[ExI] Subject: Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion

[Amara Graps]

Samantha has a knack for giving beautiful birthday gifts to people
(in this instance, it was a beautiful contemplation on _her_ birthday).


Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> :

>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?

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA
Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson