Speaker 1: Oh hoos me with us.
Speaker 2: The Hell.
Speaker 3: Of the the Who Today, I want to talk about
Speaker 3: a topic that you've heard covered, but we don't often
Speaker 3: hear people with academic expertise covering this topic.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think to a.
Speaker 3: Degree I have that, But what about the issue of
Speaker 3: transhumanism as an academic discipline as a study.
Speaker 1: Today I have one of.
Speaker 3: My good buddies as the guest with me. His name
Speaker 3: is David Patrick Harry. You can find him on Twitter
Speaker 3: under that as well as on YouTube under Church of
Speaker 3: the Eternal Logos. And David, I want to talk to
Speaker 3: you about transhumanism because this is a subject that you
Speaker 3: know very well. I think you're studying this at the
Speaker 3: academic level. Before we get into it, I'm going to
Speaker 3: let you give your take on it. What I understand
Speaker 3: is kind of an agenda that we have been under
Speaker 3: for many decades.
Speaker 1: We can go back to people like HG.
Speaker 3: Wells, who wrote a book called The New World Order,
Speaker 3: the Open Conspiracy, Bertrand Russell, other people in those circles.
Speaker 1: They said they wanted to go back to Plato.
Speaker 3: Utilize Plato's philosophy of techney and make it into a technocracy,
Speaker 3: a world government ruled not by nation states, not by
Speaker 3: firewalls of the family and borders, but rather a global
Speaker 3: federation of world citizens where nobody has identity other than
Speaker 3: what the system gives you, ultimately by some sort of matrix,
Speaker 3: some sort of thing to be plugged into.
Speaker 1: And as we progress up into the future.
Speaker 3: Beyond the designs of people one hundred plus years ago,
Speaker 3: we see books like Between Two Ages by Brazinski outlining
Speaker 3: this world government we see that's run by technocracy. The
Speaker 3: book is called the Technotronic Era. We see people like
Speaker 3: Zhaka to the Kissinger of France writing books about transhumanists
Speaker 3: as the tip of the sphere of the revolution. We
Speaker 3: find people like Klaus writing books like the Fourth Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 3: where he talks about how we're going to be LinkedIn
Speaker 3: to Skynet.
Speaker 1: We see his understudy You.
Speaker 3: Noah, you of all Harari basically saying the same type
Speaker 3: of stuff. What is transhumanism? Does it have a predecessor
Speaker 3: in the ancient gnostic cults and mystery religions?
Speaker 1: And is it kind of ultimately something gnostic?
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me, Jay, I really appreciate the opportunity,
Speaker 2: and this is a topic that I've been really concerned
Speaker 2: with and is the primary focus of my academic research.
Speaker 2: And as you highlighted, you know, we have a lot
Speaker 2: of conversation, and you do incredible work talking about many
Speaker 2: of the globalist elite books and the technocracy and how
Speaker 2: transhumanism fits into that.
Speaker 4: But what I think most people aren't aware of is that.
Speaker 2: The sort of philosophical presupposition that give an undergird transhumanist
Speaker 2: philosophy in the contemporary period.
Speaker 4: Actually have pretty old roots.
Speaker 2: And I would argue that you can look back to
Speaker 2: early philosophers like John Scotis Origina. He was an Irish
Speaker 2: Neoplatonic Christian deemed heretic by the Church, but he was
Speaker 2: considered one of the leading philosophers of the Carolyn Gian era,
Speaker 2: and in the eight hundreds he talked about this new
Speaker 2: concept of the useful arts as redeeming the abilities.
Speaker 4: That were lost to Adam due to the fall.
Speaker 2: And so what's interesting, and a handful of scholars have
Speaker 2: made this argument, and I actually agree with it, that
Speaker 2: transhumanism and transhumanist philosophy actually emerges out of heretical belief
Speaker 2: systems within Christianity, specifically Western Christianity, and that from the
Speaker 2: Scholastic period forward. This idea that technology and technological or
Speaker 2: mechanical means are going to divinize man and regain total
Speaker 2: universal knowledge over nature, which they believed Adam had before
Speaker 2: the fall, is therefore us moving back to the New Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: And this is generally characterized as a millenarian perspective as
Speaker 2: opposed to a more traditional Christian perspective would be more
Speaker 2: of an apocalyptic and that would ebb and flow.
Speaker 4: There'd be good and bad periods.
Speaker 2: Throughout history, but ultimately the eschonological vision of traditional Christianity
Speaker 2: is that things are going to get worse in one
Speaker 2: sense or another. Where many of these heretical views that
Speaker 2: we can see moved through the Scholastic period through people
Speaker 2: like Yakima Fiore, and I'll speak a little bit more
Speaker 2: about that in just a few about why he is
Speaker 2: so influential, Roger Bacon moving into people like Paracelsus, the alchemist,
Speaker 2: Henry Cornelius Agrippa, moving into somebody like Francis Bacon, who
Speaker 2: also wrote a book called The New Atlantis. And after
Speaker 2: the Reformation period, there is this energy that was really
Speaker 2: characterizing Protestant Northern euro Pan ideas that was sort of
Speaker 2: blending hermetic ideas, esoteric Western esoteric ideals with Protestant Christianity
Speaker 2: and undergirded by this belief and technological progress which ultimately
Speaker 2: is going to lead towards the transcendence of man and
Speaker 2: go to the New Jerusalem. And so much of the
Speaker 2: sixteenth century in the seventeenth century was characterized by this
Speaker 2: enlightenment utopian thinking that we were going to redeem ourselves
Speaker 2: through technology. And I would argue, and even Nick Bolstrom,
Speaker 2: we'll talk a little bit about. He's one of the
Speaker 2: leading current philosophers of transhumanism. He has an article on
Speaker 2: the history of transhumanism and he even highlights that many
Speaker 2: of the aspirations of transhumanism actually comes out of Western
Speaker 2: esoteric alchemy. But I think we could make a strong
Speaker 2: argument that it even emerges before that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like the Tian there was going to bring
Speaker 3: up her meticism. You know, there's a famous book by
Speaker 3: Dame Francis Yates on the Rosicrucian Enlightenment, and she highlights
Speaker 3: the beginning of that book the philosophy of Say.
Speaker 1: John D right the first Double O seven.
Speaker 3: John D was very interested in the notion of man
Speaker 3: achieving apotheosis through ritual magic, and a lot of the
Speaker 3: esoteric stuff that you're talking about that we think about
Speaker 3: today comes out of this tradition of hermeticism, and even
Speaker 3: scientism itself actually has a lot of its origin in
Speaker 3: the hermetic tradition of the fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred
Speaker 3: and seventeen hundreds. Many of the famous scientists were involved
Speaker 3: in these esoteric lodges where they can conduct alchemy. Newton
Speaker 3: was a famous alchemist. Most people don't know this, and
Speaker 3: it ties in as well with the rise of Marxism
Speaker 3: and socialism because a lot of the groups that you're
Speaker 3: talking about jokeam of Fior and his radical Franciscan philosophy.
Speaker 3: It was a very imminentizing of the esketon, and that's
Speaker 3: just a fancy word for saying, we can bring the
Speaker 3: Kingdom of God into time and space through human works,
Speaker 3: create a kind of human kingdom of God.
Speaker 1: And later groups picked up this idea.
Speaker 3: Thomas Munzer and the Munster Rebellion was an earlier the
Speaker 3: next phase of a kind of socialism. And as we
Speaker 3: get up into the period of Marx, Marx himself has
Speaker 3: a very technocratic bent in his writings he thinks that
Speaker 3: technology could be the key to the creation of what
Speaker 3: would quote liberate man and bring about the utopian state.
Speaker 1: We see this in other philosophers after Marx who also
Speaker 1: speak this.
Speaker 3: Way, and then we get into the technocrats and they
Speaker 3: share this idea. But like you said, it goes back
Speaker 3: to the ancient world of the idea of creating an
Speaker 3: ideal world, an ideal government. But it also wants to
Speaker 3: transform man. And I think when we mentioned gnosticism, why
Speaker 3: do you think they want to transform man? Is it
Speaker 3: something like out of the Garden of Eden, like the
Speaker 3: promise of that, you know, you can be like God,
Speaker 3: you can be your own God, And it almost sounds
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would argue, again coming at it as an orthodox Christian,
Speaker 2: that it really is this sort of misinterpretation of scripture
Speaker 2: being Genesis three. But really, many of the thinkers throughout
Speaker 2: history that I would highlight regarding this trajectory of transhumanist
Speaker 2: undergirded presuppositions all believe in this linear progress that technology
Speaker 2: and rational apprehension of nature is what's going to transcend man.
Speaker 2: And the traditional Christian understanding is the way that we
Speaker 2: unite with God is through a moral behavior, a moral
Speaker 2: living of our lives that reflects the teachings of Jesus Christ,
Speaker 2: and it's through that embodiment of the teachings of Christ
Speaker 2: and the uncreated energies as an orthodox Christian that we
Speaker 2: become synergized by God. But this worldview is specifically about
Speaker 2: you could argue it has gnostic elements because of this
Speaker 2: emphasis on the rational apprehension of knowledge, which when we
Speaker 2: move into the twenty first century with somebody like you.
Speaker 4: Val Norah Harari and his philosophy of dataism.
Speaker 2: Which I would argue is a central core to transhumanist philosophy.
Speaker 2: He actually argues in favor of asophy data ism, where
Speaker 2: the only thing that truly exists in the world is information,
Speaker 2: and therefore the only thing that's important is the ability
Speaker 2: to process and cipher information. And he makes the claim
Speaker 2: towards the end of that book Homodeus, that we are
Speaker 2: just algorithms, and everything that's living is an algorithm, and
Speaker 2: therefore there is no real ontological distinction between a digital
Speaker 2: or computerly generated algorithm and us as biological entities, and
Speaker 2: the only thing that's important then is how much can
Speaker 2: we process?
Speaker 4: And therefore, if you are upgraded with.
Speaker 2: Hardware in your brain, or essentially totally transcend human nature
Speaker 2: through transhumanism, that you are going to be at an
Speaker 2: ontologically a higher state than you.
Speaker 4: Could ever be as a human entity.
Speaker 2: And that really is gnostic in the sense that one
Speaker 2: it's a transcendent of nature for them, it's part of
Speaker 2: their post evolutionary philosophy. But that focus on rational apprehension,
Speaker 2: I think is something that can't be underappreciated, that it
Speaker 2: really stems out of spiritual idea is And when we
Speaker 2: look at the twentieth century, somebody like Arthur C. Clark
Speaker 2: and his famous quote that any sufficiently advanced technology is
Speaker 2: indistinguishable from magic. You know, my research is really focused
Speaker 2: in the realm of new religious movements in Western esoteric traditions,
Speaker 2: and I would argue that transhumanism is a new religious movement.
