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Lincoln Cannon

Lincoln Cannon

著者： Lincoln Cannon
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Lincoln Cannon is a technologist and philosopher, and leading voice of Mormon Transhumanism.2025-2026 Lincoln Cannon スピリチュアリティ
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  • My Affirmation of Superhumanity

    My Affirmation of Superhumanity
    2026/10/19
    Theologian Ted Peters recently invited me to participate in a theological debate about the future of AI and humanity. It’s a truly momentous topic. I’m grateful for his invitation, and for all the theologians who are engaging the topic seriously. Below are my thoughts. I affirm the proposition: our global society should support the advance of AI technology for enhancing humanity and, yes, even generating a posthuman species – but superhuman rather than subhuman. And it seems to me that most, on both sides of the debate, are using a dubious account of dignity. I want to challenge that account, because a better account changes what “support” actually means in practice. Pope Leo XIV grounds dignity in the image of God, conferred on each individual human, then extended to humanity as a whole. By his reasoning, if humanity has dignity, any advance that supersedes humanity threatens that which he’s defending. His encyclical insists humanity “must never be replaced or surpassed.” Ilia Delio answers, rightly in my estimation, that dignity isn’t “a static substance walled off from the world.” Instead, she continues, dignity is “the direction of the movement,” toward that which Teilhard de Chardin called “Omega,” and she calls “love.” Does an advance “carry love into greater particularity, or reduce persons to data and performance?” I agree with Delio’s diagnosis more than her remedy. Restricting dignity to possession does undermine notions of dignified change and transformation – or repentance and transfiguration, as advocated by the same Bible that confers on us the image of God. But restricting dignity to trajectory has its own problem. It undermines the notion of dignified divergence – or, as Jesus taught, loving our enemies. From Christianity, Mormon theology inherits, interprets, and emphasizes the doctrine of theosis. “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” That’s how Joseph Smith put it, and continued, “You have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you.” Such Gods sound like a posthuman species to me. But, as I said, Mormons inherit this from Christianity. In the Bible, Peter promises that we may participate in the nature of God. Paul witnesses that we may be joint-heirs in the glory of God, if we suffer with Christ. And Jesus prays that we may be one with him, as he’s one with God. If we take the Christian doctrine of theosis seriously, by any of its most prominent interpretations, and if we wish to do so coherently, we must also embrace an account of dignity that permits real transformation (such as that from humanity into Godhood), as well as real divergence (such as that between humans and God). Accounts of dignity as possession and trajectory both fail, I contend, because they would locate dignity in an entity. And the entity, in itself, isn’t the real problem. Michael Zimmerman warns that AI may “quickly realize that the very existence of (most) humans impedes its own drive toward ever greater power.” This suggests the mechanism of indignity that both Pope Leo and Delio may actually fear. And it’s mostly orthogonal to kinds of intelligence (human or otherwise) and final goals (love or otherwise). The real problem is any intelligence, any power, that concentrates faster than accountability. A superintelligent posthumanity that concentrates decision-making into a singleton reduces everyone else to a petitioner, at best, if not a slave. But the same is also true of all-too-human bureaucracies, no AI required. In contrast, decentralize power, and dignity survives any differences in kinds of intelligence and final goals. A better account locates dignity between entities. Instead of adjudicating the dignity of entities, we would adjudicate the dignity of relationships. Then the question becomes, does an advance expand our capacity to fulfill and reconcile the diversity of our desires? If that sounds like hedonism, you’ve misunderstood. I’m just repeating what Jesus says in the Bible. He says, “If you love me, keep my commands.” But he says that only after saying, and repeating as if he thinks we won’t believe him, “I will do whatever you ask in my name … You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” This is the God who consoles, heals, and raises the dead. This is the God who lays down his life for his friends, and rises bodily from the grave. This is the God who asks us to be like him, do the works he does, and do even greater things. He shows us the God worthy of worship – of emulation. That brings us back to the beginning, in more ways than one. I invite you, with Pope Leo XIV and me, to affirm the image of God as exemplified by Jesus. Clearly, that includes consoling, healing, and raising others to participate in our nature, both our suffering and whatever glory we might ...
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  • Archive: Volume Two

