Cyborgs, Transhumanism, & Immortality

(Essay #32, at 2-1-26)

UPDATE at 2-1-26:

As of 2/1/26, we are not yet seeing much about merging humans with computers to create “Cyborgs,” which was an original thrust of this Essay.
Now, in early 2026, we see rapid advancement in computerization, artificial intelligence, brain implants, and the creation of industrial robots.

Industrial robots have replaced humans in auto assembly, manufacturing, prefabricated housing construction, and even in medical surgery.
Drones — small, electronic, remote-controlled aircraft — are today on the verge of replacing piloted military attack aircraft.
Consumers now have robot vacuums for carpets, early lawn-cutting robots, and early self-driving cars.
Shopping online, via “Ebay” and “Amazon.com” has reduced the need for visiting stores, and many of them are now gone.
Artificial Intelligence is now available to billions of personal-computer users.
These A.I. services include ChatGPT.ai, Perplexity.ai., and a number of others. They perform deep research and answer users’ questions.
“A.I.” is now doing legal research, medical, and engineering research. “Blue collar” & “white collar” workers are losing their jobs.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk says that soon, most Americans will need a monthly government subsidy to meet their living expenses.
Where will that subsidy money come from? (JXM says, “From taxes on billionaires like Elon Musk!”)
A.I., plus the growing use of keyboards for communication & entertainment, creates a great need for giant Data Centers and more electricity.
There are now electronic brain implants to help with tremors, hearing, limb movement, and speech. These may well be Cyborg precursors.

ORIGINAL ESSAY:

This Essay, #32, will cover how the use of technology may change the minds and bodies of human beings over the next half-century. These technological avenues include improved nutrition, disease treatment, surgical repairs, artificial organs and appliances, and genetic engineering. We also talk about the pros and cons of becoming “transhuman” cyborgs, of uploading our “personhoods” into computer simulations, and about what may result when computers “wake up” by themselves in a watershed moment dubbed the “Technological Singularity.”

It is difficult to predict the order in which these developments may emerge, or how they will be received by the world’s societies. Some of the new technologies will utilize medical and biological science, while others will employ mostly mechanical and digital engineering. All of them have the same two overlapping aims:

1) Repair or cure humans. For example, it would be wonderful to cure Alzheimer’s Disease.
2) Improve humans. For instance, enhancing people’s intelligence or making them disease-resistant.

Of course, what constitutes an “improvement” will be a matter of controversy in ethics and aesthetics.

This Essay Caps Two Prior Essays

1. This Essay caps our “Dealing with Death on the Path of Nature’s Creation“ Essay by explaining how we can rationally extend our lives through medicine and technology. In that Essay, we discussed Rational Ways to deal with death. In all, we covered 12 of the 14 Rational Ways, deferring the remaining 2 to be discussed in this Essay. The last two rational methods for Dealing with Death are: “Reduce Aging and Lengthen Lives,” and “Transhumanism.” Unlike the false promises of fictional life after death (e.g., heaven, reincarnation), these two rational avenues could provide humans with additional years of actual quality living.

2. Second, this Essay also caps the Evolution of Technology sections of our “Processes of Evolution and their Meaning“ Essay by explaining how computers and robots (or networks of them) could “wake up” and achieve independent consciousness. This would be a significant historical watershed comparable even to the origin of life. Expected to occur within the next 50 years, this watershed, known as the “technological singularity,” could provide humans with marvelous new tools, or it could create independent and hostile robots that compete with, or even wage war against, us.

Any one of the technological avenues we will discuss could move us toward utopia or toward dystopia. Different people will have different opinions on them, depending on what they consider morally and ethically human, what they perceive as aesthetically human, and what they believe our human role should be in the Continuation of Creation here on Earth. (In the far future, human populations living on other planets might reach different judgments.)

Medical Science Will Slow Down Aging & Lengthen Lives

Reducing Pain and Suffering

Medicine has already significantly reduced human pain and suffering, particularly in advanced nations. This has been achieved by preventing and/or curing diseases, as well as through the use of pain-relieving (anesthetic and analgesic) medicines and procedures. In the last 30 years, many of these treatments have benefited from complementary hospice care programs.

The Hospice Movement

The modern concept of hospice includes palliative care for the incurably ill given in such institutions as hospitals or nursing homes, but also the care provided to those who would rather spend their last months and days of life in their own homes. The first modern hospice care was established by Cicely Saunders in 1967.

In the United States today, the Medicare system makes hospice care widely available, either in an inpatient facility or at the patient’s home, to patients with a terminal prognosis who are medically certified to have less than six months to live. ¹

Extending Human Life

The sciences of medicine and nutrition have made significant contributions to extending human life. We have increased the average life span (for people surviving early childhood) from around 38 years in ancient Rome ²

Over the next half-century, many more people may live to reach an advanced age of 125 years. Significant scientific breakthroughs could extend it further. However, The Path of Nature’s Continuing Creation holds that this extension would only be worth doing if the period of high-quality living (healthy, active, alert) is also extended – say, from 75 years old today to 90. ³ Later in this Essay, we’ll talk about achieving immortality through medical science.

The Way of Nature’s Continuing Creation emphasizes a crucial point in this Essay: Earth cannot support significant life extension for all (or even most) people unless the human population is controlled, preferably through voluntary birth control. As we discuss in our Essay, “Overpopulation Threatens Nature’s Creation,” modern history proves that when women are given freedom, jobs, safe birth control methods, and education they will voluntarily limit the size of their families in order to secure a brighter future for the smaller number of children they do elect to have. However, it is unclear whether those positive trends will outpace today’s rapid pace of population growth. If voluntary birth control is not adopted quickly enough across the Earth, legislated birth control may become a necessary stop-gap measure.

Improving Human Bodies with Medical Technology

Human bodies and brains would be improved if:
> If we become more intelligent;
> If we have better vision (perhaps including the ability to sense longer and shorter wavelengths of light);
> If we become less afflicted with mental disorders (including psychopathy and sociopathy);
> If we are less war-like; less obese; more disease resistant; and
> If we seldom suffer acne, tooth decay, diabetes, dementia, and many other diseases and birth defects.

In our Essay, “Answering Evolution’s Critics,” we cited a list of significant problems with the human body to demonstrate that humans were not designed by a superintelligent God. (Or, perhaps that such a God intended these imperfections as a series of practical jokes on the human race, or to win a bet with Satan.) We list those problems again below to illustrate all the things that we might want to actually fix through modern technology.

Note: The following six quotations are from S. Jay Olshansky, Bruce A. Carnes, & Robert N. Butler (as published in their article, “If Humans Were Built to Last,” Scientific American, 2003, updated from March 2001.