Speaker 2: It sort of challenges the categories of what religion is,
Speaker 2: but it's built on many presuppositions.
Speaker 4: Despite transhumanists now would.
Speaker 2: Say, oh, we're atheists, we're rationalists, we don't, you know,
Speaker 2: have any sort of spiritual worldview, But in fact I
Speaker 2: would say that they do. And these are ancient roots
Speaker 2: and Yakima Fioria, as you mentioned, was an abbot who
Speaker 2: believed that there was these sort of three different ages
Speaker 2: that reflected the Trinity. There was the Age of the Father,
Speaker 2: which was the Old Testament, the Age of the Son,
Speaker 2: which was the incarnation of Christ.
Speaker 4: And then he believed, as most.
Speaker 2: People do, that in his life, then they entered into
Speaker 2: the Age of the Holy Spirit. So he just happened
Speaker 2: to be at the precipice, and that this Age of
Speaker 2: the Holy Spirit then was all about the regeneration of
Speaker 2: man back to the Adenic state, and that technology and
Speaker 2: knowledge are the ways in which that occurs. And when
Speaker 2: we look at somebody like Roger Bacon, who was also
Speaker 2: an English Franciscan friar, we see the exact same thing.
Speaker 2: And there's many legends regarding Roger Bacon. He was obviously
Speaker 2: considered an alchemist, but there's a big legend about his
Speaker 2: mechanical or necromantic brazen head that he was able to
Speaker 2: conjure and that he could then ask the questions to
Speaker 2: this mechanical or a necromantic head and it would give
Speaker 2: him all sites of responses. It's a sort of an
Speaker 2: all knowing entity, and it's like, well, that's in the
Speaker 2: thirteen hundreds, and we can already see a sort of
Speaker 2: precursor in what many people believe that AGI is going
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the idea of a mimicked logic machine that mimics
Speaker 3: the human brain. This is origins of modern computing. If
Speaker 3: you if you look at Leibnitz. Leibnitz in some of
Speaker 3: his writings, you know, the co founder of Calculus at
Speaker 3: the same time as Newton. He has essays where he
Speaker 3: talks about the possibility of building on the basis of
Speaker 3: his kind of neoplatonic philosophy, a machine that mimics the
Speaker 3: logic of the human mind, and it.
Speaker 1: Kind of sets the stage for the rise of the computer.
Speaker 3: I think the medieval Gollum mythology also plays into that.
Speaker 3: There is an overlap two with a medieval cabbala and
Speaker 3: her meticism and scientism that emerges out of that as well.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of strains that go together absolutely.
Speaker 3: And one thing you talk about a lot in your videos,
Speaker 3: and you have a channel, Christy.
Speaker 1: Eternal Logos over on YouTube.
Speaker 3: You talk a lot about boundaries and that men and
Speaker 3: the masculine spirit is very interested in erecting and protecting boundaries.
Speaker 3: That's part of what it is to be a man,
Speaker 3: and I appreciate that because this is overlooked today. I
Speaker 3: just did a stream, kind of piggybacking your masculinity stream.
Speaker 3: And this relates to the transhumanist stuff, because transhumanism is
Speaker 3: really about going beyond all boundaries, and it ties into
Speaker 3: the trans agenda in terms of biology, because the idea
Speaker 3: that when you're mentioning these esotericists, when we look at
Speaker 3: something like the image of Baphomet, we notice that it
Speaker 3: has both genders, and in some of the occult circles
Speaker 3: and traditions, there's this idea that to have both of
Speaker 3: the genders, or to be non binary, to go beyond
Speaker 3: that is to return to this original primal monadic state,
Speaker 3: which is not in any kind of division or differentiation. So,
Speaker 3: for example, to go from the original source primal monad
Speaker 3: state to male and female is somehow a fall into
Speaker 3: a lesser state of being. And they have an assumption,
Speaker 3: and you can actually read some of the esotericists and
Speaker 3: the occultists and the Crollians, they'll speak this well, they'll say,
Speaker 3: we need to get back to some kind of non
Speaker 3: gendered supra state beyond man and woman or being both.
Speaker 3: That statue that they unveiled in one of the Nordic
Speaker 3: countries where it was a man with genitalia having breast
Speaker 3: feeding a baby. That is a form of the Baphomet
Speaker 3: imagery here. How does that relate to the transhumanist movement though,
Speaker 3: And this idea of transcending boundaries.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you highlight that transcendence of boundaries or the
Speaker 2: dissolution of boundaries. Terrence McKenna was famous for arguing that
Speaker 2: that's exactly what psychedelics do. And I would argue that
Speaker 2: much of when we look at the agenda of the elites,
Speaker 2: the dissolution of national boundaries, the dissolution of boundaries between
Speaker 2: man and machine, the dissolution of boundaries between man and animal,
Speaker 2: the dissolution of boundaries between male and female, that these
Speaker 2: are actually attacks on the psyche. These are attacks on
Speaker 2: the reality of God's creation. These are attacks on our
Speaker 2: ability to logically and rationally apprehend and process reality. And
Speaker 2: if you can't see what's in front of you and
Speaker 2: understand it, well, then you're going to be very malleable
Speaker 2: by powers that be to reinterpret the phenomenon that is
Speaker 2: occurring in front of your face, and I think that's
Speaker 2: something that we're seeing right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, human nature is believed to be plastic. There's no
Speaker 3: such thing as nature's there's the plasticity of man.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to ah C. Wells's Island of
Speaker 1: Doctor Moreau.
