Transhumanist Religion Deception: New theology for the “religious” posthuman

March 6, 2014 “If a God did not exist, then it would be necessary to invent one.” Voltaire, 1768.  Literally meaning “God from the Machine”- for Euripides and the other ancient playwrights, this could easily mean an actual Olympian stepping into the picture to remedy some calamity that humanity has sewn beyond its own ability to remedy, however, the term refers to any occurrence in which out of seeming chaos and confusion and desperation, there emerges the perfect means to set everything right again.
As an artistic device, it has inspired debate since lo unto its antediluvian origins; many contending that it is a crutch employed by lazy or unimaginative writers who cannot devise a more elegant or subtle means of resolving a conflict.
It might not be surprising that Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the loudest of these critical voices. Even as he argued for the “Death” of God, he implicated the Deus Ex as the decline of drama, imploring of Euripides’ ghost: “Now, once tragedy had lost the genius of music, tragedy in the strictest sense was dead: for where was that metaphysical consolation now to be found?” The “music” he refers to are the intricate and wondrous patterns that can only emerge from pain and horror and hardship- like jazz or the blues; emergent patterns and new forms that can only be borne out of chaos and bedlam.
The Deus Ex Machina, by contrast, is therefore seen as pop music- simple and repetitive drivel that serves to distract and appease us with shallow and false consolation. One doesn’t have to reach very far to see the parallel between this aesthetic issue, and the position taken by Nietzsche, Marx, and many of their contemporaries towards religion- that it is also a false consolation which serves only to numb us rather than to experience in full measure the fear and ignorance and anguish- the “music” of life which could ultimately lead us to real beauty or transcendence.
Plato, by contrast, is a philosopher whose work is often embraced and endorsed by religious scholars and theologians, but he was possessed of an even more militant inclination, contending that all art was a contrivance which could only serve to draw people away from what is real and therefore was inherently evil, begging the question: is it ever possible for a falsehood to bring us closer to the truth? Does wishing for something to be true necessarily stand at odds with acting to make a thing true?
For those of you with an earnest belief in most of the world’s major religions though, there is no higher truth. You have always believed it would be necessary for a higher power to reach into our world and reshape it- for something beyond us to become a part of our lives and allow us to reach our fullest potential- both on an individual level and a species. You pass down stories and traditions that incorporate the ultimate conception of the “Deus Ex”, not out of laziness or simplicity or a lack of creativity, but out of the very earnest, sincere, and not at all irrational assumption that there are some problems endemic to our nature and the nature of the world we live in which cannot be solved by human means alone.
This is an assessment which is shared by many secularists and transhumanists- we only disagree about the form and origins of the powers that will be necessary to save us. Where we see the emergent intelligence of “God from the Machine”, you, the faithful, may just as rightly look on it as Machina Ex Deus- “Machine from God”.
When Charles Darwin laid the foundations of modern biology through natural selection, many accused him of blasphemy- of trying to usurp the power/role/knowledge of God. But now, a great majority of religious people no longer regard this empirical understanding of evolution as any kind of threat to their desire to believe in a benevolent creator at work in the universe. I would humbly urge you simply to approach the promise of the Singularity with the same tact- simply a means to an end. Whether you believe our salvation necessitates our suffering as part of divine providence, or you believe that our suffering necessitates our salvation in the struggle to overcome contingency…. Deus Ex Machina or Machina Ex Deus… should not stop us from working together to make this the shared ending of our very real story- not a lazy, self-gratified flight of fancy, but a solemn promise to ourselves and to each other of a world and a people transformed by our unity with a power greater than ourselves.
Together, regardless of our metaphysical beliefs, we have chosen to embrace the vision of an ending to our shared story that some cynics (secular and religious alike) regard as too good to be true… so rather than fight with each other over the origins of our salvation, let us work together to pursue its fulfillment through our good works. We need not and cannot await permission to do so- for the divine consciousness that one would seek such permission from is waiting to be born, or else waiting to be discovered- and either way, the answer rests within each of us- and surely any benevolent creator we have would want us to reach out and grasp for it, when we’re ready.
See Full Article - http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/yshua20140301