Pulse
20 Apr 2026
One of the most worrying consequences of the rise and ever-increasing influence of the movement called transhumanism is that it might usher in a new eugenics.
The word ‘eugenics’ transports us to a very dark period in our recent history, and to the persecutory policies of the Nazis which led to the murder of at least six million Jews. It was first coined by Francis Galton (1822-1911), the cousin of the famous biologist Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Galton derived this word from the Greek eugenes, which means ‘good in birth’ or ‘good in stock’.
Thus, from its very inception, eugenics is about controlling the propagation of the human species in such a way that its inferior members are either eliminated, or prevented from being born. As a matter of fact, Galton strongly believed that deliberate measures can and should be taken to control the course of human evolution and enhance human development, believing that such efforts will benefit the human species.
Nazi eugenics in the 1930s, based as it was on the idea of ‘racial hygiene’ (Rassenhygiene), was inspired by Galton’s vision, and similarly premised on pseudoscience, a distorted understanding of humanity, and a profound, if sometimes unarticulated, set of prejudices.
Most literature on eugenics would make the distinction between positive and negative eugenics.
Positive eugenics refer to efforts to ensure, as far as it is possible, that the population consists of people with ‘desirable traits’, such as a high Intelligence Quotient. Historically, measures that have been undertaken to achieve this goal include encouraging healthy and high-achieving people to have more children, or introducing public policies to encourage them to marry and start a family.
Negative eugenics, then, is the endeavour to limit the number of people with ‘undesirable traits’ in the population. Measures such as immigration restriction and discouraging people with those traits from getting married and having children have been taken to achieve this goal.
More radical measures – such as those employed by the Nazis – include sterilization, child and adult euthanasia, and even genocide.
Both positive and negative eugenics are integral to the vision and proposals of the transhumanists, although they take on a slightly different form, as we shall see.
THE NEW EUGENICS
The negative eugenics of transhumanism is evident in its determination to rid human nature of any traits that are considered ‘limiting’ and ‘undesirable’. Positive eugenics in contrast places an emphasis on employing technology to bring about radical improvement to human capabilities such that human nature itself – as we know it – is transcended.
Ivana Greguric describes what some transhumanists think that technology is able to do with regard to human enhancement thus:
The usage of bioelectronics enables us to connect new technologies with human nervous system on a high-functioning level, nanotechnologies and nanomachines coupled with genetic engineering can affect biological changes within the cells, bringing further changes in the human biological structure. There are two dominant courses of improving and reshaping the human body. On the one hand, the human body is ‘dematerialised’ in the infinite time-space of the virtual world, using digital information, and on the other hand, the technical implants and artificial additions turn a man into a partially artificial being – cyborg, with a tendency for replacing all organic bodily parts and their functions, creating a robot.
Greguric explores all the possible ways in which technology can bring improvements to the human condition beginning with certain interventions such as genetic engineering, and ending with the frightening scenario of the complete robotisation of the human being.
Be that as it may, in the transhumanist account, negative and positive eugenics are the two sides of the same coin.
The influences behind the transhumanist version of eugenics are many.
Like most eugenic ideologies, the transhumanist account received its most fundamental inspiration from the work of Francis Galton. However, transhumanism also drew from French philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Like the mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), transhumanists believe that the human condition can be vastly improved with the advance of the sciences, especially medicine. And like the philosopher Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-1794), they look forward to the day that even death itself will be conquered by science.
It is important to note that many – if not all – transhumanists reject the old, Nazi-style eugenics. They embrace what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has called ‘liberal eugenics.’
The old eugenics is practiced through coercion and policies imposed by a totalitarian regime which violates the freedom and autonomy of its subjects. Liberal eugenics, on the other hand, allows individuals to freely take advantage of all the biotechnology available for enhancement purposes.
Transhumanists who energetically support liberal eugenics have argued that this approach is non-coercive as it allows individuals to make their own choices to use (or not to use) the technologies at their disposal.
It is therefore not surprising that most transhumanists advocate a radical version of human rights, which works on the premise that citizens are autonomous beings. They alone should decide on whether to do any modifications on their brain, DNA or bodies.
Philosophers such as Nick Bostrom, John Harris and Julian Savulescu (who is currently the Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor in Medical Ethics at the National University of Singapore) who are energetic advocates of human enhancement all disavow the old eugenics. The identify as the ‘new’ eugenicists who champion liberal values such as liberty and autonomy.
However, in reality, liberal eugenics is coercive in a different way as society places intangible pressure on individuals to choose augmentation so as not to be at a disadvantage.