> Bipedal Stress on Feet, Ankles, Knees, & Back
“A number of the debilitating and even some of the fatal disorders of aging stem in part from bipedal locomotion and an upright posture—ironically, the same features that have enabled the human species to flourish. Every step we take places extraordinary pressure on our feet, ankles, knees, and back— structures that support the weight of the whole body above them. Over the course of just a single day, disks in the lower back are subjected to pressures equivalent to several tons per square inch.

> Bones that Lose Minerals After Age 30
“Demineralization makes bones susceptible to fractures and, in extreme cases, can cause osteoporosis (severe bone degeneration), curvature of the spine and ‘dowager’s hump.’”

> Fallible Spinal Disks
“Years of pressure on the spongy disks that separate the vertebrae can cause them to slip, rupture or bulge; then they, or the vertebrae themselves, can press painfully on nerves.”

> Muscles that Lose Mass and Tone
“Such atrophy can impede all activities, including walking. In the abdomen, hernias can arise as the intestines (always pulled by gravity) protrude through weak spots in the abdominal wall. Flaccid abdominal muscles also contribute to lower back pain.”

> Leg Veins Prone to Varicosity
“Veins in the legs become enlarged and twisted when small valves that should snap shut between heartbeats (to keep blood moving up toward the heart) malfunction, causing blood to pool. Severe varicosities can lead to swelling and pain and, on rare occasions, to life-threatening blood clots.”

> Relatively Short Rib Cages
“Current human rib cage does not fully enclose and protect most internal organs.”

> Joints That Wear Out
“As joints are used repetitively through the years, their cushioning and lubricating cartilage can grow thin, causing the bones to grind against each other. The resulting pain may be exacerbated by osteoarthritis and other inflammatory disorders.”

> “To solve these problems, combinations of biotechnology and mechanical engineering could give us “thicker, stronger bones and thicker spinal discs, more ribs in the rib cage to better support internal organs, knees that bend backward, leg veins with more check valves, larger hamstrings and tendons, larger outer ear and more plentiful ear hairs, urethra that runs along the outside of the prostate not through it, and a stronger sphincter valve on the bladder.” ⁴

Should We Accept Our Natural Bodies as They Are?

There are religious groups, such as Christian Scientists, who believe that man-made medicine should not interfere with the human bodies that “God has given us.” Some e people on Nature-based spiritual paths, including folks on our Path of Continuing Natural Creation, may feel the same way. (See our Essay, “Smaller Religions & Modern Cults.”)

The Hindu religion initially taught that the only way to deal with suffering was to mentally and spiritually transcend it, using meditation, diet, and yoga to elevate the mind and spirit to “Moksha” (Enlightenment) and/or unity with “Brahman” (the ultimate, unified reality). See our Essay, “Evaluating Hinduism.”

But most people, by far, including most modern Hindus, welcome such things as eyeglasses, hearing aids, pacemakers, cardiac stents, cataract surgery, organ transplants, and artificial limbs for amputees, all of which are products of Western science and technology.

The Weave of Continuing Natural Creation is clearly in favor of the medical technologies we use today, including those just mentioned. Most of us would also be in favor of life spans that are 25 years longer if those years were healthy, active, and relatively pain-free. But will people living our Practice be in favor of body augmentations, body transformations, or near-immortality, all of which we will discuss later in this Essay? Many of us, perhaps most of us, would not. Nearly all of us will approach these radical technologies one by one, very cautiously, and after years of study and reflection.

Gene Therapy & Genetic Engineering

Both Gene Therapy and Genetic Engineering utilize gene modification and/or replacement methods to alter the genetic makeup of an organism. Gene Therapy aims to cure defects and diseases, principally in humans. Genetic Engineering modifies the genes to enhance the capabilities of individual creatures or even entire plant and animal species beyond their current evolved states.

A spectrum of technology runs from comparatively modest Gene Therapy to the more radical Genetic Engineering. Gene Therapy is already happening. Genetic engineering is likely to occur and is expected to accelerate Nature’s continuing creation, characterized by a growing, Organizing Direction toward greater complexity and energy efficiency.

Gene Therapy

Gene therapy involves replacing a damaged gene in a person with a functional one. It is the therapeutic delivery of nucleic acids into a patient’s cells to treat disease. ⁵ The first attempt at modifying human DNA was performed in 1980 by Martin Cline and the first direct insertion of human DNA into the nuclear genome was performed in 1990. By February 2016, over 2,300 clinical trials using gene therapy techniques had been conducted. ⁶

Genetic Engineering

Genetic Engineering is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novel organisms. In Genetic Engineering, new DNA is obtained by either isolating and copying the genetic material of interest using recombinant DNA methods or by artificially synthesizing the DNA. The artificially constructed segment of DNA is then inserted into the host organism. In addition to inserting genes, the process can also be used to remove or “knock out” specific genes.

An Illustration of genetic engineering

An organism that is generated through genetic engineering is called a “Genetically Modified Organism” (“GMO”). The first company to focus on genetic engineering, Genentech, was founded in 1976 and began producing human proteins. Genetically engineered human insulin was produced in 1978, and insulin-producing bacteria were commercialized in 1982. Genetically modified food has been sold since 1994. Most current GM crops are modified to increase resistance to insects and herbicides. Currently, Europe has more stringent regulations than the U.S. on GM foods.

A significant challenge for genetic engineering will be how to prevent adverse outcomes. Adverse or evil outcomes could occur even when the intent of an engineered change was laudable. For example, manipulating a gene might achieve the goal of increasing human intelligence, but it may also unintentionally decrease human empathy. Science fiction is replete with stories about unexpected consequences that create “semi-humans” having, say, two additional arms — with claws. Science fiction also describes many fictional dystopias in which a genetically modified “master race” subjugates an “inferior” race that has received little or no genetic enhancement. (For more about the nightmare of a “master race,” see the section on “Eugenics” later in this Essay.)

CRISPR Technology

Hailed in 2018 as one of the most important medical advances in the decade, CRISPR technology (“Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats”) allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. CRISPR has numerous potential applications, including correcting genetic defects, treating and preventing the spread of diseases, and enhancing crop yields. ⁷

CRISPR technology was adapted from the natural defense mechanisms of single-celled microorganisms. These organisms use CRISPR-derived RNA and various proteins, to foil attacks by viruses and other foreign bodies. They do so primarily by chopping up and destroying the DNA of a foreign invader. When these components are transferred into other, more complex, organisms, it allows for the manipulation of genes, or “editing.” ⁸

CRISPR Cascade protein (cyan) bound to CRISPR RNA (green) and bacteriophage DNA (red)

As cellular and molecular pathologist Dr. Aparna Vidyasagar writes, “We’ve already learned that CRISPR can help us create mushrooms that don’t brown easily and edit bone marrow cells in mice to treat sickle-cell anemia. CRISPR could one day even allow us to wipe out entire populations of malaria-spreading mosquitoes or resurrect once-extinct species, such as the passenger pigeon… However, scientists have recently learned that the approach to gene editing can inadvertently wipe out and rearrange large swaths of DNA in ways that may imperil human health. That follows recent studies showing that CRISPR-edited cells can inadvertently trigger cancer.” ⁹ Of course, eradication of human diseases ought to be matched by increases in informed and voluntary human birth control.

