Episode 136 - Transhumanism - with Revd Dr Stephen Goundrey-Smith - Still Unbelievable!

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Episode 136 Transhumanism with Reverend Doctor Stephen Gowndry
Smith This is Matthew and in this episode of So Unbelievable
I invite an old friend of mine to have a conversation about
transhumanism. Stephen and I have known each
other since we were in a church 18 plus group more than 30 years
ago. Stephen has always been a friend

(00:27):
I could depend on. Stephen trained as a pharmacist
and then there's a minister for the Church of England and now
combines both of these skills inhis work at Ripon College,
Cudstone. We raised several topics in this
conversation, so please, as always, check the show notes for
Essentronics and if you have anythoughts, Steve and I are both
happy to receive them. Reason, press@gmail.com.

(00:54):
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of
Still Unbelievable. I have a very special guest with
me here today, an old friend of mine.
And this is actually marked a very special episode for Still
Unbelief. Well, the first time we're doing
a face to face interview, I likethis, or rather rather more of a
conversation than an interview, to be quite honest, as you'll
find out later. But I have with me an old

(01:15):
friend, somebody who's known me since I was in my 20s.
And for those of you who've listened to the back catalogue
and are familiar with some of the episodes that Andrew and I
have done together, round about 18 months ago, there was an
episode where Andrew and I answered 10 questions for
atheists from the apologist Braxton Hunter.
And one of the questions that Braxton asked on that episode

(01:37):
was if there is one person in your life, one friend, one
family member who could get you close to believing in God, who
would that be? And my answer was my old friend
Steven, and he is sat here with me today.
So Steven Gandry Smith, you've known me since before I got
married. I've known you for a similar
amount of time, the same amount of time, in fact, since before

(02:00):
you got married. We're well advanced in years,
but we were both young and immature, light to party, like
to go out, like to brew. Or rather, you liked to brew
your own product and I certainlyenjoyed consuming it.
We did a lot of fun things together, we did some pantomime
acting together, we met in church youth group and we have

(02:22):
been friends through quite a lotof changes in our respective
lives. Thank you Stephen, genuine
pleasure to have you here in my house, in my spare room here in
rural Somerset. Thank you so much, Stephen
Gandry Smith. Tell my listeners about
yourself. Great.
Well, thank you, Matt. Really appreciate your
hospitality today. A bit about me, Yes, I'm a

(02:43):
pharmacist by background. When we first met in Tunbridge
Wells many years ago now, I was working as a pharmacist at
Pembury Hospital and and from that I developed a career in the
Pharmaceutical industry. And to be so that that gives you
an idea of my scientific background.
But of course, I then was went on to into Christian ministry,

(03:06):
trained for ministry, worked in parishes, and in the last few
years have discovered a vocationas a scientific theologian.
So much of my work today, or at least some of it, involves
thinking about scientific questions, particularly around
biomedical immortality, around transhumanism from a theological

(03:29):
perspective. So that's a little bit about.
Me and I find that whole subjectreally fascinating, Steve.
And to be quite honest, looking back to our circle of friends at
that time in our lives, you are,I think, the only person who
could have taken this particularpath.
You always were cerebral on a slightly different level to
everybody else, and that's not meant to be as an insult to

(03:54):
everybody. We all had our own uniqueness.
But you were the one who was very definitely the one who I
could stay up late with, and we often did, talking about all
sorts of matters and wreaking all sorts of intellectual
nuances from matters which people didn't even dare to think
about. There is no surprise in me
whatsoever, but 30 years later, it's you and me who are sitting

(04:16):
here having this conversation. Absolutely.
We really were the three thinkers of our age, weren't we?
So And it's great that we're having that conversation today,
yeah. And so as part of all of that,
Jason, over the years, I've seenyou, supported you into your
ministry, watched you become a aChristian leader in various

(04:38):
churches here in the UK while maintaining your pharmaceutical
interests. And we've had various chats
about that. And well, and during that time,
I went in the opposite direction.
And you were one of the very first people that I told the, of
my, my deconstruction from Christianity.
You know, a little bit about my story.
You're, you know, that I've contributed the chapter to a

(05:01):
book called Apostate Voices of rather Stories of Deconversion.
And you've, you've read that chapter.
We've had a bit of a frank conversation about that This
episode. This one is not about Steve's
reaction to my chapter, althoughthat may or may not come up
during this conversation. But that's just to lay the
context for the interview and for the discussion that we're

(05:21):
we're having now and the different paths that Steve and I
have taken. And I think what is really nice
about you and the friendship that that we've got is everybody
who talks about the journey thatI've been on talks about the
fear and the loss of friends, etcetera.
And while I didn't give you as much credit as I should have,
I'd have loved to have been moreopen with you in those early

(05:43):
years, and unfortunately, I wasn't.
So this is my opportunity to sayI'm sorry about that, Steve,
because you just certainly deserved more.
Because I knew that our friendship would always survive
this. I knew that I had no nothing to
fear from you as an individual in all of this.
It puts a little bit of context into the fear and the

(06:03):
disconcertment that you were there.
That happens in terms of deconstruction and eventual
deconversion. But you have always been that
friend who would never leave me.So thank you for that, Steve.
I'm really honoured to hear you say that and that gives me real
pleasure for us to be having this conversation now and in a

(06:24):
sense I'm honoured, but there's a bit of pressure there as well,
so hopefully this will be a goodconversation and one way we'll
all learn a fair bit. Absolutely.
This is definitely not going to be a friendship ruining
conversation. So with all of that set up
listeners, I hope you're still here with us.
So the conversation that Steve and I are going to be having is
quite cerebral. It is about transhumanism.

(06:45):
It is about how transhumanism effects scientific
conversations, how it affects ethical conversations, and
therefore also how it affects religious, specifically
Christian conversations. If that is the topic that
interests you, and I know some of our listeners are, I promise
you this is going to be a fun ish conversation.
It's definitely going to touch on some of the questions that

(07:05):
you think and if you have any thoughts on how this
conversation could be improved, please the usual e-mail address,
recentpress@gmail.com. I know Steve would love some
feedback. I know that Steve is already
writing academic literature on this kind of topic.
He is absolutely the right kind of person to hear this kind of
feedback because of what I know is coming down in the next

(07:26):
couple of years. And from
stevespensopleaserecentpress@gmail.com.Please do send your comments and
your thoughts. So Steve, you've sent me some of
the documentation that you've written.
I've not had the pleasure of reading the entirety of the tone
that you've written. Well, I have managed to read
some of it and you have some really good thoughts on
transhumanism in terms of where transhumanism meets humanity and

(07:50):
in terms of the questions and the challenges that that faces.
I think we're pretty much on on the same page.
I think where we might differ ishow much you value the religious
application to that or what religion has to say about that.
So I'll definitely be asking questions about that.
But let before we get to that point, I think the question I
want to ask first is tell me a little bit about why did

(08:14):
transhumanism tickle you? What is it about transhumanism
that interests you? Why do you want to think about
it and talk about it? So transhumanism is a subject.
To be honest, I didn't know great about myself about
probably 15 to 20 years ago. But as I've said, I worked in
pharmacy and in the Pharmaceutical industry, and

(08:37):
what we do there is about new medical technologies, whether
it's drugs or devices. And transhumanism is the
philosophical idea that we can change human nature radically
using biomedical technology. So immediately it's on a
trajectory, an upward trajectoryfrom where we are at the moment

(08:58):
with medical science. So that's one thing that grabbed
my attention. The other thing was that because
it is a philosophical movement, straight away there's a great
deal of interest from people with a range of world views.
So on the one hand, you've got atheist philosophers who want to
explore transhumanism because they see it as a way of

(09:22):
improving human nature and discarding any old mythologies
of religion. On the other hand, you've got
Christian theologians who go oneof two ways.
So some of those will say transhumanism is if you like a
restatement of the idea of Christian transformation towards
a heavenly sphere and will be pro transhumanism.

(09:45):
But on the other hand you'll have Christian theologians who
see the whole idea of self improvement of humanity with
technology as being deeply anti the Christian notion of of
salvation and a heavenly destiny.
I probably lie somewhere in between if I'm honest.

(10:06):
Thank you for that. And I think before we get into
that, let's draw some boundaries.
What is not transhumanism? Where are the boundaries between
what we're familiar with and comfortable in our day-to-day
life? And what is the ideas of
transhumanism, what it will bring?
To give you some examples, we'vegot the whole big thing that's

(10:28):
in the news at the moment is thechange in vaccine technology,
mRNA and the differences. Is that transhumanism?
The other thing is we've got amputees, specifically leg
amputees, who've got additions to their limbs.
Certainly we've got the the blade for running, but there are
other additions. You can you can swap the blade
out if you don't want to run forsomething else.

(10:49):
Is that transhumanism? So really good question.
As I say, a few moments ago I gave you a, if you like an
overall definition. How you then take that
definition further is is a matter of great debate.
So I spent several pages in my PhD thesis and in my first book
discussing a definition of transhumanism.

(11:13):
And in the end, I went for the the broadest possible approach.
So any technological approach that would radically change
human life. And the real keyword there is
radically. So not in terms of politically,
radically, although it probably would and we'll perhaps talk
about that in a few moments, butcertainly that would hugely

(11:37):
change how we live lives as humans.
So, and they have to be technological interventions.
But what this means is there's abroad range of technologies that
could be called transhumanist. So you've already mentioned
about cybernetic body parts. Well, these can probably enhance

(11:57):
how we do everyday activities and would change how the world
worked around us. So they certainly fit into the
transhumanist category. You could also include gene
editing that would give us powers that we don't already
have. So you're referencing CRISPR,
that kind? Of CRISPR and things like that,
yes. The other area is nanomedicine.

(12:20):
So if we use particles that would change our body structure
from the inside. There's some really interesting
work by an author called Noreen Hertzfeldt on this.
And these are very radical technologies because they have
the ability to change your body from the inside, deal with all
kinds of disease, perhaps give you extra resilience, but of

(12:45):
course they have massive destructive power as well, which
is why they're so dangerous. And of course, the final
frontier for transhumanism that many people talk about is mind
uploading, The idea that we could get rid of our frail
bodies altogether and upload ourmind onto a computer and then
somehow or other live a life through interfaces with the

(13:06):
material world. So the transhumanism, while it
is a philosophical movement about radically changing human
life with technology, the technologies themselves cover a
multitude of sins, dare I say it, some of which are more
radical than others and some of which are more scientifically
feasible at the moment than others.

(13:28):
So, for example, we are doing some work with, you know,
there's work going on with cybernetics in our society
already. We haven't got to a point where
we're replacing large amounts ofpeople's bodies with cybernetic
parts yet, but you never know, it might come.
Mind uploading is still obviously very futuristic but
but gene editing pharmacogenomics is already a

(13:52):
reality and the NHS is looking into pharmacogenomic medicine
already. Wow, wow.
So, and as always, dear listeners, things that are
mentioned in this conversation will be in the show notes.
If you're, if you've listened toStill Unbelief or anything more
than a couple of episodes, you'll know that the show notes
are always as full as I can possibly make them with

(14:13):
references to what's being made.So Steve's material that's out
there, that's published, if you've got the money to spend on
it, go there. Buy some of Steve's product.
You'll be buying me a cider eventually if you do that.
And the other subjects that we're talking about, there'll be
links in the show notes to all of these topics, so check those
at the end of the episode. So you've made a couple of

(14:34):
references, Steve, to technologyand cybernetic.
So let's draw a quick boundary. The quick yes, no distinction.
So I mentioned blades earlier for for amputees to help them
run. Is there a difference?
And in terms of the transhumanism label, if a blade
is just a static piece of metal versus a blade that might have a

(14:54):
battery and a chip in it to assist how it works, would that
make a distinction between one being transhumanism and the
other not? Or would you say they are both
transhumanism? Well, I would say that the
boundary with all of these things is blurred.
So I mentioned that there's various different technologies
that you could group under the transhumanist heading.
And the problem we have is that of course there are many medical

(15:16):
technologies used now that are used therapeutically as
assistive technologies that if they were used in different ways
could be enhancement. So in some situations they could
be enhancement. So to take your example of the
blade, if it was a static piece of metal, yes, of course it
probably would be an assistive device.

(15:37):
But of course, if you start started in plant putting, making
it with smart sensors and other forms of technology within it,
then obviously you could producesomething that would be very
much an enhancement because it would be able to do things that
a normal person couldn't do. But the fact is the boundary

(15:57):
there is always blurred. Many philosophers in this area
will say it's very hard to make a distinction between a
treatment, in other words a correction of a effect, and an
enhancement, which of course is giving further powers of some
sort, further ability. OK, I like that.

(16:18):
So there will definitely be, I think it's right to say that the
boundary is blurred. I think it's probably something
that's very difficult and I imagine that there are people
who would draw a line between what I just the example I just
gave. I'm getting the sense that
you're not prepared to draw a hard line between those two and
you're very happy to have the, the blurred creeping

(16:39):
distinction. I'm probably in the same place
there as well. The other distinction that you
just made, and I like this as a distinction.
Again, it's not a crisp one, It's a it's a blurry one.
But in terms of aiding to returnto the inverted commas,
normality versus aiding to exceed normality, and I like

(17:02):
that as a distinction and I imagine there are some people
who would draw a line at that, but I think I'll take the camp
of it's an assistance. Even if it's replacing what was
lost, it's still an assistance. So glasses then.
If you're wearing glasses, you're now a transhumanist.
Congratulations. And there we go.

