This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally airing on 3/21/24. To listen to the program, please click HERE.
Sam Rohrer: Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand In the Gap Today it’s also our monthly focus on what we term creation and apologetics update. Now on this monthly focus, if you’ve been listening to us, what we do, we do this, we select a current cultural trend or belief that is either gaining traction or has gained significant acceptance already within our culture. And that generally means things that you’re seeing evidenced within perhaps the scientific, the academic, the political and frequently religious spheres. A lot of times they’re all connected. Now today’s subject, well, seemingly very recent and thought is actually well, has some history to it and it’s deeply rooted within our secular culture, but seems to now be taking flight in remarkable ways and is the concept of blending technology and what is referred to as human enhancement. Now this is also called transhumanist technology or simply transhumanism.
Sam Rohrer: Improving the embedded and broad nature of this emerging phenomenon is clear just by doing a simple internet search, which I did just before the program. And it brings up these following headline. I’m just going to give you a couple. Here’s one from the Spectator Magazine. Title was Transhumanism is the Most Dangerous Idea in Circulation Today. It’s from the UK Guardian. They said, no death and enhanced life. Is this the future transhuman from foreign policy.com transhumanism and foreign policy? Do you see that connection? Here’s one from Karen International transhumanism as the dominant ideology of the fourth industrial revolution. And from Noah Yuval Harrari, the philosophical guru of the globalists in the World Economic Forum. He has one and says, we have now with artificial intelligence been able to hack the operating system of humans. So you get the idea. So while little understood by most people, we do need to know more about this technology as it’s impacting us all in the worldview that’s driving it.
Sam Rohrer: My title for today’s program is this Transhumanist Technology where the Bible draws the line. And my returning guest is Patricia Engler, a Christian apologetic speaker for answers and Genesis, author of her own book, recent book, Prepare to Thrive, A Survival Guide for Christian Students, and Patricia’s also pursuing an MA in bioethics. Her goal is to help Christians think biblically about sanctity of life issues and emerging technologies of which this area of transhumanism and what is referred to as human enhancement, what we’ll talk about and define today. And with that, I welcome back to the program Patricia Engler. Patricia, thanks for moving back with me.
Patricia Engler: Thanks much glad to be here.
Sam Rohrer: Patricia, we’re undertaking a rather large subject today. You know that, I know that we can spend days on it and people do in fact, but the fingers of this thing called transhumanism, augmented by transhumanist technology seems to have already reached into literally every aspect of modern life as some of those headlines I just cited indicate. But let’s get started if we can, by defining some of the most relevant terms. For instance, let’s start right off with this. Would you define transhumanism? What is that?
Patricia Engler: Yeah, sure. So basically transhumanism, it’s a movement to philosophy, a worldview that seeks to technologically evolve humans to the next level. So we’re taking technology, we’re incorporating into human bodies and minds to try to either make us enhanced humans or even some sort of post-human transcendent, transcending past human nature or even God-like beings. For some people they want to reach immortality through this.
Sam Rohrer: Alright, now let’s take it beyond that transhumanist technology. Now you defined a little bit of that, but defined that and maybe describe just briefly examples of the technology that would be, that’s a part of this thing you just defined as transhumanism.
Patricia Engler: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve used the term transhumanist technology to describe the types of technology that people want to apply to enhance humans or to transcend human nature. So that would include things like gene editing. We’re hearing a lot about things like CRISPR that can do that very effectively in a way that we just haven’t seen before. Things like neural chips, brain computer interfaces, ways of connecting the body itself and its electrical systems and the mind and its neurons with some sort of computer. And then just the other ways that modern medicine has a technology technologically altering the body in the mind. And what’s tricky about these technologies is a lot of them are what we call dual use. So they can be either as therapies that restore normal healthy functioning and cure people, or they can be used to enhance already healthy people to something beyond normal and something beyond what human nature we would normally think of that as including. So we need to be evaluating these technologies based on their specific applications in it’s kind of a case by case way, based on what’s the purpose, what’s the consequences, what’s the context here? So that’s what I mean by the transhumanist technologies
Sam Rohrer: And I think that’s good and we’re going to break that out more as we walk through the programs at Ladies and gentlemen, you say, oh boy, probably most of you have heard the word transhumanism. Maybe not transhumanist technology connected and defined quite this way. But it’s increasingly out there if you’ve heard ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk and he has his neural link with this embedded chip in somebody’s brain. Alright, now that is an example of, and my guest, Patricia Engler from and Genesis just referred to that chip type thing as something in passing, but it’s evidencing itself in a lot of different ways. Now, let me come back and ask you further, Patricia on this. If you could describe this overall concept of Transhuman, you defined that some of the terms, but describe the overall concept from the standpoint of its genesis. If there’s a father to this concept, who is he or she and when did it get a start?
Patricia Engler: Yeah, so that’s some really interesting history because like you said, we think of this as being kind of a novel idea that just kind of came up out of nowhere. But actually this goes way back. So the term transhumanism was popularized all the way back in the sixties by Sir Julian Huxley. So people might know of him as the brother of Alduous Huxley, grandson of Heley in terms of Darwin’s bulldog. So very strong evolutionary background there. And Julian Huxley was an evolutionary biologist and he was also the first director general of UNESCO. And also an interesting connection there is he served from 1959 to 1962 as the president of the British Eugenics Society. So people of course might be familiar with eugenics as this idea of a good birth, trying to improve the human genome and gene pool by favoring the birth of people with favored traits and either sterilizing or killing or preventing the birth of people with less ideal traits. So that thankfully lost favor after the Nazi holocaust and the atrocities there, but we still see quite a eugenics mindset in society. And he was involved in the Eugenic society even after World War II, as you can see. And then in 1968, Huxley wrote an article titled Transhumanism. And if you read it, it opens up with evolutionary ideas and it says that it’s humanity’s inescapable destiny to direct the future of evolution on earth. And that’s the gist of transhumanism right there.
Sam Rohrer: Okay, that’s perfect. Perfect job of laying that out, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, we’re talking today a theme transhumanist technology where the Bible draws the line. Now when you come back, we’re going to move into that term that’s used describing what church is talking about here, and that’s human enhancement. We’ll be back in just a moment. If you’re just joining us right now, this is our monthly program that we do. We call it a creation and apologetics update. Select some theme today is the issue of transhumanism or transhumanist technology. We define some of the terms in the last segment and the emphasis through the apologetics perspective is where does the Bible draw the line? What guidance does scripture gives us? Because if we believe that the word of God is the word of God, it does in fact give us guidance and direction on every issue of life, this being one of them.
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Sam Rohrer: Now my special guest today is Patricia Engler. She is a Christian apologist and a speaker for Answers in Genesis. And they have website at, what is it, answersingenesis.org I think. Patricia? Yep, that’s right, yes. Okay, so that’s where you can go. Ladies and gentlemen, actually I’m going to refer to it here, but she’s written something on this theme and you can actually go there and read it and a lot more. So anyways, lemme get right into it. We have a lot to cover, but from the creation of mankind with Adam created by God in his image and which creation all over God declared to be good, in the case of Adam, God saw a need to create Eve as a help meet for Adam, and he did. Male and female created he them, and it was good from that time. At that moment, Satan began an attack on God’s perfect creation and his plan, he successfully Beguiled Eve and then together with Adam who sinned with his eyes wide open, all of creation was cursed.
Sam Rohrer: So that what we see today all around us, while it is so remarkable and beautiful in so many ways, it doesn’t even remotely approach the beauty of the original innocence in creation before sin. So in reality, from that time down through the ages, people who fear God have sought to improve the quality of life within biblical parameters of which includes God as creator. And we the creation now, those who reject the God have followed the ongoing goal of the devil whose goal is to destroy life, distort or alter life as God designed it with the idea that they are god. Now many things have been done over time, including the attempt to create life or create the perfect human as the Nazis did as Patricia referred to on the other side with eugenics movement and all to what Noah Yuval Harrari that I cited of the World Economic Forum has said, and he has said to destroy free choice and through technology to control people even to their thinking and action, right?
