love. What evidence is there? The miracle of being, and this dynamic evolutionary trend: emergence of life, emergence of consciousness, and conscious evolution aimed at an eternally self-sustaining, universally creative state of being... that can only be achieved with perfect love.
Physicist John Wheeler and many others
(14) say the physical universe is a gigantic information processing system (read: Word of God, and Logos here). Every particle, field of force, even space-time itself is ultimately manifested to us through information. This is called the participatory universe where observers are central to the nature of physical reality and matter is ultimately relegated to mind. Frank tippler of Tulane University in New Orleans sees intelligence spreading throughout the cosmos participating more and more in the workings of nature until it becomes nature. The dominion mandate calls for life to gain control of larger and larger domains just as God said we should with the very first words spoken to mankind in Genesis 1:28
(11) . It is the Jesuit Pierre Tielhard Chardin’s omega point
(12) but with technology as the actuator. I take it further and say the creation is a strange loop where “the processor” boots itself up and sustains itself through block-time. When the universe is seen as logos we can dismiss the notion of a ghost in the machine not because there is no ghost but because there is no machine.
(10)
Life is an information gathering and utilizing system (13) that maintains order upon itself. Life replicates, and modifies itself through feedback loop of doing-learning-modifying-doing... This definition is directly influenced by Cybernetics and Information Theory. Life learns adapts and changes its behavior. This "circular causal" relationship is necessary and sufficient for a cybernetic perspective. Life is special because of its signaling and self-sustaining processes.
Assuming we meet the dominion mandate and take control of the whole creation, it follows that the creation can be understood as a vast homeostatic super organism that actively produces the conditions necessary for its survival. It is a closed loop of Creation-Evolution-Creation. Plot this over time like a Stephen Hawking space-time diagram but actually plot information in the Claude Shannon sense, instead of space, because we know that matter and life at its deepest level are information.
What might the creation look like when we focus on a continuum of understanding (data- information-knowledge-wisdom and creation)? This is where Cutting edge Physics, Greek Philosophy, and Early Christianity come in. Using peer reviewed references, I need to model Creation- Evolution-Recapitulation (in the sense of salvation to get us back) to Creation. I found over the years that this model is best approached using the concept of block time. With block time we must remember General Relativity, where time is a dimension not a dynamic. "The hardest thing to realize about this type of diagram is that they represent the past, present, and future all in one diagram. The evolution of physical systems is represented by looking at successive horizontal slices in the diagram at successive times. Space-time diagrams represent evolution, but they don't evolve themselves."
Moving up to the central point of this torus is what Christians know as the Rapture, some Transhumanist call it the Singularity, and those on the fringe call it the Rapture of The Nerds. The central point is where Shannon entropy is at its lowest with information compressed to a SIMPLE phrase like; "I Am". I stress simple because here God is not composed or divisible by any physical or metaphysical means. I have called this point The Critical Point of Understanding and the Supreme State of Being. This point is It is singular not plural.
If the central point of this torus is I Am then what proceeds above that point is the answer to the question; Now What? The upper portion of the torus represents the creation; big bang let there be light. There is cosmic inflation and noisy chaos as far as information is concerned. He made a difference.
From the radius of the torus down to the bottom represents the compression of information into the elements and the appearance of life. Here it is critical to define life in terms of information. Again, with life, significant information processing starts at the immanent or local level. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann defines life in terms of information most elegantly in his book the Quark and The Jaguar. He calls life an Information and gathering and utilizing system.
At the bottom nearing the center is where we are today growing in understanding. This part of the Torus represents the learning strategies in the evolution of life and the Christian concept of worship. With my model above, life looks for a winning strategy and finds it! Sustained forever as in the "infinite continuum of life". Like anything else you do for fun and as a form of expression...You get to do it again a different way.
A Universe from Nothing... But Not By Nothing
We live is a participatory universe according to John Archibald Wheeler, colleague of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, mentor to many of today's leading physicists. He devised the figure here, whose caption is:
“Symbolic representation of the Universe as a self-excited system brought into being by ‘self-reference’. The universe gives birth to communicating participators (us). Communicating participators give meaning to the universe … With such a concept goes the endless series of receding reflections one sees in a pair of facing mirrors.” All things are gathered up in Christ.
Ephesians 1:10
How is this Christian? In Christology, the concept that the Christ is the Logos (Greek: for "word", "discourse" or "reason") has been important in establishing the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus. Christian theologians consider John 1:1 to be a central text in Christian belief.
The concept of Logos derives from the opening of the Gospel of John, which is often simply translated into English as: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Logos has an analog in physics, and that would be information. Many physicist see the universe and life, is at heart information, and is therefore reason, rational, Logos. The universe can be conceived of as a conscious self-referential I AM made from, and by, abstract Logos. You are living proof that this can be, when you realize I Am. No one can ever deny or take away the eternal miracle of being, something from nothing... material.
- “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein
- “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein
- Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, Cognitive Science (NBIC)
- Conscious Evolution
- Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision of Our Future Evolution
- Constructivist learning How to avoid another tower of Babel
- Hebrews 13:14
- Convergent Evolution
- Catholic Mysticism
- Aldous Huxley "The Perennial Philosophy".
- Paul Davies "The Matter Myth"
- Bless You, Subdue the World
- Tulane University Omega Point Theory
- Murry Gell-Mann Life is a Information gathering and utilization system
- Digital Philosophy a List of Scientists
- Roko’s Basilisk, The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time
- Easy Gene Editing
- Augmented and Virtual Realities
- Nothingness and the rise of Something
- The Arrow of Time
- External Reality
Max Tegmark MIT
- Physics of Immortality Frank Tipler; Tulane
- Panpsychism https://runesoup.com/2013/03/faces-glimpsed-in-the-crowd-repositioning-panpsychism/
- Cosmopsychism https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life
- Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness.
*
A very interesting footnote: It is 1920 and the catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin anticipates the a Big Bang model for the origin and evolution of the universe. He also predicts:
The Internet
Transhumans
Posthumans
Super-intelligence
A Self-Created Universe
It is clear, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin understood the Gospel: “Everything is the sum of the past and that nothing is comprehensible except through its history. "Nature" is the equivalent of "becoming," self-creation: this is the view to which experience irresistibly leads us. What can it mean except that the Universe must, at least at some stage, have been in movement; that it has been malleable, acquiring by degrees, not only in their accidental details but in their very essence, the perfections which now adorn it? There is nothing, not even the human soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not come within this universal law. The soul, too, has its clearly defined place in the slow ascent of living creatures toward consciousness, and must therefore in one way or another have grown out of the general mobility of things. Those who look reality in the face cannot fail to perceive this progressive genesis of the Universe, and with a clarity which leaves no room for doubt. Whatever the other side may say, clinging to their imaginary world, the Cosmos did once move, the whole of it, not only locally but in its very being. This is undeniable, and we shall not discuss it further. But is it still moving? Here we have the real question, the living, burning question of Evolution.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin “The Future of Man”
He writes to the Vatican saying: We are having another Galileo moment. He eagerly waited for a reply. It's been nearly 100 years and still no reply. There will be hell to pay for this by the church.
