Transhumanist Church

In mid-2003, I launched the Transhumanist Church website to announce my intent to create a Religious Transhumanist organization.  The goal was to combine elements of the Society for Venturism with the spirit of early twentieth century American Religious Humanism.  Religious Humanism does not exist as an independent movement today as the bulk of it morphed into secular humanism while the religious remnant was eventually absorbed into Unitarian Universalism.

Depending on the context, the term "Church" either means a Christian organization or any religious organization in general, whether Christian or non-Christian.  To disambiguate, you might use the alternative term "Fellowship" for an organization that is religious but maybe not exclusively Christian.  The term "Society" feels similar to "Fellowship" but maybe more secular.

The Society for Venturism was originally known as the Church of Venturism.  After a founding member of the Society for Venturism joined the Transhumanist Church, the members voted to change the name of their organization to the Society for Universal Immortalism (SfUI).  After that, the Transhumanist Church domain name was no longer used.

Although I am no longer actively involved with the SfUI, I have found a new home with the Church of Perpetual Life.  Along the way, I looked into alternatives such as the Terasem Movement Transreligion and the Mormon Transhumanist Association.  I also started my own personal micro-church which I am calling the Optihumanist Fellowship.  

On my Cryonics Industry Consortium (CrInCo) website,  I have a directory of cryonics organizations providing services in the United States.  It recently dawned on me that I could create a similar website listing Transhumanist religious organizations.  To promote growth in this area, I have relaunched the Transhumanist Church website.

World Religions

I recently watched the presentation "The Ark Before Noah: A Great Adventure" by Irving Finkel.  When he described the extreme reaction of George Smith upon discovering that the story of Noah's Ark was an adaptation from a much older Babylonian mythology, I recalled how I had also immediately spotted the obvious similarities when I was first introduced to the Epic of Gilgamesh.  Dr. Finkel has a number of other good presentations on related subjects available on YouTube.

As a youth being raised as a Southern Baptist in a city which was said to have had the most churches per capita in the Bible Belt and in which all three of the universities in town represented different shades of Christianity, I was not cognizant of world religions.  The 1980 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) book Deities & Demigods, which included a section on the "Babylonian Mythos", might have been my first introduction to religions beyond Judeo-Christian.  When you are first introduced to the idea that many different peoples in many different places have had many different religions over many millennia, you start to realize that your assignment to the religion that you were taught to believe in as a child is a circumstance of when and where you were born.

I remember that the late Daniel Dennett, my favorite philosopher, proposed teaching world religions in public schools.  The Unitarian Universalists (UUs), which teach their children about different religions in Sunday school, recognized that their children, upon adulthood, often adopt the religion of their spouses rather than continuing on with UU.  The joke about this is that when the children are taught about the different varieties of religion outside of UU, they then think that they are expected to pick one.

It is clear to me that Dennett's proposal to teach world religions in taxpayer-funded schools, if enacted, would upset many parents.  My thinking on this has been influenced by my new understanding of Terror Management Theory from listening to the audiobook The Worm at the Core.  By providing entertaining illustrated books about ancient myths from other cultures, parents can inoculate their children against subjugation by modern myth-based religions.

My Full Name

I like to use my full name on the things that I write. As far as I can tell, nobody else in the world shares this name so it is my way of saying "I was here".

I want to disclaim, however, one case that I know of in which a person wrote under my name with the intent to deceive others into believing that it was me. This person typically wrote on websites and blogs associated with Unitarian Universalism (UU). He had a grudge against UU and chose me as he knew that I had been a member of that organization.

To a lesser degree, I also want to disclaim things that I wrote where editors then changed the wording to the extent that it changed the meaning. This includes letters to the editor of newspapers and the letter to the readers on the back cover of my book. I have stopped writing letters to the editor for this reason. In the age of the Web, I think self-publishing is the way to go.

To an even lesser degree, I disclaim computer code that I have written where someone else then subsequently modified it without adding their own name to it. Their modifications, both good and bad, are then inappropriately attributed to me. In this situation, I would prefer that they add their own name or "unattributed" even if their changes are minor.

UU Humanist

I recently attended a Zoom presentation hosted by the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association (UUHA).  Rabbi Adam Chalom gave a talk on "Imagine There's No Heaven: A Humanist Approach to Mortality and Memorial".  The UUHA just launched a new YouTube channel so the talk might be archived there soon.

While he was speaking, I was thinking of how an Optihumanist memorial service might differ, especially for someone who was in cryonic suspension.  Like a Humanist service, it would not offer comforting words to the grieving survivors that they might meet again in a supernatural afterlife.  Unlike a Humanist service, however, there would be some hope for a reunion in a different kind of afterlife, either physical or virtual, via some future medical technology.

Optihumanist Principles 2015

Wikipedia states that the Mormon Transhumanist Association syncretizes Mormonism and Transhumanism.  Here syncretization suggests a fusion which attempts to smooth over and reconcile the incompatibilities between differing belief systems.

Previously I wrote that I was going to redefine my own microreligion Optihumanism to be a combination of American Religious Humanism and Transhumanism.  One incompatibility between the two is that most Religious Humanists accept aging and death as natural and reject extreme life extension medical technologies such as cryonics.  An incompatibility on the other side is that most Transhumanists reject religion in all forms, including those with no supernatural elements.  

Overall, however, I call this a combination rather than a syncretization as the two go fairly well together.  In fact, I think it is inevitable that most Religious Humanists will eventually become Religious Transhumanists as future advances in medical technology are gradually accepted into the mainstream.  With regard to the acceptance of future forms of sentient life, most Religious Humanists come from religious traditions such as Unitarian Universalism which have historically provided welcoming environments to outsiders.

My newly updated Optihumanist Principles for 2015 reflects this combination.  It is a much shorter statement than my previous efforts and, by being shorter, I hope less exclusionary.  It is divided into four brief sections, the third of which espouses Transhumanism and the others which wrap it within the tradition of the Humanist Manifesto.

I will be revising the rest of the content at the Optihumanist website over time to reflect this shift.  This will include an update to my list of recommended books.  Some candidates that I am reading now include:

• The Path of the Eternal Song by Tripper McCarthy
• The Transhumanist Reader edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More
• Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton

First Church in Boston

While I was in Boston last weekend on a business trip, I attended the Sunday morning service of First Church in Boston, a Unitarian Universalist (UU) church founded in 1630. You can view a slideshow of the photos that I took.