An intelligence so capable it can perceive every cause and effect. The promise of eternal life. The dawn of a new age in whichsuffering will be eliminated, every need will be met and the individual will find fulfillment by subordinating himself to something far greater than himself.

These are the promises of most great faiths. The capacityto understand and predict everything thatcould possibly occur is a characteristic most would ascribe toGod.

But today, thisrhetoric surrounds an ostensibly scientific and secular movement. Transhumanism, the attempt to overcome the bodys limitations through technology, and the hunt for artificial intelligence are promoted with evangelistic language.

Around the world, heavily funded by billionaire philanthropists, researchers are probing whether aging can be curbed or even prevented, just like any other disease.

Indeed, scientist Aubrey de Grey, chief science officer of the SENS Research Foundation, argues the biggest obstacle to immortality is simply a lack of funding to fuel research.

Even dissident and Wikileaks head Julian Assange confidently predicted de facto immortality would soon exist because people would upload their consciousness to an artificial intelligence and live forever as part of a simulation.

Its like a religion for atheists, Assange said.

Assange is not alone in identifying the fundamentally religious impulse behind the movement. In a recent piece at Aeon a digital magazine on science, philosophy, society and the arts Beth Singler of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion pointed out how despite itsscorn for religion, the AI community often sounds like a group of believers in a coming god.

[B]elievers in a transhuman future in which AI will allow us to transcend the human condition once and for all draw constantly on prophetic and end-of-days narratives to understand what theyre striving for, she writes.

The community has also generated thought experiments in which the singularity, the creation of artificial intelligence thatwill spark runaway growth, is framed as something akin to the formation of a god. For example, Rokos Basilisk posits an AI which, because it would conceive of itself being able to provide the greatest good for the greatest number, would actually punish humans, even after death, who do not labor to bring it into existence.

Joseph Farah, founder of WND and author of The Restitution of All Things, argues secularists and scientists who seek to escape the need for God ultimately and inevitably find themselves groping back towards the divine.

Theres an old saying, If you dont believe in something, youll believe in anything,' he said. Theres an absolute, fundamental need for human beings to believe in something.

If its not the God, it will be a god. Transhumanists offer an alternative god. You can be like God, the old lie the serpent told Eve in the Garden. You can still have eternal life apart from serving God and obeying His commandments. Its as simple as that. Transhumanists are peddling that kind of lie, again, so naturally they would have their own doctrines, gospel story, creation story, etc.

Ultimately, Farah maintains transhumanism and the quest for immortality, despite its supposedly secular orientation, leads to anti-Christian spiritual and even demonic connotations.

Absolutely, I think thats implied in the way this plays out, he said. Its about living forever. We all know these bodies wear out over time. But you can conquer death. Thats a spiritual idea and it comes from Gods consistent message to us. Its hardwired into our fallen genetic material. And, I believe it is at least inspired by the father of lies.

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Mark Biltz, the discoverer of the Blood Moons phenomenon and the author of Gods Day Timer, pointed out the term transhuman ultimately came out of religious literature.

He pointed to an article in the London Guardian profiling how a former Christian fell into transhumanism.The very word first appeared not in a work of science or technology but in Henry Francis Careys 1814 translation of Dantes Paradiso, the final book of the Divine Comedy, Biltz noted.

Dante, in this passage, is dramatizing the resurrection, the moment when, according to Christian prophecies, the dead will rise from their graves and the living will be granted immortal flesh, he said.

The vast majority of Christians throughout the ages have believed that these prophecies would happen supernaturally God would bring them about, when the time came. But since the medieval period, there has also persisted a tradition of Christians who believed that humanity could enact the resurrection through science and technology.

Whats amazing to me is how transhumanists are not just made up of atheists exclusively but Christian involvement has been growing exponentially, he said.

It is hard to believe how this is coming into mainstream Christianity! Indeed, there is even a Christian Transhumanist Association, headed by a preachers kid who was saturated in the Bible and Christian thought but has identified as a transhumanist since the mid-90s. He states in an article in Vice that we may see the next wave of Christians embrace transhumanist technologies as part of a sacred duty to participate with God in the redemption of the world.'

Biltz says he is troubled by such theological innovations.

When I read this I see how the deception of Christians in these last days will be so persuasive, he said. Christians are like the proverbial frogs in the boiling water. Believers need to get on Gods calendar so they realize we are at the time in history were we really need to be looking up, for our redemption draws nigh. Man has always wanted to become god or at least create a god in their own image. This just demonstrates how close we are to the coming of the Messiah.