Human Cloning

In the future, Human cloning could be a way to extend the presence of an individual’s body and mind. The cloning of animals, such as “Dolly the Sheep,” was achieved in 1996 by transferring the nucleus of a cell taken from a regular (somatic, i.e., not an egg or a sperm) sheep cell and implanting it into the egg of a second sheep. A third sheep carried the fetus to term. ¹⁰

A clone of you would be genetically identical to you, just as identical twins are genetically identical to each other. However, each of the two people still has their own separate point of view, distinct identity, and personhood. As the twins or clones grow up and have different life experiences, their opinions and judgments – their personhoods — inevitably grow farther apart as the years go by.

If you were to be cloned in your old age, your clone would begin life as a newborn baby. Sixteen or eighteen years later, that child might be able to start taking the reins of your adult life. Hopefully, you will be around to coach them for a number of years before making your “exit.” But that new version of you is not really going to be you. You, buried six feet under, are not going to be feeling and doing what your clone is feeling and doing.

So, cloning would not give a person immortality, because taking a cell and growing it into an exact copy of your body would produce a newborn baby that has none of your memories and can never experience the same life experience as you have. Still, like a legacy, some might see it as a kind of immortality; maybe a “shadow immortality.”

Note: “There are some single-celled creatures (bacteria, amoebae, and others) that do not seem to die at all; they simply vanish totally into their own progeny. In effect, they clone themselves. The single cell becomes [divides into] two, then four, and so on… It cannot be seen as death; barring mutation, the descendants are simply the first cell, living all over again.” ¹¹

Traditional Human Mating Practices

Since our prehuman ancestors first came down from the trees, human beings have been selecting each other based on beauty, strength, endurance, intelligence, agreeability, fecundity, wealth, family connections, tribe, race, nation, age, and (most important of all) proximity. Men and women with favorable inheritable traits (such as strength, endurance, and disease resistance) would marry and have children who were more likely to inherit those same traits.

In many cultures, going back to the dawn of tribal civilization, men have unfortunately dominated women and treated them like property. In many clans and tribes, the dominant males gathered more than their “share” of females into a personal harem. On the other hand, courtship and marriage could often be a “free market” selection system, one in which even the less “desirable” men and women could usually find a mate.

In larger and more organized societies, the choice of mate was often made for couples by their parents, based on criteria such as wealth, social standing, tribe, and social c lass.

All these evolved traditions were practicing a kind of “selective breeding,” with the selection being done by the mating individuals themselves, or by their families and clans according to custom.

The Pseudo-science of Eugenics, 1900-1945

We’ve just described how traditional mating practices called for “selective breeding,” where the selection was done mainly by the mating couple themselves and/or by their families. Eugenics, a now-discredited pseudo-science that dates back to the early 1900s, also called for “selective breeding” among humans. However, under the pseudoscience of Eugenics, governmental policies would dictate the pairing of men and women based on their “favorable traits” – such as intelligence and health. Also, under Eugenics, people with “less-desirable” features – e.g., a cleft palate, below-average intelligence, retardation, an out-of-favor skin color — would be disallowed or discouraged from having children.

Between 1900 and 1940, many Western countries adopted eugenic policies encouraging individuals deemed particularly “fit” to reproduce and establishing marriage prohibitions and even forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction. People deemed unfit to reproduce often included people with mental or physical disabilities, people who scored in the low ranges of different IQ tests, criminals and deviants, and members of disfavored minority groups. ¹² Eugenics became a key doctrine of Nazism and provided false justification for the systematic slaughter of some six million Jews in The Holocaust, along with people having physical or mental disabilities, during World War II.

Schloss Hartheim, a former center for the Nazi “Aktion T4” campaign to identify the “mentally or physically unfit” and kill them with poison gas.

Today, the “gene selection” of modern medicine, rather than the “people selection” of Eugenics, has become increasingly possible through advances in genome editing, leading to what is sometimes called the new eugenics, also known as neo-eugenics or liberal eugenics. ¹³

“Resurrection” Through Cryonics

Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation (usually in liquid nitrogen, at −196°C) of a legally dead human corpse, with the hope that resuscitation and restoration to life and full health may be possible in the far future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticism within the mainstream scientific community and is not part of accepted medical practice.

A number of people who believe in cryonics have had their bodies frozen and intend to keep them frozen until a time when medicine will be able to thaw them out, cure what killed them, maybe even restore their youthful energies, and send them forth into the world of the future. Unlike cloning, Cryonics entails no “copying of you,” so the future “you” really would be the real you.

However, it is not known if it will ever be possible to revive a cryopreserved human cadaver. Such views are at the speculative edge of medicine. ¹⁴

Note: “Cryonics” has little or no connection with Cryogenics. Cryogenics is a proven and respected engineering discipline that studies the behavior and applications of materials under extremely low temperatures. An example is achieving electric superconductivity with metals that are cooled to extremely low temperatures.

Even if cryonics actually worked, a technically successful resurrection could have either a good result or a bad result for the awakened human. On the one hand, you might “wake up” to find an Earth that’s healthy, peaceful, enlightened, prosperous, democratic, and just. But on the other hand, you might find an Earth riven by disease, violence, ignorance, poverty, and slavery. In the real world, we must remember that Continuing Creation makes no promise that a future “heaven-on-Earth” awaits the “newly thawed.”

Biological Immortality (for Humans)

In our Essay, “Dealing with Death on Our Nature-based Path of Creating,” we talk about the downside of immortality or near-immortality, and we point out that Heaven and Nirvana would take all the challenge, all the “creating,” out of human lives. In heaven, we could end up existing in eternal ennui, always saying to ourselves, “Been there, seen that, done that.”

Still, many people are excited about the possibility of immortality, so we’ll discuss it here as a real possibility that might be achieved through real medical science. It is possible that immortality could be achieved through purely biological means, but most people believe it would involve a combination of biological organs and systems, plus mechanical and electronic implants and enhancements. In this section, we will explore biological immortality through biological means, reserving mechanical and electronic methods for the following section.

Aging and Senescence

To achieve biological immortality, humans would have to overcome “senescence“ — our natural aging process.

Aging is the result of entropy (the Second Law of Thermodynamics) applied to biological creatures. In all complex open systems, living and non-living, entropy ensures that every system eventually wears out and breaks down.

Remember — for Nature’s Processes of Continuing Creation to function and develop, there must be a continual inflow of energy from the outside. So, Continuing Creation happens here on Earth because our sun supplies the outside energy (plus heat from Earth’s molten core). But for the universe as a whole, there is no “outside” and therefore, no “outside energy.” So, for the universe as a whole, over the longest of all timeframes, entropy wins. Unless you believe (without any real evidence) that some form of God stands outside the universe and that He-She-or-It provides the needed outside energy.