Sam Rohrer: This is the groundwork, Patricia, you’ve prepared an excellent short apologetic available on the Answers in Genesis website. I just gave you entitled it Thinking Biblically about Transhumanist Technologies. And in that you stated something, I want to go off of it, you stated this, “…from governments to billionaires, powerful voices tell us we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will drastically alter humanity. And one of the considerations you so accurately highlight, in my opinion as I read that it’s what’s referred to as human enhancement. You’ve already used that term, so have I. And then you identify some basic considerations of this from both a secular and biblical worldview. So let’s do that now. We’re on the same track. First of all, define that term human enhancement. What is meant by that?
Patricia Engler: Sure. That term human enhancement, it can mean anything from just moderately improving someone’s natural abilities to radically modifying humankind itself, which is that vision of transhumanism. So people traditionally distinguish enhancements from therapies which bring you up to a normal level of health and functioning, whereas enhancements carry you beyond that level. Now that distinction is a bit debated, we’ll talk a little bit more about that, but that’s the gist of what enhancement is.
Sam Rohrer: Okay, I want you to just very quickly here, give one example of a human enhancement as in therapy. Whatcha you talking about? Yeah,
Patricia Engler: Sure. So for instance, that Neuralink that you mentioned that Elon Musk is putting together, so that is currently being used for a therapy in terms of helping say paralyze people be able to control a cursor with their mind or that type of thing. But you could use those same types of brain computer interfaces for going beyond therapies to say letting healthy people control objects with their minds or communicate mentally and that type of thing. So things we wouldn’t normally associate normal humans as being able to do. So that’s one example.
Sam Rohrer: Okay, that’s a great one. That helps I think all of our listeners. Alright, let’s not go now. And if you could describe in simple terms how human enhancement is viewed or viewed generally, at least from a secular worldview perspective. And then next you’re going to go from a biblical worldview perspective, but do we have these two basic views, worldviews of life, bring the secular worldview perspective to how this matter of human enhancement is viewed?
Patricia Engler: Yeah, so within that secular worldview, right, there’s no God. So humans are self creators. We decide what it means to be human, what should our meaning, human value, our morals, what’s right and wrong? Who counts as a person? All that’s up to us. So that means there’s no ultimate foundation for those things like morals and value. If we evolve without God, and that also means human nature is open-ended, it can change, we can change it. We’re just material animals continuous with the rest of the material world. And all of this results in a mindset that Carl Truman helpfully explained. It’s a poetic view of the world, which basically says the world and ourselves we’re just raw material out of which we make our own purpose and meaning and we create ourselves through that. So we are god’s basically that’s the basis of the secular view for enhancement, which also sees technology as a way to save ourselves. Secular people recognize that death and suffering are problems even though they don’t have a moral foundation for calling them bad, but then say that technology is the savior. So we create ourselves, we redeem ourselves, we create a new heaven on earth through technology where we live forever without death and suffering and pain. That’s the secular view.
Sam Rohrer: That sounds very much like the secular view of man as God because all those terms that you used are basically descriptive of many what would term spiritual conditions. And so okay, let’s let that sit there and then we’ll come back and compare contrast here, move now and share the fundamental underpinnings and the view of human enhancement from a biblical perspective. And while you do that, just compare contrast what you just said from the historical,
Patricia Engler: Yes sir. Compared to the secular view, Christians of course believe in God. He is the all-knowing all wise, completely good creator, he made an orderly universe with distinctions between creator and creation. So we’re not God between humans and non-human. So we’re not just continuous with the rest of nature. God completed creation. It’s not something that’s still being created. We see that in Genesis two right at the beginning and the end of Genesis one as well. Genesis also says creation is good. So we have here this view of creation as given and good and completed. And unlike a poetic view of the world that sees raw reality as just something that we manipulate, we have what’s called a mimetic view, which according to Truman sees the world as having a given order and a given meaning. So then we match ourselves to that. We don’t just master reality.
Patricia Engler: The biblical view also sees humans as made in God’s image or relational embodied beings. Our job is to steward creation, to tend and to keep it, not to try to alter it into something else. Our bodies aren’t just ours that we own to use however we want. They belong to God. And God created us as individuals for specific good works that he has in mind for us, we’re his workmanship, he knit us together. Again, we don’t just own ourselves to recreate into whatever we want to. So the Bible gives us this concept of an essential human nature. We see that even just in the fact that Jesus took on human nature when he was incarnated to save humans who descended from Adam. So we have this biblical view of sin and salvation in contrast to the secular worldview where creation was good, it’s fallen due to our sin because it’s fallen.
Patricia Engler: We need to be responsible and how we use things like technology, we recognize that humans are sinners, so we need to exercise wisdom and also to mitigate the effects of the fall. So we’re trying to overcome things like death and suffering to a degree, but we know that we can’t ultimately get rid of sin in its effects. That is what Jesus did. We can’t save ourselves with our own technology, but we know that Jesus conquered death and arose to restore creation forever to its original perfection. And so God sets the rules and He’s the one who brings us salvation in contrast to secular worldview. So even though the Bible doesn’t talk about modern transhumanism, it does give us all these really important paradigms and principles that we can use to think about enhancements.
Sam Rohrer: And it does. And while you’re saying that, I’m thinking further about some of the condemns of this fellow have already quoted a couple of times, Noah Yuval Harra and I do that because a lot of our listeners would have read things by him. He’s the face, he’s the guru of the world economic forum. He defines, he’s probably one of the leading voices on transhumanism. But in his comments he’s also said, free choice dead. He said, that’s dead. Now he’s a self-described atheist. He is an evolutionist. He doesn’t agree with God’s view on human sexuality. And he has been very so bold as saying that through transhumanism there will be no soul and despises the concept of soul. So ladies and gentlemen, I just share that with you from the perspective here of what we’re talking about transhumanism, advanced technology interposed into a person’s body through various mechanisms.
Sam Rohrer: It has everything to do with where that person starts. Is God in the picture or are we now God? And what are we trying to do make ourselves more able to glorify God and how that or to completely there is no God in the picture and there’s no soul at the heart of a lot. What’s driving this which makes it so important for all of us who are believers who believe in the word of God is to understand that this concept of secular man as God has really made unbelievable advancements, or if you could put it that way, it’s much further down the road than you think. And so it’s right there before us, even though we may not directly be aware of when we come back, we’re going to bring up this concept and talk about this idea of co-creator. There are some who think, well God created, but well we can help him.
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Sam Rohrer: Well we should we human civilization, which is not all that long, but what, 6,000 years from creation. And you just heard the spot there from Ken Ham in the middle who happened to be Answers in Genesis with whom Patricia, my guest, is associated. The flood was only 4,000 years ago. We’ve not been here all that long, but throughout human civilization there have been two worldviews that have always existed slightly different in the form, but it’s the same thing we’ve already described a little bit. But one is a God-fearing worldview that produces a people and a culture driven by the fear of God in light of God’s commandments. That’s what Ecclesiastes 1213 says, the whole duty of man fear God keep his commandments. That’s one worldview. And this results, when that’s done, it results in self-discipline and a morally imposed restraint. On one hand, being careful by those people.
Sam Rohrer: I’m going to say us, most of you listening to me right now in this category, being careful not to step into God’s domain as creator, but seeking always the wisdom of God for what purpose? Well, to better fulfill the command that God gave us in Genesis to take dominion, multiply and have children and raise up seed that gives glory to God. It’s to better steward creation where human life is created through multiplication of reproduction and then always with the goal of bringing glory to God and then executed throughout our life so that whatever vocation we may be in and God calls us to, we glorify God and we walk a godly life. Now, the other worldview has been a God defiant view where man becomes God, where the God designed the intellect and abilities given to us to take dominion over what God created is taken in arrogance and pride and appropriated to mankind our idea not God.
Sam Rohrer: And man and rebellion because of sin not only throws away God’s moral restraints, but literally and intentionally violates the boundaries God has established. Be that in the area of human sexuality. Now we have transgenderism, we’re going to make whatever it wants, marriage, we make it to whatever it wants to be, or we murder babies and we say it’s freedom or we try to create life with no soul or free will as Noah Hava talks about. Now, all of that moves us to what is referred to as the emerging co-creator concept and technology driven human enhancement within this context. Okay, Patricia, now in your article, I’m going to quote this to help set it up. You say this, the biblical worldview, which I just described in fuller detail, supplies a Christian foundation for thinking about enhancements, human enhancements, but not all professing Christians reach the same conclusions you say, then you refer to a man by the name of Philip Hefner and you say this, Philip Hefner’s view of humans as created co-creators, advocates for this concept argue that as beings made in their creators image, the humans are meant to join God in creating humanity.
