Cybergnosticism: seeking paradise in cyberspace

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Cybergnosticism: seeking paradise in cyberspace

David Lutz, DSc (Philos.), Prof. Holy Cross College, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

"Transhumanism", an abbreviation of "transitional humanism", seeks to enhance and extend human capabilities by means of technology. As Pramod K. Nayar explains, "Transhumanists believe in the perfectibility of the human, seeing the limitations of the human body (biology) as something that might be transcended through technology so that faster, more intelligent, less disease- prone, long-living human bodies might one day exist on Earth" [31, p. 6 ]. Transhumanism is transitional to "posthumanism", which hopes to improve the human species to the extent that it is no longer human. According to Francesca Ferrando, "Philosophical Posthumanism is an onto-epistemological approach, as well as an ethical one, manifesting as a philosophy of mediation, which discharges any confrontational dualisms and hierarchical legacies" [12, p. 22].

One attempt to advance transhumanism and posthumanism from science fiction to reality is the 2045 Strategic Social Initiative, founded in 2011 by Russian oligarch Dmitry Itskov. The Initiative's "International Manifesto" expresses concern that the progress of technology thus far has not saved mankind from the limitations of our material bodies, "nor from diseases and death". The "Manifesto" calls for "an improvement of man himself and not only of his environment", and expresses belief that "it is possible and necessary to eliminate aging and even death". It then identifies one of the Initiative's objectives as the creation of an "artificial body and the preparation for subsequent transfer of individual human consciousness to such a body". The Initiative also hopes to develop a new comprehensive ideology for the human race: "We suggest the implementation of not just a mechanistic project to create an artificial body, but a whole system of views, values and technology which will render assistance to humankind in intellectual, moral, physical, mental and spiritual development" [20].

We human beings require purpose in our lives, and look forward to a future that is better than the present. For this reason, all traditional cultures are religious cultures. Christianity provides the purpose that we need: we are on this earth to love God and our neighbors as ourselves, to become virtuous and holy, with the hope of spending eternity with God. Nevertheless, millions of citizens of formerly Christian nations have turned away from Christianity. When traditional religion is abandoned, something must take its place to meet the human need for purpose, meaning, and hope. technology religious meaning

Following the rejection of Christianity, a variety of substitute belief systems have been adopted. Although it claimed to repudiate religion, Marxism became for millions an ersatz religion: "It is the paradoxical fate of Marx's thought to have exerted an influence upon the modern scene comparable to that of a new faith" [41, p. 125]. For many citizens of capitalist countries, the purpose of human life is material wealth and financial security. Although secularism is often understood to be opposed to religion, it is, in fact, a substitute for traditional religion. It is a belief system with its own creeds and heresies, virtues and vices, venial and mortal sins.

Another attempt to find meaning for life is the search for purpose in the natural sciences and technology: "The idea that we can reach salvation through science is ancient and powerful" [28, p. 1]. A widespread belief in modern and postmodern societies is that our progress in the natural sciences and technology has made religion obsolete. Nevertheless, David Noble makes the point that faith in technology is actually religious faith: "Although today's technologists, in their sober pursuit of utility, power, and profit, seem to set society's standard for rationality, they are driven also by distant dreams, spiritual yearnings for supernatural redemption" [32, p. 3]. Lee Worth Bailey agrees that technology is often created to fill the void left by loss of traditional religious faith: "If God is rejected, what will give us ultimate significance in the clockwork cosmos? In a mechanical universe, we depend on technology to give us wealth, power, pleasure, and salvation from suffering" [4, pp. 157-158].

With the new technologies of the computer age, a new religious denomination has emerged: "Our love affair with computers, computer graphics, and computer networks runs deeper than aesthetic fascination and deeper than the play of the senses. We are searching for a home for the mind and heart. Our fascination with computers is ... more spiritual than utilitarian" [18, p. 85]. According to Michael Benedikt: "The image of The Heavenly City" is "a religious vision of cyberspace" [6, p. 16]. And Jennifer Cobb provides a digital reinterpretation of the theological virtues: "Faith, hope, and love are present in the digital just as they are present in us. We both participate in the great continuum of Consciousness that is best known as God" [8, p. 148].

