Absolutely not mainstream.

In a comment to a prior SIMF post I mentioned The Religious Case Against Belief (I wrote a little about it here) — essentially a critique of the view that religion = belief system… as in the kind of closed-door belief system or ideology that insists it has a complete & inerrant explanation for everything. From Carse’s POV (& mine) fundamentalism, for example, isn’t “religion” — it’s belief system. Because belief systems claim to have “all the answers,” they have no questions — no sense of mystery, & a rejection of any new knowledge that might contradict the belief system.

As an example for the difference between religion & belief system, Carse discusses the case of Galileo v. the Pope of his time. Galileo was a Christian, but also a scientist who was always working to refine the truths he found in his method — i.e., scientific methodology — which is more “religious” than claims that “the Pope in inerrant” or “the Bible (or whatever text) is inerrant” ideologies of religion-inspired belief systems.

As my calculus tutor in high school taught me, “no system can contain a metasystem.” Religious belief systems get that ass-backwards. Real religion, & real science, don’t.

“I’m often told that science strips away comforting illusions or the mysteries that add beauty and meaning to life. Yet which is a more potent (let alone true) image – stars as glittering nails in crystal domes, or as incandescent engines that create life? Science needs no pious platitudes or sloppy metaphors. Science doesn’t strip away the grandeur of the universe; the intricate patterns only become lovelier as more keep appearing and coming into focus. Science leads to connections across scales, from universes to quarks. And we, with our ardent desire and ability to know ever more, are lucky enough to be at the nexus of all this richness.”

I discuss the “separability” issue further in my H+ Magazine article Ghost in the Shell: Why Our Brains Will Never Live in the Matrix.

In that sense, as “ultimate concern,” that this post is about a profoundly “religious” question. And lo! comments have immediately brought that to the fore in comparing transhumanism to evangelical Christianity, gnosticism, etc. I would say, though, not only to evangelical Christianity, but lots else that we see of the dysfunctional & sick way that religion manifests when it claims the superiority of “spirit” over physicality, & demands that its adherents abhor the body — & so “celibate” Catholic priests sexually abusing kids, & so “family values” evangelicals like Ted Haggard & his ilk self-tortured by internalized homophobia, etc.

Religion & science both go off the deep end when they loses track of “the ground of being” — the phrase Paul Tillich used to describe the foundation of existence (ontology). If you take it literally, “ground of being” for us humans is the ground we walk on, substance of the planet, our physicality. How did people ever decided that “spirit” was somehow separable from the body? “Spirit” from Latin spiritus meaning “breath” — but we can’t breathe without lungs (not to mention the rest of the respiratory & circulatory system), which are physical. Duh.

Just because atheism doesn’t acknowledge belief in “god” doesn’t rule out a sensibility of “religion” in the sense of the ultimate concerns about existence (ontology again). In that sense, seems to me that transhumanism is bad science & bad religion rolled into one. I still like a lot of cyberpunk, but it loses me whenever it turns into “true believer” about this removal of spirit from the body it can’t breathe without.

I’m also of the opinion that the Singularity will never happen, at least not the Rupture variety. Other variants won’t be unique, because several events in humanity’s evolutions have also been singularities: writing; plant and animal domestication; etc.

The Singularitarians acknowledge that the advent of the “Big Bang” variant of the Singularity would lead to the end of humanity as we know it — but they hope to be “uplifted” like the Righteous at the Second Coming.

Gnosticism is fascinating because it’s older than Christianity and continued to evolve as a set of syncretic beliefs long after Christianity came into existence.

Gnosticism, like transhumanism, is interesting to read about, but like you I dislike their rejection and abhorrence of physicality. (Actually, I find gnosticism more interesting; most SF stories beyond the Singularity are difficult to get into. And I don’t believe the Singularity will happen.)