The Bible story is more miraculous and astounding than you could have imagined. See the incredible proof of the unchanging nature of God and the exciting clues to what awaits at the end of days in Gods Day Timer by Mark Biltz, available as a book or documentary now in the WND Superstore.

Joel Richardson, the New York Times bestselling author of The Islamic Antichrist and Mystery Babylon, believes what is occurring is part of an old pattern in human behavior.

Mankind is essentially religious, whether they will admit it or not, he explained. If someone claims to deny the one, true God of the Bible, and every other god, they will inevitably find another created object to worship, most often themselves.

Richard said the Silicon Valley techno-gods of our time are among the most arrogant and most overt of the self-worshippers.

Perhaps understandably so. Never before in human history has technology and particularly the kinds of technology that is just on the horizon, so deeply challenge not only the essence of what it means to be human, but also our very perception of what it means to be God, he said.

Because of technology, mankind is entering a very dangerous spiritual phase of its existence. The tower of Babel is once again being erected. Those who are at the vanguard of these technologies, though denying true religion, understand the fundamentally religious nature of their work. This is why you will find so much of their work enshrouded in such religious language.

Richardson argues all of this was foretold in the Bible.

As always, it is mankinds arrogance that is his undoing, he said. Ultimately, these are those who the apostle Paul spoke of long ago when he said, that though they self-profess to be wise, they become fools, darkened in their understanding. After all, we all know how the story of the Tower of Babel ends. There is only one true God. He is the one who once warned, Though you say you are gods, you will die like mere men.'

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Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries suggests transhumanism is comparable to the theory of evolution in how it assertsknowledge will evolve to a higher level likely without God.

Man just has to play God or at least be godlike, she said. This advancement comes through cloning and genetic manipulation. Transhumanists look to the future and believe the human condition will see improvement in physical ability, lifespan, mental acuity and health. In addition, the world conditions can also be improved. Such technological advancements, some have said, would even redefine what it means to be human.

It says in the Bible that knowledge will increase. It doesnt suggest this knowledge will be used to good or evil, but I believe, like everything else today, man is trying to be like God. Man will abuse this increase in knowledge and understanding. Thus, transhumanism is almost a religion in itself.

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Pastor Carl Gallups, who examines current headlines in the light of end times prophecy in his book When The Lion Roars, argues the reason transhumanism so closely resembles a religion is because it was predicted in the Bible itself.

From the Garden of Eden to the book of Revelation we watch the story unfold, and the prediction that humankind would eventually, near the return of Jesus Christ, accept the very same lies that started in the Garden, the pastor explained.

Those lies can be summarized as: Man can be God-like, man can live forever without obeying Gods morality code, and therefore man can create God, life and morality in his own image, rather than the other way around. This is exactly what the transhumanists imagine themselves doing. Thus they are in a constant dilemma of trying to explain exactly what it is they are up to without falling into biblical language and imagery. If this scenario wasnt so clearly predicted thousands of years ago, complete with the somber results that are soon to come, it would almost be comical.

Gallups warned transhumanists are pursuing something the Bible warned about in the last days.

Even the transhumanist prophets predict an ultimate and soon-coming intelligence that will surpass any human capability perhaps even leading to unthinkable brutality, the pastor said. They even admit that what they are up to is, ultimately, rebellion against human existence as it has been given. Again, exactly what the Bible predicted. Demonically, that intelligence, rebellious spirit and brutality will manifest itself in the personage of the Antichrist. Transhumanists are not only saying basically the same thing as the Bible but are actually working feverishly to usher in the same biblical predictions they mock.

Gallups said ultimately Christians have a choice: whether they will place their faith in the promises of technology or the prophecies of Scripture thatseem to be predicting exactly whats happening today.

Which came first, the Word of God and the lies of the Garden of Eden or the modern transhumanists pursuit that matches the Bibles description of the last days? The answer is so obvious that apparently even some of the transhumanists see it the Word of God and its prophecies came first. Therefore, Im sticking with the original source, Gods holy Word.

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Continued here:
Transhumanism just another 'religion' in which man seeks to ...

social and philosophical movement

Transhumanism, social and philosophical movement devoted to promoting the research and development of robust human-enhancement technologies. Such technologies would augment or increase human sensory reception, emotive ability, or cognitive capacity as well as radically improve human health and extend human life spans. Such modifications resulting from the addition of biological or physical technologies would be more or less permanent and integrated into the human body.

The term transhumanism was originally coined by English biologist and philosopher Julian Huxley in his 1957 essay of the same name. Huxley refered principally to improving the human condition through social and cultural change, but the essay and the name have been adopted as seminal by the transhumanism movement, which emphasizes material technology. Huxley held that, although humanity had naturally evolved, it was now possible for social institutions to supplant evolution in refining and improving the species. The ethos of Huxleys essayif not its lettercan be located in transhumanisms commitment to assuming the work of evolution, but through technology rather than society.

The movements adherents tend to be libertarian and employed in high technology or in academia. Its principal proponents have been prominent technologists like American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil and scientists like Austrian-born Canadian computer scientist and roboticist Hans Moravec and American nanotechnology researcher Eric Drexler, with the addition of a small but influential contingent of thinkers such as American philosopher James Hughes and Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. The movement has evolved since its beginnings as a loose association of groups dedicated to extropianism (a philosophy devoted to the transcendence of human limits). Transhumanism is principally divided between adherents of two visions of post-humanityone in which technological and genetic improvements have created a distinct species of radically enhanced humans and the other in which greater-than-human machine intelligence emerges.

The membership of the transhumanist movement tends to split in an additional way. One prominent strain of transhumanism argues that social and cultural institutionsincluding national and international governmental organizationswill be largely irrelevant to the trajectory of technological development. Market forces and the nature of technological progress will drive humanity to approximately the same end point regardless of social and cultural influences. That end point is often referred to as the singularity, a metaphor drawn from astrophysics and referring to the point of hyperdense material at the centre of a black hole which generates its intense gravitational pull. Among transhumanists, the singularity is understood as the point at which artificial intelligence surpasses that of humanity, which will allow the convergence of human and machine consciousness. That convergence will herald the increase in human consciousness, physical strength, emotional well-being, and overall health and greatly extend the length of human lifetimes.

The second strain of transhumanism holds a contrasting view, that social institutions (such as religion, traditional notions of marriage and child rearing, and Western perspectives of freedom) not only can influence the trajectory of technological development but could ultimately retard or halt it. Bostrom and American philosopher David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association in 1998 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to working with those social institutions to promote and guide the development of human-enhancement technologies and to combat those social forces seemingly dedicated to halting such technological progress.

means by which humans react to changes in external and internal environments.

the process involved in knowing, or the act of knowing, which in its completeness includes perception and judgment. Cognition includes all processes of consciousness by which knowledge is accumulated, such as perceiving, recognizing, conceiving, and reasoning. Put differently, cognition is an...

in human beings, the extent of an individuals continuing physical, emotional, mental, and social ability to cope with his environment.

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transhumanism | social and philosophical movement ...

Transhumanism is a movement that seeks to find the solutions to mankind problems in robotics, genetic modification and general human involvement in what would be perceived to be natural processes. This movement is often perceived as the enemy of religion because the views contrast so strongly, but that need not be the case.

To learn more about transhumanism, robotics and related concerns, visit Human Paragon, a leading resource for anyone in the Transhumanism community and anyone seeking more information. For info on how this connects to Christianity, read on.

Were All After the Same Thing

Christians and transhumanists both want to better mankind, to reduce poverty, suffering and illness the world over. These two goals are the same, and any groups that so strongly share the same ideals should not be the enemy of one another.

Transhumanists seek to better understand the genetic makeup of mankind in order to find ways of tweaking this. It is artificial evolutionand if as Christians we can accept evolution and the way that this ties into our beliefs, then surely we can so the same with the science of transhumanism. After all, it is our duty on this earth to love and to careto be altruistic. And there is nothing more loving and caring the using our natural talents and intelligence to mold the world around us in order to remove the problems we face every day.

Is It What God Would Want?

God created mankind in his image, God created a world that he deemed to be perfect, so why should we change that, right? Well you only need to look around you to see that humanity is anything but perfect and that we have near-destroyed the world He created.

If finding solutions to these problems is wrong, then how can causing these problems be right? How can it be okay to build nuclear weapons, to cause climate change, to destroy thousands of acres of natural forestry and to care the extinction of thousands of Gods creatures? None of this is right and if we continue as we are, the well only make that situation worse.