Alan Turing, one of the founding fathers of computer science and artificial intelligence, wrote about "the transmigration of souls" [42, p. 444], by which he meant the transfer of souls or minds from humans to computers. And Noreen Herzfeld explains that the concept of "cybernetic immortality" is based on the assumption that "human beings are basically biological machines whose unique identity is found in the patterns that arise and are stored in the brain". She continues, "If these patterns could be replicated, as in sophisticated computer technology, the defining characteristics of the person would be preserved" [19, pp. 70-71].

Although this may sound like mere science fiction, a number of scholars are taking it seriously. David I. Dubrovsky, Co-chairman of the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences on the Methodology of Artificial Intelligence, poses the question: "Cybernetic immortality - fantasy or scientific problem?" He then offers his answer: "It is a scientific problem - of approximately the same type as the problem of people going into outer space, which was proposed by Tsiolkovsky at the turn of the 20th century" [10]. Margaret Wertheim agrees: "Lest one imagine that fantasies of cyber-immortality are just in the minds of science fiction writers, we should note that much of the underlying philosophy guiding this fiction is emerging from the realm of science, from fields such as cognitive science, robotics, and information theory" [47, p. 263].

In one of his books, Marvin Minsky expresses the belief that machines can have minds: "This book assumes that any brain, machine, or other thing that has a mind must be composed of smaller things that cannot think at all" [29, p. 322]. Hans Moravec asks us to "imagine that a human mind might be freed from its brain" [30, p. 4]. Ray Kurzweil attempts to explain how we would transfer a person's mind from a human body to a machine: "We would map the locations, interconnections and contents of all the neurons, synapses and neurotransmitter concentrations. The entire organization, including the brain's memory, would then be re-created on a digital-analog computer" [24]. Stephen Garner writes about how such a transfer could lead to a better life: "If one could reproduce the function of the brain in a synthetic object then one might be able to transfer a human mind to an environment free from pain, suffering, and ultimately death" [15, p. 19]. And Martine Rothblatt also writes about how this would enable us to attain immortality: "Cyberconsciousness will make it possible, for the first time, for a person to live in a kind of technoimmortality forever in the real world" [37, p. 283].

Several authors emphasize the religious aspect of cyberimmortality. According to Noble, "Artificial Intelligence advocates wax eloquent about the possibilities of machinebased immortality and resurrection, and their disciples, the architects of virtual reality and cyberspace, exult in their expectation of God-like omnipresence and disembodied perfection" [32, p. 5]. He explains that the objective of cyberimmortality is union with God: "At first the effort to design a thinking machine was aimed at merely replicating human thought. But almost at once sights were raised, with the hope of mechanically surpassing human thought by creating a "super intelligence", beyond human capabilities. Then the prospect of an immortal mind able to teach itself new tricks gave rise to the vision of a new artificial species which would supersede Homo sapiens altogether. Totally freed from the human body, the human person, and the human species, the immortal mind could evolve independently into ever higher forms of artificial life, reunited at last with its origin, the mind of God" [32, p. 149].

Brent Waters argues that attempts to achieve transhumanism begin with the desire to escape the limitations of our human bodies: "For the transhumanists, human biology, and its inherent finitude and mortality, is the enemy that must be conquered". Waters then observes that this is a religious quest: "Although the transhumanists reject a religious notion of a fall from which humans must be redeemed, they nonetheless offer a salvific and eschatological story" [46, p. 168]. And Philip Larrey comments, "Instead of metaphysical transcendence, transhumanism seeks transcendence through digital means" [25, p. 104].

Stephen Garner understands posthumanism as substitute Christianity: "And so technologists like Moravec and Kurzweil appear to have developed a new soteriology and eschatology, complete with a "techno-rapture". One is left thinking that the posthuman philosophy has created a parody of the gospel with its own religious stories, narratives, spiritual beings and doctrines of eschatology and eternal life". He continues by revising Christian Scripture: "In the manner of Lk 4:18-19 there is a sense that its proponents are called to proclaim the good news to the informationally poor, to proclaim freedom for those imprisoned in their human bodies, cybernetic recovery of sight for the blind and a declaration that the new day has dawned. Similarly one hears echoes of Gal 3:28 - "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all who are posthuman"" [15, p. 20].

Several scholars have noted similarities between contemporary post-Christian belief systems and ideologies that early Christians identified as heresies. Mary Midgley observes that some people "turn to Freudian thinking for their personal salvation", but then adds, "In general this had to be a private salvation, one which involved to some extent turning one's back on the problems of an irredeemable world, rather like Gnostics and Manichees in an earlier age" [28, p. 144]. Several authors have noted parallels between Gnosticism and the desire to escape from the real world into virtual reality. Michael Heim credits science fiction writer William Gibson with highlighting the "essentially Gnostic aspect of cybertech culture". Heim describes similarities between cyberspace and the aim of Gnosticism: "The surrogate life in cyberspace makes flesh feel like a prison, a fall from grace, a descent into a dark confusing reality. From the pit of life in the body, the virtual life looks like the virtuous life. Gibson evokes the Gnostic- Platonic-Manichean contempt for earthy, earthly existence" [18, p. 102]. Some authors call the hope of attaining salvation in cyberspace "cybergnosticism", which has been defined as "the belief that the physical world is impure or inefficient, and that existence in the form of "pure information' is better and should be pursued"" [33].

Gnosticism is a doctrine of salvation by knowledge. Eric Voegelin identifies the essence of Gnosticism, both ancient and modern: "All gnostic movements are involved in the project of abolishing the constitution of being, with its origin in divine, transcendent being, and replacing it with a world- immanent order of being, the perfection of which lies in the realm of human action. This is a matter of so altering the structure of the world, which is perceived as inadequate, that a new, satisfying world arises" [44, pp. 68-69].

A number of authors have noted similarities between ancient Gnosticism and the new cyber spiritualities. Douglas Groothuis explains that, whereas pretechnological Gnostics hoped to free the human soul from the material world, cybergnostics seek to use material resources as "the launching pad into an artificial, but strangely spiritual, realm of being" within the physical universe: "A host of cyberphilosophers exhibit an almost Gnostic approach to matter while simultaneously worshipping the abilities of material technologies to provide them with the medium for their disembodiment" [17, pp. 39-40]. Erik Davis also see parallels between Gnostic mythology and the attempt to escape from the material world into cyberspace: "Gnostic myth anticipates the more extreme dreams of today's mechanistic mutants and transhuman cowboys, especially their libertarian drive toward freedom and self-divinization, and their dualistic rejection of matter for the incorporeal possibilities of mind" [9, pp. 77-78].

Erik Persson interprets cybergnosticism as an attempt to escape from the injustice and evil of material existence: "Cyberspace can be construed as the ultimate consequence of [the] "revolt against reality" and the concomitant desire for man's dominion over being, providing an electronic, quasi-spiritual otherworld totally under man's control as the replacement, in the gnostic's view, of the imperfect, unjust, and evil order of the present world" [34, p. 8]. Charles Ess explains that traditional Gnosticism and its contemporary reappearance in the digital age share a yearning for immortality: "Cybergnosticism echoes the Gnostic belief that a soul, as radically separate from the body, can achieve immortality through acquiring a secret knowledge (gnosis): for cybergnostics, this secret knowledge and correlative immortality will emerge online" [11, p. 685]. Oliver Krueger points out that the hope of "technological immortalization" is at the core of cybergnosticism: "The idea of uploading human beings into an absolute virtual existence inside the storage of a computer takes the center stage of the posthumanist philosophy - and this is the context of the question of Gnosis in cyberspace" [22, p. 80].