Sam Rohrer: Then you want to say, however, a closer look reveals that this concept is not biblical. And that’s where I used in my title, where does the Bible draw the line? So would you explain this concept of co-creator? If you need to define a little bit more, do that. How is it manifesting itself in the transhumanist concept? And further then explain why is that concept not biblical, even though some professing Christians say it is.
Patricia Engler: Yeah, sure thing. So it really is just as simple as that. This concept is just arguing that we’re creative beings made in our creator’s image. So therefore God must have intended for humans to join him in further creating humanity and helping the rest of the world evolve to reach its full potential. So this idea then manifests itself in transhumanism as kind of a Christianized form of transhumanism. So it’s based on this false idea that God used evolution to create people and wants humans to take over evolution, to help God achieve his purposes for us and for the world goes back to some of the things that Julian Huxley talked about as we discussed earlier. Now these evolutionary ideas we can already see are unbiblical, but it gets worse because if you go back and actually read Hefner’s book where he was explaining this concept, a lot of people that talk about the co-creator concept to try to justify some sort of Christian transhumanism, go back and cite Hefner, but they don’t tell you that he based this concept on total reinterpretations of real core doctrines of Christianity, including even sin and atonement.
Patricia Engler: Hefner said Jesus died not to pay humanity sin debt, but to show us how to advance evolution. And even if you go, even if you don’t go quite that far, the Bible just doesn’t show us as being co-creators. The Hebrew word for create appears 50 times almost in scripture and that’s in reference to God. It only shows up four times in references to humans and none of them are actually talking about literal creative acts. So the Bible does not portray humans as co-creators. That’s an unbiblical idea that people try to use to push transhumanism within the church.
Sam Rohrer: And I think for most of our listeners, that would be pretty well understood. And anyways, lemme just go on. I want to bring up something else here. You and I have not talked about this. I’m going to put you on the spot, hopefully you’ve thought about it. I have thought much about it, but make it very practical. Four years ago the whole world was impacted by Covid. There was a recommendation that three quarters of the world accepted and that was a new technology called MR Nna could be inserted into people’s bodies to help their immune system theoretically enhanced their immune system. But now clearly that is not the case and the evidence is overwhelming that that was just the opposite. So I just want your perspective on that. That is a technology and even this Yuval Harari that I’ve quoted a couple of times cited that very technology as an advancement of transhumanism because it was forcing the body’s DNA God designed DNA to be modified according to some human thought or desire. Alright, any comment on that?
Patricia Engler: Well actually people do bring up vaccines, even just not the mRNA ones, but vaccines in general as an example of trying to show, well, it’s enhancing your immune system, so therefore it’s an enhancement, but we use it all the time so it can’t actually be unethical to enhance people. So people do try to bring that vaccine idea into the transhumanist discussion to try arguing for it. But if we look at some distinctions, normal versus enhanced states, therapies versus enhancements, tools versus modifications, you can show pretty well that vaccines don’t count as enhancements. They’re restoring or preventing you from if they work, if they’re well-made and all that, an ideal vaccine is going to restore or prevent you from declining in health. So yeah, it gets a little messy when you start dealing with the DNA and that type of thing. I haven’t looked into that as much, but vaccines in general we wouldn’t consider as enhancements, but certainly some of them could be used for something along those lines, which is where you get into that dual use type of technology.
Sam Rohrer: And so I did put you on the spot, I apologize for that. I generally don’t do that. And that one is a big issue, a lot of discussion and maybe we’ll actually come back and further that one a little bit because within the medical professional at all levels, there’s a lot of application and consideration on that, particularly when you involve the messenger RNA, that actually directs the body’s system to do something that otherwise, which is separate from a vaccine. So it’s not a vaccine by definition. But anyway, lemme go back on this. We’re have a couple minutes left. You referenced a couple of things about enhancement technologies and you gave three distinctions, normal versus enhanced states, therapies versus enhancements. You mentioned that in tools versus modifications. Again about a minute and a half. Flesh that out just a little bit if you could because you go into further detail in the article, which people can find on the interest in genesis.org website.