Drastic times call for drastic measures and when the world is in ruin and there seems to be little hope, the idea of transhumanism could be the answer. And if we really are created in his image then that means that everything we are came from him; everything we know and everything we have at our disposal is his. So, transhumanism could therefore not be seen as something against God, but a way of performing Gods will, a way of righting the wrongs.

Im not saying thats the case, Im just saying that there are many ways to look at this and that the ideas of groups like the transhumanists should not be so readily dismissed on religious grounds.

Learn More

As mentioned above, Human Paragon is a great place to learn more about this, and its important that you do. These techniques and ideals might actually help to bring parts of the Christian story to life. Its the only way any of us can live as long as Methuselah, the only way we can truly scale the heights that our lord set for us.

So, lets not fight it and lets at least try to understand it.

Here is the original post:
tech-life-game-news - Christian Post (blog)

WASHINGTON A Christian pastor from Florida is promoting acceptance of some forms of transhumanism, saying believers should be open to finding an ethical alternative to the complete rejection of the scientific, technical and philosophical transhumanist movement that has already begun.

Rev. Christopher Benek, associate pastor of family ministries and mission at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, writes in the Christian Post that its time for the development of Christian transhumanism.

If you have read the The American Conservatives recent postings about the evolving transhumanist movement, you have likely developed reasonable concerns, Benek wrote. People should be dismayed at Zoltan Istvans misguided article in TAC from two weeks ago entitled: The Growing World of Libertarian Transhumanism. And, if one believes that Istvans transhumanism represents all transhumanists, then Kai Weiss follow-up piece Transhumanism is Not Libertarian, Its an Abomination, is correct and appropriately titled. But these two depictions do not represent the majority of transhumanist thought. As such I would request: Please folks do not throw the transhumanist-baby out with Zoltan Istvans bathwater. There is an ethical transhumanist alternative: Christian Transhumanism.

Benek says Christians can make a positive moral impact on the debate over transhumanism rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater.

To be clear, transhumanism at its core is not some sci-fi or superhero that will happen in 100 years, concept, he wrote. Transhumanism is happening right now. As a pastor serving a local congregation, I see proof of transhumanism in my congregation every day.

Get up to speed on transhumanism, as mankind seeks an alternative way to immortality without God. Watch the DVD, Transhumanism: Recreating Humanity

By that, Benek says, people who have hip and knee implants, pacemakers installed and get Lasik eye surgery to enhance vision are dabbling in transhumanism.

Humanity is evolving beyond its current limitations by way of exponentially increasing advances in science and technology, he says.

Rev. Christopher Benek

He cautions that Christians should not conclude transhumanism is all bad.

I say this because holding an overly dogmatic position in a quickly developing technological movement is likely to leave one looking hypocritical in the long run, he says. Case in point: If scientists figure out a way to affordably use CRISPR technology to edit the human genome to eliminate the possibility of getting cancer no one is reasonably going to reject that technological advancement.

Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, Americas independent news network.

Benek also promotes a new organization called the Christian Transhumanist Association, for which he serves as founding chairman. He says the group has 755 members and 2,000 Facebook likes.

Just this past June of 2017, the CTA formalized the addition of a seven-member academic advisory council made up of renowned academics with the intent of establishing a center of positive engagement at the intersection of Christianity, Transhumanism, and the academic world,' he writes. It appears that, every single day, the CTAs numbers and influence are on the rise.

He added, Christians have the opportunity to radically influence the direction that transhumanism takes in the future. Morally guided, community discerned, Christian transhumanism offers a legitimate alternative to utilitarian, atheistic transhumanism.

The rest is here:
Christian transhumanism? Yes, says pastor - WND.com

It is difficult to define, but its a growing movement. Transhumanism has its own central organization (Humanity+), its own demographic base (Silicon Valley), even its own political formation (the Longevity Party).

On one level the movements goals appear benign. One of its key documents, Principles of Extropy, sums up the basic values of transhumanism: perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, and rational thinking. The local Rotary Club would not object.

But the fundamental ambition of transhumanism is more problematic. Its architects champion a use of technology to accelerate the evolution of humanity so radically that at the end of the process humanity as such would disappear. A superior posthuman being would emerge. According to Wikipedia, Transhumanism is the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available knowledge to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. From its inception, the abolition of human death and aging has been one of the goals of transhumanism as it engineers a new being freed from the biological constraints of the current human condition.