In contrast to those who understand cyberspace in terms of the Gnostic heresy, some authors interpret it in terms of orthodox Christianity: "Today's proselytizers of cyberspace proffer their domain as an idealized realm "above" and "beyond" the problems of a troubled material world. Just like early Christians, they promise a transcendent haven - a utopian arena of equality, friendship, and power. Cyberspace is not a religious construct per se, but ... one way of understanding this new digital domain is as an attempt to construct a technological substitute for the Christian space of Heaven" [47, p. 18].

Robert M. Geraci employs the term "Apocalyptic AI", which he defines as "the presence of apocalyptic theology in popular science books on robotics and artificial intelligence" [16, p. 1]. He understands Apocalyptic AI to include cyberimmortality: "Apocalyptic AI advocates promise that in the very near future technological progress will allow us to build supremely intelligent machines and to copy our own minds into machines so that we can live forever in a virtual realm of cyberspace" [16, p. 8]. Furthermore, Geraci considers transhumanism to be a religion: "Although most transhumanists believe that transhumanism is a rational, scientific movement, they do not recognize the religious beliefs deeply rooted in their mindset through the adoption of Apocalyptic AI. Apocalyptic AI advocates promise happiness, immortality, and the resurrection of the dead through digital technologies" [16, p. 103].

Geraci sees Apocalyptic AI as concerned with resolving the problem of cosmic dualism: "Apocalyptic AI divides the world into categories of good and bad, isomorphic with those of knowledge/ignorance, machine/biology and virtual world I physical world. Apocalyptic AI theorists locate human beings on the bad end of this spectrum due to the human body's limited intellectual powers and inevitable death" [16, p. 9]. Those who hope for cyberimmortality often refer to the human body and brain derisively as "meat".

The dualism that cyberimmortality seeks to resolve is fundamentally one of good versus evil: "The foundation of apocalypticism is the desire to reconcile a cosmic dualism in which good and evil struggle against one another in the universe" [16, p. 14]. Geraci alludes to Christian Scripture (I Thess 5:2) in describing the coming of the AI apocalypse: "Apocalyptic AI dissolves cosmic dualism in a world where the line differentiating the machine from the living explodes in a singularity that will sneak up on us like a thief in the night" [16, p. 31].

Geraci observes in a note that other authors have connected hope in cyberimmortality "to ancient Gnosticism, rather than apocalypticism" and comments that "ancient Gnosticism counts as among the religions most oriented toward a dualistic view of the world" [16, p. 182]. Nevertheless, he prefers to interpret Apocalyptic AI as "the direct descendent of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic traditions" [16, p. 87]. Furthermore, he understands Judaism and Christianity as characterized by dualism: "Apocalyptic AI, like its predecessor movements in Jewish and Christian history, starts with a dualistic view of the world" [16, p. 24]

Gnosticism is certainly dualistic: "The cardinal feature of gnostic thought is the radical dualism that governs the relation of God and world, and correspondingly that of man and world" [21, p. 42]. The universe, and with it evil, was created or arranged by a created being: the demiurge. The human race is totally separated from God and enslaved in the dungeon of the earth [21, p. 43]. A human being is a composite of body and soul, which are mundane, and spirit, which is a spark of the divine substance and is enclosed in the soul [21, p. 44]. Gnostic salvation consists in the spirit's liberation from the mundane: "Matter is evil; the disembodied spirit alone is divine; and salvation lies in the long-buried memory of our own origin as sparks from the divine flame" [26, p. 27]. Because humans live in a state of ignorance, this salvation requires revelation of a special knowledge (gnosis). Since evil has been created, good and evil are independent, opposing principles or forces [13, p. 28].

