[ExI] [ExtroBritannia] RE: Humanity+ Talk Religion & transhumanism (not the usual!)

[Amon Zero]

On 6 September 2011 01:57, Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:

> **
>
>
> Pray is a strange request.
>

Heh - apologies; apparently my email went through a 16th Century English
filter  ;-)   "Pray tell" just means "please do say"...


> Made me laugh. But anyway, I mean that most
>
> transhumanists are not militant atheists. Trust refers to the reliance.
> But I it is a typo because I wanted to say "thrust".
>


Ah - ok. Well, I have to say that there is a large overlap with the
increasingly strident atheist community, but it is of course hard to keep
track of how many futurist-inclined atheists identify as transhumanists and
vice versa in the absence of a large, formal survey. Suffice to say that I'd
be extremely surprised if it turned out that the majority of transhumanists
identified as strong religious believers. I am aware of a number of
transhumanists with religious beliefs of one type of another, but I've
always been under the distinct impression that they are definitely in the
minority.

As for the thrust of the piece (obviously I had a long day yesterday, not
spotting that!) - well, I suppose that's why I wondered if it was a
controversial idea. I knew it certainly was ten years ago (when a number of
articles mentioning the Matrix implied such an idea - that transhumanists
are body-hating neo-Gnostics - and Erik Davis explicitly made the point in a
sustained attack on Extropianism in his book "TechGnosis"). The motivation
to write the piece came from thinking that rather than being defensive in
the face of such claims, perhaps transhumanists might use the parallel
(however flawed or inaccurate it may be) to our own advantage.

- A
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