(17:23):
Absolutely so. However, really important point
here, one of the issues with this is the cultural attitude to
technology. So there are many technologies
that we currently use that technically, if you think it
through our form of enhancement when we drink a coffee to make
ourselves more alert as as we'vedone before this interview, that

(17:44):
some people would regard that asa form of enhancement because
it's giving us a power that we don't have otherwise.
So but culture regards coffee drinking as normal, yes, but of
course it doesn't regard having a cybernetic hand with extra
sensors as normal. So, So an important part with
all of this is the cultural attitude.

(18:06):
And we know for a fact that thatthat technology is never just
technology. The cultural response is really
important. And so, and we also know that
things that we've regarded in the past as being alien become
culturally normal. So for example, the motor car

(18:27):
where we're used to driving around there, 100 years ago it
was all horses and carts. And you know, we now expect to
be able to drive around. So there is a cultural element
to this as well. And my concern with all of this
is how can we work out what is cultural that we may well be
able to supersede? How do you get the difference

(18:50):
between that and the situations where that there are some
ethical lines we want to draw? And that's what a lot of my work
looks at. I want to offer an alternative
divider between transhumanism and not transhumanism, and that
is intent. I wear, I wear glasses.

(19:12):
I've had to put up with it now for about 10 years.
And one of the reasons why I need to wear glasses when I'm
driving is literally so I can read Rd. signs.
It's it's that basic. Now if I was to swap out those
glasses for night vision technology to improve my night
time driving to a level that is superior to what I would

(19:33):
normally have, that would be. Transhumanism.
Because my enhancement? Yeah, because signs to me like
an enhancement. My intent is to be superior,
whereas my intent for wearing glasses when I'm driving is just
so that I can do it. Yes, that's a very, that's a
helpful distinction to an extent.
The problem would be with that is, is when we decide what is

(19:57):
normal basically. So obviously we want to be able
to read the road signs, but but you could say, you could say
that that actually. Where is your normality?
And it might be in 50 years timewe're all using night implants
in our eyes that will then become the new normal.

(20:17):
So that's one of the difficulties with having that
kind of distinction is that the normal changes basically.
As we get used to it and. Exactly.
And that's that cultural. Boundaries blur and boundaries
shift. It's now normal to take a tablet
for a headache, whereas not thatmany years ago we just had to
deal with it. Exactly.

(20:37):
Yeah. OK, Good.
Good answer. Good.
Come back. I'm still going to stick with
that. Distinction.
I'm happy. Don't worry.
You're welcome to that distinction.
That's fine by me. The problem is the distinction
will change in 20 years as as new normal comes along.
So the other then question that I want to ask, and I guess this
would be another distinction on on transhumanism is permanence.

(21:02):
If I get in a car, that is an enhancement because it enables
me to get somewhere that I wouldn't otherwise be able to
get to. I work 12 miles away from my
home. A lot of people work further
away than that. It takes me between 20 and 40
minutes in my car in the morning.
If I was to walk it or even cycle it, it will take me quite
a lot longer than that. Let's just be frank about it.

(21:25):
So my car is an enhancement, butit's not permanent, whereas
something like a leg prosthetic is effectively a permanent
enhance, a permanent adaption tomy body that's not always used
enhancement there. So I would like to offer that as
a distinction. I think that's an important one
to think of. So at the end of the day, many

(21:46):
medical technologies at the current time are not permanent.
But what about those procedures that would be reversible, You
know, so the whole mind uploading scenario, you know, if
you've uploaded your mind into acomputer and your body is
defunct, then actually that's not something you can easily
come back from. And indeed, some of the

(22:08):
cybernetic things are things that, you know, you've pretty
much got to live with. So permanence is helpful as a
distinction, and it probably is certainly one of the factors
that you would want to consider.And of course, the problem is,
you know, one of the big ethicalissues is that if you are going
to do something you know is irreversible, that puts a lot
more. There's a lot more riding on

(22:30):
that and knowing it's the right thing, which is not always easy.
And that's a good reason to be particularly careful about more
permanent changes. Now for the second time.
Now, and I ignored it first timearound, so I'm not going to
ignore it this time around. You've mentioned mind uploading.
It's a very fanciful idea. It's been in science fiction

(22:52):
multiple times before, but just for clarity, you're not talking
attaching sensors to the human skull and the machine reading
those sensors. You are talking the actual
removal of the brain activity orthose neuron sparks and
replacing them or placing them in a separate computer chip

(23:14):
which is replicating exactly thesame process.
Absolutely. So the authors, Ray Kurzweil and
Hans Muravec, both of whom are very techno progressive, talk in
quite graphic terms about doing this.
But yeah, you're absolutely right.
It's about basically downloadingthe, the, you know, the, the

(23:35):
informational contents of your brain onto some form of
computer, some form of silicon hardware and getting rid of your
body and then living your life as information rather than as an
organic person. You're quite right.
It is very fanciful. And this is one of the areas

(23:57):
where transhumanism is very interesting to philosophers
because, of course, this is a great mind game, isn't it?
So it's a good thought experiment.
And many of them have conversations about, you know,
is your identity the same as it was before?
And most philosophers say, well,it probably isn't.
No, because you're no longer thethe same person and they will

(24:19):
say, well, can you have an authentic experience of the
world around you. We're pressing Descartes idea of
I think therefore I am to the limits there are we only our
thoughts. So philosophers love these kind
of questions. Of course, in terms of is it
fanciful? I have heard some people

(24:42):
seriously saying that we can do mind uploading in the next 50 to
100 years. I don't want to be one of those
people, I'm honest, but but I dohear, you know, some people
saying that that it's not scientifically feasible now, but
it might not be that long in global terms before it is
interesting do. You have a gut feel.
I think it's some way off yet, if I'm honest, and I think the

(25:05):
main reason it's some way off isfor cultural reasons.
At the end of the day, we, we like being embodied people and
actually there's an awful lot ofstuff we'd have to change about
how we live lives if we were going to live in silica lives.
So. So I I can't see it catching on
culturally if I'm honest. No, there's a very interesting

(25:28):
comedy program called Upload which was is on one of the the
streaming services which I've watched.
It plays with this idea in an intriguing way.
It makes it very light. I enjoyed it.
I don't think it's anywhere close to what the reality would
be, but my thoughts on this are I'm not sure it will.

(25:50):
I'm not convinced it will ever be possible, let alone
achievable, and my reasons for this are the immense storage
power and computing power that would be acquired.
For that you'd need a chip with enormous, almost uncalculable
number of connections. You know, and they have to be

(26:10):
dynamic connections in order to accurately replicate what the
brain is capable of, not to mention the memory required in
order to store all of that. And then on top of that, there
are unique uniquenesses in the human brain, like for example,
how memory is stored and how memory is of how memory

(26:31):
functions and how we activate and retrieve our memories, which
I'm not convinced will ever be possible to replicate in a chip
function. So I'm going to call it and say
that I actually don't think thiscould happen.
That's, that's interesting. I think with quantum computing,
we stand the chance of having the processing power available.

(26:54):
But I do share many of your doubts, certainly around the
whole question of how a computerwould interpret a human mind.
And I think there's a huge number of questions there that
are unanswered, and I think there are a lot of unintended
consequences. So for that reason, as I've
said, I don't want to be burningmy mind anytime too.

(27:18):
And my other thoughts on that isthe only way you could
accurately replicate the human brain in tip form is you'd have
to know the entries of every single connection within the
brain and I don't see how you could possibly do that in a non
destructive way. No, absolutely.
We are talking about, and I think either Ray Kurzweil or

(27:39):
Hans Murrayvec talks about this in very graphic terms of
removing a person's brain while they are still technically alive
and, and basically removing all the information from it in all
kinds of different ways neurallyand, and, and through kind of
brain wave mechanism. So I agree with you.

(28:01):
I don't think it's possible or. Or even if it becomes
theoretically possible, I think it's hugely problematic.
Yes, quite. And if you do it at the end of
life when someone's got dementiaor something like that, all
you're doing is creating a computer with dementia.
Who would want that? Absolute.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, good thinking, good
thinking. Absolutely.
So. But let's get on to things that

(28:23):
are more reasonable, more possible, and potentially more
more interesting. And that is how transhumanism
could transform, improve, change, challenge our lives and
the way we think within our lifetime.
So we're talking 20-30 years time, and for the younger
listeners, 50-60 years time. What are the realistic scenarios

(28:47):
of things that we could see happen that we don't see happen
at the moment? Well, there are some things I've
said that are already on the horizon.
So the kind of crisper gene editing technology, we could be
in a position where we could fairly quickly eradicate out
certain disease. If you did that in the germ cell
lines, you could eradicate some diseases.

(29:08):
Now there's questions about that.
Is that do we really want to eradicate a certain kind of
person and is it about the disease or is it, is there some
social component about that? And many theorists of disability
will say that the social component is really important.

(29:29):
So I don't think even using geneediting, which we are closest to
using at the moment, it is it's not without its problems.
But I think that's an area that that that will become more and
more of an issue in terms of cybernetics.
I think we're we're poised to have a huge revolution in that

(29:53):
area. So we've got some cybernetic
parts being used in terms of of limbs, but also a lot of smart
components like prostheses, interactive wearables.
I think there's a lot of potentially digital technologies
that interact with the biological body that could
become huge in the next 50 to 100 years.

(30:17):
In terms of other forms of technology, we've heard quite a
bit about the idea of brain implants and neural threads
where we can think our thoughts on onto our mobile phones.
That's not that far off, but I think it's still, there's still
work to be done on that for the same reasons of as mind

(30:38):
uploading. But I think that's not as far
off as we might think. Now that leads us into an
interesting area because we could be in a situation where
our thoughts may not as be as private inside our skull as we'd
like them to be. So I think that technology in
particular raises ethical issuesthe same reason.

(30:59):
So yeah, I'd say the gene editing stuff is close.
I think that the whole area of cybernetics, particularly brain
computer implants and interfacesis is going to be a could be a
thing in future, in the fairly near future.
I definitely have questions overthe latter.
But before we get to that, let'sgo go back to the the

(31:21):
eradication level. Certainly there are myriad
diseases that we could all list that we would all celebrate the
death of. So that's an easy conversation
to have. Yes, we all want those diseases
gone from society. It makes life better.
It makes us better able to function, size, He makes us
better able to feed our loved ones, etcetera.

(31:43):
And then we're also talking diseases that affect animals as
well, which makes life for all of them better.
We pretty much all agree on that.
Let's put that one to one side. Let's get on to more more
fundamental, more challenging ones.
So let's pick on schizophrenia for a generally accepted to be a
net negative to humanity. Yeah.

(32:05):
Let's play pretend for a bit andyou mention that there is a way
that we can accurately both detect and fix schizophrenia in
the womb. So mother takes a scan, your
child is is going to have schizophrenia is going to
develop from it's going to become apparent from age,

(32:25):
whatever, and it's going to get worse.
And we know from from his history that people with this
kind of schizophrenia are very likely to do bad things after
the age of 30 because of the waythat it impacts.
We can fix that so that this will not affect them.
And we can do that through whatever the treatment is,
whether it's a drug or a nanotech.

(32:48):
How is not the important question here?
Is that a road that humanity should do if they could do that?
So I think we shouldn't rule it out that one of the issues with
fixing is the whole kind of ideaof fixing.
So, and we're seeing this already with the use of azembic,

(33:08):
the diabetes injectable medicinefor weight loss.
So some people see azembic as a way of of fixing obesity.
You know, if we could, if someone uses this, they will
straight away. They don't have to go through
all of the the tiresome stuff with diets, self disciplined

(33:29):
eating and so on and so forth. You can just, you know, if you
like deploy the magic bullet. The problem with that general
approach is it's tempting to do it and not think of the
consequences. It also sidelines the important
task of thinking, what does thismean for me in terms of my moral

(33:51):
life, my development as a person?
How do I discipline my life in terms of living with this
condition? Now, I think you're right.
There's some conditions that arewill be compelling to to give
that fix. But as I say, the idea of a fix
as an instrumental, you know, we, we press the button or we

(34:14):
give the drug and bang, it's changed is always we need to be
a little bit wary of because it does circumvent some of the
processes that that we involve with learning to come to terms
with how we are and how we mightwant to develop and grow.
So a classic example, which I know you've mentioned already on

(34:37):
your questions, is the whole idea of moral enhancement using
a drug. In this case, it'd be something
like Prozac to change our mentalstate so that we are able to
make more moral decisions and behave in a better way.
Great idea on the face of it, but what it does is it

(34:58):
circumvents the work that we do as we grow up and interact with
our culture and, and learn aboutright and wrong in relational
situations to think that we can have a, a drug that will, you
know, fix it straight away. So the whole fixing mentality is
one we have to be a little careful with.

