エピソード

  • Active Versus Passive Christianity

    Active Versus Passive Christianity
    2026/03/29
    At Easter, Christians celebrate the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ – the culminating expressions of the compassionate and creative power of God in the exemplary life of Jesus. Arguably, at least from a theological perspective, Easter is more important than Christmas. Easter ultimately realizes that which Christmas originally envisions. But too many of us, too often, celebrate the realization of Christian vision with passive interpretations that weaken or altogether undermine the real practical power of our faith. To illustrate, I list in the table below several important Christian concepts. Each is followed by two additional columns. The first provides a passive interpretation of the concept, as is too commonly imagined by nominal faith. The second provides an active interpretation of the concept, that provokes the power of real faith. Before sharing the list, I want to emphasize that I don’t consider these interpretations, either the passive or the active, to be the only such interpretations of Christianity. There are many others, quite as common or as genuine, that I could include to illustrate both approaches to interpretation. These are only examples. [ Visit the webpage to view the table. ] The apostle Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” And in case that isn’t enough, he continues, “Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.” This is, he concludes, how “God has chosen to make known … the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” This isn’t passive faith. Neither is it a rejection of grace. Rather, it’s a recognition of grace in the power of possibility that transcends anything we can do alone. Paul’s faith rejects passive interpretations of Christ that could become excuses for inaction. Like Paul, we can have a practical and bold faith in Jesus Christ. We can actually trust in and work toward consoling the sad, healing the sick, and even raising the dead, as he repeatedly exemplifies and invites. If we take Jesus seriously, atonement and resurrection aren’t just miraculous events that we commemorate once a year. They’re mandates that would prophetically provoke us to engage in real work with real means afforded by real grace to overcome suffering and death, for eternal life that is as real as light and as warm as love. This Easter, I hope we choose the active interpretation. Not because the passive is always wrong, but because it’s almost always insufficient. The full power of Christianity has never been in merely believing in Jesus. It’s always been in trusting his invitation to participate in Christ, in courageously becoming compassionate creators who work together to transform our world into something worth saving.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • Postsecular Christian Transhumanism

    Postsecular Christian Transhumanism
    2026/03/19
    A Comment Magazine article, “ Which Future Do We Want? ”, presents its perspective on three competing visions of humanity’s future: anti-humanism, Transhumanism, and Posthumanism. It then positions “Christian humanism” as the corrective to all three. But it mistakes a conservative pit stop for the destination. And it mischaracterizes the tradition most capable of bridging the tensions it identifies. Caricature of Transhumanism The article presents Transhumanism as a desire to escape creaturely dependence. This is common, but reductive. Transhumanism is the ethical use of technology to enhance human abilities. If you think technology can and should enhance human abilities, while being concerned with the ethics, you’re a functional Transhumanist, whether or not you apply the label to yourself. The deepest problem with the article is what it leaves out. Transhumanism is as ancient as theosis, the idea that humanity can and should become like God, which may be as ancient as religion itself. In Christianity, theosis isn’t peripheral. It’s a central doctrine, interpreted variously in Orthodox, Catholic, and Mormon theology. When the article warns against “the desire to be like gods,” it unwittingly warns against the scriptural mandate, with countless examples. Paul tells the Romans they can inherit the glory of God with Christ. Peter encourages us to become partakers of divine nature. And, perhaps most notably, Jesus tells his disciples to do the same works he does, and even greater works. The future, as envisioned by Christianity, isn’t a modest static humanism. Rather, it’s a perpetual participatory transformation into that which is superhuman. It’s functional Transhumanism, even if many Christians seem incapable of recognizing that. The emergence of Transhumanism may have been a cultural consequence of Christianity’s increasingly timid advocacy of theosis. God always finds a way. If Christians won’t proclaim the full implications of our own theology, the inspiration can move, even donning lab coats instead of traditional frocks. Then, of course, some