Speaker 3: He was actually a way ahead of the curve in
Speaker 3: this idea because his idea was that you can sort
Speaker 3: of turn man into whatever you want him to be,
Speaker 3: because he's sort of like putty, right, and so you
Speaker 3: can mold him into the future entity that you want
Speaker 3: to be. But this is interesting because one of the
Speaker 3: flaws that I see here. We have a new live event.
Speaker 3: We've been having a blast doing these live events all over.
Speaker 1: Will be in.
Speaker 3: Las Vegas June twenty second with our good buddy Jamie
Speaker 3: Kennedy from Scream, the Jamie Kennedy Experiment, an awesome comedian.
Speaker 3: We have a great time doing these six hour events.
Speaker 3: They're not it's not just stand up, it's not just
Speaker 3: boring lectures. More like a party. I know my buddy
Speaker 3: David here has been to one of our events. It's
Speaker 3: a lot of fun. It's June twenty second in Las Vegas.
Speaker 3: Heading over to my Twitter page, Jay dire Twitter. You'll
Speaker 3: see at the top there is the post and you
Speaker 3: can go over to the event bright link and get
Speaker 3: your tickets right now June twenty second in Las Vegas.
Speaker 3: We'll also have with us our buddy Isaac Bishop. You've
Speaker 3: seen him on the podcast with Sam Tripoli Temple Hat
Speaker 3: many many times.
Speaker 1: So my wife Jamie will also be there with us.
Speaker 1: Six hour event.
Speaker 3: Be sure and get your tickets now, there's a limited seating.
Speaker 3: So we're talking about this dissolution of boundaries. We're talking
Speaker 3: about weird contradictions in the worldview of transhumanism. And before
Speaker 3: the Breakthore I was trying to get into the point
Speaker 3: of this element of On the one hand, we want
Speaker 3: no boundaries.
Speaker 1: However, all of reality in.
Speaker 3: This quantification perspective is seen to be somehow information. Well,
Speaker 3: to have information requires sitting some kind of boundaries. We
Speaker 3: have this piece of information, which is the sink from
Speaker 3: this piece of information. So having in no information requires boundaries.
Speaker 3: Yet at the same time we're told that there are
Speaker 3: no boundaries and man must sort of step beyond all
Speaker 3: boundaries and somehow achieve his own divinity.
Speaker 1: And it's always.
Speaker 3: Based on weird fallacies, weird illogical contradictions. Claus and Harari,
Speaker 3: for example, say that there's no such thing as consciousness,
Speaker 3: there's no such thing as the mind. However, we're going
Speaker 3: to upload the mind to the cloud. How are you
Speaker 3: gonna upload something that doesn't exist? It makes no sense.
Speaker 3: Man is going to be god, of course, but man
Speaker 3: is meaningless muck from the pond skam of the ancient,
Speaker 3: primordial world of the soup. So it's always a contradictory
Speaker 3: story and narrative. Yet they're selling us on this myth
Speaker 3: that technology will somehow make us into.
Speaker 1: Gods or Marvel Universe. Soy men, superheroes.
Speaker 3: Right, what's the root of this in terms of what
Speaker 3: they really want? So we've talked about the ancient history,
Speaker 3: but what's the real goal of the transhumanists in your view?
Speaker 2: Well, it depends on who you ask in regards to
Speaker 2: some of these contemporary philosophers. You know, if you look
Speaker 2: at one who is a co founder of Humanity Plus,
Speaker 2: which is sort of the rebranding of the Transhumanist Association,
Speaker 2: the World Transhumanist Association that was rebranded in the early
Speaker 2: two thousands as Humanity Plus by philosopher Nick Bulstrom and
Speaker 2: David perce and David Purse describes himself as a negative utilitarian,
Speaker 2: and that philosophical worldview is interested in the elimination, or
Speaker 2: at least the limiting to the most significant extent, suffering.
Speaker 2: And so he is a vegan who promotes a hedonistic
Speaker 2: transhumanism which is about the engineering. This is a direct
Speaker 2: quote of paradise engineering. So he believes that this hedonistic transhumanism,
Speaker 2: what they're going to do through the technologies is engineer paradise.
Speaker 2: And in so doing, he goes so far is that
Speaker 2: he wants to redesign the total globe mobal ecosystem.
Speaker 4: I kid you not.
Speaker 2: And in his own writings, he would want to re
Speaker 2: design predatory species so that they would no longer eat
Speaker 2: other animals and therefore eliminate suffering. And the one of
Speaker 2: the ways in which he postulates we might be able
Speaker 2: to do that is through a brain implant.
Speaker 4: And so what would.
Speaker 2: Happen is when you experience suffering, this would be sort
Speaker 2: of transmutated into a sense of pleasure, but.
Speaker 4: It would be it would be the way.
Speaker 2: He describes it is, it would inform you that you
Speaker 2: would be suffering. It'd be a different type of stimulation
Speaker 2: but therefore when you experience suffering, you wouldn't actually feel it.
Speaker 4: Well. From a Christian worldview, that is demonic.