Within twenty centuries of religious groups that have claimed the title "Christian" there is considerable diversity, with some versions resembling gnostic dualism: "There is fairly general agreement on the kinship between gnosis and Protestantism" [26, p. 31]. The mainstream of Christianity, however, is non-dualistic and opposed to Gnosticism. God created the universe and it is good. Just as darkness is not a principle or entity but merely the absence of light, "evil has no existence except as a privation of good" [2, III, vii, 12]. In contrast to Platonic and Cartesian dualism, as well as Gnostic dualism of spirit and matter, the human person is a hylomorphic composition: "The soul is the form of the body" [1, I, 76, 7]. To be a saint in heaven is to have a glorified body, not to be a disembodied soul. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed affirms belief in the "resurrection of the dead", and the Apostles' Creed in the "resurrection of the body". That could not be true if our bodies were evil. Christianity, in contrast to the Gnostic heresy, is not dualistic.

Belief in cyberimmortality assumes an anthropology quite different from hylomorphism. Computational functionalism is the belief that mental states are "computational states of the brain" [39, p. 220]. According to computational functionalism, "the mind is the software of the brain" [35, p. 271]. If computational functionalism were true, human beings would be computers: "What is man, or any material object, but a sum of information?" [27, p. 221] And, if we are computers, it seems to some authors who accept computational functionalism that it will someday be possible to transfer our mental software to hardware that is more durable than our current, frail, human bodies. They believe that this will make it possible to attain "personal immortality by mind transplant" [30, p. 121].

If computational functionalism were true, that would mean that we do not have free will and that moral responsibility for our words and deeds is an illusion. Love and hatred, virtue and vice, good and evil, holiness and sinfulness, religious faith and unbelief would all be reducible to computational states of the brain.

Aristotelian hylomorphism was an important step forward from Platonic soul-body dualism. Rene Descartes' rejection of hylomorphism and adoption of mind-body dualism was an important backward step in the history of philosophy. Cartesian dualism is, in fact, inferior to Platonic dualism, because Plato understood the human soul to include both cognitive and affective powers. A human soul is more than a mind. Computational functionalism is a direct descendant of Cartesian dualism. To use the language of Gilbert Ryle, if a human mind is "a ghost in a machine" [38, p. 224], why cannot a ghost be transferred from one machine to another? And, if from one machine to another, why not from a biological machine to an artificial machine? If, however, the human soul is the form of the human body, as the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition affirms, a human soul is not something that can be uploaded or downloaded to computer hardware.

Human beings are "embodied beings" [40, p. 3]. We cannot be the persons we are without our material bodies, imperfect and frail though they may be during our terrestrial lives: "The spiritual soul, created by God, is the animating principle and substantial form of the living human body" [43, p. 26]. If it were possible to transfer a human soul or mind from a human body to a machine, the result would not be the same person as the original: "If we are to assume (for argument's sake) that what leaves the body to be uploaded in a digital device is the soul, then the life principle of the composite would no longer hold the union in being" [25, p. 105]. A human person is not and cannot become a "machine-stored mind" [36, p. 71] nor a "cybergnostic machine" [27, p. 258].

Thomas Fuchs understands that the hope of cyberimmortality is the latest reincarnation of ancient Gnosticism: "To free the spirit from the material body is the salvation which today's techno-utopians are offering us. Ultimately, this makes them the secular epigones of the Neo-Platonic and Gnostic teachings of the body as the "grave" or "dungeon of the soul"" [14, p. 75]. Fuchs decisively refutes computational functionalism, mind uploading, and "digital immortality" [14, p. 16]. He asserts that "the idea of using the brain as a blueprint for immortality has nothing to do with reality and more to do with a naive belief in the computer model of the mind" [14, p. 73]. Functionalism is an anthropological mistake: "The human person is not a copyable sum of data, not a digital program but rather a living and experiencing being" [14, pp. 73-74]. True intelligence, as distinguished from artificial intelligence, is impossible without life and consciousness: "Only living beings are conscious, feel, sense, or think - not brains, and not computers. Persons are living beings, not programs" [14, p. 28]. Artificial intelligence merely simulates the true intelligence of flesh and blood human persons: "The human mind is not an ensemble of digitizable algorithms and information but constitutively alive and embodied" [14, p. 53]. Transferring human minds to computer hardware is impossible, because our minds are not software: "Mind uploading equates the mind with the totality of algorithmic processes in a complex system like the brain - i.e., with software that could basically run on any kind of sufficiently complex hardware or wetware" [14, p. 71].

