Transhumanism: A Religion Without Religion

This project seeks to dispel the belief that transhumanism (a movement advocating for human-enhancement through technology) is diametrically opposed to religion. Transhumanism, rather than being a non-religious or secular movement, is instead a survival of Christian religious ideology shorn of its explicit religious character and transformed into a less religiously-apparent secular-scientific guise, retaining both beneficial and dangerous religious structures that continue to persist in transhumanist discourse. Many of the foundational religious structures that are largely unrecognized by transhumanists that I discuss include: the elimination of death, the sacredness of human life, the imposition of human-exceptionalism by understanding humanity as God-like, and finally, an unwavering faith in predetermined and unalterable messianic future events. Regardless of their presentation in a secular-scientific idiom, transhumanism’s retention of religious structures appropriates and continues the history of religious ideas deeply ingrained in Western culture, in what I call, following Jacques Derrida, transhumanism’s “religion without religion.” My argument employs a deconstructive logic of the X without X, or in this case, a “religion without religion,” to examine some of the ways religion may be extended by non-religious means, such as through the secular-scientific discourse of transhumanism. The value of thinking of transhumanism as a religion without religion, an approach lacking in current scholarship, is its ability to recognize the discursive histories of transhumanism’s religious past, while also recognizing the new, religious and non-religious possibilities of transhumanism’s future. My deconstructive perspective highlights the religious structures within transhumanism, showing how transhumanism unwittingly perpetuates dogmatic formulations of religious structures, like a determinate messianism, that may inflict incalculable harm to humanity and nonhuman beings alike. Recognizing these religious structures reveals how transhumanism can draw strength from the religious structures they too often ignore by being more self-critical and acknowledging the need for the non-knowledge of faith even in scientific pursuits, while also avoiding the dangers of religion, such as the over-confidence in technology to solve the problem of death. This project uncovers some of the harmful effects of the religious structures that survive in transhumanist discourse in the hopes that these dangers may be mitigated or avoided in the future.