Speaker 2: And we've talked about sort of providing everybody with their
Speaker 2: hedonistic desires and living in you know, podlike entities with
Speaker 2: their ubi, all their you know, kibble, and their their
Speaker 2: bugs ready there to eat for them. And he's very
Speaker 2: much in favor of a utopian worldview like this where
Speaker 2: you talk with other major transhumanist thinkers.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Max Moore is really kind of considered one of the
Speaker 2: premier philosophers and founders of contemporary transhumanism, and he owns
Speaker 2: the Alcore Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is
Speaker 2: focused on cryogenics, and so they are currently freezing human
Speaker 2: bodies right before death. So this is a sort of
Speaker 2: assisted mediated death where they will you'll go there before
Speaker 2: you die. And he's actually recently on the THEO Vaughn
Speaker 2: podcast talking about what they do at Alcore and you
Speaker 2: have to obviously sign waivers, it's very expensive, and then
Speaker 2: they'll place your body in a form of liquid nitrogen
Speaker 2: or you can just put your brain in there, so
Speaker 2: you have kind of two options and it's been speculati.
Speaker 2: I don't know for sure, so somebody will have to
Speaker 2: fact check me. But Bill Gates and some of the
Speaker 2: elites have been very interested in cryogenics, and his wife
Speaker 2: Natasha Vitamore actually participated in an experiment at the University
Speaker 2: of Seville in Spain where they were able to prove
Speaker 2: that there was no memory loss in multicellular organisms when
Speaker 2: they were cryonically frozen. So what they did is they
Speaker 2: froze neurons and tissues from a multicellular organism and then
Speaker 2: were able to unfreeze it.
Speaker 4: Although it's a little bit.
Speaker 2: More technical because obviously if it was just frozen in
Speaker 2: the way that we think something in the freezer, it
Speaker 2: would the water would be a major problem for the
Speaker 2: tissues and all this different stuff. So there's a different
Speaker 2: process for it, and they're very emphatic to explain this
Speaker 2: when everybody brings it up. But what they did prove
Speaker 2: is that the memory of something before could be maintained
Speaker 2: after it was sort of resuscitated. And so the whole
Speaker 2: point of Alcore Life Extension Foundation is for what they
Speaker 2: deem and what they even describe explicitly as a form
Speaker 2: of resurrection, and that people who pay for these services
Speaker 2: that eventually, at some point in the future, whether we're
Speaker 2: able to, in their opinion, upload our brains or our
Speaker 2: minds to a computer, or be able to totally technologically
Speaker 2: augment the human entity, that they'll be able to revive
Speaker 2: somebody right on the brink of death before they're frozen,
Speaker 2: and they would be able to sort of transfer them
Speaker 2: to a new body. And this is something that they
Speaker 2: believe they're making headway in, and this is something that
Speaker 2: a lot of money is being pushed for. And when
Speaker 2: you look at their founders, it's many of the same
Speaker 2: global movers and shakers that you would suspect funding a
Speaker 2: lot of this research.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just weird to me.
Speaker 3: The way the thought process of a lot of these
Speaker 3: people is that they give the appearance of being very
Speaker 3: logical and very rational and sort of almost worshiping mathematics,
Speaker 3: like some sort of weird Pythagorean cult or something. And
Speaker 3: yet at the same time, if I were to say,
Speaker 3: you know, I brought the number seven with me, would
Speaker 3: you like to talk to him? Would you like to
Speaker 3: talk to the number seven? People would think you're insane,
Speaker 3: They think you have a mental problem. You can't talk
Speaker 3: to the number seven. And yet when we think about
Speaker 3: what a computer is or what AI is, it's really
Speaker 3: nothing more than a.
Speaker 1: Bunch of nerd code.
Speaker 3: There's there's no consciousness there, and yet they'll treat well.
Speaker 1: If we just put.
Speaker 3: More nerd code in there, eventually it'll like become it's
Speaker 3: like a magical thinking if you like, more algorithms somehow
Speaker 3: equate to consciousness.
Speaker 1: And I was I.
Speaker 3: Recently did a lecture on Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass,
Speaker 3: which is a sequel to Alice in Wonderland, and we
Speaker 3: went really deep into the philosophy of that book. He
Speaker 3: was a mathematician, and in certain ways I think some
Speaker 3: of his thought uh sort of sort of presages where
Speaker 3: we are now, because he was a pretty strict determinist
Speaker 3: and he put his mathematical determinism.
Speaker 1: Into the Alice stories.
Speaker 3: And when you get into the the later chapters of
Speaker 3: the copy that I have, there's a there's a reprinting
Speaker 3: of what the tortoise said to Achilles, and this is
Speaker 3: a famous logic problem in the history of logic. But
Speaker 3: it all it overlaps with mathematics as well, because it
Speaker 3: sort of makes the point that following upon.
Speaker 1: Zeno's paradox that.
Speaker 3: You kind of can't encapsulate some things in sets or
Speaker 3: in math or in logic, and it overlaps with Girdel's
Speaker 3: in completeness theorems where the sets appeal outside of themselves.
Speaker 3: And the reason I bring all that up there's a
Speaker 3: famous paper that was written some decades back.
Speaker 1: I think it's at Oxford. It's called Mind.
Speaker 3: Machines and Girdell, and it's making the point that some
Speaker 3: of these mathematical principles and philosophical logical principles that we're
Speaker 3: talking about that you see in some of Lewis Carroll's writings,
Speaker 3: it kind of demonstrates the impossibility of numbers or sets
Speaker 3: ever becoming self aware or self conscious.
Speaker 1: It's not possible. It makes no sense yet, So much
Speaker 1: of what.
Speaker 3: We're talking about with AI and transhumanism is premise on
Speaker 3: the idea that it can just become conscious. So how
Speaker 3: do you see an overlap maybe with evolutionary philosophy and transhumanism,
Speaker 3: the idea that we're evolving, maybe even humans and robots
Speaker 3: or robots are not on become conscious and we're going
Speaker 3: to meld with them.
