Secular transhumanist dilemma and the human-machine struggle: a theological analysis

Abstract

Nowadays, technology is revolutionising how we think, learn, live, and relate to humans, nature, machines, and the divine. Amid new technological inventions, technophobic and technophilic groups have spread dystopic and utopic portrayals concerning humanity’s future. Transhumanism, a philosophical, scientific, and artistic movement that pursues the transformation of biology with technology, has strongly contributed to this polarisation. According to secular transhumanists, the new hero will be the posthuman, the future biologically, psychologically, genetically, emotionally, and technologically enhanced version of the human species. Their new utopia, marked by the technological singularity, depicts a future historical event when technological advances will transform our reality. In this context, this thesis argues that secular transhumanists have been unnecessarily at odds with religion and theology, as they can produce meaningful technological, ontological, and ethical knowledge that can solve some of their epistemic gaps in dialogue with contemporary theologians. Thus, this research’s scope lies in a topology where computer scientists, philosophers, and theologians intersect.

The introductory chapter, “The Transhumanist Dilemma”, opens the discussion by tracing the transhumanist ancestry, its guiding principles and its futuristic promises of a technological singularity. It introduces three philosophical discourses that are actively engaged in technological discussions and critique, in their own ways, the transhumanist project. Dystopic posthumanism rejects technologies used for human genetic modification and morphological enhancement. Radical posthumanism celebrates technology’s intrinsic power to deconstruct humanism’s anthropocentrism and modern epistemologies.

Methodological posthumanism focuses on studying how emerging technologies shape humans’ actions, capacities, and values. Because transhumanists embed proto-theological motivations, their narratives use religious language, and their movement sprouts from a science-as-saviour mentality, the chapter introduces theologians who respond to transhumanism and address the technological phenomenon. By bringing to the surface the overlooked biblical allusions and the Christian influence present in the works that transhumanists claim as part of their movement’s ancestry, the theological inclusion challenges the secular nature of transhumanism.

The second chapter, “Technology: Phenomenon of the Metaux”, analyses Ray Kurzweil’s theory and history of technological evolution. This analysis highlights the epistemic gap among secular transhumanists regarding AI’s limitations and solving powers. A gap produced by an instrumentalist understanding of technology, which treats technology as neutral tools that humans master. To help remedy this gap, the methodological posthumanists’ notion of technological mediation and radical posthumanists’ views on reflexive technology, which acknowledge human–technology relationality, are necessary. In addition, because for Kurzweil, everything that exists is evolving ‘patterns of information’ that are transcendent and can only exist if they ‘participate’ in information, theologian Catherine Pickstock’s neo-Platonic framework of participation is introduced. Pickstock’s notions of eros and emergence guide us towards (re)thinking AI as a metaxological emergent phenomenon. So, standing in the in-betweenness, always mimicking and luring towards human intelligence but existing in the world of machines, although AI might not reach a perfect episteme, it can produce orthos doxa.

The third chapter, “The Posthuman: Multiple Versions, Multiple Idols”, analyses two ontological issues present in the technological debate: human enhancement and the posthuman. Transhumanism’s mandate to enhance humanity is confronted by authors who attribute a normative status to nature. Hence, anthropologies that move from ‘human nature’ to ‘human being’, focusing on our existence rather than our essence, are required. Additionally, because the posthuman is anything but a monolithic anthropology, secular transhumanists’ depictions of the posthuman are opposed to those offered by radical posthumanism. This chapter argues that the transhumanists’ way of seeing reality, which gives rise to their posthuman and post-secular technologies as idols, is what produces ontological issues and antithetical responses. Catherine Pickstock’s genealogy of the anerotic gaze – the gaze of mastery – helps us trace the transhumanist way of seeing, that frames reality as a given, to sophistic immanentism. Jean-Luc Marion’s work helps us foresee how this gaze, coupled with transhumanism’s technophilia, phenomenologically constitutes new idols.

The fourth chapter, “Technology Ethics: Erotic Gaze and the Agapeic Gift Exchange”, analyses transhumanism’s individualist ethics and liberal politics, strongly criticised by the dystopic posthumanists’ restrictive legislations and the radical posthumanists’ anti-humanist interconnected collectivism. It also discusses proposals that teach us how to understand and balance opposing ethical views in technological discussions. Moreover, because theologians have long studied the complex relationship between the creator and its creatures, it is argued that public theologians can help transhumanists refine their ethos, provide users with ethical guidance concerning their technological-mediated actions in everyday life, and counter-balance issues arising from governmental legislation. Consequently, the chapter draws on Catherine Pickstock’s erotic gaze of the doxological subjects and John Milbank’s theology of the gift to articulate a technology ethics. A proposal, grounded in a metaphysics of participation, that invites us to see the world with the erotic gaze that appreciates reality, including technology, as gifts, and binds our technologically mediated actions to the agapeic gift-exchange. Because just as the transhumanists’ posthuman and post-secular technological idols are products of their anerotic gaze that frames reality as givens, our way of seeing will shape how we interact with our technologies and act in this hypertechnological world.2026-11-13