The way I became
acquainted with this whole exotic idea of transhumanism, I was
doing research actually.
I was a writer and
doing research for one of the largest US newspapers out of
Oklahoma,
and this is maybe 20 some years ago, and doing research on the
history of Halloween
of all things, and somewhere I came across the term that I had
never seen before called Transgenics.
Now, I didn't know
what Transgenics was, but I could kind of put two and two
together: trans, genes;
that somehow we're talking here about genetic engineering, the
altering of genes
and I became fascinated with this idea because back then, the
science was brand new.
There was not, you know, biotechnology,
nanotechnology.
These were not even
terms that existed but it was following on the heels of the
mapping of the human genome,
which then was giving both the birth to a promise and also to
the sciences
that we are going to be able to do things with genetics. We'll
be able to heal our bodies. We'll be able to make ourselves
stronger.
There was a great
deal of promise that was emerging quickly, and the science to
back it up at least in theory.
And so, I started doing research in the Transgenics and that
time, it wasn't very easy to get information.
The internet was
brand new. Certainly, the science wasn't old enough for there to
be much,
that had been published in peer-reviewed journals, and I wanted
to know what is the good and what is the bad
and what is Transgenics.
And I came to
understand that Transgenics was simply
the crossing-over of species barriers. This could be done at the
level of just organisms.
This could be done
all the way up to the level of sentient beings that you get
literally blend one kind of a creature
with another creature. Why would we want to do that? What would
be the purpose behind it?
That was what
motivated me,
and quickly, I began to realize that both the military and also
the pharmaceutical industry both had an interest
in Transgenics. The military because they thought they might be
able
to create exotic new forms of materials that could be used.
For instance, one of
the first successes was a project that was funded by DARPA, the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in which they created
Transgenic goat spiders,
actually spider goats, and the reason that they did this was
because they knew
that spider silk is amazingly resilient, lightweight but very
strong and yet, it's not very easy,
you know, to create a spider farm where you can milk spiders for
their silk, but they knew that they could do this with goats,
and so one of the first successes in Transgenics was creating a
goat which was part spider.
It could actually grow spider silk in its milk and then they
could use this for making lightweight bullet proof vests.
They could use it for
creating cargo nets but since that time until now, as we may
discover later on in this discussion,
it has become far more sophisticated in terms of the military's
interest and the amount of dollars that are flowing into
research
that grew out of those early forms of Transgenic Science. All
the other side of Transgenics which is probably
the biggest part of where the funding is coming from today is in
the pharmaceutical industry.
Pharmaceuticals. Why?
Because... The industry often has to labor with the FDA to try
to get permission to do testing
of new drug therapies on human subjects, it's very daunting,
that task to try to get a promising new remedy
potentially for some kind of debilitating disease and then to be
able to take and start trying that medicine
which is unproven on human test subjects is not easy to do.
What the
pharmaceutical industry saw right away that they would be able
to take animals and put human DNA into the animals, create a
human animal chimera and then,
they could work around this problem with getting permission from
Federal Agencies to do a human experimentation
and now they could test new drugs in human animal chimeras to
see how the human elements of that creature might respond
in a way that they're hoping for with these drug therapies.
That too has also
grown a great deal
since those original Transgenic experiments in that now, of
course,
what the public most usually hears about is human animal
chimeras that are being created
for the purposes of developing stem cell lines and then stem
cell lines can be used for testing new therapies
in hopes that we're going to lead the cures for a variety of
human diseases and ailments.
Anyway, it was the
discovery of Transgenics and my interest in why we would have an
interest in funding,
research and to crossing over species barriers that then led me
to discover that behind these emerging fields of science
was a new cultural movement called Transhumanism, and
transhumanists are made up today really of all walks of life,
everything from college kids to old hippies,
to academics and professionals. It has become a cultural
movement and it's quickly growing.
It's international.
Today, there's a Christian Transhumanist Association. There's a
Buddhist Transhumanist Association.
There's a Muslim Transhumanist. There's a Mormon Transhumanists,
and then there's just a Transhumanist Transhumanist Association,
and for whatever reason, I've had the privilege of somehow
becoming connected with some of the leading figures in the world
in this area.
In fact, Dr. James
Hughes, who was the president of the World Transhumanist
Association,
when he was still the head of the WTA, contacted me and asked if
I would come on his indicated radio show,
which is called Change Surfer Radio. Dr. Hughes is a
bioethicist. He teaches at Trinity College in Hartford,
Connecticut.
He's a sociologist. He was and is really the man, the top shelf
if you will.
So, I agreed to do a
show, and I went on a show and not very well prepared either,
but to debate the bio of the ethics of crossing over species in
barriers
in ways that are completely unnatural and why would we want to
do that.
Now, of course, as a
Christian,
and I would probably still consider myself a conservative
Christian, I believe in a divine order.