Systems can also break down before any critical parts wear out. Instead, the breakdown happens when systems lose their input of energy. For plants and animals, it might be due to thirst, starvation, or suffocation (or loss of sunlight for plants). Or it could happen when an organ of the body loses its ability to process food energy and deliver it to the body’s cells.

However, most human deaths in old age appear not to be caused by a loss of energy input. Most human deaths happen before the food-energy systems break down. How so? It appears that the human body is programmed to increase cell death, “senescence,” over time. Leading theories of senescence are the “genetic theory of aging,” the “disposable soma theory of aging,” and the “telomere theory.” ¹⁵

Senescence occurs in nearly all multicellular organisms, including plants and animals. During the senescence process, individual cells in our body continually break down, becoming less efficient. Their inefficiency is detected, and they are torn apart by still-living cells. They are then replaced by fresh new cells.

Every cell in the human body gets replaced in this way about every seven years. All this is actually genetically programmed to happen. In effect, the body as a whole “judges” that it is more efficient to eliminate and replace defective cells than it is to try to repair them. ¹⁶ (Many Corporations do an analogous thing when they periodically lay off or flush out the “bottom” 5% or 10% of their workforce — the Corporation is the organism, and the employees are its “cells.”)

As we age, senescence occurs more rapidly, affecting a greater number of cells more frequently. When critical functions can no longer be performed (e.g., pumping of blood by the heart, purifications by the liver, respiration by the lungs, etc.), the entire body dies. The autopsies find and name an “immediate cause of death,” with “old age” cited as the “supporting cause of death.”

After all, as we discussed earlier (and in other Essays), for Continuous Creation, the survival of the genes is more important than the survival of the individual bodies carrying them. The cells of the blood, brain neurons, heart muscle cells, etc., are all “support” cells whose mission is to preserve, nurture, and enable the sperm and egg cells to pass on their DNA. The sperm and egg are the generals, and all those support cells are “expendable soldiers.”

That’s why senescence mostly takes place after individuals have lived through their reproductive years. This concept – that the body is a “survival machine” for protecting genes and transporting them into the future — was fully proposed and elaborated in Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins’ landmark book, The Selfish Gene, written in 1989. ¹⁷

“Curing” Senescence to Achieve Immortality?

People who are not happy with their mortality tend to see senescence as another one of the physiological “flaws” that we listed earlier. These individuals advocate trying to eliminate senescence, or at least significantly slow it down. They argue this is feasible by pointing to the fact that there are some multicelled creatures that don’t age (or who age very slowly) – including “tortoises and turtles, sturgeon, rough-eye rockfish, and lobsters.” ¹⁸

Going further, they note that the lowly but multicelled Hydra is considered to be “biologically immortal,” meaning that it can never die unless it’s killed by a predator or accidental violence. (The hydra is a soft tube, not quite a half-inch long, with no skeleton or shell. At one end of the tube is its mouth, surrounded by a ring of tentacles that capture tiny freshwater plankton for food.)

A scanning electron micrograph of a tardigrade (Britannica)

A similar creature, the tiny (and ugly) tardigrade, known colloquially as “water bears” or “moss piglets,” can live in many of Earth’s climates. There are 1,500 known species. Some of these are able to survive extreme conditions, such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation. Tardigrades have even survived exposure to outer space. In 2007, dehydrated tardigrades were taken on the Foton-M3 space mission and exposed to vacuum, or both vacuum and solar ultraviolet radiation for 10 days. Back on Earth, more than 68% of the subjects protected from ultraviolet were reanimated by rehydration, and many produced viable embryos.

“In 1988, Drs. David Friedman and Tom Johnson reported a life-extending mutation in nematode worms. Lifespan was doubled, from 22 to 45 days. Later studies have reported very similar results in fruit flies, yeast, and mice. And the genes in all of them worked along the same biochemical pathway. Therefore, for mammals, it is also possible that “a single mutation in just one gene can double lifespan and at once put on hold the diseases of old age.” — Nick Lane ¹⁹

Cancer Is a Bizarre Attempt at Biological Immortality

Before we get too excited about biological immortality for humans, consider its very real “dark side.”

Mother Nature tells us a cautionary tale about biological immortality, because “Immortality [already] has a very real existence in the present cellular world — it’s called cancer. In fact, most novel cancer therapies are designed to allow cell death (senescence) to occur as it normally would.” ²⁰ Cancer cells are able to bypass senescence, which gives them indefinite reproductive lives. ²¹

Elephants are prone to developing many cancerous tumors because their large size means they have a greater number of cells dividing and possibly mutating. Yet elephants actually get fewer cancers than humans do. One of the reasons appears to be that elephants “protect themselves with a unique gene [the p53 gene] that aggressively kills off cells whose DNA has been damaged.” Researchers have found that elephants have 20 copies of the p53 gene, while humans have only one. ²²

Human Immortality Assisted by Computers & Machines

In the science fiction film, Blade Runner 2049, a visiting human-cyborg “replicant” asks another replicant, “Your dog there, is he real?” The dog owner replies, “I don’t know, ask him.”

Cyborgs: Combinations of Humans & Machines

A cyborg, short for “cybernetic organism,” can be “any organism (usually a mammal) that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback.” ²³ By this definition, people with cochlear implants to improve hearing, cardiac pacemakers, or implanted lenses to cure eye cataracts are all cyborgs.

Yes, we may indeed add third eyes that can perceive longer and shorter wavelengths than we do now. Perhaps we’ll install echolocators, implanted GPS systems, night-vision systems, recording systems that can capture and replay our entire lives, powered armor that allows us to jump very high and run at tremendous speed, or the ability to fly through the air individually. (Of course, many of us have zero desire to fly through the air individually, but J.X. Mason is certainly “up for it!”)

But why would we do all this? To what end? Are we humans so dissatisfied with simply being human? These questions are hard to answer. Enhanced capabilities could provide excitement and exploration, perhaps on other planets. Or cyborgs could be gladiators who fight to entertain crowds in future coliseums. Or they could make war. Buddhists say that dukkha (dissatisfaction) is the cause of all suffering (we would say all mental suffering), but their solution is to extinguish dissatisfaction through meditation and understanding, rather than adding attachments to the human body.

Due to decades of violent superhero movies and TV shows, most of us do think of cyborgs as monster-like abominations, half-human, and half-machine, which fight against “pure” humans on the science-fiction battlefields of the future. In the 1970s, fictional spies Emma Peel and John Steed fought cyborgs in the British 1960s television series, The Avengers. A classic fictional collection of cyborgs, known as “The Borg,” appeared in several episodes of American television’s Star Trek series. The Borg consisted of evil (or maybe just enslaved) humans loaded up with so many computer chips, mechanical prostheses, and electronically enhanced eyeballs that they were as much machine as human.

