[ExI] Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion

[Samantha Atkins]

I remember in 1988 or so when I first read Engines of Creation.  I read 
it with tears streaming down my face.  Though I was an avowed atheist 
and at that time had no spiritual practice at all, I found it profoundly 
spiritually moving.  For the first time in my life I believed that all 
the highest hopes and dreams of humanity could become real, could be 
made flesh.   I saw that it was possible, on this earth, that the end of 
death from aging and disease, the end of physical want, the advent of 
tremendous abundance could all come to pass in my own lifetime.  I saw 
that great abundance, knowledge, peace and good will could come to this 
world.  I cried because it was a message of such pure hope from so 
unexpected an angle that it got past all my defenses.  I looked at the 
cover many times to see if it was marked "New Age" or "Fiction" or 
anything but Science and Non-Fiction.  Never has any book so blown my 
mind and blasted open the doors of my heart.

Should we be afraid to give a message of great hope to humanity?  Should 
we be afraid that we will be taken to be just more pie in the sky 
glad-hand dreamers?   Should we not dare to say that the science and the 
technology combined with a bit (well perhaps more than a bit) of a shift 
of consciousness could make all the best dreams of all the religions and 
all the generations a reality?   Will we not have failed to grasp this 
great opportunity if we do not say it and dare to think it and to live 
it?   Shall we be so afraid of being considered "like a religion" that 
we do not offer any real hope to speak of and are oh so careful in all 
we do and say and dismissive of more unrestrained and open dreamers?    
Or will we embrace them, embrace our own deepest longings and admit our 
kinship with those religious as with all the longing of all the 
generations that came before us.  Will we turn our backs on them or even 
disdain their dreams - we who are in a position to begin at long last to 
make most of those dreams real?   How can we help but be a bit giddy 
with excitement?   How can we say no to such an utterly amazing 
mind-blowing opportunity?

- samantha