In other words, I believe that God was at the beginning of
creation and God, for whatever reasons,
placed barriers between the species and ordered that each kind
would only reproduce after its own kind.
So, in the back of my
mind, of course I want to know what does God know that we don't
know. Why did he do that?
But then, I would say
that even if you didn't believe in divine creation, if you are
an evolutionist,
what we are doing now was not allowed for by evolution either.
Natural selection has not done what we are now doing.
And so, for me, it was a cause for alarm that they talk about
throwing off the balance of nature.
We were talking about
doing it in ways that a former generation could not even have
imagined.
So, today, the World Transhumanist Association had an original
cause.
It was really to
bring international attention to the idea that through emerging
fields of science,
we would soon be able to alter what it means to be a human,
literally, rewrite our DNA,
alter ourselves by altering our genetic makeup, create humans
Homosapiens 2.0.
The movement today is often called "h+", which certainly means
humans plus.
A transhuman is in a
transitionary state of being. They are human.
They are wanting to
transition into something else but ultimately, they want to
become a post-human,
something that has become so radically altered from what we are
today as to no longer even be considered to be human
and they imagine creating Homosapien 2.0 through the use of
technology
from neuropharmacology to nanotechnology, genetic engineering,
stem cell sciences,
robotic assistance, brain machine, interfacing, all of the new
fields of science
that could have an application for human enhancement is
important to the Transhumanist movement.
Now, the World
Transhumanist Association had an original goal of bringing
international attention to the movement
and there was a point at which they believed that they had
succeeded in doing that and so, they dropped the World
Transhumanist Association name and changed it to the IEET, the
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology.
Dr. Hughes is also
now the CEO or the president of the IEET
and most of the most well-known names in the world that were
also involved in Transhumanism
such as Nick Bostrom of Oxford University are chairs or members
of the IEET.
So, somehow, I never
set out to somehow become involved
as the nemesis, if you will, of the Transhumanist movement and
have actually became friends with people like Dr. Hughes.
He has since been on
my radio show and we recently did a series where we were talking
about the question,
"Are we alone in the Universe?" which was raised by the Royal
Academy of Scientist out of the UK,
and we have him come on and he talked about, you know, future
space travel from a Transhumanist point of view
and how our bodies could be enhanced to make us more adoptable
to zero gravity states and things like that.
So, but the movement
is very serious and it's being taken very serious in the world
today from Academia to university studies,
and you'll be surprised to find out the amount of revenue and
literally in the tens of millions to the billions of dollars
that are flowing into this futuristic dream of Transhumanism now
and the adaptation of various fields of science which will be
used in the very near future to alter
what it means to be a human. The science is being developed now
according to the world's best and government experts.
It's being tested in
laboratory settings and is slowly being adapted so that it can
be used as a tool for actually altering
what it means to be a human.
With regards to who
would be funding, who has an interest, that's where it begins to
become really surprising
and actually is not too difficult to verify even from secular
but reputable news sources.
For instance, if you
were to go to Google today and type in "Transhumanism", you
would find something like
250,000 web pages now around the world that are dedicated to
both the study,
philosophy, about this world-new world view called Transhumanism.
However, if you were
to type in "genetic engineering laboratories", you'd find more
than 24 million web sites in the world now dedicated to the
subject of genetic engineering,
which is, of course, one of the sciences that the Transhumanists
believe... aspire to believe
that this is going to be used to alter what it means to be
human. Now, on the ground, what does it mean?
Here in the United
States of America, you may remember where a few years ago, 2006,
I believe,
George W. Bush in the State of the Union Address called for
legislation to be enacted
that would prohibit the creation of human animal chimeras, and
he wasn't just talking about embryos for experimentation,
because he also talked about prohibiting the creation of exotic
human life forms that could be patented.
Why would the
president of the United States in a speech of record be calling
for legislation that would prohibit this technology?
It's because it's emerging very quickly, and we know now that
there are those rogue scientist wannabes,
the doctor Moreau's, who are already raising this to full
maturity, and we can come to some of those admissions in this
interview as well.
For example, one of
the first things that President Obama did at the executive
level.
As soon as he became
president, he overturned the restrictions that had been put in
place by President Bush
which would have prohibited federal dollars, American taxpayer
money flowing in to pay for experiments
to be done in human animal chimeras and other forms of science
such as stem cell sciences which is also important to the
Transhumanist movement, but what most of the public doesn't
realize when we're talking about stem cell sciences we're almost
always talking about the creation of a human animal chimera from
which those stem cells are being derived.
But now, tax dollars
in the United States from the federal level are flowing into
thousands of laboratories.
In the state that I
live in Missouri, for instance, there is a farm that is raising
transgenic pigs
that are part human. They're using these pigs to actually grow
organ in a test,
in hopes that these humanized organs in the pigs can then be
transplanted into people who are on donor waiting list.
You know, years ago,
they called this xenotransplantation, and they had hoped to
implant entire pig organs inside humans
but the human bodies kept wanting to reject these pig organs.