(35:19):
But I I agree with you in principle that there are some
things that that will be no brainers really and will be
fairly compelling to do. Schizophrenia is a good example
because it is, you're quite right.
It's a condition that has a lot of negative effects.
There's not really much positiveabout it.

(35:39):
Treatment is often very difficult.
As you may know, levels of adherence to antipsychotic
medication are often very poor. Their well-being is poor on a
long term basis. The other issue with the kind of
the fixing mentality is that of course we can think we've fixed
it and then we haven't. So we are seeing at the moment

(36:03):
the reemergence of a number of diseases for which there was
vaccination because people have either rejected the technology.
So obviously we see that quite often with vaccines, and that's
a whole big area, this vaccine refusal area.
But they either reject the vaccine or they don't see it.

(36:24):
It's as important as it should be, or our health providers
don't deploy it in the way they should do.
So we kind of think that we can fix something straight away, but
actually the danger is we think we fixed it, but it comes back
again. So the fixing mentality is one
that we have to be a little bit careful with, if that makes any

(36:46):
sense. But I do agree with you, there
are some things that are obviously no brainers.
OK, so let's run with that for alittle bit longer then.
I'm glad that I, I picked a, a good choice with with
schizophrenia, there probably are already people who are
thinking through how can we catch and treat and work on

(37:09):
that, that specific condition earlier in life, because then it
makes everybody's lives better. The caring for and the treatment
of somebody with it is problematic as well as it is for
the person who has it. So I imagine that all parties
involved would love to see the eradication of it.
And you you did in your answer. Remind me and remind the my

(37:31):
listeners as well that these kinds of remedies are rarely
targeted and specific. Yes, we are getting better, but
what you're doing is you're introducing something into the
body, whether it's a gene editing or whether it's a drug
that tries to achieve something and it is never surgically
accurate. It is never absolutely perfect.

(37:52):
There is always a knock on effect.
There is always a consequence that we need to think about.
Even if we're taking an aspirin for a headache.
It is not just working. On where your headache is, it's
working all over your body and we need to remember that for
things. If we're having that
conversation about schizophreniaand I think picking up on that,
our treatments are getting increasingly personalized.

(38:13):
So for example, in the last 20 years we've had biologics for
rheumatoid arthritis. Now when you and I were living
in Tunbridge Wells in the early 90's, the way of treating
rheumatoid arthritis was anti-inflammatory drugs which
damage the stomach and disease modifiers that were hugely

(38:34):
toxic. These new biologic agents over
the last 20 to 30 years have changed the game with that and
they've done that because they're more specific.
So and I think it's possible fortechnologies that we will regard
as enhancement technologies to be more as specifically acting
as some of the current more personalized medicines.

(38:59):
I don't want to get too much down this road, but we've kind
of touched the edge of it. So let's at least cover it.
But it does run into danger of politics and stuff like that.
And that is mandatory treatments, non optional
treatments. I'd like to just touch on that
because we've skirted the edge of that.
But this is not going to be a major factor of this

(39:19):
conversation. But again, it's 2025.
We've come out of five years of shitty COVID and lots of
resistance to that, and the allowance of that resistance,
the toleration of that resistance, has enabled people
to be braver in their resistanceof other things.

(39:41):
And the consequences of that have brought back deadly
diseases, and we've seen children die as a result.
So is there a case for mandatingthese treatments?
So this is again a very difficult area, and I think what
you need to know is that in the whole thinking about

(40:03):
transhumanism as a futuristic thing, one of the greatest fears
of many thinkers in this area isthat as soon as you have a
technology that is. It confers a person huge
advantages. But perhaps if it's a more
costly technology, then we couldend up with a society where you

(40:26):
have the enhanced and the unenhanced straight away.
That becomes a justice issue there and it gets political.
So one of the problems we have with all technology is we can't
completely, we can't completely divorce it from politics.
But I know that you want to avoid the political issues and
that's fair enough. I would say that what we would

(40:48):
be better off doing rather than mandating things, bearing in
mind that autonomy and personal choice are so important in our
current society, are better approach is to work out how we
can create a narrative in society, say this is good for
all of us. So I think that's the better

(41:09):
approach if I am honest. I would not want to use the
language of mandating certain things.
Obviously we have had mass vaccination in the past.
And the interesting thing is we before the COVID vaccine issues,
we never got, we never thought too much about consent.

(41:30):
But it's always been a key part of modern medical ethics.
But now we do think about consent.
But what we do know is that vaccination programs, certainly
in the from the 50s onwards, mass vaccination process, we're
very effective in terms of health healthcare.
So I think what we have to do israther than get bogged down in

(41:54):
the mandating, overriding of personal consent issues, is to
work on what is the best thing for all of us as a society.
That's a good point. But what I would like to bring
up, and it'll be remiss of me not to, is I know I have
listeners who have medical issues which mean that them

(42:17):
being able to take the vaccine that they want to take is not
possible or might not be possible.
And they rely on you and me being vaccinated, not carrying
diseases, to give them the freedom to live a life.
And as soon as we give the choice of others to refuse that
vaccine, we are taking choice away from those people to live

(42:39):
the life that they want to live.Well that's true, but on the
other hand, if we go for an approach that emphasizes the
common good and says it will be great, it is the public spirited
thing to be vaccinated, then youand I will still go off and get
vaccinated and hopefully our friends who have medical issues

(43:00):
with vaccines would then still be protected.
But straight away, we're not in a situation where we're forcing
the government, if it mandated certain vaccines, would force
them to have it as much as us. So I think that kind of approach
of working out what is the common good and encouraging

(43:20):
people to buy into that social contract is still a good way
forward and helps our friends inthat situation.
Right, I'm going to paint a hypothetical.
I'm not always a fan of hypotheticals because sometimes
hypotheticals can give a a left field story that is actually not
reality. But let's paint one anyway.

(43:43):
Let's use the past couple of minutes as an example.
Let's imagine then that there isan individual born in a couple
of years time and they're now intheir 30s or 40s.
And they are and they've got a medical condition where they
can't take certain vaccines and these vaccines that are

(44:03):
essential for the good of sites that we, let's just pretend it's
COVID. Whatever reason they're unable
to take the mRNA vaccine that would protect them against COVID
or whatever is equivalent in 30 or 40 years time because of
condition that they were born with.
And so they rely on the rest of the population to do that.
Now let's pretend that at the time that they were born, it was

(44:26):
possible to detect that deficiency and fix it in utero.
And their parents opted not to do that for whatever reason, and
they chose not to do that. That per child has now grown up,
become an adult, and there's gota condition that was
preventable, but their parents robbed it, robbed them of that.

(44:51):
Do they have a case? Well, we already have that
situation, of course, with prenatal Down syndrome
screening. There are many people with Down
syndrome who might say, well, I could have, we could have done
something about I could have my life didn't have to be the way
it was. So that's slightly different
because it may not be a disease that they live with.

(45:13):
Obviously Down syndrome, you either have it or you don't.
But I think that ethical situation is there already.
And one of the key kind of the the quick answer is, do they
have a case? Yes and no, that they could say
yes, they do because they didn'tchoose to have this particular
condition. And now here they are, Lombard

(45:34):
with it. But on the other hand, you know,
they didn't have that level of autonomy as a fetus.
And the parents made a choice, probably made a choice in good
faith that they felt was the right one.
So I think it's very hard ethically.
It's hard to say there is a casethere, but in a sense there is.
You see what I mean? But I think problematic

(45:56):
conversations about transhumanism will probably
centre around exactly that, I think.
I think that is where the black mark on transhumanism will come
from. Parents making a decision on
behalf of their child, because that is the parents right, and
then the child deciding 30 or 40years later that they made the
wrong decision. And it might be something as

(46:17):
innocuous as choosing your eye colour.
Or it might be something as serious as a curable disease,
which the parents chose not to cure.
And of course, that could work both ways.
So the parents could well have decided to avail of some great
new technology that would improve their child's cognitive
powers. Unfortunately, it's given we now

(46:40):
know 30 years later, it gives them psychotic flashbacks and
they are now in a situation where their mental health is
poor because of the unexpected consequences of what at the time
was thought to be a progressive technology, one of the big.
Problems. We're talking about thalidomide
here, aren't you? Yes, Thalidomide is an example

(47:01):
of that kind of thing. In a sense, it's not quite the
same. Thalidomide was a medicine for
for morning sickness. So it was seen as being a a
relatively, you know, a relatively uncontroversial
intervention. But but it had these completely
unexpected consequences in termsof its effect on the unborn

(47:25):
baby. But, but, but absolutely these
situations happen already. So I think my point is, is that
you can blame the parents, but they may have made a good faith
decision and it might be whichever decision they might
they make, it could be the wrongword.
Either way, there will be court cases in the future over this.

(47:47):
So whose? Job, right?
Yes, Yeah. Whose job is it then to think
these things through and make sure that these challenges,
these difficulties, these potential problem areas are both
predicted and thought about? So one of the problems we've had
as I've already alluded to, the fact that we have unintended

(48:08):
consequences. So any medical intervention you
never, what we would hope is that we know some of the
obviously the some of the benefit effects that you'll
have. We'll know some of the side
effects depending on how long it's been on the market.
But we never know what it's there may there may well be
unintended consequences that we don't know about.

(48:29):
We know that with with some of the medical interventions we
have currently, the problem we have in future is more radical,
more invasive medical interventions in future we are
likely to have more unintended consequences because they work
at much lower levels in the bodystructure and in our Physiology.

(48:51):
So I think the risk we face is that these unintended
consequences will be more in future than they are now.
And one of the problems we have is that at the moment, and in
fact in any area of technology, the law usually struggles to
keep up with technological progress.
So we're seeing this at the moment, argue with the AI

(49:13):
debates about AI and how we regulate AI.
Well, we're nowhere near that. And I think we'll have similar
issues with biomedical technologies that we could class
as transhumanist. Basically, I think what will
happen in future is that there will be specific cases over

(49:34):
which there will be a court battle and a precedent draw.
How that will go, it's hard to say at the moment.
So now I'm not a lawyer, so I can't tell you how that might
go. But certainly one of the
principles that go in ethics andphilosophy is that you can't

(49:55):
hold parents too responsible forthe decisions they make and good
faith about a child, even if it doesn't turn out right, if you
see what I mean. So it'll be interesting to see
in the law how that pans out. The obvious concern in that case
is often in edge cases like this, the law tends to swing to

(50:16):
the party which has got the mostcash to burn.
Indeed so. And that's will be.
And this of course is why some of these issues are inherently
political, because at the end ofthe day they are often settled
by those with the power and the money.
So that's why it's all very tricky.
And This is why we need areas ofstudy, areas of questions,

(50:41):
philosophers, etcetera, who are unimpinged by the political
elites. Absolutely, Absolutely so.
And yes, that was a dig at a certain country at this.
Moment. Yeah, no, no names, no factor,
of course, but, but, but part ofthe work I do, as you know, I'm
largely an independent scholar with the work I I write is my

(51:04):
own opinion. I don't have financial support
to do it. And I do that.
I can say what I really think, or I can at least be freer with
what I hope is the truth about these things.
And, dear listener, if you have money to burn and you want to
influence the way these conversations go, you know who
to contact. Indeed.
So, Yeah. We all have a price, don't we,

(51:25):
Steve? Indeed we do.
We do. I just haven't discovered.
No one's offered me mine yet. And it's very, very low, I
promise you. Quite.
So. We haven't gone there yet.
So let's go there. You are also an edgy theologian.
You do stand up. You have served churches.
You do think about these things through your Christian faith.

(51:48):
You don't separate your Christian faith from these
thoughts. What has religion got to offer
in these cases? The important thing with
thinking about these things froma religious perspective is that
actually whether or not we have faith personally, a lot of
people in the world do. So we can't ignore the religious

(52:11):
angle even if we don't espouse any particular religious faith.
Now I come at this from a Christian perspective and that's
about my kind of long standing commitment to the God and Father
of Jesus Christ. I recognize that there are
people thinking about this and in fact I review them in my
books from a Muslim, a Hindu perspective.

(52:35):
A lot of the people in the worldhave faith, and I think the
problem we have is that technology is never just about
technology. It's about value.
All of these people of faith will come at these technologies
from a perspective of value. So the question is, what is it
about the technology that will enable certain religious values

(53:00):
to be lived out in People's Daily lives, and what won't?
One of the ideas that I'm very clear on that I expound in my
most recent book is the idea of how can we make technology, what
we call a common good, somethingthat works for everyone in a
pluralistic society. The common good is a really good

(53:20):
idea because it touches on, on the one hand, the Christian
tradition obviously in from the likes of Augustine and Aquinas.
And of course, more recently, the Catholic Church with Vatican
2 espoused the idea of the common good.
What it is, what it what we needto do to hold human dignity

(53:42):
everywhere, to ensure equality across society, to take a view
that that an individual's life is good when society is good.
All of this is good stuff. Obviously it has political
connotations, which we won't go there now.
But the other important thing with the common good is that
actually this is not just a Christian idea.

