Abstract
A common article of faith in Western civilization has it that there exists, and should exist, a sharp line of demarcation between science and religion. The general progress of the sciences, especially the empirical and experimental, is associated with or even seen as a “cause of”, secularization and a general decline in religiousness. This theme is itself a variation of a strong commitment once made in the West: when scientific knowledge increases, faith and superstition decreases. Such views can hardly be attributed to “science itself” or to “religion itself”: many practicing scientists discover God in Nature, and many religious persons take a keen interest in science. Rather, the demarcation of science and religion is an outcome of longlasting efforts and practices intrinsic to Western societies.27 This chapter explores an idea and phenomenon in which spaces between science and religion collapse: immortality. Recent years have seen a renewed turn towards engineered immortality as a serious goal for research and innovation, to the extent that it is becoming a leitmotif for the 21st century. Huge amounts of public and private money have been invested (especially in the US), and researchers have tuned their experiments towards new goals: delayed senescence, anti-aging treatments, cryo-preservation, up-and-down-loading of consciousness to computers and digital networks. The most ardent promoter of engineered immortality, transhumanism,28 is a mixed bunch of social visionaries, techno-prophets, practicing scientists, entrepreneurs, businessmen and policy makers.
Age steals away all things, even the mind.
Virgil
The mission of the Immortality Institute is to conquer the blight of involuntary death.
Immortality Institute 2004
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Notes
- 1.
What Bruno Latour (1993) has called “work of purification”.
- 2.
The transhumanist web-page humanity + defines transhumanism as follows: (1) The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. (2) The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies (http://humanityplus.org/learn/transhumanist-faq/#answer_19).
- 3.
Through which Benjamin referred to time as mathematical and standardized, and so always and anywhere the same. This, according to him, was how modern reformers saw history and progress.
- 4.
Later on, “Fram” also carried Amundsen on his expedition to conquer the South Pole.
- 5.
In addition, Norwegian newspapers eagerly covered, to some extent also financed, his expeditions. Nansen’s “follower”, Amundsen, the first to set foot on the South Pole (also with “Fram”) was hired as a correspondent for Aftenposten.
- 6.
A central claim of extropians being that science and technology have opened up the prospects for people to live indefinitely.
- 7.
Although abandoned, the NBIC initiative would find its way into other institutions, such as the Immortality Institute and the Singularity University.
- 8.
For the sake of comprehensiveness: there are varieties of transhumanism not covered in this chapter, some of which significantly deviate from those described here. For instance, humanist and liberal varieties can be found. These, however, have not enjoyed the same institutional influence as the mainstream version.
- 9.
Moore himself has decreed Kurzweil’s writings as unscientific speculations, as have a number of other scientists.
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Rommetveit, K. (2012). Immortality. In: Øyen, S.A., Lund-Olsen, T., Vaage, N.S. (eds) Sacred Science?. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen. https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-752-3_9
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