Now, though, with
human DNA actually growing inside of a pig, we may be able to
create an organ that can solve this problem of organ donation.
That kind of funding
from the federal level now is flowing into states in a way that
had been prohibited
under the Bush administration, but it goes deeper. In 2006, a
fantastic thing happened.
The Department of
Health, which is the largest department in the United States of
America, which funds research into health issues, provided
$773,000 to Case Law School in Cleveland, Ohio,
for one reason, to develop over a 24-month period the guidelines
that will be used,
according to their own press release, at Case Law School, used
for creating policy for human enhancement
regarding the next step in human evolution.
Max Mehlman who is
the law professor and a bioethicist at Case Law School
was given a responsibility of leading the team of 24 to 36
months' field of study, if you will,
using actual test subjects, human subjects, according to the
original press release, would be used
for devising how policy, government policy can be extended to
human nonhumans.
Well, because it
started in 2006, and we knew that the target ending date for the
study
which was being done not just by Max Mehlman but law professors,
bioethicists, genetic engineers,
people who work in the fields of genetic alteration, that within
24 months to 36 months,
this field study would be done. 2009 was the target date for the
report to be issued.
So, I waited with
bated breath in what way did Case Law School actually used human
test subjects
to provide what the government wants, guidelines to be used for
human enhancement to set the policy,
for how, for instance, will the constitution, how will the bill
of rights be extended to a human nonhuman.
How much of a living
entity has to be human before it can be protected under our
laws,
must it be 90% human and 10% something else, 50% human. So, I
wanted to know.
Well, the end of the
test came and no public statements had been forthcoming
but what I noticed was that Professor Mehlam immediately at the
end of the study
started traveling the United States giving lectures at
universities and he's giving two different lectures
and this is the title of his lectures. One is called "Directed
Evolution: Public Policy
and Human Enhancement."
And the second
lecture he's giving now is "Transhumanism
and the Future of Democracy". And you can go to the Arizona
State University
and that second lecture is actually available as a podcast. You
can download the lecture unless they remove it from the time
this film is made until the time somebody might go there to
download it, but you can actually go and download it.
So, here, you not
only have the president of the United States losing using
federal funds to go into research on human animal chimeras, stem
cell lines, various kinds of laboratory experiments on humans
that could then be applied later on down the road through a
Transhumanist philosophy, the use of those technologies, but
it's actually being funded through the US Department of Health
to actually set the policy and guidelines for how the law will
be applied to human nonhumans.
It even goes deeper.
The Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, DARPA,
has, for over the last decade, been funding to the tune
literally of billions of dollars research into what they call
the Extended Performance War Fighter.
They have since
removed the document, the original document, on the Extended
Performance War Fighter program
from the DARPA's own website, but a person can Google and find
the same articles
that were originally published being cached across the internet.
The interesting parts
about the Extended Performance War Fighter is that it even
includes literally altering the DNA of soldiers. The public may,
more commonly hear this referred to
as super soldier technology. But it got interesting this year.
The 2011 budget for DARPA,
which can be downloaded at Wired magazine, if a person wants to
go and read the DARPA budget,
allows millions of dollars for what they are calling Biodesign.
Biodesign is actually outlined in the budget.
The purpose of it has
to do with immortalism.
The purpose of it is
to literally discover
how cellular destruction occurs and why in regeneration of
cellular decay
we as humans don't wind up at 100% again and we begin to age,
and DARPA has an interesting figuring out how to get around the
decaying process of cellular life and they used the term
"creating an immortal organism" but it's more than just an
organism. They consider it to be potentially a lethal force
that can be used in military application.
Wired magazine
referred to it as a living breathing creature,
and DARPA admits that the force of this living creature,
this immortal organism, could be so potent that it ought to also
have what they call a kill switch introduced into its organism
so that in case it gets out of hand, we could throw the switch
and stop it, or if it became available to our enemies,
we could throw the switch and stop it.
So in the United
States we know that from the federal level,
under Obama, revenue is flowing into this research. We know that
from the US Department of Health,
revenue is flowing into this research, from the defense advanced
research projects agency
and if a person wants to do their homework, they'll find out
that it's also the Air Force, the Navy, the Army, all of our
military laboratories
are funding now to the tunes of millions and billions of dollars
research into fields that also include
the altering of their soldiers for the purposes of having total
battlefield domination in the future.
But a person should
also be aware that this technology is not just limited to the
United States of America, in Australia,
in China, in Great Britain, all around the world literally tens
of thousands of laboratories
are receiving both federal and private funding for this kind of
research. In the United States, even when Bush had called for
restrictions
on federal funding, it didn't stop the research here. Simply, it
was being done through private grants and private dollars.
There were no laws that were stopping people from doing human
animal research here.
But now, it starts to
get really interesting in that even the scientific community is
making admissions
which of course I was suspicious of anyway for some time.