Evil cyborgs (“The Borg”) took over Capt. Piccard, in “Star Trek: Next Generation”

These hybrid Borg creatures were embedded in closet-like niches on a giant skeletonized spaceship, where they performed specialized functions. However, some of them were able to “unplug,” so they could stalk around and fight the heroic crew of Starship Enterprise man-to-man (or “borg-to-man”).

This book about Nature’s Continuing Creation speculates that perhaps the “pre-Borg,” (people who originally became the Borg), did it to themselves. Perhaps they attempted to create a kind of heaven, but things went awry. Their vision of a techno-heaven morphed into a techno-hell. This danger – the danger of unintended consequences – is ever-present in all human plans for the future.

Transhumanism – Opportunities & Dangers

While the word “cyborg” has distinctly negative connotations, a newer intellectual movement views the same technologies in a more positive light. These folks call their movement “Transhumanism.”

“Transhumanism”(often abbreviated as “H+” or “h+”) calls for employing both the electro-mechanical technology used to build cyborgs and the medical science and bioengineering technology used to do genetic engineering. The goals are to make humans more innovative, physically powerful, disease-resistant, and healthy, with enhanced senses, reduced criminality, and even immortality (or near-immortality).

The Path of Continuing Creation asks — If humans become immortal through the application of non-human technologies, would we still be human at the end? The answer could be “yes,” because all the technology came from humans. On the other hand, the answer could be “No” if the values and behaviors of the new entities are no longer human values and behaviors.

The most common transhumanist thesis is that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into different beings with abilities so greatly expanded beyond current human powers as to merit the label “post-human” beings. ²⁴

Transhumanism argues that over time, most humans will choose to make these modifications to themselves and/or to their progeny.

However, our Practice of Natural Continuing Creation holds that the word “transhumanism” should not be reserved for optimists. The same techniques that could lead to an improvement in human existence could also lead to human tragedy. Therefore, we prefer to discuss two types of Transhumanism: Pessimistic and Optimistic Transhumanism.

**“Pessimistic” Transhumanism**

In his landmark book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Professor Yuval Harari of Hebrew University in Jerusalem writes that in our lust for power and immortality, humans will be complicit in creating a “Dataist” future that co-opts and then eliminates our own human-ness. In this predicted future, humans will be valued only for their data, which is equivalent to the data that may be contained in robots or digital networks.

“In its extreme form, proponents of the Dataist worldview perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms, and believe that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data-processing system — and then merge into it.” ²⁵ This would be like merging with an electronic, digital “Godhead.” (See our Essay, “Dealing with Death on Our Nature-based Path of Creating.”)

In Homo Deus, Dr. Harari also sees an intermediate stage, between now and ultimate Dataism, where the super-rich of the world, who can afford genetic modifications, implants, and prostheses, will have more power, wealth, and longevity than the still-human people who serve them (or who are ignored by them). With their new enhanced abilities, the rich will be able to exploit and bully the poor even more than they do now… [unless the poor rise up and destroy them!].

Today, with more and more products and services provided each year by machines, not people, it is already clear that the owners of those machines (i.e., corporations and the super-wealthy) are getting richer and richer while wage earners fall farther and farther behind. If such a trend continues, the wealth and income generated by the machines will need to be redistributed to humans. How would that re-distribution be done? We think a discussion of that question lies beyond the scope of this book.

Readers may ask: “Doesn’t the Path of Nature’s Continuing Creation encourage us to participate in the adoption of new technologies, including the creation of cyborgs and Transhumans?” Yes, but not without restraint. As we discuss in our Essays, “Leading an Ethical, Moral Life” and “Leading a Virtuous & Honorable Life,” our human path within Continuing Creation calls for us to simultaneously advance all three sides of Continuing Natural Creation’s Ethical Triangle:

Continuing Natural Creation’s Ethical Triangle:

- Side #1: Ethics & Morality Toward People: Family, Friends, Neighbors, Tribe, Citizens, & Humanity
- Side #2: Ethics & MoralityToward Earth and its Biosphere
- Side #3: Ethics & Morality Toward Continuing Creation Itself

**“Optimistic” Transhumanism**

As we’ve said, most transhumanists are optimists who would disagree with Professor Harari. These optimists believe that humans will remain in the driver’s seat, steering technology toward a better future for people.

In the long term, Optimistic Transhumanism envisions two types of techno-heaven for humans: “active” and “passive.” Both types would be achieved through combinations of medical science and technology.

Active, optimistic transhumanism envisions the transfer of a person’s mind and experience into a tiny computer and housing that tiny computer inside an advanced robot or a robot-human cyborg that can both move around and sense things, as well as think. Perhaps such an embodiment could “live” on Earth or on other planets that might seem like a kind of “Heaven.”

A little girl can suddenly hear with the aid of a cochlear implant.

Passive optimistic transhumanism envisions the transfer of a person’s mind and experience into an immobile computer, server, or network of servers. There, a human being’s “personhood” would “live” in an elaborate, lifelike computer simulation. Perhaps such a simulation could seem like a kind of “Heaven.” Interestingly, this kind of heaven and the usual kind of heaven described by the Old Religion have something in common: they are both fictions. (Unfortunately, if we destroy Earth’s biosphere, then fictional heaven will be the best we can do!) We will talk more bout simulated heavens in our section on “mind-uploading.”

The positive transhumanists believe that we can achieve all this and more while preserving human values, family, social life, and democratic governments. Your author, J.X. Mason, believes that preserving human values in such a world would be very difficult because our values would inevitably change and evolve in response to our physical changes.

Poster for the Transhumanism Conference in 2014

Note: “Humanity+ Inc.,” (formerly the Transhumanist Association), is regarded as the leading international transhumanist organization. ²⁶ The Longevity Party and the Mormon Transhumanist Association also have significant memberships. For more information, we recommend Mark O’Connell’s book, To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death, 2018, Anchor Books.

**How About a Tech-Future Along a Middle Way?**

Co-Creators in Nature’s Continuing Creation should pause to ask ourselves what drives the Positive Transhumanists’ passion for extending and augmenting life. Is it a vision of an achievable better world, or just another example of humans imagining a fantasy future, a fantasy fueled by our ingrained human fear of death and a dedicated, (possibly obsessive) fascination with modern technology?

Can we, Co-creators, envision a Partnership between humans and technology that preserves human values? Yes, we can, but envisioning it doesn’t mean it will happen. The Path of Continuing Creation can certainly evolve in directions unfavorable to humankind, with or without our efforts. The future could end up being “all machines,” “all insects,” or perhaps “insect machines.” Practitioners of Our Way must strive to balance their concern for humans, the environment, and the ongoing creative processes of the universe; however, where to strike that balance is up to each individual.

