Science isn’t everything—unless one is a transhumanist, of course. In which case it literally is everything...

At least one reason why transhumanism

will not translate into reality

BY DENYSE O'LEARY

Transhumanism: a new way of thinking that challenges the premiss that the human condition is and will remain essentially unalterable. Clearing away that mental block allows one to see a dazzling landscape of radical possibilities, ranging from unlimited bliss to the extinction of intelligent life.

Last January, hplus Magazine, dedicated to all things futurist—transhumanism, AI, nano, neuro, and whatnot—offered us five forecasts to ponder, by futurist philosopher Gray Scott.

In this column, I will deal with only one of his predictions:

1. Transhumanists will outnumber Christians by 2035.By 2035, even if a majority of humans do not self-identify as Transhuman, technically they will be… The future will be filled with digital implants, mind controlled exoskeletal upgrades, age reversal pills, hyper-intelligence brain implants and bionic muscle upgrades. All of these technologies will literally make us more Transhuman. …Along with the rising rate of atheism, this will cause Transhumanism to overtake Christianity by 2035. Evolutionary psychologist, Dr. Nigel Barber, argues that “more educated countries have higher levels of non belief and there are strong correlations between atheism and intelligence.”

Now, that last point is bunk, as I pointed out in a 2012 article here at MercatorNet, commenting on the circus wagon of such claims:

I first became suspicious when Lynn et al. tried to explain why the United States is anomalous “in having an unusually low percentage of its population disbelieving in God (10.5 percent) for a high IQ country [98].”…Good thing it’s easy to test that one. Canada has a similar history, and features average IQ 99, with 22 percent not believing in God. So twice as many Canadians don’t believe in God but exhibit no statistically significant reward in IQ. That’s one wheel off - but it’s still a tricycle.Looking at the chart closely, I noticed another anomaly: The Czech Republic and Slovakia split on January 1, 1993. In 2008, the Czech republic clocked IQ 98, 61 percent disbelieving in God, and Slovakia at IQ 96, with only 17 percent disbelieving in God. The difference is obviously cultural. Second wheel gone. We now have a bicycle.The third wobbly wheel was the fact that Israel and Portugal -with very different culture and histories - both feature IQ 95. But in Israel 15 percent disbelieve and in Portugal 4 percent. So tripling or quadrupling the number of atheists did nothing for IQ when culture and history are different. Will the data at least give us a unicycle for the theory to wobble on?

Don’t count on it; let's call a taxi and get out of this dump.

By the way, Barber’s credibility isn’t helped by the revelation that he is an evolutionary psychologist. Let’s just say that his discipline is the Bedrock of psychology.

But that’s not the big problem with the prediction. The main reasons for the decline of Christianity have nothing to do with transhumanism.

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