James Hughes was executive director of the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+) at the time he gave his landmark sermon in 2005. He also had just published Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future. He’s now executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
In a remarkable 2005 sermon, James Hughes called on Unitarian Universalism to be a shelter for refugees from more rigid faiths shaken by the transformation of the human into new forms.
"It is the celebration of this miracle of human intelligence that is the core of our humanist creed, that is the common root between the two belief systems of transhumanism and Unitarian Universalism," he said.
"We have a unique gift because of our uniquely humanist understanding, whether theist or non-theist, that humanity is called to be co-Creator of our own future. We UUs do not see a bright shining line drawn by God around our genitals, our genomes, or our governments, that proscribes the limits of our creativity. We are, as the humanist Julian Huxley said when he first coined the term transhumanism in the 1920s, a species that can transcend itself."
"This desire to transcend the human condition is one of the most fundamental spiritual drives we know. We are hard-wired to seek out dances and chants, sweat lodges and fasts, fermented berries and bitter mushrooms, that scramble our routine modes of perception. Since the invention of symbolic culture we have been praying, making offerings, going on pilgrimages, in search of healing, eternal youth, transcendent knowledge, the power of flight and transformation."
These are stirring words. They explain why my UU Boca Raton colleague Ron Roth and I are working with a new organization called AI and Faith to amplify the conversation Hughes started 17 years ago. The discussion of AI and the human goes to the core not only of what we are, but what we aspire to be.
We've hosted one conversation in our series thus far. That was with Levi Checketts in a story you'll find here. We're planning another for later this month following a service with a TransHumanist theme on February 20 that Ron and I are jointly planning. We'll provide further details as we get them.