Two of the movements philosophers, Max More and David Pearce, have developed eloquent apologies for the transhumanist creed. But they also indicate the movements more ominous philosophical themes.

The very concept of human nature disappears in much transhumanist literature. The human body is dismissed as something of secondary, accidental importance. Mr. More argues that the self has to be instantiated in some physical medium but not necessarily one that is biologically humanor biological at all. Once again in the history of philosophy, the body has become a mere container for the human mind. The body is perceived as an impediment to the minds development rather than humanitys natural site for thought. Tellingly, in this new version of anthropological dualism, the soul has disappeared; it is the sovereign self, a liberated will yearning for omniscience and omnipotence, that remains. Unsurprisingly, Ayn Rand is one of the movements favorite novelists.

Not only is humanity freed from its biological finitude in the transhumanist dream; it no longer enjoys any unique status as a subject of rights. Max More claims that creatures with similar levels of sapience, sentience, and personhood are accorded similar status no matter whether they are humans, animals, cyborgs, machine intelligences, or aliens. The religious claim that human beings are made in Gods image and the political claim that humans deserve respect because of their transcendental status crumble. Little of Renaissance humanism remains in a movement that glorifies the posthuman being to come and considers current humanity a fleeting phenomenon with no particular, intrinsic dignity.

The moral philosophy of the transhumanist movement is broadly utilitarian. One cannot judge the morality of a particular act in isolation; its goodness depends on whether it contributes to the global pleasure of a future humanity and ultimately a posthumanity.

David Pearce has developed an influential version of this transhumanist utilitarianism in his book The Hedonistic Imperative. For Mr. Pearce, the greatest ethical task of humanity is to eliminate all suffering in the world. Just as medical science has eliminated physical suffering through anesthetics, we should now use technology to conquer all psychic suffering. Mr. Pearce endorses a vigorous use of genetic engineering and pharmacology to achieve this goal of an anguish-free humanity and posthumanity. He even supports the use of such technology to abolish pain in wild animals.

Mr. Pearces ethics represent the perfectionist side of the transhumanist project. He describes the mission to eliminate suffering as paradise engineering and the naturalization of Heaven. The state of a properly engineered posthumanity in the future is nothing less than paradisal: Our descendants may live in a civilization of serenely motivated high achievers, animated by gradients of bliss.

It is a strange utopia. Our current opioid epidemic is a cautionary tale against the dream of a sedated humanity. We are still reeling from the totalitarian dream where millions perished in the name of a radiant future that required some lethal cutting of ethical corners in the meantime. The enthusiastic transhumanist revival of eugenics is a cause for alarm. Is there any place for people with disabilities in this utopia? Why would we want to abolish aging and dying, essential constituents of the human drama, the fountainhead of our art and literature? Can there be love and creativity without anguish? Who will flourish and who will be eliminated in this construction of the posthuman? Does nature itself have no intrinsic worth? Finally, isnt the transhumanist dream of liberating humanity from its biological and psychic creaturehood simply a high-tech surrender to an ancient temptation, Ye shall be as gods?

Whos afraid of transhumanism? I am. We all should be.

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Who's afraid of transhumanism? (We all should be) - America Magazine

Luis Manuel Tapia Bolivar/DreamstimeA fight over whether or not transhumanism can be libertarian broke out over at The American Conservative. The contretemps began with an article by Zoltan Istvan, author of The Transhumanist Wager. Istvan is also seeking to become the Libertarian Party candidate for governor of California.

In "The Growing World of Libertarian Transhumanism," Istvan optimistically asserts that "freedom from the government will allow radical science to go on undisturbed."

Zoltan defines transhumanism as "the international movement of using science and technology to radically change the human being and human experience. Its primary goal is to deliver and embrace a utopian techno-optimistic world." Due to rapid technological progress "the world is shifting under our feetand libertarian transhumanism is a sure way to navigate the chaos to make sure we arrive at the best future possible."

Kai Weiss, a researcher at the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute in Vienna, Austria, swiftly denounced the piece. "Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution," he wrote.

Clearly there is some disagreement.

Weiss is correct that Istvan doesn't expend much intellectual effort linking transhumanism with libertarian thinking. Istvan largely assumes that people seeking to flourish should have the freedom to enhance their bodies and minds and those of their children without much government interference. So what abominable transhumanist technologies does Weiss denounce?