(54:04):
Many Enlightenment thinkers werekeen on the idea of the common
good in the classical world. Aristotle, Plato, all of whom
had a notion of the common good.So in a sense, it's an idea that
can unite people across religious divides and provides
us with something to help us think about how we use

(54:27):
technology for human flourishing.
And this is really important because, as I say, if we think
about technology as not being just instrumental, so we do it
to do a job that we think it ought to do, but actually to
improve our life as a community together.
We can't avoid the issues of value and therefore we can't

(54:49):
avoid the religious views and, you know, ideas from
Christianity, loving your neighbor as yourself, the idea
of hope, kindness of the virtues, shall we say.
Thank you, Steve. What I'm reminded of is when the
European Declaration of Human Rights was created, there were

(55:11):
people of all face and none involved in the drawing up of
that policy. Can you imagine the situation
where the the issues of transhumanism and medical
intervention become so significant to mankind?
It's something similar has to happen.
For that there are. Already people thinking in those

(55:31):
terms in terms of seeing technology use as a human right.
Obviously there are organizations that do that from
a tech progressive perspective. So humanity plus the so-called,
you know, the was the Transhumanist Association that
they would like to, that they'd love there to be a kind of a
declaration of human rights thatis techno progressive.

(55:54):
I think those of us from, who have a religious view on the
matter would like to see something like that happen, but
not quite in the same way. But I, I, and again, I, I say
again, it's often very hard to separate technology from
politics. And I think as soon as you start
talking about deployment of technology for the betterment of

(56:18):
human nature and, and the human condition, straight away you
have to consider the whole question of, of rights and
duties. So, So I think we will will need
to go down that route. It's a very difficult route
because of course, as I've said already, many philosophers
struggle to draw a distinction between therapy and enhancement.

(56:41):
There's a considerable debate about what technologies will be
ultimately good for humanity andwhat could be ultimately
divisive. But that's the very reason we
need to have some kind of agreedBill of Rights on the issue.
Right. So I see some obvious challenges

(57:01):
in that, not least of which is certain religions.
Sorry, let me rephrase that. Certain elements of some
religions are very exclusive in the outlook.
We've got elements of Islam who will reject any other religion
and atheism from being out of having any value.

(57:24):
There are fundamentalist elements of Christianity that
will take a similar view about any other religion.
In fact, some elements of Christianity are so
fundamentalist so that you can see all Christians as Christian.
So how do you get those people, people who adhere to those
extremist forms of religion around the table, talking to

(57:45):
everybody else, those who they normally seek to exclude?
Hopefully there is some means ofdoing that.
What we do know is that already that is the case with the human
rights that we already have recognized in international law.
As you know, there are some countries and some factions of
people who don't want anything to do with those and will opt

(58:07):
out of them, if not illegally, then by trying not to enforce
those rights in their countries.So I think we're already in that
situation. How can we improve through
things and encourage people to go down that route?
I think the significant thing with transhumanist technologies
and enhancement technologies is that because they are applicable

(58:29):
to all human beings, they will affect all human beings.
So I think there's possibly quite a compelling argument to,
to think about the consequences of that, you know, whatever your
beliefs. But I, I mean, you're right,
there will be some factions of society or certain religious
groups who will not accept that.Can we make any progress on

(58:52):
that? That kind of depends on the
technology that is coming over the horizon.
I think some will be sufficiently radical that we
will all have to act together orface extinction or or distinct
limitations on our existence. So, and I think that will be the
one thing that possibly draws more fundamentalists of

(59:16):
different religious groups into thinking, hang on a minute, we
need to somehow or other reach some kind of agreement on this.
My concern about that, and I think we're seeing echoes of
that already. As you hinted at, let's pick on
Christianity. Christianity is not the only
offender, it's just it's what weboth know.
So let's just stick with what weknow.

(59:38):
There are elements of fundamentalist Christianity who
are very exclusionary in their language calling, going so far
as to call progressive Christians toxic and not real
Christians. Now, I think this, the negative
effect of what I can see with this kind of transhumanist

(59:59):
progression is that those groupsof people will have one of two
choices, become more isolationist or become more
progressive. And sadly, I think they'll
become more isolationist and they'll become cultish.
And as soon as you've got groupsof people who isolate into a
cult. We breed problems down the line.

(01:00:20):
David Koreshby, your mind was probably your.
Idea. I agree with your analysis.
I think that's exactly what willhappen.
Either groups will group together for the common good, or
they will become more isolationist.
And I think if they become more isolationist, the chances are
that they will go one of two ways.

(01:00:41):
They will either somehow or other find out a way to continue
in that isolationist way, in a way that is sustainable or they
will destroy themselves. So we shall have to see.
But I agree with your analysis. What I'm not sure about is where
that will take the cults. Now, I'm not a great, I'm not a

(01:01:01):
great expert on There are theologians who specialized in
in ecclesiology and and cults and the development of
sectarianism. So I don't know that area so
well, as I say, but I agree withyour basic analysis of the
direction it will go. But where it will end is a
different matter. The other more global, less

(01:01:23):
religious concern that I have about this kind of thing is we
are very much, and you did hint on it earlier, we're very much
in the realms of this will be something for the rich.
The rich nations, the progressednations, the technologically
advanced nations, which also just so happened to be the
mostly Christian nations, are the ones that will gain the most

(01:01:45):
benefit from this. So we're talking North America,
we're talking huge swathes of Europe and we're talking select
countries over in Asia. They will benefit from this the
most. And it will leave the the Middle
East, it will leave Southern America, it will leave Africa
trailing behind with little bitty bits.

(01:02:09):
But not the globe, not the national acceptance of this kind
of thing. And there is a potential here to
draw a huge divide between typesof humanity, much greater than
we already see now. Okay, I'm going to challenge you
a little bit on that, that thereis your idea that there's a kind
of a direct sort of axis betweenwealth and Christianity, because

(01:02:31):
I think firstly, you're quite right.
The wealthy nations are the onesthat will do well.
However, there are some very wealthy majority Muslim nations
and I, depending on how they go,and I discussed this a little
bit in my, in my most recent book, depending on how they go,
they may well be users of enhancement technologies.

(01:02:54):
The other question is how Christian other nations are.
Now, we don't want to talk abouta certain political situation
that we both know about, but youknow, we hear about nations that
are wealthy being Christian. But but but in what sense are
they Christian? So that's that's so just to
decouple the kind of the wealth and Christianity situation

(01:03:15):
there. But you are right, the wealthy
nations will do better. And I think the countries who
will be the victims will of course be sub-Saharan Africa,
the poorer parts of Asia, et cetera, et cetera.
And there's big debates going onabout this already because the

(01:03:35):
problem is our tendency has beenthe imperialistic West.
And I say that unless I say how I say that in, you know, in
loose terms. But the tendency has been to see
the Western scientific methodology as being the correct
one and all indigenous science and technology as being somehow

(01:03:58):
inferior. And the problem we have is that
actually there are many thinkersin Africa now.
So if you listeners want to heara bit more about that, read
something by a guy called HulaniMadingi.
You can what his name is in yourshow notes who's written a great
deal, who's not happy about the fact that Africa could have a

(01:04:19):
westernized form of technology foisted on them.
And he wants to see technology used in a way that's right for
the political priorities of Africa.
So there's huge debates about this.
And I think while you're quite right the wealthy countries of
the world will have the big advantage, I think there will be

(01:04:40):
a lot of how should we say, agitation from certain parts of
the world that have strong liberationist tendencies now.
My answer is yes to this question just for the benefit of
you and my listeners because of my history.
But given what? What given the humanities

(01:05:04):
progress or lack of progress in various areas over the last 600
years, do these more the currentmore wealthy countries, Europe,
North America, parts of the Middle East, do they owe the
poorer parts of the world when it comes to this kind of

(01:05:25):
technological advancement? Do we have a debt that we should
pay? Do we owe them to bring them up
to our level on their terms? Like I said, my.
Answer is yes. OK, So it's a good question.
And the problem with it is that the Western, the wealthy Western

(01:05:46):
way of thinking would be on our terms.
And actually they would probably, I think there are
many, from what I've read, thereare various thinkers in Africa
who are very interested in thesetechnologies and they do have a
progressive vision. These are people who faced often
huge disruption in their own countries, civil war,

(01:06:12):
corruption, crime, lots of issues that they want to see a
better life for their people. So they've got, but they see
themselves as doing that in a way that is, that is, if you
like, commensurate with their traditional ways, their forms of
technology and indigenous medicine.

(01:06:33):
So I think there's huge debates about that and the danger with
the, the, the the wealthy countries owe the poor countries
something is probably not quite the right dynamic.
What I would hope we can do is work out how we can all together
work towards a future that is right for.
More of the world. Than we have at the moment.

(01:06:54):
Fair enough answer. I'm going to stand by my claim
that we owe them. OK Yep Yep.
But there is a better way to message it.
I still see it as a debt that weowe, but the way I would I think
a a constructive way of best. Let's say it's a duty that
perhaps we have more of a duty to try and ensure that there is

(01:07:17):
better, the better distribution of wealth because after all, we
have the wealth as the wealthy countries.
So we, we have a duty to think about what we can do for the
whole, the whole world. That's definitely a a less
triggering word to use, so let'slet's go with that.
The way I would want to sell it though, isn't using that

(01:07:38):
language. The way I would want to sell it
is it's better globally is and to use the word that you used in
the documents that you sent me. If there is greater equity
around the world, then we by default get a safer, less
transient world and the world that everybody is happier with

(01:07:59):
their lots. Immigration is a big, big thing
that the that the wealthier countries are dealing with, but
they're dealing with it by becoming isolationist, by saying
get out of my place. Whereas the solution is not to
dissuade them from coming by making us less attractive.

(01:08:20):
The solution is by making where they're coming from more
attractive. I agree, absolutely.
And because that's where they really want to be.
They want the place that they'releaving to be better.
Well, put simply, they they wantto be in their home and for
their home to be a safe place. Yes.
Exactly. So this is what you and I mean

(01:08:40):
when we use the word equity. Indeed, yes.
The duty that we have is to ourselves by making the whole
world a more equitable and better place, by sharing what we
have with those who aren't thereyet, because it makes everybody
more happy. Absolutely, absolutely.
And this is, you know, from a Christian perspective, this is

(01:09:04):
entirely consistent with obviously biblical messages
about justice. It's entirely consistent with,
you know, for example, the account of the Good Samaritan.
The Samaritan was a much hated figure and yet he helped this
Jewish person by the roadside. I won't go too much into into
biblical literature, but there'splenty of of example was of

(01:09:28):
Christians who are outward looking in terms of their
charity and their justice. Thank you for that, Steve.
And reminder listeners, I'm herewith my old friend Stephen
Gandry Smith. Steve and I've known each other
for more than 30 years. We're both in our 20s.
We're both enthusiastic young men with dreams of the future

(01:09:48):
and no idea what life was actually going to bring us.
I think we're mostly happy with where we are now.
I know I am. I'm pretty sure I am too,
actually. OK, we we drive the right cars,
we live in the right house, we have the right pets, and we have
the right life partners. So what more could anybody want?
Out of the Yeah, yeah. This experience that's brought
upon us with no choice from us over indeed, right.

(01:10:12):
Yes, and. So, and as always, do check the
show notes for links to Stevens material and to other things
that we bring up during this conversation, right?
So, Steve, we're talking about how we bring equity into the
world and there are obvious exclusions that are going on
there. They'll be countries that won't
want to deal with each other. Again, we're touching on

(01:10:34):
politics again, like we said we wouldn't, but we will bring come
back onto the subject on at hand.
But we talked earlier about how that's an hour ago now actually,
about individuals with the rightto choose not to have certain
treatments because it's their choice.
And then we moved on to say groups of people within a

(01:10:55):
nation, it might be within theirright to remove themselves from
certain choices. And now we're talking equity
globally. Will nations.
Is it, is it right then for a nation to say, actually we want
none of this? We want an Iron Curtain around
our country and we want none of that in here?

(01:11:15):
There might be some which refuseto deal with other countries.
I'm thinking obviously North Korea, very few people are going
to want to share this kind of thing with North Korea.
North Korea might not even trustany of this technology.
So we're we're creating by trying to make equity around the
world. We are, given today's current

(01:11:37):
politics, probably de facto creating an even more pariah
state. OK.
Now, interesting questions and Ithink, yes, I think there will.
We're kind of slightly straying into the realms of international
relations. We are which we aren't which we
are not experts, which again. We are not experts, so we are
many things. We're not experts in

(01:11:58):
international relations. But what I would suggest is that
we do have this already in a nontechnological world.
So we have some countries that are very isolationist, others
are more generally willing to work together quite usually on
certain cultural and ethnic axesin terms of who wants to relate

(01:12:20):
to who. So there's always some tensions
there, but we kind of have this diversity already.
In terms of the future, I think it is true that there will be to
think that we can get to a a global situation where we have a

(01:12:41):
globally agreed technological vision, I think is a long way
off. But but what I hope we can do,
and I outline this in my most recent book, is that if we can
at least develop a way of innovation that would work in
terms of the common good, we could at least get a chunk of

(01:13:03):
the Western world on board with that and maybe some other
countries. And I talk a bit in my book
about the role of NGOs, non governmental organisations and
their role in being technology arbiters for for a global in a
global situation. And again, there's a few
political issues here which I'm not going to touch on.