Instead of implementing draconian and oppressive policies to force individuals to subject themselves to enhancement, the liberal eugenicists are content to let social convention and the tyranny of the masses do the job. The outcome is pretty much the same.
DIGNITY AND VOCATION
All forms of eugenics are – at a very basic level – a social engineering programme which seeks to improve the human condition and eradicate ‘undesirable’ traits (and in some cases, ‘undesirable’ people or groups). While the ‘new’ eugenics espoused by the transhumanists, with its appeal to autonomy, seem to have the advantage of gaining greater public acceptance, it is nonetheless equally exploitative and manipulative.
Regrettably, Protestant churches have had a chequered history in her relationship with eugenics. This is especially the case for more liberal or progressive Protestants who embrace Darwinian evolution and its social implications.
In her book, Preaching Genetics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement, Christine Rosen writes:
Protestants proved the most enthusiastic and numerically powerful group of religious participants in eugenics movements. Supporters ranged from high-ranking clerics to small town ministers in the Methodist, Unitarian, Congregational, Protestant Episcopal, Baptist and Presbyterian churches. Furthermore, a substantial number of theological leaders embraced Darwinism.
Be that as it may, Christians must challenge the enhancement and eugenics programme of the transhumanists by asking some fundamental questions.
Does transhumanist eugenics violate the dignity of the human being?
Take the example of mind-uploading. Does uploading the information in the brain onto a computer and attaching it to a mechanical and robotic substrate which replaces the flesh-and-blood body violate the basic dignity of the individual?
Does transhumanist eugenics transgress the vocation and telos of the human being created in the image of God?
Transhumanism of every stripe laments the frailty and limitations of human nature as we know it. Its vision is to transcend these impediments through the instrumentality of science and technology.
But the transhumanist fantasy, it must be stressed, is not simply to improve on certain traits and capabilities, but to transcend human nature altogether and bring into being the post- or trans- human.
This is clearly a transgression of the purpose of the Creator, which is to allow the creatures that he has brought into being to reflect more fully the divine image in which they have been created. In other words, the Christian vision is for the creatures who bear the divine image to be more human, not post or trans human.
Will transhumanist eugenics exacerbate the inequalities that already prevail in our world by creating the great and unbridgeable distinction between enhanced human beings and their un-enhanced counterparts?
Since I have used mind-loading to illustrate an earlier point, I’ll use it again here. Even the most enthusiastic proponents of mind-uploading recognise that this process (if it were even possible), would be extremely costly.
This is because mind-uploading requires the input of an inter-disciplinary team of experts including top neuroscientists, engineers, computer scientists, robotics experts, etc. In addition, it would require supercomputers to store the vast amount of data in a single human brain.
It is obvious that only the wealthiest could have access to this technology. The same concern applies to other technologies such as genetic engineering, and nanotechnology.
If the transhumanist fantasy is realised, the population of rational beings on earth will be divided into two castes: the trans-humans and the un-enhanced homo sapiens. Will this new world order bring about and exacerbate old evils such as discrimination, ostracization, and slavery?
On 21 February 2009, Pope Benedict XVI gave an address to the members of the Pontifical Academy for Life on occasion of its 15th General Assembly. Although the speech was written many years ago, and for a very different context, the words of the Pope are still relevant as we reflect on transhumanism and eugenics.
I reproduce the key paragraph in full:
It is necessary to reiterate that every form of discrimination practiced by any authority with regard to persons, peoples or races on the basis of differences traceable to real or presumed genetic factors is an attack on the whole humanity. What must be strongly reaffirmed is the equal dignity of every human being by the fact that he has been born. A person’s biological, mental and cultural development or state of health must never become a discriminatory factor. On the contrary, it is necessary to consolidate the culture of acceptance and love showing real solidarity towards those who suffer. It must break down the barriers that society often builds by discriminating against those who are disabled or affected by pathologies, or, worse, even reaching the selection and rejection of life in the name of an abstract ideal of health and physical perfection. If the human being is reduced to an object of experimental manipulation from the very earliest stages of his development this means that biotechnological medicine has surrendered to the will of the stronger. Trust in science must not make one forget the primacy of ethics when human life is at stake.
The fatal flaw of the transhumanist project is that it champions the titanism of the human spirit but lacks the bridle of a sound and robust moral vision.
The result is hubris and a delusional grandiosity which the Bible calls sin, where mortals, in refusing to accept their own finitude, attempt to ‘play God’.
Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor at Trinity Theological College (Singapore) and Theological and Research Advisor of the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.