
God in the machine: my strange journey into transhumanism - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/god-in-the-machine-my-strange-journey-into-transhumanism
======
ilamont
_In the late 19th century, a Russian Orthodox ascetic named Nikolai Fedorov
was inspired by Darwinism to argue that humans could direct their own
evolution to bring about the resurrection. Up to this point, natural selection
had been a random phenomenon, but now, thanks to technology, humans could
intervene in this process. Calling on biblical prophecies, he wrote: “This day
will be divine, awesome, but not miraculous, for resurrection will be a task
not of miracle but of knowledge and common labour.”

This theory was carried into the 20th century by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a
French Jesuit priest and palaeontologist who, like Fedorov, believed that
evolution would lead to the Kingdom of God. In 1949, Teilhard proposed that in
the future all machines would be linked to a vast global network that would
allow human minds to merge. Over time, this unification of consciousness would
lead to an intelligence explosion – the “Omega Point” – enabling humanity to
“break through the material framework of Time and Space” and merge seamlessly
with the divine. The Omega Point is an obvious precursor to Kurzweil’s
Singularity, but in Teilhard’s mind, it was how the biblical resurrection
would take place. Christ was guiding evolution toward a state of glorification
so that humanity could finally merge with God in eternal perfection.

Transhumanists have acknowledged Teilhard and Fedorov as forerunners of their
movement, but the religious context of their ideas is rarely mentioned. Most
histories of the movement attribute the first use of the term transhumanism to
Julian Huxley, the British eugenicist and close friend of Teilhard’s who, in
the 1950s, expanded on many of the priest’s ideas in his own writings – with
one key exception. Huxley, a secular humanist, believed that Teilhard’s
visions need not be grounded in any larger religious narrative._

It's been a while since I read _Singularity_ , but does Kurzweil mention
Teilhard or Huxley?

