Religion in the making

“Transcendent Man” is a documentary about the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil, a successful American inventor and author of the book “The Singularity is Near”. The documentary shows him hobnobbing with both Colin Powell and William Shatner, later turning up at an event featuring Barack Obama. Stevie Wonder is another celebrity interviewed. Kurzweil's association with Shatner (Captain Kirk in Star Trek) is perhaps symbolic.

Kurzweil is a believer in “the law of accelerating returns” and exponential technological progress. He claims that a new evolutionary leap will take place around the year 2040, when a state he calls “the singularity” will be reached. At that point, machines will acquire super-human intelligence, and nothing will ever be the same. The documentary discusses both Artificial Intelligence, nanotechnology, the potential immortality of the physical body, genetic engineering, and the creation of new human bodies through computer-generated virtual reality. Kurzweil himself imbibes mysterious pills which supposedly reprograms the biochemistry of his body, thereby extending his life span. (This interests Shatner, who says he doesn't want to die.) When talking to Powell, Kurzweil claims that all our energy needs can be taken care of by highly advanced solar panels. If this sounds like science fiction, it probably should. Indeed, “The Terminator” is explicitly referenced in the documentary, and other ideas sound strikingly similar to those in “The Matrix”. This makes the pairing of Kurzweil and Captain Kirk look pregnant with meaning!

A couple of critics have been included in “Transcendent Man”, but most of them don't really question the idea of eternal technological progress. Rather, they believe that the machines may turn evil, or that immortality is much further away than 2040. Interestingly, the really serious criticism comes from a biologist and a Christian talk show host. The biologist, whose name escapes me as I write, argues that evolution always comes with both costs and benefits, so even if humans achieve longevity, some other traits will probably devolve or disappear. The Christian, none other than Chuck Missler, believes that Kurzweil's talk about the singularity is really a false, “pantheistic” religion. He's on to something there!

It's painfully obvious that Ray Kurzweil really has created a kind of false religion, pseudo-religion or new religion. I say “painfully” since Kurzweil freely admits his strong fear and loathing of death, especially his own impending death and that of his already deceased father. Apart from personal immortality through dietary supplements, Ray wants to bring his dead father back to life by making a computer program simulate the father's body and thoughts. I get the impression that Kurzweil is a hyper-intelligent person who simply can't stand the idea of his own physical mortality. I do think he is an idealist, who really believes he is doing humanity a favor. Yet, the pseudo-religious overtures are obvious. The singularity scheduled to take place in 2040 is Kurzweil's “apocalypse” or “rapture”. The immortal physical or virtual bodies of man are resurrection bodies (or perhaps Taoist immortal bodies, in the case of the dietary supplements). The enhanced Artificial Intelligence is, of course, God. Kurzweil seems well aware of the similarities between his ideas and those of Christianity, even speaking at a Christian conference. He even says that God doesn't exist…yet.

Even more obvious parallels can be drawn to Aurobindo's “Gnostic Man” or Teilhard's “Omega”. What can only be achieved by God's direct miraculous intervention or a spiritual evolution, Kurzweil hopes to achieve through enhanced technology. Here, he is similar to Nikolai Fyodorov, the first of the Russian “Cosmists”. What I find remarkable is that so many of Ray's colleagues accept his basic scenario, despite its obvious roots in religion, Cosmism or science fiction! Or perhaps not so remarkable: Kurzweil has simply taken the quasi-religious implications of the modern idea of Progress to their logical and fully conscious conclusions. Of course, the idea of Progress is in itself an immanentized version of both postmillennial and premillennial Christianity and Judaism, wedded to the 19th century “progressive” distortion of Darwin's evolutionary thought.

Here, somebody could argue: “but it's true”. Except, of course, that it isn't. The truth claims themselves are “religious” in the most negative sense of that term: blind faith. This is obvious throughout the documentary, where Kurzweil's admirers constantly resort to the argument from authority, genius or previous prediction when claiming that Kurzweil must be right about The Singularity, as well. Somebody even calls him a modern prophet… A more dispassionate look at things shows that we are already on the brink of the abyss, and that Kurzweil's whole idea of humans breaking free from their physical constraints by technology is sheer illusion. On the “positive” side, this also means that the dystopian speculations about “terminators” or “artilect wars” are equally bogus. (Tribal wars are far more likely!) As for Kurzweil's idealism, well, AI developer Hugo de Garis says in the documentary that he *is* willing to destroy the human race in order to build an advanced machine-brain. I'm sure De Garis is a really N.I.C.E person…

Those who want to live forever will either not live to see it happen, or they should turn to real religion and spirituality.