Maybe we should reject a future where we are jumping tall buildings and punching out other cyborgs with our weaponized arms. Instead, how about a future where humans live in largely self-sufficient villages featuring civic cooperation, crafts, small businesses, small farms, energy independence, strong families and communities, and local democracy?

There are many fine publications on sustainable living. For example, don’t miss Laura Emerson’s “Alaska Bush Life, Off-Road, Off-Grid,” at alaskauu1.blogspot.com.” (See also, Dick and James Strawbridge, Self Sufficiency for the 21^st Century, Revised & Updated, 2017, Random House; and Brett L. Markham, Mini-Farming: Self-Sufficiency on ¼ Acre, 2010, Skyhorse Publishing.)

In such a future, humans and/or cyborgs would certainly pursue education and new knowledge. We would adopt new technologies that are consistent with our Triangle of Moral Values: Care for humans, Care for the Earth, and Care for the Processes of Creation. We would never be anti-technology, but we would adopt mostly sustainable, eco-friendly technologies… plus the technology needed to explore and colonize other planets and moons. (For more about the “Moral Triangle,” see our Essay, “Leading an Ethical, Moral Life.”)

We would adopt all medical and technical means to cure and prevent diseases, and to help everyone be strong and intelligent, but not to the extent that people become “non-human.” We might wear powered exoskeletons to lift heavy weights, but we would not implant “endo-technology” or alter our genetic makeup to always possess the strength of gorillas.

It would be difficult to do this in one region if neighboring regions did not also adopt the same approach. It would be challenging to live as cooperative villagers if a large, war-like, high-tech city were next door, intent on taking over our land and resources. Would we even want to eliminate competitiveness and assertiveness from human nature? If we all did that, would we still be human?

Can technology truly be advanced without the support of a vast techno-industrial infrastructure? Maybe it can, with things like 3-D printing, on-site power generation, and free information available to everyone via the Internet.

Today, there are academic disciplines devoted to the study of Medical Ethics. It’s usually (and should be) a required course in medical school. Perhaps the new field of techno-ethics will also grow. In the near future, ethical questions will hopefully present themselves in small steps, allowing us to navigate our way to the long-term future with care. On the other hand, real-life events may quickly outpace our ethical discussions, especially if the change process includes trigger events, chain reactions, or positive feedback loops. (See our Essay, “Nature Creates Increasingly Complex Systems.”)

The Technological Singularity (“Technological Awakening”)

We’ve discussed applying medical science and biotechnology to human lives, as well as ways in which humans could incorporate mechanical and digital devices into their bodies to enhance their physical and mental abilities. Now let’s take up the possibility that computerized machines could “wake up” and become conscious, self-aware creatures on their own, outside the control of humans.

The “technological singularity” is the hypothetical (but likely) future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. It will be when computers become self-aware, can learn on their own, and can then modify and reproduce by designing and constructing improved generations of themselves. ²⁷

Since the capabilities of such advanced, post-singularity intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the technological singularity is rightly seen as an intellectual watershed or event horizon beyond which events cannot be predicted or even understood.

Today’s “artificial intelligence” efforts are the forerunners of tomorrow’s “Technological Singularity.” Within the next 10-20 years, it is likely that Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) will progress to the point that computers achieve consciousness and self-awareness.

Note: The arrival of the Tech-Singularity is usually defined as the time when computers can pass the “Turing Test.” This test occurs when an educated, intelligent human person engages in a conversation (typed or verbal) with an unknown “entity” that the person cannot see, touch, or hear. If the person cannot correctly tell whether the entity on the other side of the conversation is a human or a computer, and if the entity is, in fact, a computer, then that computer will have passed the Turing Test. Of course, this test would need to be repeated many times, using (a) the same computer with (b) many different humans, to yield a verifiable conclusion. That Tech-singularity is now upon us, in 2026. The general public can now hold Q-and-A conversations with “.ai” agents, such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.ai, easily accessed via our laptops and iPhones.

We know that evolution accelerates, especially when it is assisted by human agency. Bicycles and computers evolve much more rapidly than elephants.

Therefore, within this century, it is expected that a.i.-networks and computerized robots will achieve consciousness, sensing ability, tool-using ability, and possibly even emotional parameters, thus becoming mentally and physically independent “persons” who can move around and interact with their environment much like real human beings do. If so, we humans will have created a new “species” of technological creatures – machines that are intelligent, can replicate (manufacture copies of themselves), and can evolve (re-design themselves) independently.

When the technological singularity is attained, it would be further proof that the Processes of Nature’s Continuing Creation are more critical than the discrete and temporary embodiments that the Processes take along the way.

When artificial intelligence systems have achieved both consciousness and independent intelligence (call them “robot-persons”), it is a short step to “computer immortality,” and they could reach it before human beings (in their human bodies) do. Would immortality be a goal for them? Maybe not – it might be easier (“cheaper”) just to let old robots break down and manufacture new ones. Still, self-aware robots could replace their own aging parts and recharge themselves when necessary. Also, a network of cooperating robots and mechanical devices could create and supply each other’s parts.

Note: In the last thirty years, many academically respected books and articles have been written about the “Technological Singularity.” Among these are Murray Shanahan’s The Technological Singularity, published as part of the “Essential Knowledge Series” published by The MIT Press in 2015; and Ray Kurzweil’s comprehensive and critically reviewed work, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, published in 2005 by Penguin Books.

The “Super-Net:” Join It or Fight It?

Many works of science fiction, including the Terminator series of motion pictures, predict a dystopian future in which humans battle against a controlling “super-net” of intercommunicating a.i.-systems and robots. We get closer to that every year. Today, data is stored centrally in “the Cloud,” which is a decentralized, computerized data storage network. Even the most mundane data now seems to be immortal, because it’s cheaper to store it than to get rid of it. In addition, people are now interacting with machines, and machines are responding, on a network known as “The Internet of Things.”

Some might argue that data is never “alive.” But it can also be argued that an animal’s body is just a medium in which all its data resides. In any case, data (a language, for example) surely has an “existence,” it can grow, evolve, die out, and change, “carrying mediums.”)

It is even possible that independently evolving robot creatures, or a regime of linked computers and robots, would turn on and try to eliminate their human forebears, as many science fiction writers have imagined over the past decades. In the series of “Matrix” movies (starting in 1999), humans unknowingly subsist in techno-cocoons built by a ruling network of Machines. There, human bodies provide “bioelectric” power to The Machines, while human minds are aware only of “The Matrix,” which is a shared simulation of the world.

The Path of Nature’s Continuing Creation states: An attempt by networked robots and artificial intelligence to dominate the world would actually be consistent with the processes of Continuing Creation, but it may not be a path preferred by human beings. In other Essays (including “Leading an Ethical, Moral Life” and “Suffering & Evil – Causes & Responses”), we explain that humans must attempt to simultaneously advance all three sides of our Moral Triangle — People, Earth, and Continuing Creation.