Speaker 1: Like how in two thousand and one or.
Speaker 2: Something, right, I think most people in regards to that
Speaker 2: question are gonna be familiar with like Wernervinge and Ray
Speaker 2: Kurzwell's theory of the singularity, which is built on this
Speaker 2: idea that there's going to be this ex dimensional growth
Speaker 2: of technology based on Moore's law, and that we're going
Speaker 2: to reach this sort of apex and it really is
Speaker 2: a sort of eschaeological vision of transhumanism. And this is
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why I think it really gels
Speaker 2: well with many of these medieval Renaissance Enlightenment ideas of utopia,
Speaker 2: because transhumanism does fit into that quite well. And when
Speaker 2: we you know, and I think it needs to be
Speaker 2: said that transhumanism and that term and the way we
Speaker 2: understand it was actually first said by Julian Huxley, and
Speaker 2: he wrote a book in nineteen fifty seven called New
Speaker 2: Bottles for New Wine, describing what he articulate as the
Speaker 2: religion without revelation. And that's what transhumanism essentially is, is
Speaker 2: that we don't longer need to deal with revelation because
Speaker 2: revelation is occurring through our rational apprehension of the world.
Speaker 2: But you mentioned earlier Again, this sort of dissolution of
Speaker 2: boundaries in this emphasis on unity is very much a
Speaker 2: neoplatonic presupposition and it's characterized throughout transhumanism because they are.
Speaker 4: Focused on this unifying principle.
Speaker 2: So Ray Kurzwel, for example, in his books I Believe
Speaker 2: It's the Age of Spiritual Machines literally believes and he
Speaker 2: promotes this idea that we will all be interconnected and
Speaker 2: there will be essentially a global hive mind of humanity.
Speaker 2: And again that's another dissolution of boundaries. And this is
Speaker 2: why transhumanism so much in favor of androgeny, and they
Speaker 2: use the rhetoric.
Speaker 4: Well, they're very very.
Speaker 2: Supportive of the LGBTQ enterprise because of what they deem
Speaker 2: as bodily autonomy, and so if you can transition and
Speaker 2: you can change genders, this one shows a sort of
Speaker 2: nominal reality that these universal characteristics don't really exist and
Speaker 2: we can augment ourselves. But it also highlights this push
Speaker 2: towards it doing a way with traditional masculinity, as we said,
Speaker 2: is very much principally oriented around boundaries and the maintaining
Speaker 2: of boundaries, whether it be men that went to war
Speaker 2: to defend national boundaries or religious principles, or the tribe
Speaker 2: itself or their wives and children. These were all boundaries
Speaker 2: to some extent in which men defend. And that's also
Speaker 2: done through ideology, that's done through religion and culture, and
Speaker 2: what we're seeing right now through multiculturalism and globalism. All
Speaker 2: these things are sort of dissolutions of boundaries to some
Speaker 2: degree or another. And post evolutionary theory is essential to transhumanism.
Speaker 2: So I have a handful of philosophical presuppositions that really
Speaker 2: characterize transhumanism. The first one I would say is post secularism.
Speaker 2: Actually the Frankfurt School Urgen Habermas. I'm not a big
Speaker 2: fan of the Frankfurt School, but Urgen Habermas had really
Speaker 2: a great criticism of what he saw as genetic engineering
Speaker 2: and the development of crisper technologies and stuff like this,
Speaker 2: and he highlighted how this was part of the decadence
Speaker 2: of liberal democracies in the West. But he described transhumanism
Speaker 2: in this enterprise as a post secular phenomenon. So what
Speaker 2: post secularism means is that secularism, as most people probably understand,
Speaker 2: is this distinction between the religious ultimate meaning and then
Speaker 2: the sort of secular enterprise and the sort of public
Speaker 2: sphere and stuff. Well, because of whether it be postmodernism, posthumanism,
Speaker 2: or post secularism, all these things are a collapsing of
Speaker 2: boundaries again, and so post secularism is the collapsing of
Speaker 2: the boundary between the religious and the secular. And Habermass
Speaker 2: highlighted that what transhumanism is is because of the postmodern turn,
Speaker 2: it really is a form of post secular meaning making,
Speaker 2: which ultimately is a religious and he argued that it
Speaker 2: really is a secular faith, and multiple other academics have
Speaker 2: made this argument regarding transhumanism as a post secular faith. Now,
Speaker 2: posthumanism is also essential, and there's kind of a couple
Speaker 2: competing schools within posthumanism. There's more of the ecological bent
Speaker 2: that's very radical and doing away with an anthropicentric view
Speaker 2: of the twenty first century. And so the idea is
Speaker 2: to reorient our perception away from what benefits mankind generally speaking,
Speaker 2: towards like the earth or nature or the cosmos or
Speaker 2: something like this. And so they are wanting to end
Speaker 2: the sort of enlightenment project of man being the sort
Speaker 2: of measure of all things. And transhumanism, though posthuman because
Speaker 2: they want to sort of transcend the limits of biology.