(01:13:25):
But you know, I do think those NGOs have an important role to
try and get as as much of the world on board with some kind of
common technological vision. Yeah, so you're what you're
saying then it'll be a tragedy of a certain national leader
started firing those kinds of people indiscriminately?

(01:13:45):
I wouldn't like to say to be exact, but it it, it would be
great, wouldn't it, if as many of us could work together as
possible. Yes, mentioning no names.
Of course. No names, of course, right?
Absolutely. But to bring it right round full
circle and back to the top in hand, transhumanism, etcetera,
what we see in culture today in terms of the gap between the

(01:14:07):
haves and the have nots, it's probably the greatest it ever
has been in modern human history.
Won't transhumanism just make that gap bigger?
Oh, it certainly will do, Absolutely yes.
So, so actually, yes. Already we have an issue around
social justice and the danger iswe might want to embrace

(01:14:29):
technologies that will make the problem worse.
So my view on the matter is thatwe will have to think very
carefully on how we use technologies to not just not
make the problem worse, but actually to try and improve the
social situation in a technological world.
So, and I talk, I discuss at some length about this, the

(01:14:53):
extent to which we are we use technology with a
responsibility. And I use and I don't want to
get too deeply into theology at this point, but I use the idea
of the the created Co creator. So the the yeah, the biblical
view is God created the world. A fairly modern theological

(01:15:16):
concept is that we are Co creators, so we share in God's
ongoing creative power as human beings working with science and
technology. So it's a very useful idea
because it gives us a sense of vocation and purpose.
Certainly if you are a religiousbeliever, you can see straight

(01:15:37):
away that that kind of links that in with some kind of idea
of vocation and purpose. It's not always a popular idea
for the very reason that you've already alluded to.
There are some fundamentalists who who will be Christians and
actually there's probably similar traits in other

(01:15:58):
religions who will say, well actually only God is sovereign.
We are just creatures who do hiswill and will not entertain any
idea that we have any any kind of Co creation powers with God.
But the problem that we face in a technological world is that
unless we do take radical steps which could be seen by religious

(01:16:21):
thinkers as a kind of playing God, we won't surmount this big
justice issue. Do you see what I mean?
I do and I do actually like whatyou've just said and I wish when
I was a Christian that I had thought more deeply about that
specific thing. I like this idea of being Co
creators with God from the Christian perspective because of

(01:16:41):
my familiarity with Christianity.
I see what you're trying to say that and I am genuinely on a
religious perspective, attractedto that as an idea.
And I, I do wish, I think I missed and lost some of my
Christianity by not thinking about that issue more deeply.
And I wish I had. And I think our progressive

(01:17:02):
Christian friends should welcomethat idea.
And I like it because what it does from the Christian
perspective is it puts you more into the mind of God, which is
what the Christian wants anyway.It puts you more in touch with.
The desires of God and I think Christians really should embrace
that rather than skew it. So now the big warning word with

(01:17:23):
Co creation, of course is we must be responsible in it.
And that's where the challenges come because many of the
Christians of good faith who aremore conservative in their
views, who will criticize the idea is say, well, you know we
are sinners. How can we possibly act wisely
as Co creators? And the problem that we face is

(01:17:43):
that my personal view, and I argue this in the book is that
in a technological world we haveno option.
Now I've come up with some more theological arguments as to why
Co creation is a good thing, butthere are many conservative
Christians who don't like that idea at all.
So I'm glad that it appeals to you because clearly you can see

(01:18:04):
there's a bit of common ground there.
Yes, but you'll be surprised there are plenty of more
fundamentalist Christians who would find that idea very
difficult. But my view is in a
technological world, I can't seeif we are going to make things
ethically better that we can avoid it.
I think it's a conversation thathas to be had.

(01:18:26):
I agree. I think there is so much fear
and caution wrapped up in the phrase playing God that it is at
risk of holding back. Genuine progress.
I absolutely agree. And listeners, forgive me.
I use the phrase there really just as a sort of a shorthand to
get us on stream with what I'm trying to say about Co creation.

(01:18:48):
But you're quite right, it is anemotive phrase and it's one that
we have to be a little bit careful of using.
But I do think we have to think about go how we can take our
full responsibility in a technological world.
So I think one of the problems we have at the moment, and we
see this with a lot of consumer technologies and I think we see

(01:19:11):
this often in different professional areas as well, is
the technologies available and we make utilitarian decisions
about using it rather than valuebased decisions.
And I think we must start thinking about value much more
in terms of using technology than we do at the moment you.

(01:19:32):
Used the word there, which I hadn't really thought about yet
until when I was going through your material that you sent me
and through this conversation. But it is a word that's relevant
to this conversation. That's utilitarian because that
is associated with my form of atheism and the humanism which
is associated with that in termsof you make decisions that are

(01:19:53):
utilitarian in nature, you know,and to use it at its most brutal
level, one child too many or a child which is going to cause a
lot of resources for you as a family unit.
Let's have an abortion that's atits extreme end.
At the other end, in terms of a topic that's also very relevant

(01:20:14):
to politics here in the UK, is assisted dying.
Indeed it's very relevant there.A person gets to a point of life
and says I'm becoming in frail. I am a next cost to society.
I am an emotional drain on my children, my hedges.
I would be happier if they were just able to get on with their

(01:20:35):
life. It is now time for me to press
the button and check out and that is a very much a
utilitarian decision, a decisionthat we, I think we should allow
people to make within certain safeguards obviously, but I
think it is a decision that people should be allowed to make
if they choose to. How does this ethos of

(01:20:57):
utilitarianism meet transhumanism and what that
offers? And what does religion have to
offer between the two? OK, So now again, really good
question. Let's not talk about assisted
Dime. We'd be here for another
podcast. I think so.
But looking at thinking about utilitarianism in how we use
medicine and technology, the situation is, is that for

(01:21:21):
actually a long time, since Jeremy Bentham, who was the
great physician 2 centuries ago,who very much took a utilitarian
view, the greatest good for the greatest number in medical
situations. We've been using this kind of
thinking for a long time for a lot of evidence based medical
decisions. So guidance produced by

(01:21:42):
organisations such as the National Institute of Health and
Care Excellence is evidence based and it is essentially
utilitarian. It is saying if we use this drug
in this patient population, we will provide the greatest
benefit for the greatest number.So it is utilitarian thinking.
The problem with utilitarian thinking is when you start

(01:22:05):
getting bigger questions than the treatment of our disease and
whether our well-being is at 8 on a scale of one to 10 or 10.
You know, when we get into the realm of bigger decisions that
assisted dying could be argued to be one of them.
The use of transhumanist technologies that would lead

(01:22:27):
half or some of the population to basically oppress the
remainder, it becomes a much bigger issue because the problem
with utilitarianism and many, again, this is a standard
Christian argument against utilitarianism.
So I say straight away there are, I think even as a Christian

(01:22:49):
ethicists, I think there are some situations where a
utilitarian approach is quite reasonable, but not all.
So the problem with utilitarianism is that it's all
about numbers only. So it's about, you know, if
there's ten of us and you have atreatment that will benefit 9,
then go ahead with the treatment.
The Christian view is that actually we need to consider the

(01:23:10):
unite worth of the person as well.
So, so actually, if you have very radical medical
technologies, you'll be in a situation where you might choose
a technology that will have a beneficial impact on a lot of
people, but the people that it doesn't have a positive effect
for, it would positively have a negative effect.

(01:23:33):
And the problem with utilitarianism is that it
doesn't take into account our individual worth and value as
people. So with a lot of transhumanist
technologies, the unenhanced, their dignity could be impugned
as a person. The person who is enhanced could
actually have their dignity. The technology may be such that

(01:23:55):
it affects their functioning as a person.
So for example, classic example would be some kind of neural
thread where you could think your thoughts onto your phone.
Actually it turns out to be it'sa two way connection.
People can think their thoughts into your head, and your value
as a person is undermined because your autonomy is

(01:24:17):
undermined. So these human dignity issues
are really important. It's fiendishly hard to have a
definitional conversation about these things.
So Christians will ground their dignity in the sanctity of life.
And this takes us to the assisted dying debate and in the
image of God, that which makes us in the image of God, which

(01:24:40):
again is debatable as to what that consists in.
So in terms of a secular view, human dignity is even harder to
define. And many thinkers think that
there's various elements to that.
So privacy, our right to privacy, our right to freedom of
expression of our true selves, all of these elements of human
dignity and all are potentially impugned if you only take a

(01:25:04):
utilitarian approach to major decisions about deployment of,
of radical nature changing technologies.
So there's a big, big and meaty answer.
Feel free to give me some further questioning on that if
you wish. Well, I.
Was basically going to summarizeyour saying is that we need a
bit of both we, we. Probably do need a bit of both,

(01:25:26):
if I'm honest. We'll need more of the human
dignity in future than we'll need of the utilitarianism, to
be honest, because we'll get to a point where where actually it
may not be fair to make utilitarian decisions anymore.
It's either do we accept this technology for everyone or do we
not, you know, so there we go. I'll put that out there all.
Or nothing in interesting. Tell me what you think about all

(01:25:49):
or nothing approach to listenersthat's interesting.
It certainly is a good equalizer, the all or nothing,
and I'm attracted to that aspectof it.
I would need to think about it more before I jump in on that.
One, So what I'd probably say isthat I probably presented it as
a little bit too much of an ultimate you did.

(01:26:10):
What I would rather say is that wouldn't it be great if we could
find the right technological approach so that we could all
flourish in the lives that we live and with the common goods
of life that make life worth living.
So I'd probably put it in a lessconfrontational way to that.
But the fact of the matter is, is that we do have to think in

(01:26:33):
corporate terms about how we do this.
And you're right, there will be certain political factions,
fundamentalist religious groups who will not want to buy into
this, but there already are. So that's kind of how I think
about the technology. So, yeah, all or nothing is
probably putting, but I'd love to hear some debate about that.

(01:26:55):
Yeah, I'll. Need to think about that through
before I start poking back. But you are right, those who are
excluding themselves from thingsnow will just exclude themselves
from things in the future. And we shouldn't deny ourselves
just because they're going to, we just because we know they're
going to deny themselves. So that is.

(01:27:16):
The caveat, of course, is that it is available to them.
So all of these isolationist groups, they need to know that
this technology is affordable. It is available commercially
where they are if they wish to avail of it.
So they may choose not to, but it needs to be available to

(01:27:38):
them. All right, so let's pick then.
Something that has definitely happened in the UK in recent
years and is therefore predictable, would happen in the
future under a new transhumanisttechnology, and that is blood
transfusions. We have certain factions within
the Jehovah's Witnesses who eschew blood transfusions as a

(01:28:01):
technology that they do not wantto have.
And it is a religiously based rejection because they are as
they are made by God and to takesomebody else's blood is to
pollute their God created body or or whatever it is.
The theology that's behind that I'm probably butchering the way
that they think about it, but that's affected the the result

(01:28:23):
is the same. They reject blood transfusions,
something that possibly one day may well have seen be come under
the category of transhumanism ifwe were to have this
conversation 100 years ago. That's besides by they reject it
for religious reasons and peopledie as a result.
And there have been court cases where Jehovah's Witness parents

(01:28:44):
have gone to jail because they've denied their children
that life saving medication on religious grounds.
I can see exactly the same happening in 100 years time over
a transhumanist technology and it would be a more mainstream
Christian going to jail. Over it.
That's a really good point, Ash,and I'm glad you said that

(01:29:06):
because I hadn't thought of the Jehovah's Witness blood
transfusion analogy in those terms.
But you're right, it will be a very similar kind of court
situation. So with Jehovah's Witnesses, the
the, and again, I'm not a massive expert on on the
Jehovah's Witness theology, but they take their view on that

(01:29:26):
from their reading of Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem in the
Jehovah Bible, which talks aboutabstaining from the meat of
unclean animals and from blood. Now this was part of the I'm
going to make this as simple as possible in terms of the
theology here. This was part of the settlement
between the Jewish and Gentile Church to enable the Gentiles to

(01:29:50):
be treated as equal and as full members of the church as much as
the Jews. But basically what they were
trying to say here was for the Gentiles to abstain from dietary
stuff that would separate them from the Jews.
It was never about blood transfusions.
So the fact of the matter is, a blood transfusion is a modern
technology. It is not the form of ingestion

(01:30:12):
of blood that Acts 15 and Luke had in mind when he wrote Acts.
Now, I'm sure there are Jehovah's Witnesses who would
contest that, but that's as I understand it.
And certainly I don't see that as analogous at all.
You are absolutely right. There have been situations of
parents who have refused their child treatment.