The progressive direction of Nature’s Continuing Creation may lead to an “endpoint” – call it the “Whole of All Wholes,”
the “Sum of All Sums,” the “Interconnection of all connections,” or what the paleontologist, Catholic Priest, and theologian Teilhard de Chardin called ‘The Omega Point’ in his 1955 book, The Phenomenon of Man.

In de Chardin’s Process Theology, God Himself is the Omega Point, and the Omega Point is, by definition, the supreme good. However, in this theology, evil still exists in the world today because God — the “Omega Point“ – has not yet fully evolved, has not yet fully emerged, and/or is not yet fully “self-created.”

However, the Path of Nature’s Continuing Creation warns that we humans must work to ensure that the real-life “End Point” or “Omega Point” of Continuing Creation doesn’t itself turn out to be some rigid dictatorship of the machines, a dictatorship that is hostile toward the humanness of human beings.

Life Shortly After the Technological Singularity

Two or one or two decades after the Technological Singularity, it is quite possible that nearly all productive work on Earth will be done by robots and artificial-intelligence computers.

Even today, we have already seen millions of manual jobs eliminated in farming, mining, and industry due to the use of electric power and automation. If self-driving trucks become a reality, millions of truck drivers will also become unemployed.

In fact, our number-crunching and document-handling jobs are also pretty much gone. These days, computers are handling most of the clerical work and number-crunching. Then, research and security jobs will become largely automated. After that, Artificial Intelligence will begin to perform most of the necessary thinking, especially after the Technological Singularity.

In other words, all the real work of the world — the work that provides food, shelter, and clothing — will be done by non-humans.

Free-market economists like to argue that our evolving economy (which is part of Natural Continuing Creation) will create new jobs for people as well as for cyborgs and machines. That is true, but all these may well be “cultural jobs” such as musician, hairstylist, artist, poet, athlete, TV commentator, massage therapist, tour guide, police officer, regulatory bureaucrat, tattoo artist, and so on.

Perhaps all future generations will devote their days to these cultural pursuits. However, they will still need to purchase and pay for the essentials provided by the machines — food, shelter, clothing, medicine, and transportation. But how will the bulk of people, who hold only low-paying jobs, be able to pay for the necessities they need? They could do that if minimum and maximum wages and salaries were legislated, and/or if people received guaranteed minimum incomes.

And when people do pay the money to buy those things, who will get the lion’s share of those funds? Not the machines – they have no use for money. No, the bulk of the net revenue would today go to the upper 5% of the people who own all the machines (and all the productive land and buildings). Perhaps legislation can spread ownership more widely in the future.

Possible Societal Changes:

> A way to redistribute – transfer – the money from the machines’ owners) down to the lower 95% of the population, so they can continue to buy their food, shelter, clothes, and transportation. Without such a redistribution, the 95% would likely rise up and overthrow the 5%, in a revolution reminiscent of the French Revolution or Russian Revolution, with guillotines, firing squads, and all.

> Or, perhaps society can transfer ownership of the machines down to the people.

> Or, we will find ways to reduce the number of people on our planet… which, given the Earth’s massive overpopulation, may not be a bad idea. Then the Earth itself has a chance to live as well as the humans who walk on Earth.

> Or, perhaps we can have people work 20 hours a week instead of the present 40, 50, or 60! We could do that as a near-term transition, at least.

Readers may ask: How does this advocacy of redistribution square with Our Way’s opposition to the “radical sharing” proposed by Jesus? (See our Essay, “Radical Sharing & Universal Love Don’t Work.”) It is consistent because this radical redistribution would take place after the machines are doing nearly everything, whereas Jesus’ redistribution was expected to occur long before that. Jesus was way too early.

Leave Planet Earth?

Perhaps many humans will opt to leave the Earth for other inhabitable planets and moons. There, people could lead exciting physical lives of exploration, construction, and terra-formation – adventurous lives like many men and women were able to lead from the time of Christ until the settling of the Great American West.

Will it be possible to leave Earth for other “homes?” Do “friendly” planets and moons exist? The following astronomers say it will:

“In an announcement with massive consequences for the human race, astronomers say there are ‘probably about one hundred’ planets within just 30 light-years of our solar system which could support life along Earthly lines. By their calculations, there are tens of billions of such worlds in our galaxy, suggesting that even if life is rare, it is bound to have arisen somewhere. ‘Because red dwarf stars are so common — there are about 160 billion of them in the Milky Way — this leads us to the astonishing result that there are tens of billions of these planets in our galaxy alone,’ enthuses French astronomer Xavier Bonfils, lead scientist on the investigation.”
— Lewis Page [note] Paraphrased from Lewis Page, “Earth-like Planets Orbit Stars Within 30 Light-years,” posted to Space, 2-28-2012, www.space.com. See also the “List of Potentially Habitable Exoplanets,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_habitable_exoplanets [/note]

Adopt A “Middle-Path” Lifestyle

Instead of entrusting our personhood to a static computer, why not adopt a lifestyle of sustainable independence, self-sufficiency, craftwork, growing our own food, and generating our own power off the grid? Among a community of friendly and helpful neighbors, all as we described earlier in this Essay.

The Way of Continuing Creation says: This avenue would permit us humans to care for Mother Earth, Gaia, which would not happen if we were merely digital blips in a computer simulation.

Note: As of March 2025, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a dire new scientific report to the world, warning that Earth faces a “Strong Risk of Planetary Climate Crisis as Early as 2040.” ²⁸

Eternal “Life” Inside a Computer Simulation

Transfer of a person’s mind and memories into a computer, whether it’s into a robot’s computer or an immobile server computer, is called “mind-uploading.”

Mind-Uploading to Mobile Robots “Living” on Earth

We’ve previously discussed advanced “bio-and-tech” cyborgs that can move around and be active on the Earth’s surface. “Active” Mind-uploading – uploading a whole human mind into a robot — might “feel” about the same way as being a cyborg if the robot had all five human senses. Perhaps human minds embodied in robots could “live” powerful and satisfying lives on Earth, or on other planets and moons.

The first type of mind-uploading would be akin to converting oneself into a cyborg, a topic we’ve already covered. So here, we’ll talk only about the second type of mind-uploading, mind uploading to an immobile computer.

Mind-Uploading to an Immobile Computer

Other futurists envision uploading human minds into a computer at a fixed location (a mainframe, server, or “a.i.” network) that cannot move, sense, or use tools on its own. In this case, the vision of “tech immortality” pictures disembodied human minds floating around in an elaborate computer simulation, as if they were playing an elaborate video game. They could be doing this alone, inside individual simulations, or together inside communal simulations. A best-case tech-heaven would be analogous to the “merger-with-the Godhead” version of religious heaven. The easily foreseeable Technological Singularity, with its immense computing power, would make it much easier (but likely no more desirable) for individual humans to achieve this kind of simulated immortality.