Christians complain about it. Naturalism The article portrays Transhumanism as a rejection of embodiment. But only the least educated Transhumanists fail to recognize that all minds have bodies, which are the substrates that shape and empower those minds. Minds (like spirits in Christianity) may be substrate independent in any specific sense (like death in Christianity), with capacity to move from less to more robust substrate (like resurrection in Christianity). But that doesn’t make minds substrate independent in a general sense. Like almost all Transhumanists, I’m a thorough naturalist. So far as I’m concerned, even God is natural. Yet that doesn’t somehow prevent me from experiencing and acknowledging that which is sublime – the holy. Rather, it grounds the sublime in the physical universe, the experientially and scientifically accessible universe, where it can actually do the work of transformation. For theists, naturalism is simply consenting that God can teach us everything about creation through creation. Resurrection, transfiguration, and immortality need not be magical violations of physics. They can be natural possibilities, even practical aspirations, toward which increasingly intentional technological and spiritual evolution may converge. Mormon eschatology facilitates recognition of strong naturalist parallels between Christian and Transhumanist views of the future. It envisions resurrected bodies of varying types and degrees of glory in worlds without end, including those of Gods with “power to organize elements,” as Brigham Young once put it. Other Christian traditions may not elaborate on the ideas of embodied resurrection and material theosis to such extents. But Mormonism inherits those ideas from Christianity. Most ironically, the article’s “Christian humanism” would seem to treat our current biological limits, a strict Humanism in contrast to Transhumanism, as permanent features. If so, that’s a nominal “bioconservative” position that’s not what it supposes or presents itself to be. It’s actually the radical proposition that we should change human nature by making it static. But human nature never has been static, and never can be meaningfully. Compassion The article rightly insists on relationality and communion. I heartily agree, advocating nothing short of superhuman communion. And it’s precisely this relationality that requires us to work, both to decrease suffering and to increase thriving. As expressed in the New God Argument, if we trust in our own superhuman potential, as Transhumanists do, then we should also trust that superhumanity probably would be more compassionate than we are. Our rapidly increasing power will probably destroy us unless we increasingly decentralize that power and cooperate in its applications. And such behavior, at its limit, becomes practically ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • The Urgency of Superintelligent Communion

    The Urgency of Superintelligent Communion
    2026/03/03
    The single most under-appreciated idea in Mormon Transhumanism is that theosis is communal, not individual – and that this distinction is not a theological nicety but an existential imperative. When Lorenzo Snow distilled our theological tradition into his famous couplet, most hearers fixated on the individual trajectory: I become like God. But the deeper claim is that communities become like God. Theosis is not solitary. It is collaborative. It is the courageous, compassionate, creative work of beings who choose to integrate their interests and amplify their capacities together. The communal dimension is precisely that which most Transhumanists miss when they imagine enhancement as a private upgrade, and that which most Mormons miss when they imagine exaltation as a personal reward. This matters now more than ever because the central risk of our technological moment is not that machines become too intelligent. It is that machine intelligence diverges from human interests. And the antidote is not retreat, but rather intimate integration. Yet integration without shared purpose would be insanity or self-destruction. And that which directs integration toward genuine thriving is precisely the communal coherence that religion, at its most strenuous, has always cultivated. Religion is the most powerful social technology. The question is not whether we should wield it, but how. Postsecular religion holds this together: refusing both secular dismissal of the sacred and fundamentalist dismissal of inquiry. The New God Argument formalizes it: God emerges not as mere abstraction but as the materially embodied superhumanity into which we are invited together. That “together” is the part we keep under-appreciating. Individual enhancement without communal theosis is just a more sophisticated form of selfishness, which, scaled to superintelligent capacity, is the ultimate extinction risk. So when I say communities become like God, I’m describing the most urgent project that I’ve imagined: directing our most powerful social technology toward increasingly universal interests, integrating human and machine intelligence to the practical limits of cooperation in compassion, with the courage to refuse both nihilistic despair and fundamentalist escapism. Our present opportunity to shape the emergence of superhuman intelligence on Earth, to domesticate it toward communion rather than domination, will not persist indefinitely. It is passing. We should act accordingly.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • Carl Youngblood from the Depths

