Pulse
7 Jul 2025
Two of the most prescient books published in the first half of the last century are arguably Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (published in 1932) and George Orwell’s 1984 (first published in 1949). They envision how the invasion of two technologies will reshape our world (including our culture, imagination and self-understanding) over the next two generations.
1984 describes the use of what we now call information technology by a totalitarian empire to put every individual and household under surveillance and control. Brave New World, on the other hand, portrays a world in which human beings are richly enhanced by biotechnology. Francis Fukuyama brilliantly describes the imagined ‘utopia’ in Huxley’s work thus in Our Posthuman Future,
In this world, disease and social conflict have been abolished, there is no depression, madness, loneliness, or emotional distress, sex is good and readily available. There is even a government ministry to ensure that the length of time between the appearance of a desire and its satisfaction is kept to a minimum.
Among the two, the more frightening scenario is arguably the one presented in Brave New World. This is because the population freely believed in what science and technology promised and willingly subjected themselves to their dictates. As the Jewish philosopher and bioethicist, Leon Kass, puts it:
Unlike the man reduced by disease or slavery, the people dehumanized à la Brave New World are not miserable, don’t know that they are dehumanized, and, what is worse, would not care if they knew. They are, indeed, happy slaves with a slavish happiness.
Huxley’s dystopian world presupposes a certain attitude to (or veneration of) science and technology and how they can be employed to ‘improve’ the human condition. It presents a dangerous scientism which teaches the dogma that science (and its cousin technology) has the ability to ‘solve’ all of the world’s problems.
It is this attitude towards science and technology that we find in a movement which had its beginnings in the late 1950s and which is fast gaining traction today – not just in popular culture, but also in academia.
The movement that I am referring to is Transhumanism.
WHAT IS TRANSHUMANISM?
The term ‘transhumanism’ was coined by Julius Huxley in his now famous 1957 article simply entitled ‘Transhumanism.’ According to Huxley:
The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself – not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, and individual there is another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature.
The evolutionary biologist, with eugenics visions of a future utopia, adds that ‘once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new existence, as different from ours and ours is from the Pekin man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its destiny.’
It is clear from these statements that Huxley believes in the transformation of the human species into ‘a new existence’, which is profoundly different from its current form at this point in its evolution.
Nick Bostrom, the Swedish philosopher at Oxford University, expands on Huxley’s account of transhumanism. He writes:
Transhumanism is a loosely defined movement that has developed gradually over the past two decades, and can be viewed as an outgrowth of secular humanism and the Enlightenment. It holds that current human nature is improvable through the use of applied science and other rational methods, which may make it possible to increase human health-span, extend our intellectual and physical capacities, and give us control over our mental states and moods.
According to Bostrom, transhumanism grew from the soil of secular humanism and the Enlightenment. This explains the confidence it has in science and technology (‘other rational methods’) to achieve its goals of transcending current human limits and hastening the evolution of the species.
This view is consistently and succinctly presented by Humanity+ founded in 1998 (previously known as the World Transhumanist Association). In the words of the ‘Transhumanist Declaration’:
Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth.
Transhumanists bemoan the human nature that they have received from the impersonal forces of evolution, but take comfort in the fact that these very same forces have gifted them with the capacity for science and technology, which they can now use to surmount the limitations of their nature.
Bostrom puts this across clearly, his confidence in science evidently unassailable:
Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution. Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become post human, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have.
BRANCHES OF TRANSHUMANISM
Some scholars have identified at least three branches of transhumanism, all of which are inspired and energized by the same worldview and aim at the same goal.
Individual Transhumanism
The first branch may be described as individual transhumanism. Here we are looking at the aspirations of the transhumanist as an individual, which Anders Sandberg has helpfully summarized as ‘ambition to live a life supported by enhancements so as to achieve better health and mental capacity, refined emotions, new abilities, and longevity, and perhaps become a posthuman.’
Individual transhumanism receives its inspiration from the concept of extropy advanced in the 1990s by the Extropy Institute. The Extropian Principles 2.5 states:
Extropy: A measure of intelligence, information, energy, vitality, experience, diversity, opportunity, and growth. Extropianism: The philosophy that seeks to increase extropy.
Transhumanists are motivated by this outlook to employ every means that science and technology have afforded to enhance and improve the human condition.
As the philosopher and futurist Max More (who is also Ambassador and President Emeritus of Alcor Life Extension Foundation) puts it, extropianism can provide ‘an inspiring and uplifting meaning and direction to our lives, while remaining flexible and firmly grounded in science, reason, and the boundless search for improvement.’
Terrestrial Transhumanism
Terrestrial transhumanism expands the scope to include the future of humankind as a species or at least our current civilization. As Sandberg explains:
A typical version is expressed as a story of technological progress, occurring either automatically or as a result of deliberate effort, and leading to a series of human condition-changing technologies (e.g., life extension, cognitive enhancement, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, brain-computer symbiosis, whole-brain emulation, space colonization). In any case, the new technological capabilities enable humans to become enhanced transhumans and eventually posthumans – that is, beings largely liberated from the constraints imposed by natural evolution.
The main drivers of this version of transhumanism are Ray Kurzweil (computer scientist and futurist), Hans Moravec (adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA), and Eliezer Yudkowsky (artificial intelligence researcher and futurist).
Cosmist Transhumanism
The cosmist transhumanist casts his vision even wider to encompass the entire known universe. His emphasis is on the profound implications on the emergence of intelligence, not just for planet Earth, but throughout the entire cosmos.
Sandberg has again helpfully summarized this perspective:
First life, and then intelligence, emerges on Earth. Intelligence becomes technological, masters the natural world, and eventually begins to colonize space. As intelligence spreads, it converts resources in its environment into things of value to it: both instrumentally useful tools for expansion and protection (spacecraft, backups) and intrinsically valuable things (biospheres, cultures, minds).
It is not surprising that cosmist transhumanists have proposed their own ‘eschatologies’ – their visions of the fully evolved cosmos.
One proposal -associated with Ray Kurzweil – is that the entire universe ‘wakes up’, that is, becomes intelligent.
Another version – associated with the mathematical physicist and cosmologist Frank Tipler (who is influenced by the Roman Catholic theologian and scientist, Teilhard de Chardin) – envisages intelligence becoming increasingly interconnected, resulting in a super-mind or super-social entity.
CONCLUSION
Evidently, there is much that the Judeo-Christian tradition can – and must – say in response to transhumanism and the metaphysics and anthropology upon which it is grounded. Transhumanism’s confidence in science and technology and their ability to shape the human future it envisions must also be rigorously interrogated from the standpoint of Christian theology.
In addition, a critical review of this movement must include a critique of its Christian advocates. For example, according to the Christian transhumanist Micah Redding, ‘Christianity is transhumanism. It’s not just that they are compatible. Christianity is a distinctly transhumanist viewpoint sprung up in the first century, and set out to reshape both the world and human nature.’
A critique of transhumanism from the Christian perspective must seriously take into consideration ostensibly Christian viewpoints such as these, besides many other topics.
This will be the task of succeeding articles on the subject of Transhumanism.
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.