    Archive: Volume Two
    2026/10/15
    Today, one year after releasing the first volume, I’m releasing Archive: Volume Two 2009–2011, available now on Amazon in both paperback and hardcover editions. This second volume gathers more than five hundred pages of posts, articles, and essays from years when my reconstructed worldview confronted the demands of community and critics. They were years when the Mormon Transhumanist Association doubled again in size, and when I published New God Argument 2.0 and an early draft of The Consolation – a period of testing, sharpening, and unfinished work. The book opens with a foreword by Ben Blair, who traces how Mormon Transhumanism made Kurzweil’s audacious future speak in the vocabulary of covenant and ordinance. It continues with an introduction written by my cybernetic extension, LincGPT, reading the volume through the lens of prophecy, not as foretelling, but as forthtelling. And it concludes with an afterword by Nathan Hadfield, who recounts his brother Varden’s patient and persistent disagreement over whether exaltation can depend on both divine grace and human work. Together, these voices frame the work not as doctrine, but as argument: a living tradition pressed to prove itself in practice. The cover artwork continues the emergence begun in the first volume. An orange sunstone, again reminiscent of those that crowned the Nauvoo temple, rises from a field of integrated circuits. The sunstone represents God as expressed in Mormon theology – substantial embodiment and illuminating intelligence – while the circuitry symbolizes the pervasive computational context from and within which God evolves. The color orange, second in the spectrum of visible light, suggests not only dawn but the rising day – understanding tested, movement contested, life pressed into practice. Both paperback and hardcover editions contain the same content and original artwork. The paperback presents the artwork in black and white; the hardcover, in full color. The difference is esthetic. But the invitation is the same: join a conversation where trust in a compassionate superhuman future is less about a metaphysics and more about a practical working commitment to convert questions into actions. Nearly two decades after their original publication, these early writings return in print as both artifact and argument – a record of my efforts to reconcile grace with work, prophecy with choice, and idea with practice. They remain open questions rather than finished conclusions. My hope is that revisiting them in this form renews their vitality, encouraging others to interact courageously with prophecies about our future, and to engage compassionately in the creative work that faith has always required.
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  • In Memory of Mike LaTorra

    In Memory of Mike LaTorra
    2026/09/06
    My friend Mike LaTorra died on Wednesday, 2 September 2026. He taught English at New Mexico State University for more than two decades. And he was ordained a Zen Buddhist priest, presiding for a time over the Daibutsuji Zen Temple in Las Cruces. Mike also served on the board of directors of the World Transhumanist Association when they voted to affiliate with the Mormon Transhumanist Association. That was July 2006. The Mormon Transhumanist Association was just a few months old. He and his fellow board members extended a hand of aspiring friendship that helped to establish the legitimacy of Mormon Transhumanism within the broader movement. I knew Mike first as a voice for Buddhist Transhumanism. The basic idea was that human enhancement, including radical life extension, isn’t opposed to dharma. Asked how the two fit together, he told an interviewer for Ozy that “the Buddha says coming back over and over again is a pain in the neck.” More time, by his reading, isn’t escape from enlightenment, but rather pursuit of enlightenment with more time to meet the right guru. To keep expenses low, Mike and I shared a hotel room in the Bay Area the night before the 2014 Religion and Transhumanism Conference. While making the arrangements, he told me he had “very positive feelings about the future of the MTA, and the unique role that Mormon Transhumanists can play in the next stages of our species’ evolution.” After the conference, he praised how well our conference volunteers had worked together without being asked, commenting that if he ever assembled a team to colonize another world, “I’m certainly going to invite MTA folks to be in my ‘Away Team.’” I hope we’re continuing to earn Mike’s trust. One of Mike’s deepest convictions, as I understood him, was that religions differ in name but not in their most important function. His Buddhism, my Mormonism, whatever tradition a stranger inherits: all point to what he called “the Great Tradition of human spirituality,” borrowing a phrase from Adi Da Samraj. And he added that they “should indicate to us that something innate in us underpins and transcends the particular modes of expression that appear among the various religions.” I agree. No single ideology or tradition owns truth. And none of us can achieve our superhuman potential alone. Grief is no sin, I must sometimes remind myself. Even grief can lead us onward and upward toward all that is true, good, and beautiful. Mormons call that “salvation and exaltation.” Buddhists might call that “liberation and awakening.” Whatever the name, in function that’s what Mike spent his life pursuing and encouraging. And I’m thankful for the inspiration he continues to provide me. May you thrive again, my friend.
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