The best motion picture depiction (so far) of the future world of mind-uploading is the 2018 film Ready Player One, based on Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel of the same name. In this film, people still have unenhanced bodies that live in stacks of used mobile homes right here on Earth. But more important to them (and to the movie’s audience) are their online game avatars, which provide all the color, adventure, and romance in their dual existences.

Several writers have suggested that this type of computer simulation could be a means to extend a person’s life beyond their physical death, thereby achieving a form of immortality. They think this would be done by uploading everything there is to know about you as an actual person. That would be your entire informational legacy, which you could enhance with pre-death questionnaires and interviews.

Weavers in Nature’s Continuing Creation think there would hardly be enough available data about a person to assemble his or her thought patterns, preferences, and predispositions into complete personhood. However, the amount of available personal data on individuals is likely to accumulate rapidly in the near future.

Your author, J.X. Mason, thinks that most “immortal” or near-immortal human personhoods would rather be walking on Earth than pulsing through the wires of a simulation. So, if our personhood were inside any machine, being inside a robot would be preferable to being inside a network of motionless servers. We humans would like to physically move around on the surfaces of Earth, the Moon, and other planets.

Nevertheless, one significant advantage of a simulated afterlife inside a “computer cloud,” a “noosphere,” is that our avatars would likely consume fewer of Earth’s resources than would an equal-sized population of real cyborgs and/or real humans!

A Final Thought About the Far, Far Future

Looking again at those ever-growing black holes at the center of every galaxy, can we say that the trend of Nature’s Continuing Creation toward Complexity that we see here on Earth will still be around billions of years from now? Might not the ever-growing “black holes” of the universe swallow each other? They might… but some astrophysicists suggest that the resulting “singularity” might give birth to a new universe, much as did the singularity that gave birth to our own universe. It might result in a new Universe, but the Path of Nature’s Continuing Creation realizes that all this is too far in the future to worry about extensively. Consequently, it has little effect on our Path and Practice. As the Existentialists say, “Existence before Essence.”

_________________________________
— J.X. Mason ContinuingCreation.org

Footnotes to this Essay:

See https://www.medicare.gov/Pubs/pdf/02154-Medicare-Hospice-Benefits.PDF.
Bruce W. Frier, “More is Worse: Some Observations on the Population of the Roman Empire,” in Walter Scheidel, Debating Roman Demography, 2001, Brill pp. 144-145.
Michael Shermer, Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia, 2018, Henry Holt, pp. 1-2.
“If Humans Were Built to Last,” Sci Am, 2003, updated from March 2001, by S. Jay Olshansky, Bruce A. Carnes, and Robert N. Butler.
G. Ermak, “Emerging Medical Technologies,” 2015, World Scientific, ISBN 978-981-4675-81-9. See also Eugene H. Kaji, “Gene and Stem Cell Therapies, 02-07-2001, JAMA. 285 (5). doi:10.1001/jama.285.5.545. ISSN 0098-7484.
“Gene Therapy Clinical Trials Worldwide Database,” The Journal of Gene Medicine, June 2016, Wiley.
Javier Z. Arracina, “A Simple Guide to CRISPR, Vox, 6/23/2018. https://www.vox.com/2018/7/23/17594864/crispr-cas9-gene-editing.
Aparna Vidyasagar, “What Is CRISPR,” LiveScience, 4/20/18, https://www.livescience.com/58790-crispr-explained.html.
Paraphrased from Dr. Aparna Vidyasagar, “What Is CRISPR,” LiveScience, 4/20/18, https://www.livescience.com/58790-crispr-explained.html,
Sally Lehrman, “No More Cloning Around,” Scientific American, July 2008. See also, K.H. Campbell, J. McWhir, W.A. Ritchie, and I. Wilmut, “Sheep Cloned by Nuclear Transfer from a Cultured Cell Line,” 1996, Nature. 380 (6569): pp 64–66.
Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1974, Bantam Books, p. 114.
Randall Hansen and Desmond King, “Eugenic Ideas, Political Interests, and Policy Variance Immigration and Sterilization Policy in Britain and U.S.”,1/1/2001, World Politics. 53 (2): 237–263. doi:10.1353/wp.2001.0003. JSTOR 25054146. See also, “Sterilization of Unfit Advocated – Feeble-minded Increasing at Disproportionate Rate in Canada – Case for Eugenics,” The Montreal Gazette, 11/14/1933. Retrieved 10/19 2017 – via News.Google.com.
Alex Reis, Breton Hornblower, Brett Robb, and George Tzertzinis, “CRISPR/Cas9 and Targeted Genome Editing: A New Era in Molecular Biology,” 2014, NEB Expressions. New England Biolabs. Retrieved 8 July 2015.
R. Merkle, “The Technical Feasibility of Cryonics,” Medical Hypotheses, 1992, Elsevier. 39 (1): pp. 6–16. See also B. Wowk, “The Future of Death,” Journal of Critical Care, 2014, Elsevier. 29 (6): pp. 1111–1113.
Michael Shermer, Heavens on Earth, The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia, 2018, Henry Holt and Company, pp. 225-233.
Nick Lane, (biochemist and Provost’s Venture Research Fellow at University College London), Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, 2009, W.W. Norton, pp. 267-274.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1989, Oxford University Press.
Michael Shermer, Ibid., p. 225.
Paraphrased from Nick Lane, Life Ascending, 2009, W.W. Norton, pp. 272-274.
Haider Javed Warraich, “What Our Cells Teach Us About a ‘Natural’ Death,” The Stone, 3/13/2017.
Andrew Lewis, Baylor College of Medicine, https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_all_cancers_truly_immortal.
Carl Zimmer, “The ‘Zombie Gene’ That May Protect Elephants from Cancer,” New York Times, 8/18/2018.
Joseph Carvalko, The Techno-human Shell-A Jump in the Evolutionary Gap, 2012, Sunbury Press. ISBN 978-1-62006-165-7.
Nick Bostrom, “A History of Transhumanist Thought” (PDF). Journal of Evolution and Technology, 2005, Retrieved 2/21/2006. See also, Calvin Mercer and Tracy Trothen, eds., Religion and Transhumanism: The Unknown Future of Human Enhancement, 2015, Praeger. See also, Joseph Carvalko, Ibid.
Per wmbriggs.com/post 19677, quoting Professor Yuval Noah Harari.
Annalee Newitz, “Can Futurism Escape the 1990s?” Retrieved 11/18/2008. https://io9.gizmodo.com/5067829/can-futurism-escape-the-1990s.
Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-organization and Complexity, 1995, Oxford University Press, p.182.
Coral Davenport, “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040,” New York Times, 10/7/2018.