(01:30:36):
Some have gone to jail quite often.
What's happened in this country,there's been several cases in
this country of people who, of parents who've basically there
has been a court order. The child has been made a ward
of court and taken out of their parents hands so they can have
the life saving treatment that they need.
So. And I think you are right that

(01:30:58):
the legal issues around use of transhumanist technologies in
the next generation will be thatkind of debate.
OK. So that takes me on to something
that did come up in my response to some of your notes, and that
is drawing the line between valid treatment for extending a
life and just accepting that it's time for person X to die.

(01:31:22):
This is going and transhumanism will make that decision, make
that distinction more dirty. There was a time where getting a
virus would kill you. Now we can treat it.
There was a time when needing a blood transfusion would kill
you, but now we can do a blood transfusion and you can solve

(01:31:43):
it. There was a time when certain
forms of diabetes could easily kill you.
Now we can treat it so we can live a normal life.
There are all sorts of things that we can handle, that we can
treat relatively simply, that not very long ago would kill us.
Transhumanism will only make those dirt waters more dirty.

(01:32:04):
Well, yes, in terms of there have been a lot of medical
advances in the last 100 years, transhumanism therapies I've
talked about is likely or the kind of technologies I've talked
about is like to extend that life expectancy well-being.
So the real question we'll face is how far do you go with that?

(01:32:27):
So you know already we, you know, we can use insulin to
treat, you mentioned diabetes, use insulin to treat type 1
diabetes. And actually even insulin
technology has changed over the last 40 years.
When I first qualified, you had to draw up your own number of
units from the vial, inject it into yourself.

(01:32:47):
Now people with pumps and implants.
So even that technology has changed.
The question is how far will we let medical science go and how
far can we go? So now there are some theorists
who talk about one of the big tropes of, of transhumanism as
well as improving human experience and well-being.

(01:33:10):
The other great trope of course is, is life extension.
How far do we go with life extension?
And there are some theorists outthere who think we could become
immortal eventually. Firstly, I don't think it's I,
I'm not sure it's possible. And if you have extreme life
extension, the problem that you face is when does it stop?

(01:33:31):
Now, I explore this in one of the chapters of my book, my
previous book. But basically, yeah, at the
moment, we live until we're, youknow, 70 or 80.
Our bodies naturally decay. We die.
We're used to that. Imagine if we had, and I, again,
I use this example in a couple of my publications, imagine we

(01:33:54):
had a magic implant. So this is something you could
have injected into your arm witha, a combination of
antioxidants, viral vector components that actually had the
ability to rejuvenate your cells.
What if we could live to 700 years, you know, but it was down

(01:34:14):
to a technology, Yeah, which is what the position we're in at
the moment. We the reason we survive longer
than we used to is because of technology.
What if you can live for that length of time?
So then suddenly the whole mortality question becomes a bit
more burning, doesn't it? Because actually we then think
about what would be the thing that would cause us to die.
Do we really want to die after 700 years?

(01:34:36):
Let's put another implant and make it 1400 years.
Well, and the problem with that is we then reliant on the
technology to keep us alive. So the whole ballpark changes in
how we see death in that respect, yes.
So I've just given you a whole load of expertise.
It answers your simple question.You have and that is exactly

(01:34:59):
being the. Nature of our relationship for
the past 30 years. Well, there we go.
I have a mental image now of people in multiple hundreds of
years wandering around. Give me one more implant.
Yeah, well, wandering around thestreets and exoskeletons because
the rest of their body is too, too frail to to handle life.
So we've got these exoskeletons wandering around the streets

(01:35:20):
with this tiny, frail little multiple 100 year old body
inside it, controlling it through a a neural link.
That's probably the way it wouldwork out.
And I'm not, I'm not infused by that idea.
What I would like to do is bringit right down and make it
personal, OK. My mum died of cancer 15 years
ago. I can't remember how much of the

(01:35:42):
the gruesome story you you know about, but we did talk about it
a few times. Over the time, I can't remember
the details, forgive me. I know we have, yes.
So. She died from pancreatic cancer.
Probably one of the worst, if not the worst cancer you could
possibly have. It was brutal for those of us
who watch that happen. And I think it was three years

(01:36:04):
round, about three years from diagnosis to death, which is
actually not too bad given pancreatic actually.
Actually I think she did two treatments of cancer treatment,
2 rounds of cancer treatment andthen she started the third one
and part way through it said I give up.
This is this is too much me. The quality of life, benefits,

(01:36:26):
trade off is it's not worth it. I'm not doing this again.
And for myself and my brother asobservers through this, it
didn't feel like this last moments of my mum's life were
the most dignified parts of her life.
So the reason why I bring that up is this gets back to the

(01:36:47):
whole transhumanism thing and costs.
I know that the treatments that my mum had, because they were
new cutting edge treatments, which is probably why she made
it more than three years, were very expensive.
I don't know the exact numbers, but I do know they're very
expensive, probably into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

(01:37:08):
And I had a very frank conversation with my daughter
when she was old enough, when wewere talking about her mum and I
basically said words to the effect of that experience has
told me that it's not worth it for me.
Those quality of life years aren't worth extending.
So make it short. Make it as short as you possibly

(01:37:29):
can. So with how this works into
transhumanism, we are talking about a cost bet.
We're touching on the edge of utilitarianism here.
Is it really worth it to extend these things?
Is it really because cancer and cellular degeneration, one of
those two will get us eventually?
If nothing else does, why bothertrying to fight it?

(01:37:53):
So yeah, that's that's a really interesting question.
And, and it in a sense takes us onto, yeah, it's a utilitarian
question in a sense. It's slightly different to the,
the, the immortality question because while we might seek to
extend our lives to an extent, we can't make ourselves

(01:38:15):
immortal. And I think there would be some
serious problems with making ourselves immortal.
Why do any kind of medicine? So I could give you the answer
that Brent Waters gives who. So he's a Christian ethicist
who's a, who's a bioethics scholar.
And basically he makes a case that, you know, if we're
thinking of medicine purely in terms of life extension, you

(01:38:38):
know, it's ultimately flawed. You know, why bother to do any
kind of medicine? Because we are all going to die
eventually. And actually some of this is not
just about the technology of medicine.
It's about that is an expressionof human neighborliness.
So he uses the phrase, you know,medicine is a way of treating

(01:38:58):
one's name, of treating as one neighbor as you would like to be
treated yourself. So it's an instantiation of
compassion and care. So it's really important to
think of medicine as more than just just about a technological
intervention. But inevitably we have to make

(01:39:19):
decisions about these. Yeah, I can see why your mum
made the decision that she did. In terms of another person
account, my father, when he died, he was, he really didn't
want to die, but in fact he was,he was, I won't go into the
clinical details, but he was kind of left with no option
really. But what we can do in these

(01:39:41):
situations is help someone to feel cared for to the end.
And that's kind of what medicinedoes.
Using the technology is almost, you know, is almost a secondary
issue to how we enable people tolive well for the span of life
they're going to live. So so.

(01:40:03):
Yeah, Yeah, it is difficult. But as I say, I think it's
really important to treat medicine as having something
more than just being a mechanical process.
OK. That leads really well, I think
to this next question. Which is thinking about how we
think about transhumanist technologies, because we've

(01:40:23):
talked about them with the wordstechnology.
We've not talked about them withthe word medicine, right?
Yes. And so if we think about
transhumanism as something that helps us be full stop or
extended it further, helps us behuman, helps us be productive,

(01:40:46):
helps us be the family person that we want to be, helps us
live. My mom had a bit of time to
live. She was able to see her
granddaughter become 3 1/2. If she died sooner, she wouldn't
have seen her granddaughter's third birthday and there
wouldn't be those memories. So there are those benefits.

(01:41:06):
I'm not saying everything was crap, but it was mostly crap.
So if we think of transhumanist technologies in terms of in the
language of medication, in the language of enablement to be, in
the language of enablement to live, does that have the power

(01:41:27):
to change how we think about these things?
And is it a positive thing? So, yeah, I would say yes.
So there are many people who are.
Very opposed to any kind of technological human enhancement.
Some of the most well known thinkers in America, Leon Kass,
Michael Sandel, very anti any kind of technological

(01:41:49):
intervention at all. There are Christians who are
very wary about medical technology.
On the other hand, I've already said that that there's a very
blurred line between enhancements and, and and
therapy as in medicine. So, So I think it is, it's

(01:42:11):
reasonable to think about what there is in transhumanist
technologies that would enable us to flourish as humanity.
I think that's a very reasonablequestion to ask.
Some Christian theologians don'twant to ask it because of course
they see our ultimate flourishing being, of course,
our heavenly destiny. OK, So they will want to avoid

(01:42:34):
those kind of questions, but I personally think they are too.
The questions are too humane to avoid.
At the end of the day, if you take a Christian view, we don't
know how long we've got before the end of all things, and
actually we've got to live as humanity for properties will be
quite a long time in that time. So actually flourishing is

(01:42:54):
really important. We need to think about what will
enable us to flourish, and we need to think about how
technology can help us do that within some kind of framework of
values that religious folk will be happy with.
Or indeed folk who aren't religious and perhaps have very

(01:43:15):
authoritarian or totalitarian political views, who would be
happy with the route of oppression.
What can we do to make humanity flourish perhaps better than it
currently does using technology?So I think it's quite reasonable
for transhumanism to be thought of in terms of human welfare,
not just about enhancement. And that takes us back to the

(01:43:38):
word equity that we're using. Earlier and equalizing humanity
and I think it's probably a positive way there.
I'd like to ask a cheeky question.
Yeah, go ahead. As a bridge to get onto
something that I promised we need to.
Get back to. Earlier on in this conversation.
So let's paint our hypothetical picture again from the very
beginning of our conversation about the human consciousness

(01:44:01):
and the human thoughts and the human brain all transported into
a mechanical device or some description.
Yeah, yeah. Which body would end up in
heaven? Ah, right, a very good question.
Well, this is a. Great philosophical debate
because there are some thinkers who would say, well, you know,
the person is no longer. So the Christian doctrine will

(01:44:23):
be of Christ as bodily raised from the dead.
Those in Christ will be raised in bodily form.
What body will end up in heaven?So some will say, well, actually
the uploaded mind won't end up in heaven because it's not a
body anymore. Some would say that actually the
cyborgic form or whatever it is of this uploaded person, however
they are instantiated in material form, would end up in

(01:44:46):
heaven. And there are, some would say
that actually, you know, the person's body is the person's
body. You know, if Jesus bodily rose
from the dead, if the Christian doctrine is that people are
reconstituted in a bodily form at the end, then then actually
that person's original body willbe reconstituted.
So there's a range of answers tothat to cheeky question.

(01:45:06):
I'm sorry about. Well, very well done.
So you've spoken like a truth theologian I.
Applaud. You mean blinding and
bamboozling? Is that what you're saying?
Of course I would. Never say that about my dear
friend. Of course not.
But you could play with that fora long time.
You could. You could.
What if the conversion experience was after the brain
transplant? You know, does that have an

(01:45:28):
impact? Does that change the dynamics,
Fairpoint? Does that change the rules?
There's lots of fun to be had. There.
If you're a Christian, we can't go there.
It would take too long. If you're a Christian podcaster
listening to this, you have thatconversation.
We're moving on, right? So Steve, technology, that is
the obvious place to go to when talking about transhumanism and

(01:45:48):
it's only taken us nearly two hours to get here.
But for me personally, they're far more interesting
conversations have around transhumanism.
And I think we've had most of that.
But the obvious place to land intranshumanism is extreme
technology, microchips, brain implants, brain reading.
That is the obvious. It's too far ahead for us to

(01:46:10):
really seriously think about andwhich is why my interest in this
conversation is far more the mundane where we've been talking
about it now. But we need to address that that
kind of question. So when you did touch on it
before brain technology, brain implants, that means by default
transmission of your brain thoughts, your brain criteria to

(01:46:31):
other devices, two way communication back and forth.
Is there an ethical issue with going for a job interview and
instead of having a conversationand a question and answer
session, they just tap her, connect it to the side your
head, blah blah blah blah blah. 10 seconds later, yes or no, you
get the job. Oh, that's a really good

(01:46:52):
question. So first thing I'm going to say.
Is that the whole question of brain computer interfaces is
probably less theoretical and hypothetical than you think,
because these technologies are being explored for people who
are seriously disabled, paraplegic, people who are

(01:47:13):
locked in these kind of technology.
Well, those are just control signals being read.
Those aren't integrated brain thoughts and brain knowledge,
no, but we could go down that route with the right interfaces.
So, so I I would preface by saying that that possibly may be
less theoretical than you might think in the not too distant

(01:47:34):
future. I think the question that you
ask about, you know, the interview situation, this kind
of takes us, but it's an analogous to the question we
discussed earlier or what the example I gave earlier about
azembic and control of obesity rather than going on a diet and

(01:47:54):
doing the exercise and disciplining yourself.
So, so you know, we could go through a route whereby we all
have a sensor on our heads and you go for a job into you
actually you don't go for an interview, they just they just
extract the relevant informationfrom your head.
So there's a whole raft of issues there around
confidentiality, as you can imagine, because what could they

(01:48:15):
extract? How would you control what they
extracted? Let's park that for a moment.
There's a debate there. But I mean, the problem we have
here is we have again, the instrumentalism.
So actually, if we're just getting the relevant material
from our heads, we are sidetracking a whole process
where we sit down in front of each other, we get to know each

(01:48:37):
other, we talk, we understand how each other tick, which we've
done over a 30 year period of time time.
You know, we, we kind of sidetrack all of that stuff.
And actually we are relational people and there's an extent to
which we can't sidetrack that stuff.
If we're going to have real relationships, there'll be

(01:48:57):
psychologists who will back thatup.
But certainly from a, a sort of a theological anthropology
approach, that certainly is the case.
So that's I'd say the best reason not for going down the
kind of the the interview readout approach, but you could
see how it would be attractive to.
Certain members of industry, of course it would, and the reason

(01:49:18):
it would is because it would. It would enable them to go
through more candidates quickly to find out the one they really
wanted. It would, and again, this comes
to the human dignity question, suddenly become less than human
beings. We would become repositories of
data, and you and I are more than repositories of data.