There was a Reuters
article about six month ago called "Scientist Want Debate on
Animals With Human Genes",
and it turns out that the scientists that were being interviewed
were the same scientist that 24 months ago
were involved in what was called a human embryology discussions
out of Great Britain.
Laboratories wanted
to receive federal funding, public money,
to finance their investigations and experiments which included
altering humans and altering animals at least at the embryonic
stage and there was such public outcry in Britain about it
that the government decided to have a public forum and they
allowed different people, ethicists, bioethicists,
even religions scholars to weigh in on the question of whether
or not it would be ethical
to begin altering humans at, of course, in the beginning, the
embryonic level,
but later on perhaps to full maturity.
At the end of those
discussions, and there was very interesting things during the
discussions by the way.
For instance, the
Vatican had two bishops present during this discussion,
and the two bishops for the Vatican weighed in saying that if a
woman participated in these experiments
by providing eggs or ovum and then later if she had a conflict
of conscience and decided
that she wanted to raise this half-human half-animal as her own
child that she ought to have the right to do so.
And I believe that
the Vatican's bishops were not really making that argument in
sincerity
as much as they were trying to illustrate the tortured ethics,
the kind of unanswerable questions about "do they have a soul?"
In Israel, some of the religious scholars in Israel have weighed
in, talking about if we create a transgenic animal
or clone a transgenic animal, and it is part cow, how much of it
would need to be human before it would be protected under our
laws
and/or if the majority of it was cow, could we then offer it as
a burnt sacrifice?
So, illustrating once
again, that there really isn't any way to wrap any kind of
Judeo-Christian ethic around what we are now doing but it hasn't
stopped us from doing it. Well, those scientist who have been
receiving funding now from the British government for the past
24 months are back,
and the Reuters headlines "scientists want public debate on
animals with human genes" was very specific
in that they want to know how far the public now would be
willing to let them go
and there were two things in this Reuters article that were very
telling.
One, the scientists
themselves admitting that among the scientists involved in this
research,
they are comfortable now with up to 50% human-animal
integration.
You see, the public
mostly is still under the impression that this is being done at
the embryonic level
and that the amount of human DNA in a transgenic animal is so
minute as to be excusable
but what we learned in this article is it is up to at least 50%
human animal integration
and that the scientist involved with it are comfortable. But
where they want the debate to go now is,
"can we raise this to full maturity in the public's knowledge?"
And experiment on
part humans part animals that are fully grown
and by admitting that that's now where they want the public to
be comfortable with this research,
they also said that they knew that there are some rogue
scientists out there that are not operating with federal dollars
and they're getting ahead of them in this technology and it
could even become a new kind of a weapon of mass destruction.
It could at a minimum
become a molecular biological nightmare because now, by crossing
over species barriers and ways
that neither evolution nor God allowed for that we are
completely uncertain about, when this gets out of a box,
where it may lead us.
To answer the
question what would be the benefits of Transhumanism
through the eyes of a Transhumanist, I can tell you because some
of them are my friends
and I have had the opportunity to debate with them and when I
say friends, I don't mean that I share their world view
whatsoever, but we have, you know, cordial conversations that's
diplomatic, and I believe in the sincerity,
for instance, of men like Dr. James Hughes.
Dr. Hughes would
never advocate for anything, I think,
that he believed would be detrimental to the future of society.
So, much of their ideas are altruistic in the sense
that they're selfless and they're perceived to be for the good
of society as a whole. For instance, longevity.
One of the key
objectives of Transhumanism is to extend our lifespan.
People who are either
Transhumanist or who are friendly to the transhuman vision
such as Aubrey de Grey, who is a member of the Methuselah
Foundation.
The whole commitment
of which is to either through diet or even more advanced
applications
such as genetic engineering, learn how to do things that will
bring about the end of human suffering and disease
and therefore lead to a longer life spans. Learn how through
genetic engineering, for instance,
to perhaps turn off what is happening when tumorous cancers are
growing in our bodies.
So that not only do
they intend to enjoy the benefits of longer life in the future
as transhumans.
Aubrey de Grey is
saying now that if you're 50 years of age
when you're watching this video, there is a very good chance you
could live to be as much as 1000 years old
with how quickly this science and technology is advancing. But
the transhumans don't just want to extend life because,
you know, some people watching this might say, "You know what?
Why would I even want to live to be 1000 years old?
I'm kind ready to get out of here now, you know, with the way
that the world is going."
So, the Transhumanist
also considered that
and it's not just the longer life but it's a happier life, it's
a healthier life where we're stronger
and we've been enhanced cognitively. Through neurosciences now,
we're learning things about the brain.
We're learning the
portion of the brain that leads to depression, also leads to
euphoria, and if we could learn
how to control those portions of the brain, we may develop
natural treatments for persons
so that they could be happier, so that they could escape from
depression.
So, that would be one
of their ideas, of course,
enhancing our bodies so that we're stronger.