Kurzweil, who believes that cyberimmortality is possible, poses a thought-provoking question: "If a person scans his brain ... and downloads his mind to his personal computer, is the "person" who emerges in the machine the same consciousness as the person who was scanned?" [23, p. 6] But this is the reduction of cyberimmortality to absurdity. If it were possible to download a person's mind to a computer, it would be possible to make a backup copy of that person's mind. Would the original and the backup copy be the same person or two different persons? It also would be possible to make thousands or millions of copies of a human mind. We would then have a digital-age version of the pre-Socratic problem of the one and the many. This is a denial of the reality that every human being is a unique personality.

The human desire for perfection and immortality is natural, rooted in our human nature [45, p. 177]. We yearn for a life that transcends "our fragile corporeality" [27, p. 285] and our present existence in a world of disease and death. But we must accept the reality that eternal life is possible only as a gift from God, not as a technological achievement. The path to true Christian perfection is the imitation of Christ, not the production of machines superior to our human bodies.

According to Stanislaw Lem, "It is possible to create for any created beings any cybernetic paradises, purgatories, and hells that will await them" [27, pp. 284-285]. What is needed is the humility to abandon the "more or less secularized eschatological expectations" [7, p. 3] of progress in computer technology and accept the reality that only God can create heaven, purgatory, and hell, and decide where each of us will spend eternity.

Eschatological confusion is rooted in anthropological confusion: "Instead of demeaning the human body regarding the mind, we should evaluate the unity and reliance on the body as ennobling" [2 5, p. 90]. Cybergnosticism is a mistaken attempt to escape from the problems of our good but fallen world, without accepting the reality of our world, the God who created it, and who we are within it. As Benedict XVI tells us, "Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is" [5, p. 78]. And Voegelin explains, "The death of God is the cardinal issue of gnosis, both ancient and modern" [44, p. XX].

According to Stef Aupers, Dick Houtman, and Peter Pels, "Cybergnostics celebrate the possibility of the "liberation from human nature" achieved by uploading one's mind into a machine" [3, p. 699]. What we should do instead is seek eternal life within the constraints of our human nature, which is created in the image of God. Rather than attempting to escape to a higher existence in virtual reality, we need to accept the reality of our naturally good but fallen world, work to improve it, and strive to follow the path to paradise that God has established.

Wertheim notes some of the moral shortcomings of cybergnosticism: "Behind the desire for cyber-immortality and cyber-gnosis, there is too often a not insignificant component of cyber-selfishness. Unlike genuine religions that make ethical demands on their followers, cyberreligiosity has no moral precepts". She continues: "In its quest for bodily transcendence, for immortality, and for union with some posited mystical cyberspatial All, the emerging "religion" of cyberspace rehashes many of the most problematic aspects of Gnostic-Manichaean-Platonist dualism. What is left out here is the element of community and one's obligations to the wider social whole" [47, pp. 281-282]. And Benedict XVI explains that this failure to understand the common good follows from the denial of human nature: "There cannot be holistic development and universal common good unless people's spiritual and moral welfare is taken into account, considered in their totality as body and soul" [5, p. 76].

Perennial human problems such as unending wars between and within nations require religious and moral solutions, not technological solutions. Our human nature is good, but fallen because of sin. We cannot and should not attempt to improve human nature through science and technology. The Christian religion offers the solution we are seeking.

The ersatz religion of cybergnosticism offers what it calls "grace": "If we can allow ourselves to understand the deeper, sacred mechanisms of cyberspace, we can begin to experience it as a medium of grace" [8, p. 45]. This, however, is not true grace. The words of Augustine are just as true today as they were sixteen centuries ago: "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you" [2, p. 3].

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