(01:49:41):
There are clear, clear problems,problems with that.
But I can see. But you can see why as you say,
some industrial managers would think that was a great idea.
But then of course, we're then on the end of the wedge of the
corporates deciding, you know, who, who does what, who is
allowed to do what, who has whatpower, who lives longest,

(01:50:05):
etcetera, etcetera. So so we're then into a very
much a utilitarian world and we're seen just as commodities.
It would make dating apps very interesting, that's for certain.
It would make dating apps very interesting indeed.
And let's not go to that. That's another.
That's another matter. But to say this whole question
of brain. Reading is an interesting one

(01:50:26):
because the the problem we the, the, the issue we have at the
moment is that you know what's inside I I call it in my
publications the sovereignty of the skull.
What we we have inside our head,we have control over and I'm
short of a situation where you were tortured by the Stasi and
made to reveal what's in your mind.

(01:50:46):
The fact is we can choose what we disclose and what we don't.
And actually that's really important to have a democratic
society and one where we can have freedom of expression.
As soon as there's anything thatwould enable information to be
removed from our brain automatically or without our
consent would change the whole ballpark with that in terms of

(01:51:11):
how we function in society. That's very true.
I think what would happen. And again, this is me using my
inferior knowledge and my inferior thoughts.
Is that the brain being what it is and being the analog nature
by which it works? I think those more personal,

(01:51:32):
those more intimate parts of ourbrain and our thought processes,
I think they'll be harder to reach them.
You realize? I agree.
I agree. I think they will.
I think there's a lot we don't understand.
About that yet and people who advocate a mind uploading
scenario I think they make too ready analogy between the human

(01:51:52):
brain and a computer and actually it's not that
straightforward and we're seeingsome of that already with the
way that some people think AI can do what we can do but there
are many vital ways in which it can't and of course people have
often espoused the mind uploading scenario because if

(01:52:18):
you like it fits a modernist stereotype we are just
repositories of information and no more than that which is a
very reductionist view yes, I have been guilty of using the
brain as a computer and. I think if I think if you, yeah,
it is simplistic and it's easy to.
Use. In a sense, yes it is.

(01:52:38):
It certainly makes sense in somescenarios, but you're absolutely
right, we should pause. And make that absolute point
here. The brain, in the analogue
nature that it is, is not truly and not accurately analogous to
a computer. Yes, there are ways which you
can draw comparisons, but it is way more complicated than that.
Yeah, right. We agree against Steve.

(01:52:59):
This is Oh yes, there's there's probably a few things here.
That. That we will.
Agree on because The thing is a lot of these questions around
transhumanism, well, there's thehuman, there's the say.
The clue is in the fact that part of the word is humanism.
And actually I think most well adjusted, progressive and open

(01:53:20):
thinking Christians will agree on various issues around what is
humane with people of goodwill, whatever their beliefs.
So I'm not surprised there's a bit of, we probably agree on
some of these issues. There are some more things from
the information that you sent methat I'd like to bring.
Up. But before I get to those, I'd

(01:53:42):
like to do a quick sidestep to adifferent subject matter, and
then we'll return to your book and your material.
I have not given Steve a heads up on what I'm about to talk to
him about, so this is gonna be interesting.
Listeners, this is Matthew. This is still unbelievable.
We're around about two hours in.There will be some editing, so

(01:54:02):
it'll be before 2 hours by the time you hear this bit of the
the podcast. I'm talking with my old friend
Stephen Gandry Smith about his work and the things that he does
around the area of transhumanism.
Steve is a Christian. Steve is an old friend of mine,
as I've already said, and he thinks about this kind of thing
far more deeply than any human has a right to.

(01:54:22):
But as you can hear, he's actually quite interesting in
the way that he talks about it. So the the the side track I'd
like to drop onto, just briefly is, is probably the polar
opposite of transhumanism. There is a movement whose name
escapes me, and I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me what
it is. Who thinks that actually this
world, this planet will be better off if we removed humans

(01:54:44):
from it? Is it neo humanism?
Neonatalism, something like that?
Whatever the word is, check in the show notes.
I'll have found it by the time we get there.
What voice do they have in this conversation and do they have a
point? This is Matthew jumping in on
the edit. It's antinatalism.
And check the show notes for a link.

(01:55:05):
Right? I know I, I, I think I've
vaguely heard of this movement. I don't know much about them.
So these are, this is a group ofpeople, a movement that thinks
that humanity is positively bad for the planet.
Is that what we're saying? Basically, yes.
Right. OK.
Yeah. So, so this strand of thought
has been rattled cling around for a while.

(01:55:26):
There was a famous paper writtenin 1967 by someone called Lynne
White who called the religious roots of an ecologic crisis.
And basically saying that the reason we are in the situation
we are in with the climate crisis and ecology is because

(01:55:47):
humanity is absolutely trashed the planet.
And humanity is absolutely trashed the planet because of of
a, you know, this Christian ideaof subduing the creation being
interpreted as dominating over it and exploiting it.
So a very influential paper. And I expect some of these
people think in terms of that paper and, and obviously take

(01:56:10):
similar view that actually humanculture has imposed an awful lot
on the biosphere in many ways. I guess the danger with that
kind of view is so firstly, froma Christian perspective, I don't
agree with that. You know, I have a view of
humanity being made in the imageof God.
So I think, you know, regardlessof how we might think about how

(01:56:34):
we evolved, I think we have a specific role.
So I can't agree with that. I think it's important that
we're here, but we need to get it right.
And I think the danger of peoplein that group is that if they
fed their ideas in into the supercomputer that will control
everything in 2100 is that the supercomputer was saying, oh,

(01:56:57):
yes, humanity is a bad thing andpress the nerve gas button,
we're all dead. So there's my thoughts on that.
While you were talking, I did doa quick Google on my phone.
And there is a movement called the Voluntary Human Extinction
Movement. But there is an extinction
there. There is a single word that
describes it. Yeah, I didn't.
Find it I will. I'd love, I'd be interested to

(01:57:19):
know more about that, but show the show notes listeners, yeah.
I will try and find it and I'll put a link.
To it in the show notes, becauseI know there is a philosophy
that's geared around this. It's just a really good question
though, because of course. There's a lot of kind of
Christian angst around this because on the one hand, many
Christians, well, Christian, they understand the Christian

(01:57:40):
doctrine as we're made in the image of God.
We have a special role in the world.
And I see that personally in terms of our vocation to make
the world a better place with technology if we have to.
The other side of it is that there will be some Christians
out there who will be, well, we're such sinners.
We're so terrible, you know, we've absolutely messed up.

(01:58:02):
How on earth can we we make it right?
So I think there's that there will be different reactions that
from a religious perspective, yeah, just probably, yeah.
I I can't imagine that there aremany Christians.
Who would be enthusiastic about the idea at all?
I don't think there would be no no, but I think some of them
would think. You know, and there there was a

(01:58:23):
question which I asked half hypothetically, mostly
hypothetically, I. Wasn't genuinely serious, but I
think it's a serious question toask.
This helps me get back on track to your material and that is
humanity on this planet, and I'mhoping you're going to agree
with me on this is in of numberstoo great for this planet to

(01:58:44):
reasonably support. Humanity is in grave danger, if
it hasn't already done so, of being overpopulated on on this
planet or populated to realms that is unreasonably high and
should be reduced. Maybe the COVID pandemic was an
opportunity that we've missed tolet humanity naturally be

(01:59:06):
radically reduced. Oh, that's an interesting
question. So I've.
Heard it reported by the likes of, you know, the World Trade
Organization that actually we, we do, we have enough to feed
this planet. We just don't have it evenly
distributed. So that's one view.
I think there's evidence either way on that.
I'm not going to go into a massive amount of detail on

(01:59:27):
that. That's a very problematic idea.
So some would say actually that may not be the case.
We certainly are overpopulated in terms of our current
population distribution. There's no getting around that.
We've got some parts of the world with an awful lot of
people in them, and it's hard tosupport those people in the

(01:59:47):
places where they are. I think it's very difficult to
say that COVID should have been allowed to run its course.
I think that's a very controversial view.
Agreed. So and I I can't.
I'm not. Sure, I would agree with it if
I'm. Honest, but certainly I would
agree with you that that that aswe currently stand with our
current demographic situation and and distribution in this

(02:00:12):
world, we do have an overpopulation problem.
Yes. OK, so that helps me the word
ethics. The the word ethics.
And ethical behaviour come straight into that.
And obviously, the question of whether or not allowing COVID to
run riot through the human population and do what it will
is definitely an ethical question given that we had, we

(02:00:32):
have and given the technology that we have available to us to
stop that happening. And largely we did.
So we haven't talked about it inhuge, great detail.
Transhumanism and what that offers to humanity is very much
an ethical consideration. Totally.
And you bring up the phrase in your work that you sent me

(02:00:54):
virtue ethics. Can you explain what you mean by
that phrase and how it applies? OK, so virtue ethics is that
branch of. Ethics, call it normative
ethics, in other words, an ethical theory that helps us
work out the right normal way tobehave.
OK, so that's why we call it normative ethics.
Don't worry about that too much.But virtue ethics is that branch

(02:01:17):
of ethics that concentrates on the character virtues.
So it's one of the oldest and most noblest forms of ethics
because of course it started offwith Plato and Aristotle in
ancient Greece saying that we could all cultivate virtues and
that our virtues enabled us to live a good life in this world,

(02:01:40):
a good civic life in relationship to all the people
around us. So, you know, and they would
talk about South virtues are things like courage, kindness,
generosity. All of these are virtues.
Now the classical model from thelikes of Aristotle and Plato, et
cetera, is that we can cultivatethese, that these are things

(02:02:02):
that we can behave in a way thatgrows these virtues.
Now this is a little bit trickier from a Christian
perspective because we have to ask where they come from, You
know, where does this good stuffin our lives come from?
Some Christian thinkers, and I'mone of them, will say it's about
the Holy Spirit. So actually virtues is entirely

(02:02:24):
the idea of having these, you know, a series of
characteristics that form us as a person is an entirely entirely
consistent with Christian thinking about morality and
living a good life. So the situation we've been in
is that for many years the worldthought about virtues.

(02:02:45):
So after Christianity, thinkers like Thomas Aquinas basically
borrowed from Aristotle and talked about virtues as part of
a Christian idea of, of living life.
And of course the Catholic Church, the Western Catholic
Church has incorporated all of that.
So virtues has a long and noble history, but in the last

(02:03:10):
probably, certainly 2 to 300 years, it's been kind of
sidetracked. So since the beginning of
modernity. So, you know, 18th century
people didn't want to have weren't interested in a divine
source goodness in an individualthat they realized that people

(02:03:30):
could be good and bad. They wanted a different approach
of how to do ethics in community.
And that's when utilitarianism came up.
So the greatest good for the greatest number, you were then
not reliant on theories that aremetaphysical for deciding on
what is good or bad. And utilitarianism obviously has

(02:03:51):
gained emphasis over the last, well, since the early modern
era, in about 8, in late 17 hundreds, 1800s basically.
And as I've said, now we see utilitarianism used to make
medical decisions, distribution of healthcare resources.
The other big issue in the 20th century that undermined the idea

(02:04:15):
of virtue was that of existentialism.
So this is the idea that the only sum of reality is our own
experience. Nietzsche was the philosopher
who was mainly responsible for that.
Both of those things, utilitarianism and
existentialism of undermining the idea of virtue.