The elimination of
pain, you know, right now,
I go out and dig a hole and within one hour, man, I'm ready for
some cold tea in a place to throw at my feet,
but these future-enhanced bodies would be able to perform at
levels that perhaps only 25-year-old weight lifters right now do
it,
and we'd be talking about people who may be 150 years of age
they can run for miles.
Also cognitive
enhancement so that we not only eradicate diseases such as
Alzheimer's but we actually are able to modify
the brain in ways where it is enhanced to be able to think at a
teraflops faster than we can now and also to be able
to even interface with computer systems of the future
sort of like the Matrix, you know, plug-in, download and all of
a sudden I know kung-fu.
So, and these are
perceived to be true benefits to humanity.
We have better lives
and we're better off as a result. Now, they also have some very
exotic ideas about future humans
and why they would be happy in particular ways. For instance,
among transhumans is a segment
that's called postgenderism.
Postgenderism
actually has grown out of the feminist side
of the Transhumanist movement and as you know, feminists have
been at war with their gender identities and roles that, you
know,
society placed on them for some time. Some among the feminist
movement
also believe that it's a little bit unfair that, you know, they
get pregnant and they are the ones who have to carry the baby
and lose the shape of their body and then travail and give birth
where the man can enjoy the benefits of sex
but he doesn't have to go through this whole nine-month
gestation period.
So, in Transhumanism,
there are some very exotic ideas such as
post-genderism, the idea that we will be able to develop
androgynous beings, morphological beings who will take the best
of what it means to be a man
and the best of what it means to be a woman, and actually have a
new form of life that is both man and woman,
who can enjoy the benefits of things such as sex, which I
mentioned a moment ago,
but without the burden of having to become pregnant, having to
carry a child for nine months.
And so, if you...
look into some of their ideas, you know,
where do babies come from and don't these future humans want to
have genetic offspring
and they've developed ideas around how all this could be done
within their science.
You take genetic
samples and this isn't all together cloning but you take genetic
samples from the contributors,
man woman A and man woman B or future marriages may be made up
of multiple numbers.
It may be there's 18
or 20 that have entered in to what we then think of a marriage
contract
and those ones that want genetic offspring can all provide
samples of their genetics
and then this is taken to a specialized pregnancy center or
birthing center of the future
and through some form of super-invitro fertilization, those
genetic samples are placed inside of an egg
with its nucleus removed, which is also probably donated from
one of these man-woman.
It is treated with
chemicals or with electricity like we do with cloning now and it
jumpstart spindle formation,
cells begin to divide and a new man-woman made up of multiple
partners begins to grow and becomes an embryo
and if that sounds incredible to you, in Britain, just this week
the first baby from three parents was born.
Science has already been perfected. We're already doing it. It's
not as if this is as futuristic as it may sound.
We're at the
beginning of a gate now but we've come through the door. The
gate is open and we're walking through it, and we're moving that
direction
and imagining how this science could be used in ways that in
their mind is beneficial to humanity.
We no longer have the
burden of gender roles. Now, what a psychologist, you know,
will say about a baby, how a baby is bonded to its mother while
it's growing up inside of its mother' womb
is almost mystical. It's metaphysical. We don't understand it. A
baby is born and even already knows the tone of its mother's
voice.
While Transhumanist
have an answer for that too. Post-genderists believe that they
also take genetic samples
from whichever of the man-woman want to play the role of the
traditional mother and they grow a synthetic womb inside the
birthing center
and it is hooked to an androidal system that also has the sound
of the mother's voice recorded in it
and this androidal system can stand up, sit down, move around,
make natural movements that feels very natural to the embryo
that is growing up inside of it so that by the time of nine
months later and even that is a question because this future
humans
may not take nine months to gestate but if they do, you go to
the birthing center and the switch is thrown,
the little baby is born.
It's growing up
inside its mother's womb because it was taken from her genetics
and recreated in a laboratory. It is grown up listening to the
sound of her voice and her heart beat.
All of which are part
of this future system. Did you know that some of the early
discussions actually
were around creating clones, who would then, be anesthetized?
Not even aware that they're alive and their wombs
would be used for gestating these children and then afterward,
the clone if not legally defined as a human
could be discarded.
It would simply be a
system for saving man-woman A from the burden of having to carry
a child
but many, even within the Transhumanist philosophical community
simply couldn't tolerate that idea and so they advanced it to
growing a synthetic womb
which could then be used for the gestation period.
One of the other
benefits that Transhumanist imagine actually
borderlines on the supernatural and this started really with
Nick Bostrom, who is a leading Transhumanist in the world,
sits on the IEET's board under Dr. James Hughes.
Nick Bostrom actually
earned his prestigious seat at Oxford University
by writing his thesis on Transhumanist values, and thankfully,
for the rest of us that Dr. Bostrom has been
kind enough to post his thesis and other works that he has done
so anybody who would want to follow up on this could go
to nickbostrom.com, pull down the web site on the left side and
click on "Transhumanist values" and go and read his original
thesis which he wrote to earn his PHD and his seat at Oxford
University.