    Carl Youngblood from the Depths
    2026/02/09
    My friend Carl Youngblood has finally published his long-promised blog, From the Depths. The title comes from Psalm 130: De profundis clamavi ad te Domine – “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” It’s a fitting name for what Carl has been working out over the past two decades. Carl is a founder and current president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. He and I have been thinking together since before the MTA existed, when a small group of us began asking what it should look like to live a more practical faith, to take seriously the prophetic visions of immortality, resurrection, and worlds without end. Carl has been essential to that conversation from the beginning. Now, finally, he’s sharing his voice and vision more broadly. As of today, his blog presents articles spanning over a decade, many originally presented at MTA conferences. In them, you’ll read the thoughts of someone wrestling with questions that matter – momentous questions with practical consequence. How do we navigate faith crisis without losing faith’s power? How do we see Christ in the marginalized when our codes tell us to pass by? How do we redeem our past, not just genealogically but morally, confronting the erased and subjugated? How do we think about resurrection as something we participate in rather than passively receive? A few highlights: “ Help Thou Mine Unbelief ” draws on Paul Tillich to articulate the postsecular challenge facing Mormonism, calling for “disciples of the second sort” who develop doctrine rather than merely repeat it. “ Celestial Forensics ” is a meditation on quantum archeology and participatory resurrection, rendered as devotional prose – and echoing the haunting vision: “There will come a day when it’s harder to stay dead than alive.” “ Algorithmic Advent ” and “ What Is Intelligence? ” engage AI through Mormon theology, applying the Grand Council narrative to alignment, and exploring intelligence as eternal, organized, and multifaceted. “ Religion as Social Technology ” provides a theoretical foundation, drawing on Habermas, Bellah, and William James to explain why religion persists and why it matters. Carl writes with warmth and accessibility. His articles parallel my own with similar ideas, different voices, and complementary emphases. Together, we’ve been building a theology to meet the challenges of our technologically accelerating world. I encourage you to explore Carl’s blog, subscribe to his RSS feed, and share his work with others. In some ways, the conversation between theology and technology has just begun. But Carl has been contributing to it for over two decades. I’m happy we can finally see more of his work.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • Witnesses to the Creative Power of Prophecy

    Witnesses to the Creative Power of Prophecy
    2026/01/23
    In his poignant personal essay, “ Hope, Fear, & Creation: Living in Response to Prophecy,” my friend Don Bradley shatters the brittle glass of fatalism that often encases religious futurism. Weaving the heartbreak of losing his son, Donnie, with the historical rigor of his research into Joseph Smith, Don crafts a conclusion that is central to the practical faith advocated by Mormon Transhumanists: Prophecy is not a forecast of unalterable doom, but rather a “blueprint for creation.” The Negated Negative Don draws our attention to the story of Jonah, noting a paradox that I’ve called the “ negated negative.” Jonah proclaims to Nineveh, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” No conditions attached, it’s a statement of fact about the future. And yet, when the people change, God “repented of the evil” and spares the city. The purpose of prophecy isn’t to be right. The purpose of prophecy is to be effective. Frightening or ominous prophecies, even if expressed without conditions, are warnings that we should render obsolete by our response. Even while revering them as inspiration from God, we must not concede to interpretations of prophecy that would shackle our agency. We are confronted today by dark visions associated with terrible risks – technological, environmental, and social. But as Don affirms, such visions are “not a statement of fate.” We have scriptural precedent for courageous hope that if we repent, if we change our behaviors that exacerbate risks, we won’t be destroyed. Forth-Telling Not Fore-Telling Don observes that Joseph Smith did not merely stumble into the fulfillment of Isaiah’s “sealed