Patricia Engler: Yeah, so just to preview that a little bit. So normal we can think of as being a state that would fall within the human range of natural variation without qualifying as a disease. So then that helps us tell the difference between normal states and enhanced states. So unlike therapies which restore or preserve that normal state, enhancements take you beyond that state of normal functioning. And the difference does matter biblically, because we understand human nature is given and good, we’re knit together. It’s also important for humans to understand the difference between mitigating the effects of the fall versus mirroring the cause of the fall. So enhancements can mirror the cause of the fall. If you’re trying to be like God, you have that kind of hubris mentality versus mitigating the effect of the fall. You are say, doing those therapies just like what Jesus said, he healed people, he didn’t enhance them.
Patricia Engler: The Bible condemns, coness, greed, idolatry and gratitude, all those are effects of the fall or causes of the fall. So we shouldn’t try to bring them into technologies and use that for enhancing humans. So we want to distinguish between therapies versus enhancements. It’s a useful tool even though their boundaries can be blurry a little bit. And then the last important distinction is that tools versus modifications. Because some people say, well our smartphones are ways of enhancing people and we use them all the time, but hang on, tools like smartphones, they’re devices that we pick up, we interact with them with our bodies. We don’t just mentally manipulate them with our thoughts alone, like what you can do with brain computer interfaces and then we let them go and we’re just normal humans. But ontological modifications, on the other hand, you’re trying to alter yourself to change your nature into something that you’re not. The more that a device is embedded in the body and meant to alter the body and is permanent in there, the more it is a modification rather than a tool that is a really quick breakdown. But yeah, point people to the article to flesh that out in a little more detail.
Sam Rohrer: And you did a great job in putting a lot into that brief. Ladies and gentlemen, stay with us when we come back, we’re going to consider a few core questions and then a framework for generally how we approach things of this nature as we look forward. It’ll help.
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Sam Rorher: Well, we’ve moved quickly through the program today and hopefully as you’ve listened to this, you’ve been with us from the beginning. This theme, I’ll just share briefly before we go into some wrap up. It’s very difficult within an hour and within all the breaks we’re closer to 40 minutes probably of actually content. But it’s actually difficult for something for which I would ask your prayer for me and all of our cohosts to take in the issue a theme and so as to present it like we try to do and teach a philosophy, define the terms, talk about what it is, illustrate it, and then come up with some practical application and linking to it biblical principles.
Sam Rohrer: Now under a biblical worldview, that’s what it’s all about. We’re confronted with things. Sometimes they’re new in most cases, like Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, there’s nothing new under the sun. In reality there it looked a little bit different, packaged a little bit different, but human nature doesn’t change. God hasn’t changed and the word of God doesn’t change. And so it gives us everything we need. Now the real issue is do we fear God sufficiently so as to be willing to keep his commandments search out what the word of God says and actually do it. That is the key. That’s always been the challenge for those who say they fear God. So that being the case, as we walk through these things, it’s difficult. So we take a big topic here, this matter of transhumanism, transhumanistic technology talked about human enhancement of which it can come many ways medical.
Sam Rohrer: It’s a whole different frac. As I said at the beginning, it’s in politics, it’s in medicine, it’s in academia. This concept philosophically driven is throughout everything we have. So it’s hard to bring this all together. That’s just something I ask you to pray for us as we put it together, these kind of programs. And so with that, I just want to move on so we can conclude this. Patricia, in your analysis you also bring in the concept of ethics. We’ve referred to ethics. Ethics really a biblical worldview will actually instill biblical worldview ethics within every profession. I was in the political for a long time. The political is one that has great power because of the nature of government to do many things. And I said many times when I was on the floor of the house in debate, we may have the power to do what you’re talking about, but we do not have the right and we do not have the moral right before God to do what you want.