It's interesting
because Bostrom doesn't claim any kind of religious ideology
but he has diagrams in there that he uses when he gives his
lectures at universities and also
at the transvision conferences which are taking place every year
now
for about the past decade at leading law schools and
universities around the world in which the arguments are being
detailed now, worked out among law scholars on how the laws and
policy of our government would be extended to protect
transhumans of the future and future democracy
but if you click on it and you look at some of the charts that
he has created, for instance, he has one that's kind of a large
rectangle and in this rectangle, he describes this rectangle as
representing all possible modes of perception, modalities,
sensory modalities.
Down in the corner,
he draws a small circle and he says
this circle represents humans. The limits of our perception,
modes of perception or sensory modalities
our eyesight, hearing, taste, feeling and how far it extends
into all possible modes of perception.
Then around that, he
draws a larger circle and he says this is the animal kingdom.
The animal kingdom not only has our level of perception
but other levels of perception. For instance, they can hear at
higher decibels than we can.
Dogs at 40,000 Hertz,
dolphins at something like 80,000 Hertz.
Some animals like
bats can navigate using sonar. They also seem to be in touch
with the earth somehow
in ways that were not. They can pick up vibrations. They'll
begin to move out of particular areas when they know
there's going to be an earthquake or there's going to be a
volcano and they'll begin to migrate to another area
and we're not exactly sure how they do that.
The may be able to
smell tumors and if it's not smelling it,
it's some other method by which sometimes they are aware that
there is a tumorous cancer, something that is actually
degrading your DNA.
So, he talks about
these fascinating things but then he says something that I think
is of the most importance
and borderlines the metaphysical and that is when he points out
that animals can also see into areas of the light spectrum
that we cannot see into, and that is viewed in Transhumanism
as a future benefit, and even one of the causal reasons we would
want to merge ourselves with the animal kingdom
so that we can open these new modes of perception into realities
that right now we are blinded to.
Perhaps one of the
reasons we would want to merge ourselves with animals so that we
too would be able to do this.
Why is this
interesting to me as a Christian and as a researcher
and as a scholar of Biblical text is because we know
that at least some animals can see into what we think of as the
supernatural realm
and it isn't just extra-Biblical text that seem to imply this
but even in the Bible, for instance, the story of Balaam's
donkey.
Balaam gets in
trouble because he's prophesying against Israel which he's been
ordered by God not to do,
and so now, he's on his donkey and he's going down the road.
Well, the donkey can see something
that Balaam cannot see.
There's a large angel
standing in the middle of the road with its sword drawn
and is going to take off dumb Balaam's head and Balaam doesn't
know why the donkey keeps turning out of the way
and so, he keeps kicking him to get him back on the road and the
donkey's trying to save his life. A great deal of extra-Biblical
research has also been done
that seems to show that animals sometimes are responding to
something that we can't see and in fact,
probably the average person at least at one time in their life
have seen their dog growling at something that isn't there
as far as we can tell or maybe even behaving in a way.
You have a dog that's
vicious, it's brave,
it's not afraid of anything and then all of a sudden, a strange
feeling comes over you and the dogs senses it too.
The dog may even run
and hide into the bed. So, they seem to be reacting to something
that we can't see with our eyes,
and in the traditions and in the histories of the worlds, owls
come and owls serve with the goddess Hecate,
the goddess of witchcraft.
Other areas of
witchcraft were cats are used as mediums
through which we are communicating with the spirit world. That
idea has been with humanity since forever but what made it real
to me, of course
is the depiction out of the Bible at least in one illustration
where an animal can see something the humans cannot see.
That is definitely in
the back of the mind of many of the Transhumanists
and they are bravely wanting to go where no modern man has gone
before in reaching that barrier
that is between us and them. This is so true that now, the
Templeton Foundation,
which has been funding an entire series of lectures over the
last several years at the Arizona State University
on Transhumanism and the future of democracy have played off of
what Dr. Bostrom began talking about
many of what the university students are now asking about,
"How do we separate
our humanity?" If we change ourselves physiologically,
we enhance ourselves to humans 2.0, do we also change our soul?
Do we change our spirit?
Do we even have a
spirit anymore? And as these questions are being entertained,
Arizona State University began a brand new project.
You can go to ASU's
website and click on it. It's called the Sophia Project, the
goddess of wisdom.
The Sophia Project some believe even to be that feminine aspect
of God, right?
And it describes
exactly what the Sophia project is about. It is to verify and/or
to make contact with,
and then they described it, the ghost of dead humans, aliens,
angels, demons, a universal conscious, God,
they list all of it.