Speaker 2: They do compete with these people because many of these transhumanisms,
Speaker 2: like Max Moore and Natasha Vitamore, Nick Bolshrm, they're very
Speaker 2: outspoken of how much they stain postmodernism, because they view
Speaker 2: themselves as these sort of technological scientists, philosophers that are
Speaker 2: highly rational, that are actually doing real things in the
Speaker 2: world with their research, compared to these postmoderns. So transhumanism
Speaker 2: believes that it is the sort of epitome of the
Speaker 2: Enlightenment project. They are the endpoint of the Enlightenment, and
Speaker 2: so they're very clear Max Moore and Nick Bostrom that
Speaker 2: they are sort of the fulfillment of man is the
Speaker 2: measure of all things, and that transhumanism then is the
Speaker 2: ability to transcend biological constraints, and that leads into then
Speaker 2: if you transcend biological constraints, that leads into one of
Speaker 2: the other pillars, which is post evolution. That they believe
Speaker 2: that the of course they're very Darwinian Wallace theory evolutionarily
Speaker 2: oriented in their mindset, but they believe that by transcending biology,
Speaker 2: they're going to transcend the selective pressures of evolution itself,
Speaker 2: which is for them a sort of spiritual transcendence. It's
Speaker 2: a release from the suffering and the constraints of the world.
Speaker 2: And that all then, how is that accomplished? That comes
Speaker 2: to this fourth pillar of dataism. It's about the processing
Speaker 2: and ciphering and understanding of information, which really is I
Speaker 2: would argue a sort of a gnostic core to transhumanism,
Speaker 2: although they would certainly not explain it that way, but
Speaker 2: I would argue that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking to.
Speaker 3: A lot of the essays that I wrote some years back,
Speaker 3: and I remember writing about the overlaps between even though
Speaker 3: there was some disagreement between Gnostics and Plotinus, the basic
Speaker 3: idea here is that we're escaping this world, escaping.
Speaker 1: This reality, to go back to the source, the One,
Speaker 1: the monad, the unit, or whatever.
Speaker 3: So what a lot of the transhumanist ideas have done
Speaker 3: in regard to things like the metaverse and where they
Speaker 3: want to take us with this idea of the matrix
Speaker 3: is to really put that into the here and.
Speaker 1: The now in a technological sense.
Speaker 3: So even though there's they may not believe in an
Speaker 3: afterlife or a higher transcendent reality, the idea is we
Speaker 3: can put man into his own sort of virtual god
Speaker 3: world of his own. It makes me think of that
Speaker 3: movie The Cell with the Jennifer Lopez where she goes
Speaker 3: into this the mind of the serial killer and in
Speaker 3: that world he's sort of his own god and he
Speaker 3: wants to be worshiped in that virtual world. I think
Speaker 3: that's the ultimate offer here for the breaking down of
Speaker 3: all boundaries is well, what if you could be the
Speaker 3: god of your own virtual mental world, wouldn't you want
Speaker 3: to live.
Speaker 1: In that world and not in this world?
Speaker 3: So they're really sort of offering this, you know, divided
Speaker 3: fake simulacrum as a pseudo heaven. You could say almost
Speaker 3: would you agree with that? And that's really where they're pushed.
Speaker 3: Why they're pushing a lot of the brain ships in
Speaker 3: the virtual.
Speaker 1: Reality where they want to take things.
Speaker 2: And you brought up Baphomet too, which again the most
Speaker 2: tracings of the historicity of sort of veneration of Bafomet
Speaker 2: kind of goes back to the Knight's Templars, which when
Speaker 2: we look at Yakima Fiore know his mentor was Bernard
Speaker 2: of Clairvaux, who is by many considered the sort of
Speaker 2: spiritual father of the Templars and the Templars, I've done
Speaker 2: research looking into esoteric spirituality and the sort of mystery schools,
Speaker 2: and they participated in very interesting homoerotic initiation ceremonies for
Speaker 2: the Templars, and they were reviving of gnosticism generally speaking.
Speaker 4: So when you look at this ultimate.
Speaker 2: Transcendence and a gaining and attaining many of these divine
Speaker 2: qualities like omnipotence, omnipresence, omnipresence is one that Ray Kurzwell
Speaker 2: is very interested in regards to the sort of digital
Speaker 2: interconnecting of all mankind that essentially then we become one
Speaker 2: man or one entity around the world, and because of
Speaker 2: that then we have attained the sort of divine ability
Speaker 2: of omnipresence. And then obviously, through the AI and that
Speaker 2: becoming essentially your brain, you're going to have omnipotence. And
Speaker 2: this is for them him always the sort of smashing
Speaker 2: together of opposites. This is the way in which they
Speaker 2: view this sort of neoplatonic presupposition of unity over multiplicity,
Speaker 2: that they worship unity, and I think from a spiritual perspective,
Speaker 2: it becomes that they worship themselves as you highlighted, so
Speaker 2: you're only one person and there's a I think it's subtle,
Speaker 2: but it's an important point to make that because they
Speaker 2: worship themselves, they tend to worship pure unity or pure monad.
Speaker 2: And I think this could be characterized in regards to
Speaker 2: New Age religion various forms of narcissism, neoplatonism, but transhumanism,
Speaker 2: I would say, is characterized by the same thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, speaking of the Huxleys, I mean Alu Suxley's book
Speaker 3: Perennial Philosophy says that we need to concoct or sort
Speaker 3: of create the religion of the future of the world
Speaker 3: technocratic order, and he says that what it needs to
Speaker 3: be is some kind of ultimate big blob where everybody
Speaker 3: just worships collectivity in some generic natic sense, and the
Speaker 3: purpose is more of a geopolitical strategic agenda of control
Speaker 3: than it is some sort of you know, well, we
Speaker 3: really want to see people be enlightened.
Speaker 1: I mean, no, no, no.