(02:04:39):
But there was a book published in 1981 called After Virtue by
Alastair McIntyre. So key philosopher there for any
listeners who are interested, who basically said we need to
get back to that classical vision of virtues.
So virtue ethics, the idea that we have innate characteristics
or characteristics that come from somewhere within us that

(02:05:01):
make us the characters that we are and help us do good things
has come back into fashion over the last 20 or 30 or 40 years
now. So that's what virtue ethics is.
It's about the characteristics within us that make us a good
person. And we are now increasingly
seeing that we can apply that virtue ethics approach to

(02:05:24):
ethical dilemmas in business, ingovernment and politics, and of
course, in this scenario, in medicine and technology.
So treat the person. See the person as a person
worthy of treating. Yes, indeed, that's certainly
part of it. And also to believe.
That we can grow the character or we can become the person who

(02:05:46):
is a good user of technology. So I argue in my first book that
in the first, in the first few centuries of the, in fact, for
quite a long time in the Westernmedical tradition, all we had
was duty. So the Hippocratic Oath talks
about your first do no harm. It was a list of duties of a

(02:06:09):
moral practitioner. So if a doctor did these things,
they'd do the right thing. And the reason for that is
because the only thing they could control at that stage was
how they behaved towards a patient.
With the Renaissance onwards, with the growth of empirical
science, the the shift change towards consequentialism, the

(02:06:30):
utilitarianism. So instead of thinking, so we've
got this treatment here, it's a new plant based potion.
The question is how many people will it have a good effect on?
So in other words, if we use this in the people it'll have a
good effect on, it'll work. So they then move to a
utilitarian approach. Things shifted again.

(02:06:54):
The usual demarcation point given by medical historians is
after the Second World War, whenactually it was realized through
the Holocaust that humanity could do great evil.
And they said actually what we need now is some kind of rights
based system that affected not just politics but but

(02:07:16):
healthcare. And that's why virtue ethics
have made a bit of a resurgence because it fits very well with a
rights based system. So I've blown you with.
You have blown your. Mind with lots.
Of stuff there but the quick answer is that virtue ethics are
really important in all areas oflife because we all rely as

(02:07:39):
human agents on being virtuous having good characteristics to
do good things. So and that applies to medicine
as well and that applies to the practitioner, the one who does
the medicine and the one who is the the receiver of that.
OK. Thank you for that.

(02:08:00):
I. Hope you stayed with that,
listeners, but it's about you'rebringing it back down to the
individual. The individual, absolutely.
Yeah. And so that fits well, doesn't
it, with the human dignity. Approach so I've said you know
utilitarianism is prob is problematic because it
disregards the innate dignity ofthe person virtues fits really
well with that OK, let's imaginethere's a scenario where.

(02:08:24):
Whatever the technology is, there's a transhumanist
technology which changes the individual, changes their
outlook on life, changes their behaviour, whatever to the point
where those around them considerthem either no longer productive

(02:08:45):
in terms of the relationships that they have.
Have they now lost their virtue?Have they now lost their
dignity? Are they now no longer worthy of
further treatment? Oh, that's a that's a really
good question. The quick answer to.
That is probably to go back to autilitarian argument should be
really be saying that these people are, you know, unwilling

(02:09:07):
are unworthy to be treated just because they don't have the
virtue that we have. So I, I think it's more I think,
I think the, the, the, the. Scenario I'm more.
Interested in is what if we makepeople more virtuous with the
technologies we have? Yeah.
So yes, if a tech, I think if a technology, I'm just thinking

(02:09:30):
this is a slight, slight interesting one which I haven't
considered. But I think if the technology
made people to lose their virtues, I think they would
become oppressed. I think they would become non
people and therefore subject to oppression.
So I think you could end up witha reverse situation there of
people being converted into, youknow, as the Nazi ideology

(02:09:55):
called under under Mensch because they were, you know,
they they were de virtued basically.
So there's I think the interesting scenario is whether
you can make individuals or society better with with
technology, with mind enhancing or morality enhancing
technology. OK, thank you, Steve.

(02:10:16):
There's a few more questions I want to rattle through.
Before I wind up, I am watching your time.
Yeah, No, that's fine. Don't worry.
I'll catch you talking. You have you.
You have Steve. I I did.
For the benefit of the listeners.
Before Steve and I started this,we did have a conversation about
timing and I said two hours roundabout.
But I did accurately predict that Steve and I would go for
longer than two hours because that is the nature of our

(02:10:37):
friendship and that is the nature of how we can keep each
other going. And he wasn't wrong.
Of course I wasn't wrong. Of course I wasn't.
Wrong. So let's imagine.
Let's get back to. The brain implant because that's
the most fun area to be That's that's just right.
OK yeah, yeah. Let's imagine a scenario where
it's not just a brain implant that enables a person to be

(02:10:59):
human, it's a brain implant which is programmable because
that's what it is, is it's a technology.
So this individual can make themselves more aggressive for
sporting environment, for a battlefield environment, for a
negotiating environment which suits that, and then turn that
down and make them more pro social, more pro social or more

(02:11:22):
romantic for when they. Arrive back home, etcetera for
a. Particular day of the year and a
specific purchase is required that kind of thing so they can
change their personality according to this scenario where
they're in. Are we still being ethical?
This this is a whole question that's.
Already been explored order withthe use of Prozac

(02:11:44):
antidepressants, what we call the selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors as as cosmetic psychopharmacology.
So there was a very influential book.
This is Steve using his pharmaceutical knowledge, just
really remind you So, yeah. So it borders on this because
there was a book. Released in the 1990s by a guy

(02:12:05):
called Peter Kramer, who realized that actually with
these antidepressants you couldn't just treat depression.
What you could do is enhance people's personalities.
So this is relevant. You see what I mean?
And basically what he found is exactly that, that actually you
could use Prozac not just to make people not depressed, but

(02:12:27):
you gave them the right dose. If they had what what they
called soft signs of depression,mild depression, you gave them
the right dose. They could be more people would
report being more assertive in business situations.
They would feel more pro social in social situations, they would
feel less timid, you know, when they went to a party and had to

(02:12:49):
socialize. Some people find that really
hard. I don't you don't, but with that
kind of people, but some people do find that quite hard and
actually it would help them in that kind of situation as well.
So personality enhancement and these medicines have have been
used by that. So in a sense any sort of future
biomedical developments would belooking at that kind of same

(02:13:12):
argument basically. And the big ethical question
around that is we might think all of these are are good things
and I've described scenarios where they are probably helpful
characteristics, but it's contextual, isn't it?
So if you gave someone a Prozac antidepressant, if in a

(02:13:33):
situation where it might alert them, but they would have to
stay calm, then actually it probably would not be
beneficial. And the other issue is which
many of the kind of philosophersin this area debate is
authenticity. If we are the new better than,
well, me because I'm on Prozac, am I still me or am I the

(02:13:55):
authentic me? That's quite debatable because
we could say that authenticity is around, again, contextual.
So I think if I were to, I mean,you've known me for many years,
if I were to take a drug that would make me markedly
different, you would know I wasn't authentic and that would

(02:14:17):
impinge on our relationship, butit might not in a different
situation. So, but authenticity is a big
issue there and that's a big ethically debatable issue.
One of the problems we have again in this area is that you
can give people these kind of things for medical reasons and
it has a non medical side effect.

(02:14:39):
The quick answer to that is yes,Yes, there are ethical issues.
It's typically around authenticity and whether we
really are ourselves. One could make the point that
every social situation. We are basically conforming to
what is we're putting on the mask of the situation, aren't
we? Yeah, absolutely.
So there are. Gradients of inauthenticity the

(02:15:01):
question. Really isn't am I being
authentic? The question is really and is my
inauthentic? Am I being in this?
Situation, absolutely, and that's why that makes it
ethically tricky because in somesituations you may be true to
your authentic self, but in other situations you may be
pulling off a great deception because you are not the person

(02:15:24):
that you would normally be in that situation.
You've got to look at individualsituations and as we've been
saying all the way along, it's multiple Shades of Grey.
This is dirty water. It's not a clear.
Cut line, Yeah, indeed. So yes, the last thing I wanted
to bring up before. We get on to the final question.
The wind down is you brought up a really interesting point in
the material sent me and that was the story of hell and about

(02:15:47):
relation. And because you mentioned
earlier about can we use transhumanism to live forever?
And you said that would be as unattractive as being in eternal
conscious torment. Would you like to flush that out
for most? Yeah, it's probably desperate to
hear your right. OK.
Absolutely so. I'm going to give you a little
bit of. Theological background on this

(02:16:08):
before so so the the doctrine ofconditional immortality arose in
the 19th century. And the reason for that is that
at the time we were living in what at the time was felt to be
a progressive world. No one like the idea of hell as
eternal conscious punishment anymore.
They didn't say they they there was.
There was Prison Reform at the time.
People were not punished with long periods of time in prison

(02:16:31):
like they were before. There was greater justice.
There was a liberal optimism that society was changing with
technology and so on and so forth.
But as well as that, a number ofscholars looked at the biblical
picture of hell and they realized that this view of an
eternal conscious torment that was separate to heaven was just

(02:16:55):
untenable because, you know, theChristian vision is that God
will eventually be All in all. How could God be All in all if
there was this this rubbish dumpthat was separate to heaven
where all the bad people went? So basically they came up with
this doctrine of conditional immortality.
The death of Jesus enabled people to achieve immortality,

(02:17:17):
whereas those who were burnt in Christ would simply just cease
to exist. And it was seen as a more humane
approach than consigning unbelievers to hell as an
eternal conscious punishment. And it's seen as a more just.
And there's lots of theorist classes which I won't go into
this idea of conditioning and all tality became of interest to

(02:17:39):
me because it helps us think about the nature of immortality.
So obviously the Christian view of immortality is ultimate life
with God now. And at the end where we grow
into the full presence of God and become united with God, we
become in union with God, we participate in the nature of

(02:18:01):
God. So again, it's a huge amount of
theology there, basically this idea of immortality.
That's what the Christian view is.
But of course that's very different to the view of
immortality that transhumanism presents, which sees it as a
very much a biologically based immortality where we live in it

(02:18:22):
highly extended in bodies that are made highly durable with
extreme life extension. So they see our immortality or
the immortality they want to strive for as being in this
world and in this worldly body. And there's an interesting
comparison there, which of course I brought out in that

(02:18:42):
paper that you've read in that, you know, there's different
forms of immortality, but immortality is always
conditional. So the Christian view is
immortality is conditional on being a trusting in Christ and
being in faith of Christ. The transhumanist view is that
immortality is dependent on technology.

(02:19:02):
And I draw out some of the problems of that.
So there are problems with immortality in general.
There was a famous philosophicalpaper by Bernard Williams called
The Micropolis Problem, which basically argued if we were to
experience immortality in our current form, it would be too
tedious to think about. And then thinkers like Martha

(02:19:23):
Nussbaum talk about how if we were immortal, then actually all
the value systems we have in ourworld, which are often based on
finitude and the fact that we domove on and, and things change
would, would all disappear and we'd suddenly lose a lot of the
values that we had. So, and in that paper, as you
saw, I, I argued that actually the life that we would have as

(02:19:46):
technically immortal through transhumanist technologies would
probably not be a life worth living.
Thank you for that, Steve. I did like that answer, and I
liked the way that you unpacked.It in the paper, and I'm pretty
much inclined to agree there is.Something that I think
diminishes life. If life goes on forever, the
life that is short, life that isfine, that feels to me like life

(02:20:11):
it is of more value. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I think so.
I think so from. A Christian perspective.
I have the hope of heaven and a hope of something more than this
life. But I think the havoc to have
that finitude in human terms is really important.
Yes, absolutely I think it is. I think it makes us human.

(02:20:32):
Indeed it. Does.
Yeah, absolutely. And on that bombshell, to quote
some, unmentionable. So, Steve, thank you so much.
I've really enjoyed. Oh, it's been fashion.
Thank you very much. Really hopelessness.
You've enjoyed that. All that leaves now is my usual
final question. Do you have a favorite Bible
character? I do, and it's Paul, Saint Paul.

(02:20:53):
And now? Paul gets a lot of bad press
because people say, you know, he's misogynistic, he doesn't
like women, he's an awkward sod.But what's good about Paul is
that he is an eminent example ofhuman transformation ability.
So that's a big word which I've just made-up just now.
But basically this is a guy who goes from being a lawyer from

(02:21:14):
Tarsus and a rabbi whose argumentative, pedantic,
pernickety, and he has this, this, this enormously powerful
experience with God and and thenbecomes the Apostle Paul whose
arguments against the various different groups of pagans and

(02:21:35):
philosophers across the Mediterranean world help to
build the Christian Church. But he's still the same guy.
He's still got the same characteristics, but they've
gone from being something that he's directed towards something
that I regard as not a good thing, that he's gone towards
directing those towards the goodand the ultimate good, which is

(02:21:57):
God. So Paul's my favorite character
because, you know, he's a transformed man, and yet in many
respects he isn't. And yet the characteristics that
he had are now used for a betterpurpose.
So there we go. The original transhumanist.
Yeah, that's, you know, that's areally good.
Point. Absolutely.
The original transhumanist. Absolutely yes.

(02:22:19):
You're not allowed to use that misters.
I got there first. Very.
Good. Thank you so much, Matt.
It's really good session. It has been great.
Let's go and drink some more cider and then till next time,
be reasonable. Thank you, Steve.
Thank you. Really great.
Really good time. That was good, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was good. But you have been listening to a

(02:22:45):
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would like us to cover? Please send all feedback to
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Episode 136 - Transhumanism - with Revd Dr Stephen Goundrey-Smith

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 136 - Transhumanism - with Revd Dr Stephen Goundrey-Smith