The whole purpose
behind the project growing out of
Transhumanist conversation and debates and lectures being
offered at the Arizona State University
and funded by the Templeton Foundation want to take this whole
question of altering ourselves as humans forward to this next
giant question
by doing so can we also now cross over. Can we start
communicating with that unseen intelligence?
So, this too is
viewed as a value among transhumanw,
many of them are spiritual and many of them see that as a
benefit while some of these exotic ideas in Transhumanism, of
course,
where it may be being viewed by them as a benefit may cause of
lot of red flags to go up among other people
who also are interested in things supernatural.
There are some of the
critics of course of Transhumanism who believe that their world
view is a bit too positive,
that they view this as being a Utopian plan that's going to take
us into the future. We're all going to live in a happy universe
and have enhanced lives but there are those who are also
qualified to make criticisms based on the science itself
and what may it portend to do.
For instance, Dr.
Leon Kass was the chairman
of the President's Council on Bioethics during the Bush
administration
and here is a man who had the full review of the science, the
best reports on the science, testimony from experts
who are working in these fields of science and what they
believed could actually develop out of transforming mankind,
and after Dr. Kass had served on that seat with the government,
he resigned.
He wrote a book and
in the introduction to his book, "Life, Liberty and the Defense
of Dignity",
he wrote how that in laboratories around the world, scientists
are now honing their skills, polishing their skills,
looking forward to a post-human future and that humanity is on
the operating table literally scheduled
for whole cell psychic and physiological redesign while on the
streets, the evangelists,
he refers to them as not transhumans, the evangelists are
quietly selling their message
and that we are in a war for the mind of a generation, and Dr.
Kass believes we're probably going to lose this war,
but he says that anybody who cares about their humanity, the
time is now for standing up
and understanding where science is taking us and what it may
portend for the future.
He's not the only
one, Professor Francis Fukuyama reviewed emerging fields of
science and then the philosophy of transhumanism
and he wrote a white paper on it in which he considered the
combination of those two to probably be
the most dangerous science and technological and philosophical
concepts in the history of mankind, which he believes
could be very quickly lead to an extinction level event.
The Birkbeck Law
School in Britain
is one of the most famous law schools on earth for teaching CSI
students, crime scene investigators,
and they put out a press release about 18 months ago now, in
which they said that they will need to design future classes
for crime scene analysis which has been perpetrated by something
that is only part human.
The whole point was
that everything we know about forensics, about profiling might
not apply
if we're trying to track down a serial rapist who is part wolf
because he may have a blood lust.
He may have a
difference. His mind set, his instincts everything about him may
not fit anything that we understand and this is considered to be
such a real possibility by the way, it isn't just the Birkbeck
Law School, this last year in California,
a house foreign affairs committee hearing in the state of
California that was chaired by Democrat Brad Sherman,
who's actually best known for his expertise in the spread of
nuclear arms among terrorists
chaired this meeting.
A writer for a
congressional quarterly, Mark Stencel,
attended the meeting and came out of it, flabbergasted because
what the meeting was all about
is future terrorism conducted by transhumans and he said that
the entire hearing, a congressional hearing,
he said sounded more like a pitch for a sci-fi movie than it did
a sober discussion of scientific reality
because he said they were talking about super humans, super
intelligence, artificial intelligence and super animals
that could soon be on the battlefield or even in our
neighborhood for domestic reasons,
a lethal force for which we are not prepared.
The government is so
concerned
about where transhumanism may take us in this regard that they
consider this now to be the fledgling start of a new arms race.
In the way that in the past between the Soviet Union and the
United States we were on an arms race over nuclear arms,
transhumanism is the near future arms race and it is considered
to be of such importance
that the top scientific mind at the Pentagon, the JASONS,
J-A-S-O-N, that's the name of the top scientific minds at the
Pentagon put out a press release recently
called, JASONS fear brain modified foes. In which they were
talking about this technology in the hands of our enemies.
And what they were
saying was we have to get at the forefront of this technology.
See, this is how
we're going to be forced into this. It's not a matter of whether
we should or whether it's ethical.
We have to do it
because if we don't our enemies will and then they're going to
subjugate us to their will
and therefore because of that that's why DARPA and other
branches of the U.S. military and, of course,
SEPAC budgets, black budgets, things we don't know anything
about.
There are literally
billions of dollars flowing now beyond congressional review into
the development of super soldier technology
and other forms of exotic technology as a result of even what
the JASONS are talking about.
So, there is this
other side of this transhuman utopianism
that is very concerning to a lot of great minds and I can tell
you that even on the ground now, already,
the parts that are already being played out are raising alarm
bells.
For instance, the
related science of genetically modified foods,
we are already finding out that by unnaturally crossing over
species barriers
and creating potatoes that have moth genes in them and other
variations of foods that these foods do things,
they have unintended consequences.
Test that are being
done now in Britain where they're raising
fields of genetically modified crops and down wind, the
populations are developing respiratory diseases
that are unusual, that are starting to sky rocket. There had
been suppressed scientific studies.
