Like early twentieth-century American Religious Humanism, Religious Naturalism advocates for religion without supernatural elements. Unlike Religious Humanism, Religious Naturalism is open to "god-talk" to express their reverence for Nature. When the Founding Fathers wrote of Nature’s God in the Declaration of Independence, they were referencing the supernatural Creator from Deism. When Religious Naturalists speak of the Creator, they mean Evolution.
Back in 2003 when I was launched the Transhumanist Church, I coined the term Religious Transhumanism to mean a combination of Transhumanism and Religious Humanism. Last night I worked on coming up with a term to mean a combination of Transhumanism and Religious Naturalism. My first attempt at this was Religious Transnaturalism but this had already been used to reference a different kind of Religious Naturalism.
I played around with coming up with new words using Greek prefixes and suffixes. I asked Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) what it thought the made-up terms might mean. Using this method, I came up with many words that seemed close but none that quite fit the definition I was seeking.
Finally I thought of "Religious Cybernaturalism". I was leaning toward supranaturalism but the prefix "supra-" sounds too much like "super-" and its meaning is frequently defined to be the same in many contexts. "Cybernatural" resonates with supernatural but it is more distinguishable to the ear which helps reinforce the conceptual contrast.
Using "cyber-" also avoids the use of the prefix "trans-" which can be confusing. Nowadays more people associate the word "trans" with a member of the Transgender Community than with someone who advocates Transhumanism. It is kind of like how the word naturalist has come to have multiple meanings over time.
When I searched the Web to see if "cybernaturalism" had already been used, I only found five hits. These uses were all related to artistic styles, mainly variations of a type of GenAI imagery. While doing that, I also also stumbled across an interesting essay on Cyberhumanism which the author distinguishes from Transhumanism.
In the context of Religious Cybernaturalism, think of the prefix "cyber-" here to mean "to steer" as originally used in the 1948 book Cybernetics. Religious Cybernaturalists might say that they have a reverence for Nature and that they use their knowledge of Nature to extend Evolution through Design. Unlike the argument of Intelligent Design which is based on the idea of a supernatural Creator, this type of Design is guided by Human ingenuity combined with the aid of Artificial Intelligence tools.
Posts