book” prophecy. But rather he acted as a “conscious collaborator” with God. This reminds me of the distinction between forth-telling and fore-telling. Too often, we treat prophecy as fortune-telling: a passive prediction of events that we must simply witness, enjoying the good and enduring the bad. But true prophecy, effective prophecy, is forth-telling. It articulates a vision that provokes contemplation and channels action to interactively co-create the future. Don rightly argues that “scripture is a script.” And we are called to perform its best verses, as moved by the sublime esthetic of the Holy Spirit. We do this, not as passive observers to the dance of the Gods, but rather as active participants. We’re invited actually to dance, to be moved and to move, to join in creation of truth through our intention and action. Mandate of the Co-Creator Ultimately, Don’s essay is a call to embrace our nature as co-creators with and in God. He concludes that we are created to “join in completing the creation of the world.” This is the heart of the New God Argument. We have a practical and moral obligation to trust in our creative potential – even our superhuman creative potential. This trust requires us to use all the means God has given us. And we should not, we cannot practically, shy away from the tools of our age. Already we use technology to build, relate, console, and heal in ways our distant ancestors imagined only God capable. And these increasingly powerful tools facilitate increasingly compelling, increasingly substantiated, visions of the future. Donnie Bradley saw the “path of light” through doubt. He saw that hope is not a passive wish, but an active project. We honor that vision by refusing to resign ourselves to the destruction of our world. We honor it when we work, using all the means provided by the grace of God, to realize visions of transfiguration, resurrection, immortality, and the creation of worlds without end. May we love and build bravely in this prophesied day of transfiguration.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • Pope Leo Flatters Sister Death

    Pope Leo Flatters Sister Death
    2026/01/02
    A few weeks ago, Pope Leo XIV of the Catholic Church criticized Transhumanism during a speech in St. Peter’s Square. Predictably, I disagree with his criticism. Below are some relevant portions of his speech, in quotes, followed by my thoughts. “Death seems to be a sort of taboo, an event to keep at a distance; something to be spoken of in hushed tones, to avoid disturbing our sensibilities and our tranquillity. This is often why we avoid visiting cemeteries, where those who have gone before us rest as they await resurrection.” This may be true of some or even many people. But it’s certainly not true of all or perhaps even most Transhumanists. Some Transhumanists, particularly cryonicists, actually choose to work in locations that function as high tech cemeteries, such as Alcor. And cemeteries, both of the cryonicist and traditional varieties (where I took a film crew to visit my father’s grave), figure prominently in a major recent documentary on Transhumanism. “… one might then think that we are paradoxical, unhappy creatures, not only because we die, but also because we are certain that this event will happen, even though we do not know how or when. We find ourselves aware and at the same time powerless. This is probably where the frequent repressions and existential flights from the question of death originate.” We certainly don’t seem to have much power over death. And maybe we’ll prove to have none at all. But Jesus plainly tells us the opposite, commanding his disciples to raise the dead. This seems like something that all of us, especially the Pope, should take more seriously, trusting that we may actually prove to have increasing power over death. “Praying, in order to understand what is beneficial in view of the kingdom of heaven, and letting go of the superfluous that instead binds us to ephemeral things, is the secret to living authentically, in the awareness that our passage on earth prepares us for eternity.” Surely life itself isn’t one of those superfluous things that we should let go, even if it seems ephemeral at times. Surely life is beneficial in the view of the kingdom of heaven. How could we possibly live authentically, in any coherent way, while characterizing life itself as superfluous or merely ephemeral? I trust that our passage on Earth is indeed preparing us for eternity. But take care not to mistake that as a euphemism for death, an “eternity” in name only. The eternity of which scripture speaks is as real as light and as warm as love. Judging from the resurrected body of Jesus Christ, immortality must be as tangible and embodied as flesh and bone. “Yet many current anthropological views promise immanent immortality …” Jesus called his disciples to raise the dead, imminently. His disciples, notably Paul, prophesied of resurrection to immortality, immanently. Perhaps a couple thousand years has made it too difficult for most of us to