“Transhumanism” is the idea that, at some point in the not-so-distant future, technology will be able to enhance the human experience beyond recognition, bringing mankind to a state of near immortality. Wesley J. Smith comments:
[T]he church of transhumanism . . . substitutes faith in technology for belief in God (or in reincarnation and karma). . . . Transhumanists take these hopes very seriously. Indeed, they proselytize for their ageless post-human future with the kind of fervor materialists usually disdain in traditional religionists. . . .
Transhumanists used to repudiate any suggestion that their movement is a form of religion. But that wall of denial is cracking. According to [one leading enthusiast], the human inventions of religion and money long succeeded in subduing the earth. But with traditional religion waning in the West—and who can deny it?—we need new “fictions” to bind us together. That’s where transhumanism comes in. . . .
Alas, for transhumanists, technology is a very hard pillow. The fantasy of uploading one’s mind into a robot might be fun to contemplate at academic symposia and in boardrooms of high-tech companies overflowing with investment capital. And I certainly understand why living longer is preferable to the alternative of permanent nonbeing. But such temporary detours and—let’s face it—highly unlikely scenarios will never supply true meaning to yearning souls (if transhumanists will pardon the term), only a diversion. In the end, transhumanism is a wail of despair in the night, spitting vainly into the howling existential winds of what most true materialists see as a meaningless void.
Read more on First Things: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/06/even-materialists-crave-religion