The Future of the Dialogue Between Religion and Transhumanism: An Evaluation

Within the dialogue between religion and transhumanism, transhumanists tend to focus on the objections that are raised against a given technology in order to overcome objections to technological development. However, this means that transhumanists can minimize the importance of philosophical and theological questions that are raised by their advocacy. For example, new advances in artificial intelligence such as large language models show signs of reasoning, but are they truly intelligent? Transhumanists tend to minimize these questions because they may undermine future technological development. Given the tendency of LLMs to hallucinate, philosopher Shannon Vallor suggests that it is better to understand our current rendition of AI as a mirror, rather than as a mind, as is the default within AI research. The dialogue between religion and transhumanism depends on the ability of critics to confront and resolve the fundamental questions that naturally arise from technological development.