Speaker 3: If you go listen to the clip of Terrence McKenna
Speaker 3: on YouTube, I think when I found this clip is
Speaker 3: really it really showed me everything about Terrence McKenna. Look
Speaker 3: at the clipperies where it's it's the discussion of what
Speaker 3: the mushroom said to me, and it's not what you think,
Speaker 3: because he says, well, when I spoke to.
Speaker 5: The mushroom, the mushroom told me that we don't need
Speaker 5: less brown people in third world countries. It's the white
Speaker 5: soccer moms that need to stop having babies because it's
Speaker 5: killing the planet.
Speaker 3: So he literally says that we need to stop having
Speaker 3: white kids because that's what's killing the planet. So there's
Speaker 3: a geopolitical strategic agenda behind this same thing. If you
Speaker 3: listened to remember years ago listening to Manly P. Hall's
Speaker 3: lectures on esoterica and astrology, and the last lecture of
Speaker 3: that whole series was him saying, oh, by the way,
Speaker 3: the purpose of all this is that we need a
Speaker 3: socialist world government led.
Speaker 1: By the United Nations. So we're not getting esoteric mysteries.
Speaker 3: We're getting a geopolitical agenda of a one world government
Speaker 3: and technocratic agenda. I think the same thing is going
Speaker 3: along with the transhumanists who want to promote things like collectivism,
Speaker 3: New Age, all this so that everybody can be merged
Speaker 3: into the high mind, right absolutely.
Speaker 2: And you know we kind of mentioned some of these
Speaker 2: early players in regards to setting the foundation for transhumanist thought.
Speaker 2: And I'd like to just mention one further connection I
Speaker 2: think is really interesting in regards to how they understood
Speaker 2: mechanical technology as the extension of divinity. And so we
Speaker 2: highlighted in the eight hundreds John Scotis a Regina. Then
Speaker 2: we talked about Yakima Fiore and his dates are eleven
Speaker 2: thirty five to twelve oh two. Then we get Roger
Speaker 2: Bacon into the thirteenth century. Then Henry Cornelius Agrimpa. This
Speaker 2: is after the Italian Renaissance. This is after the translation
Speaker 2: of the Hermetic Corpus, which was deemed by Cosmo actually
Speaker 2: more important than Plato at that time, even though Latin
Speaker 2: in the West didn't have a full reading of Plato.
Speaker 2: And he has a quote that it was precisely this
Speaker 2: power over nature which Adam had lost by original sin,
Speaker 2: by which the purified soul the magician.
Speaker 4: Could now regain.
Speaker 2: And he highlighted this in the sixteenth century, and this
Speaker 2: was sort of echoed by Paracelsus. Both of those individuals
Speaker 2: or followers of Yakima Fiore, they're called Yakamite prophecies or
Speaker 2: Yakamites who followed this idea that technology was going to
Speaker 2: gain the capabilities of God and this was the point
Speaker 2: of mankind.
Speaker 4: Francis Bacon then also echoes this.
Speaker 2: But the book that Francis Bacon has called The New
Speaker 2: Atlanta is one of the things that's really interesting.
Speaker 4: It's subtle, but it.
Speaker 2: Has a lot of symbolism related to the Rosicrucians, who
Speaker 2: also had the same idea in their esoteric spirituality that
Speaker 2: they were going to blend Protestant Christianity, hermetic, magical, esoteric,
Speaker 2: cabitalistic ideas with science and technology itself to create utopia
Speaker 2: because the millennium was at hand. Because they also believed
Speaker 2: in the prophecies of Yakima Fiore. And so you see
Speaker 2: books like Thomas Moore, he has a book called Utopia.
Speaker 2: Tomaso Campanella has one called The City of God, which
Speaker 2: literally enshrined the worship of science and technology for the
Speaker 2: social and moral perfection of man. And then you look
Speaker 2: into the seventeenth century with Johann andre He who was
Speaker 2: a alchemist esoteric thinkers. He claims that he wrote the
Speaker 2: Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencrouz.
Speaker 4: The foundation.
Speaker 2: Fends yeah, and he wrote a book that was again utopianistic,
Speaker 2: called Christianopolis, which literally and this is what I think
Speaker 2: is so interesting. He argues that mechanical technology was the
Speaker 2: way that man's soul would unfold itself. So man's soul,
Speaker 2: in his image of God, his divinity, would unfold itself
Speaker 2: through technology, therefore making technology the sort of ladder that's
Speaker 2: that were going to climb out of the detritus that
Speaker 2: we're in.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 2: We see then, and you've mentioned this before about the
Speaker 2: Royal Society, but the Rosicrucians had the concept of the
Speaker 2: invisible College and this actually was the precursor and many argue,
Speaker 2: many scholars have argued the foundation for the.
Speaker 4: Actual Royal Society itself.
Speaker 2: That the rose acruci manifestos and many of these manuscripts
Speaker 2: were saying that there was this invisible college that was
Speaker 2: already underway, that these men were working to manifest this thing,
Speaker 2: and then it connected to the royal society.
Speaker 4: I think is really interesting.
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Hegel plays a key role in that too, because Hegel's
Speaker 3: hermetic philosophy talks about everything sort of gradually converging into
Speaker 3: pure spirit, which is the idea of transcending physicality and
Speaker 3: bodily limitations. My books you can get those that Jays
Speaker 3: Analysis signed copies. If you find today's topics interesting, there's
Speaker 3: my philosophy book deals with that, and then follow David
Speaker 3: Patrick Carey over on Twitter and on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Church of the Eternal Logo thank you for joining me
Speaker 1: today