[extropy-chat] The New Atlantis compares JPII and Transhumanism

[Joseph Bloch]

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/9/hart.htm

It's more than a year old, but some anti-Transhumanist and pro-Catholic 
blogs have just picked up on it and are breathing new life into it. 
Given the source, (The New Atlantis could well have been founded as a 
direct counter to the rise of Transhumanist thought as a respectable 
entity), we should not be surprised at the anti-Transhumanist stance of 
the author. However, his ad hominem attacks and virulence are somewhat 
startling. Some choice quotes:

"A satirist with a genius for the morbid could scarcely have invented a 
faction more depressingly sickly..."

"Obviously one is dealing here with a sensibility formed more by comic 
books than by serious thought."

"If, as I have said, the metaphysics of transhumanism is inevitably 
implied within such things as embryonic stem cell research and human 
cloning, then to embark upon them is already to invoke and invite the 
advent of a god who will, I think, be a god of boundless horror, one 
with a limitless appetite for sacrifice."

Read it all. Yikes.

Joseph Bloch
http://transhumanist.blogspot.com