Should Christians Seek Eternal Life Through Technology?

Is transhumanism biblical? It's the idea that human beings can either significantly prolong life or even make it unending through technology. Peter Thiel and his group basically argue from a Christian point of view that maybe this is how God fulfills the promise of eternal life—through the technology they're building in Silicon Valley. nspired by a recent Russell Moore article addressing this topic, we discuss whether Thiel could really be participating with God in the redemption of human life by creating these technologies, or if this project is incompatible with the Bible. (Full conversation on Holy Post 679)

Skye: What I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks is that there's a Christian movement within transhumanism. Have you guys seen this stuff?

Kaitlyn: Yeah.

Skye: So transhumanism—and I’m not going to get this quite right—but it's basically what Russell Moore is describing here: the idea that human beings can either significantly prolong life or even make it unending through technology. Peter Thiel and some of his group basically argue from a Christian point of view that maybe this is how God fulfills the promise of eternal life—through the technology they're building in Silicon Valley. That they’re participating with God in the redemption of human life by creating these technologies. Russell’s piece is worth going through in greater depth, but I want to get your guys' take on this. You both are more educated and thoughtful than I am—how would you respond to the Christian transhumanism movement?

Esau: One of the things that you see all over the Bible is God checking humanity: “Where were you when I created the foundations of the world?” There are so many examples in the Bible where we try to engineer God's fulfillment of his promises, and it always fails.

What we can do is recognize our limitations and bear witness to the coming kingdom. It's never our job to establish the kingdom. So I think, at the core, this is simply human hubris—thinking we can accomplish the ways of God on our own. It’s actually what's in the Garden of Eden: “you’ll be like God.” The human attempt to fulfill what God himself said he would do, as cooperators, is the biggest consistent folly in human history.

Skye: Okay, Kaitlyn, I want you to respond to that too—but how far is too far, then?

What I mean is—are you familiar with the old Greek conundrum, the Ship of Theseus?

Kaitlyn: Mm-hmm.

Esau: No.

Skye: Okay, so it’s this argument: You have a ship, the Ship of Theseus, and it’s on a long journey. You keep replacing one piece of the ship after another. By the end of the journey, the entire ship has been replaced. Is it still the same ship?

So we’ve seen massive improvements in science, technology, and medicine—to the point where we can grow tissue and replace organs. Their argument is, why can’t we just keep doing that until we improve the human body to the point where it can live 200 or 300 years? Or, through genetic engineering, eliminate diseases entirely? At what point do you cross the line and say, “No, you’re now beyond proper ethics. You’re trying to fulfill eternal life in a way inconsistent with Christian theology”?

Esau: One line I’ll say is: when you try to create Christian eschatology on your own volition, you’ve crossed the line. I would place the line there. Where we move back from that, I’m up for debate. But I would say the attempt to create eternal life by uploading your brain into the cloud—my hot take is: that’s past the line.

Skye: Okay. We’ll let Kaitlyn respond.

Kaitlyn: Hard agree on that one.

Skye: Yeah, that’s not hard to disagree with. But there are a lot of attempts to prolong life and there’s been this debate throughout history. Some people say even modern medicine is a way of not trusting God.

Kaitlyn: I don’t think it’s about trusting God. I totally agree with Esau’s point about the hubris of thinking we can engineer something only God can create. But I keep reading about this stuff and thinking—along the lines of what Russell Moore said—it’s a question of theological anthropology. Do we know what humans are? The early church hammered this out. We decided it was heresy to say that Jesus was not fully human—because that would contrast with his being fully divine. In making those arguments, we developed important ideas that have lasted through history about what makes humans human—and how that’s distinct from what makes a fallen human. Some things might tempt us to think they’re a result of the fall—and Christian transhumanists would say, “We’re overcoming that. It’s faithful to resist the consequences of the fall.”

But we struggle to know what’s actually a result of the fall and what is just human creatureliness. Some Christian transhumanists—even academic ones, not just internet people—confuse human limitation, finitude, and creatureliness as a result of the fall, instead of something good we were created with. Death is a result of the fall. Yet, as Esau said, we’re not supposed to engineer our way out of that. Christ is creating new life—we’re supposed to wait for God to redeem and restore. Our limitations—our finitude—are part of being creatures. That’s a good thing.

So that doesn’t answer where the line is, but I think a better question for any technology is: Is this trying to push back against the fall? For example, cancer cells are the result of the fall. A broken bone needing to be reset—that’s the fall. Is this technology resisting harm? Or is it trying to make humans into something other than we were meant to be?

Esau: Can I jump in with a big theological issue here?

Skye: Yeah.

Esau: The problem is also human sin. If you extend everybody’s life eternally, you’re extending the broken version of them—unless you’re going to somehow morally transform them. And the people who can afford this technology are the wealthiest. You’re creating a permanent inequality—where the greedy and sinful can extend their power. This utopia ignores the fact that the core problem isn’t just that we die—it’s that we sin. In some cases, it’s even good that sinful people die. One of the things that gives me hope is that wicked people eventually have to meet their Maker. Extending their evil for 100 or 200 years would be a tragedy—and that’s not taken seriously in this conversation.

Skye: There’s good theology written about the Fall in Genesis 3—arguing that one reason God didn’t allow Adam and Eve to live forever was because he didn’t want them to live forever in their sinful state. In that sense, death is a mercy. It limits the amount of evil people can do. It is Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.

Skye: Bit of a left turn, I know. But I was watching it last night—part of my great weekend—and there are people missing limbs everywhere. Sharks taking legs, arms, everything. None of us would say that getting an artificial limb is sinful. Right? It’s just a way of mitigating the effects of a fallen world. Some of the transhumanist argument is the same: “Our brain is finite, it will decay and die. So why not preserve the mind by transforming the brain with an artificial organ?” What’s wrong with that?

Kaitlyn: One of those is restoring capacity that was intended. Another is extending capacity beyond what humans have had. That doesn’t answer every question, but it’s helpful. We often reason this way: what is the normal capacity for a human? If we can restore it, that might be okay. But even then, there are ethical questions. Like with fertility treatments—we’re restoring a human capacity, but there are still ethical issues.

With transhumanism, my main concern is that we’re trying to make humans more than we were meant to be. As Esau said, it verges on godlike capacity. And there’s something just wrong about not valuing our creatureliness as a good thing.