Sam Rohrer: We have the power, we can make it happen, but do we have the right? No. And that’s the kind of ethical application that occurs all through the culture. Now in this regard, you say this regarding questions, you posit two questions is what you say, an initial question to ask, is human life harmed in making or using the technology rendering its application unethical. And then you say the next question, concerns and interventions, foreseeable risks versus benefits. But even then the determination of that is going to have to be from a biblical worldview. Alright, so briefly explain these two questions and make some further application as we put down a broader guideline on this whole issue for people to leave with
Patricia Engler: Certainly. So yeah, that first question is super straightforward. You’re just asking does this technology involve somehow harming human life right at the point of fertilization when life begins? So for instance, enhancement technologies that rely on gene editing of embryos in a way that would likely lead to their harm or destruction. Clearly that harms human life. So automatically we would know that those technologies are unethical. We can stop our analysis right there. The second step is a little more involved. So this is where you are considering each individual application of a certain enhancement intervention, that application of that technology, thinking about the unintended consequences, recognizing that we are fallen people in a fallen world and our technologies can cause a lot of potential to harm as well as to help. So we want to think about how could this technology affect people as a species, as a society and as individuals.
Patricia Engler: So for a couple brief examples, as a species we can ask what might we lose in terms of the relationality and the embodiment God created us with? If we try to transcend our nature in some of the way that transhumanists talk about as a society, how could people be including in these technologies say data tracking potential? How would that affect our privacy, our freedom, neural security? If we’re talking about the brain computer interfaces, questions about our autonomy and free will also kind of fit with that. Would we get a eugenics mentality if we have these kind of perfect humans, the really enhanced ones, and then all the kind of lesser humans, what does that look like? How does it affect families? If parents think that they should enhance their kids, does that turn kids into customizable products? So there’s a lot of these types of considerations that we want to ask and it can be difficult, especially because we don’t know exactly what these technologies can do. They’re super novel. And also we just want to remember that God is all knowing there’s probably really good reasons why he made us the way that he did, and it’s just not necessarily wise to try to tamper with that. So that’s a brief answer to those two questions
Sam Rohrer: And those are good, basic foundational questions. Okay, now a couple minutes left here you actually conclude. And the process by which you went through it is a good process. And so that’s why I’m somewhat tracking that in the program here. But it was this a biblical framework for thinking about enhancement technologies and the larger transhumanism issue. Would you present what that simple framework is? It’s similar to what you just talked about, but it’s a little bit different.
Patricia Engler: Yep. So it’s just kind of an expansion of that. So the very first step, you just want to ask in this use of technology, what are some of the topics involved? Maybe things like family, sexuality, human nature, and then how does the Bible speak to each of those? And then you want to ask those first two questions we talked about is human life harmed? What’s the nature of the intervention in terms of how it could affect humans and society and humanity in general? And then we can do that, go through some of those concepts we talked about in the distinctions. So is this a therapy? Is it an enhancement? The more that an intervention mirrors the falls, causes like hubris and desiring to be like God or seeks to try to transcend the way God made us, the more we can suspect that this is probably not something ethical.
Patricia Engler: So then after we’ve gone through those considerations, we can just apply some other basic ethical principles to tell how wise it is. Is this actually likely to benefit society or not? And then we can say yes to the technological applications that mitigate the effects of the fall. So no to the ones that near the fall. And just embrace the ones that will help us be the type of people God made us to be. Embodied. Relational people living that life of contented, thankful, stewardship, living out the vocations that God made us for attending and keeping creation, not trying to manipulate it or ourselves in such a way that would override the boundaries that God has set for us. And that is how we can model human flourishing to the world by conforming ourselves to our creative design instead of trying to overcome them. We can actually as Christians be an example to the rest of our society for what that looks like and how to live the human lives that God made us to be. And as such, be salt and light to our community for such a time as this.
Sam Rohrer: Alright, and Patricia, that brings us up to the end, ladies and gentlemen. Patricia Engler with me today. Answers in genesis.org is where you can go, this particular theme, transhumanist technology, she has things there and other articles. But thank you so much for being with me today, Patricia. Excellent. Big subject. Hard to get it all in. And we got in hopefully the essentials. But ladies and gentlemen, even she was just going over there. At the end of the day, even though a person professes to be a believer, it is a daily choice of whether or not we’re actually going to live in submission to the word of God at a daily choice. It’s not a one-time choice and all the new things that are being thrown towards us as this technology would be won. We must be even more careful in walking the scripture and saying, Lord, I am committed to doing your well your way according to your word. And sometimes like this, it takes some work to explore and to work it out to make sure that we know what God’s will is and what his way is and be obedient to his word. But when we do, he’ll bless us. And I hope that is what you choose to do.
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