Religion and the Technological Future

Abstract

Religion and the Technological Future "Like weather reporters checking our daily atmospheric pressure, for nearly two decades Mercer and Trothen have been monitoring biohacking at the frontier of the human and the posthuman. They forecast a coming storm of theological and ethical conundrums. Religion and the Technological Future tells us how to ready ourselves for the storm."

Human enhancement technologies and the future of consumer well-being

“…Such a supposedly improved being is the existential goal of transhumanism-a philosophical and technophilic social movement (Fuller, 2020). The transhumanist proposition is to drastically redesign human biology by means of human enhancement technologies (HET), such as genetic engineering (e.g., CRISPR) (Mercer and Trothen, 2021). In doing so, the idea is to create superintelligence, super longevity, and, consequently, super well-being for those partaking in HET (Human Enhancement Technologies), to overcome current human biological fragility (Pearce, 2012).…”

“…To overcome the current human biological condition, humanity must embrace technology not as a symbolic or cognitive extension tool, as in the case of smartphones, but as part of our biology (More, 1998). The speculative designing of babies from "scratch" using gene-editing techniques (e.g., CRISPR) to eliminate life-threatening conditions, cybernetically enhancing the body of those already born to achieve machine-like capacities , and infusing psychopharmaceuticals into the human body to increase cognition, happiness, and even morality are all technological possibilities to become "better" (Mercer and Trothen, 2021).…”

“…Booms and Bitner (1981) state that products are well-defined offers targeted at specific markets. Although HET may have clear targets (e.g., transhumanists), most are experimental and even speculative by nature (Mercer and Trothen, 2021). This means that a number of known and unknown challenges are expected on the way to achieving the desired transhumanist biological condition or, in other words, one that is supposedly "harder, better, faster, and stronger.…”

“…To tackle the moral issue of dangerous selective human enhancement, democracies should provide the enhancement of moral dispositions for all citizens. This, in turn, would presumably extend moral concerns about others' well-being beyond the immediate social circle and include those existing in the future (Mercer and Trothen, 2021). Such moral enhancement can be ideally achieved by becoming more altruistic, peaceful, kind, friendly, and so forth by means of consuming drugs (e.g., psilocybin) and undergoing genetic engineering procedures (e.g., introducing the MAOA gene) (Earp and Savulescu, 2020).…”

“…The speculative designing of babies from “scratch” using gene-editing techniques (e.g. CRISPR) to eliminate life-threatening conditions, cybernetically enhancing the body of those already born to achieve machine-like capacities and infusing psychopharmaceuticals into the human body to increase cognition, happiness and even morality are all technological possibilities to become “better” (Mercer and Trothen, 2021).…”