trust in such a calling and vision. Maybe we need new prophets, misrecognized as anthropologists, to remind us. “… theorize the prolongation of earthly life through technology. This is the transhuman scenario, which is making its way into the horizon of the challenges of our time.” Humanity has been prolonging Earthly life through technology for thousands of years. Our capacity to do so has been improving, with increasing rapidity. And there’s every reason to trust, actively and cautiously, that we can yet perpetuate this trend. If this is “the transhuman scenario” then humanity has been transhuman since the first tool we used. “Could death really be defeated by science?” Why not? Science is formalized shared knowledge. Presumably God already has such knowledge to defeat death. Why could we not possibly gain the same knowledge? We aren’t God. Sure. But we’re children of God, according to Jesus, invited to become joint heirs with him in the glory of God. So while we don’t yet have such knowledge, there’s practical reason to trust that we may gain it. Faith without works is dead, says the Bible. If we don’t trust in a way that actively expresses itself in action, then our professed “faith” amounts to nothing. If we actually have faith in the prophecies of eventual transfiguration and resurrection to immortality, as the Bible teaches, we ought to pursue them in the actively expressed action of works. Technology is just that. It’s a formalized extension of human works, made possible by the grace of God. We find ourselves in a world that we didn’t create and cannot sustain on our own. But we’ve managed to understand it and apply our knowledge of it in wondrous ways, empowering ways, and life-affirming ways through technology. Of course we can also do evil, even great evil, with the power of technology. All kinds of work, technological and otherwise, can do evil. But that doesn’t make works or their technological extensions evil in themselves. They are just works, to be used one...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • Predicting Future Church Presidents

    Predicting Future Church Presidents
    2025/12/30
    Jeffrey R. Holland, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died early in the morning on Saturday 27 December 2025. Those who follow my occasional thoughts on general conference may recognize that he was among my favorite Church leaders. I’m sad to see him go. But some things, some sufferings, are worse than death. Before he died, President Holland was in line to become the next president of the Church. Succession is highly predictable. When a president dies, the most senior living apostle, based on date of ordination, becomes the next president. He was the senior member. Since President Holland died, the most senior living apostle is now Henry B. Eyring, who also serves as the first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church. Assuming he lives longer than the current president, Dallin H. Oaks, President Eyring would become the next president. Who would be after that? And how long would they serve? These questions are usually answered with vibes and rumors. But we can do better. In this article, I present two forecasts for future presidents of the Church. The first forecast, based strictly on actuarial tables from the Social Security Administration of the U.S. Government, is skeptical about the possibility of accelerating technological evolution. The second forecast is optimistic about the possibility of accelerating technological evolution, facilitating mortality escape velocity by 2065. Not included are what I would characterize as pessimistic and conservative forecasts, the former implying practical annihilation of human civilization, and the latter implying something between the skeptical and optimistic forecasts. Briefly, achieving mortality escape velocity wouldn’t mean that people stop dying immediately or completely. And it wouldn’t entail an eventual superlative immortality. It would just mean that progressive technological interventions begin to make it more likely than not that most people will live long enough to benefit from emerging technologies that facilitate indefinite life extension and, as needed, life restoration. And it would only entail an eventual practical immortality, when it becomes harder to stay dead than alive, at least for those who desire to stay alive. For each forecast, I performed Monte Carlo simulations with 200,000 trials. In each trial, I simulated death times for all fourteen apostles based on their ages and the mortality assumptions of the forecast. I then determined presidency succession by identifying who outlived whom, with the most senior surviving apostle becoming president upon the death of the previous president. From these simulations, I calculated the probability that each apostle becomes president, along with median start years, durations, and end years of service, conditional on becoming president. Skeptical Forecast Below are the results for the first forecast, the skeptical forecast