Arpad Pusztai is one
famous case. His studies were supported by another independent
scientist
by the name of Irina Ermakova, who was able to repeat what he
did. What did he find?
He took rats and he
forced these rats to eat genetically modified foods. They began
developing tumorous cancers.
Their offspring came
in at half weight and died at half life. This was all done in a
laboratory setting
which was immediately being suppress by a giant corporation
whose name I won't mention,
but who literally stands to lose trillions of dollars in the
future and therefore they are highly motivated to suppress these
findings
and only because of Greenpeace and some others who have been
involved in law suits
for over decade to force these documents to be made available to
the public are we just now being made aware
of some of the things that are happening in the real world.
One of the test
studies showed that they would put rats
in a cage and starve them and then they would place genetically
modified potatoes here and natural organic potatoes here
and when they open cage doors the rats will run to the organic
product and they won't even eat the genetically modified crop
unless they're starving and have no other options and then
they'll eat it, and you got to wonder what God's little
creatures know
about these products that we don't know, but we very well could
be opening a door to a molecular, biological nightmare.
To a crossover
between humans and animals or genetic foods that probably, not
for a decade will we really understand
what the impact on our health is going to be with some of this
genetic modification.
But imagine now,
extrapolate, what we already are finding about genetically
modified crops
and there are many other stories that are now coming through
into the news that show that genetically modified crops are
leading to cancers in humans as well,
but where are genetically modified crops?
They're everywhere.
They're in Kellogg's cornflakes, genetically modified soyas
in food products in every store in the United States of America,
this bear has already come through the door
and there's no putting it back. So, now, we're riding on the
bicycle while we build it. The human population is the guinea
pig.
We're already doing
the science and we're waiting and see how it turns out in the
future, but imagine when we now take that same approach to
living sentient beings and now we have genetically modified
animals
and genetically modified humans that are in the environment and
they are crossbreeding
and interbreeding, one with each other, very quickly we could
have a human form of mad cow disease.
If you're sitting in a restaurant eating goat cheese that
contains human DNA, we don't know what the impact of that is
going to be on a human. We certainly know what it did to cows
and the kinds of brain diseases that it created in them
when they were eating their own DNA, when they were eating their
own product. We just simply don't know, prion contamination.
Wired magazine
recently wrote a special article called "Pharm animals",
P-H-A-R-M, Pharm Animals Crank Out Drugs, and the article was a
positive spin on the developing pharmaceuticals
in transgenic animals. What the public doesn't know is that the
writer for Wired magazine
contacted me first and wanted me to be part of that special
series at Wired magazine
because they had come across an article that I had written at
WorldNetDaily, which was raising some cautions
about tinkering with God's plan. So the writer, Elizabeth
Svoboda contacted me.
I like what you have
to say. "I want my article to be balanced for Wired magazine,
would you be willing to send me some issues,
nutshells, some issues that you believe should be the cautionary
side of this science."
So, I did. I send it
to Elizabeth Svoboda, about three weeks later when the article
was published by Wired magazine
nothing I had said made it into the article. It was all positive
about pharm animals. P-H-A-R-M.
So, I emailed
Elizabeth and I said, "Well, I guess nothing I had said got
written into the article." She said, "No. Everything you said
was in the article
and it got censored out by the editors at Wired magazine because
they didn't want the public to be bothered by these issues.
They wanted to put a
positive spin on it." Well, then I knew I went back and read the
article and I knew she was telling me the truth because there
was a particular line that I had used in which I said, "We might
want to be careful tinkering with God's plan."
That's a very
specific phrase. When I went back and read the article I saw
where a scientist by the name of Van de Lavoir said,
"Now, some people might say we shouldn't be tinkering with God's
plan but..."
she said, "If we find a cure for cancer through a transgenic
animal we won't hear the public saying you shouldn't be doing
that."
I didn't do it but I
wanted to email Ms. Van de Lavoir and say, "Have you watch the
movie with Will Smith, 'I am Legend'?"
Because that is
exactly the scenario with which that film opens. You have a
molecular biologist or geneticist
sitting in front of the television on somebody's talk show
saying, "We have found the cure for cancer."
How did they find the
cure? They merge human and animal DNA because some animals are
more resilient to cancer
and out of that they created a vaccine and they vaccinated all
of the earth and every celebrated
that we have found the cure to cancer. Now the scene changes and
it's two or three years down the road and almost all life on
earth is dead, why?
The unintended
consequence, a form of human rabies developed because something
that was not natural to us,
now was bridged into our physiology by crossing over into the
animal kingdom and by the way that is a very real
scientific possibility but it isn't stopping anybody, we're
doing it anyway.
So, there definitely
is two sides to this coin
in terms of what transhumanists are aspiring through the use of
these new sciences, biotechnology, nanotechnology,
neuropharmacology they all have great ology names and ism names,
but what they may do is lead us literally in the fulfillment of
biblical prophecy.