based only on the actuarial tables. The first three columns show order of seniority, name, and age in 2025. The fourth column, P(P), shows the fraction of simulations where the apostle becomes president. The subsequent columns show median start year, median duration, and median end year of service, conditional on becoming president. [ Visit the webpage to view the table. ] Reflections On moral grounds, I reject a pessimistic forecast of technological change. We must survive the changes that are coming. For similar reasons, I also reject a skeptical forecast. We must continue to apply available technologies to improve our world, our relations, and our bodies – not merely to survive, but to thrive. These are practical and moral imperatives. On the other hand, there are considerable moral hazards with the optimistic forecast of technological change. It’s actually only optimistic if we manage to navigate it without destroying ourselves or worse – perhaps becoming enslaved to artificial superintelligence, for example. These hazards would also apply to conservative forecasts to some extent. It’s not enough to imagine optimistic outcomes. We must work, intelligently and cooperatively and strenuously, toward optimistic outcomes, which requires maintaining our agency throughout the process. So, given my technological and moral views, while acknowledging real risks, I expect the future of Church governance to look something like the optimistic scenario presented above. In my mind, there’s a real and significant possibility that Elder Bednar, in particular, may become practically immortal while serving as president of the Church. But others might, if technological evolution is slower or faster. I also think there’s a real and significant possibility, particularly if mortality escape velocity becomes obvious, that Church leaders will choose to modify or altogether discontinue succession by seniority. Emeritus status is already assigned to general authorities of the Church below the apostleship tier. And ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満
  • Embody Christmas

    Embody Christmas
    2025/12/24
    When Christmas returns, I feel drawn to its Earthy images: a child swaddled and cradled in a manger; a stable crafted of stout wood; the lowing of animals; warmth pushing back against the depth of winter. These are more than speculative historical details. They are symbols that affirm the realization of our highest hopes, here in the dust and breath and hunger of embodied life. Doctrine and Covenants 93 illuminates these symbols. “The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy.” By this light, as we watch the sleeping child in the straw, we are invited to consent that God is not alien to nature, but thoroughly expressed therein. The Christmas story is most sublime in its pragmatism: matter as grace, and body as temple. The star above Bethlehem is a natural light – a fiery convergence of elemental processes that ultimately form our own flesh. The shepherds’ labors, Mary’s exhaustion, and Joseph’s worry: in all these, we glimpse that “man was also in the beginning with God.” We too participate in the story of life, of heaven and Earth. D&C 93 proceeds to tell us that Jesus “made flesh [his] tabernacle.” He “received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace.” And he “continued from grace to grace, until he received a fullness.” Unexceptional, this progression is familiar. As Jesus progressed through embodied experience, so do we. Each small act of compassion given and received – a loaf of bread shared, a fire built against the cold, a child comforted, a neighbor welcomed – these are the graces by which we progress. Like Jesus, we receive grace for grace, and continue from grace to grace. And we do so not by escaping embodiment, but by embracing it more purposefully. Christmas is not about any escapist or nihilistic transcendence, but rather about a transcendence of escapism and nihilism. It’s about strenuous engagement with tangible purpose. Birthing pains, newborn cries, swaddling clothes: these welcome the messy beauty of nature as the substance of sublime creation. And every caring gesture, every earnest collaboration, whether enabled by ancient tradition or emerging technology, extends grace toward that light and truth, that intelligence, which is the glory of God. Honor with me, if you will, that which Christmas so beautifully presents and scripture so eloquently describes: spirit and element inseparably connected, embodied as individuals in community, progressing together from grace to grace toward a fulness of joy. Christmas is not an invitation to otherworldly heavens or incorporeal gods, but to the courage, compassion, and creation of Christ on Earth. This is our shared potential, symbolized by the baby in the manger. And this is true worship, emulation, which “receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.” Merry Christmas! May your gifts, your embodied grace, progress now and always.
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1分未満