Weiss includes defeating death, robotic hearts, virtual reality sex, telepathy via mind-reading headsets, brain implants, ectogenesis, artificial intelligence, exoskeleton suits, designer babies, and gene editing tech. "At no point [does Istvan] wonder if we should even strive for these technologies," Weiss thunders.

While Istvan may not wonder, Weiss fails to make a single argument against these technological developments: It is apparently self-evident to him that they are evil.

As with all new technologies, unintended consequences are inevitable and people can and will surely misuse them. Libertarians know all too well that vigilance against government abuse of modern technologies is vital. These worries do not, however, constitute preemptive arguments for preventing people from voluntarily seeking to use the fruits of innovation to work out how to live the best lives that they can.

Oddly, as a riposte against libertarian transhumanism, Weiss cites Christian conservative Rod Dreher's assertion that "choice matters more than what is chosen. The Technological Man is not concerned with what he should desire; rather, he is preoccupied with how he can acquire or accomplish what he desires." This is a non-sequitur. Of course, libertarians (and one hopes most other folks) are concerned about what it is that we should desire. The central question is who, if anyone, has the right to stop us from pursuing our private and non-aggressive desires once we've applied our intellects and moral imaginations to figuring out what it is that we want?

Progressives and conservatives believe government has extensive authority to tell citizens how to live their lives. Libertarians do not. On that count, Weiss is entirely correct to call out Istvan for succumbing to authoritarianism when he advocates for licensing reproduction as a way to prevent overpopulation.

As someone who evidently thinks he is committed to enlarging human liberty, Weiss would do well to ponder this observation from economics Nobelist Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty:

Nowhere is freedom more important than where our ignorance is greatestat the boundaries of knowledge, in other words, where nobody can predict what lies a step ahead.the ultimate aim of freedom is the enlargement of those capacities in which man surpasses his ancestors and to which each generation must endeavor to add its shareits share in the growth of knowledge and the gradual advance of moral and aesthetic beliefs, where no superior must be allowed to enforce one set of views of what is right or good and where only further experience can decide what should prevail. It is wherever man reaches beyond his present self, where the new emerges and assessment lies in the future, that liberty ultimately shows its value.

Hayek's point is that human beings are terrible at foresight. Engaging in a robust process of trial, error, and correction is how nearly all moral and technological progress has ever been made.

As I have earlier argued:

The highest expression of human nature and dignity is to strive to overcome the limitations imposed on us by our genes, our evolution and our environment. Future generations will look back at the beginning of the 21st century and be astonished that some well-meaning and intelligent people actually wanted to stop bio-nano-infotech research and deployment just to protect their cramped and limited vision of human nature. If transhumanism is allowed to progress, I predict that our descendants will look back and thank us for making their world of longer, healthier and abler lives possible.

While Weiss asserts "it is time for libertarians to argue against the notion of extreme transhumanism," he ultimately concedes "the state shouldn't prohibit it." So long as he leaves government power out it, Weiss is, of course, free to argue as much as he likes that transhumanism is an abomination contrary to libertarian thinking. But I suspect that few people, especially folks committed to liberty and the development of technologies that enable them and their progeny to have better chances to lead flourishing lives, will heed his Luddite counsel.

For those interested in libertarian arguments in favor of transhumanism, you may be interested in my essay, "The Case for Enhancing People" and my book, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution.

Disclosure: I was on a panel with Istvan at FreedomFest in Las Vegas a month ago discussing the much dreaded prospect of designer babies. I am generally in favor of allowing parents to use modern biotechnologies with the goal of improving the prospects that their children will enjoy flourishing lives.

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Transhumanism and Libertarianism Are Entirely Compatible - Reason (blog)

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A Tamworth personal development coach has been given high praise helping pop sensation and TV personality Kerry Katona 'whole again'.

Emma Cross, has publicly credited by the former Atomic Kitten singer after getting her back on track following her split with husband George Kay, in 2015.

Speaking to OK! magazine, Kerry opened up about the counselling sessions she received from Emma after the relationship broke down and how they have inspired her to pursue a career in life coaching.

Kerry said: "Emma is absolutely brilliant.

"I've actually signed up to do a life-coaching course in October. I'm really looking forward to that."

Emma (35) has been training and gaining experience as a life coach for more than 14 years, but has only recently taken the plunge by turning her passion into a full-time career.

She was amazed when she got the call from Kerry, who is now one of her regular clients.

"Kerry was one of the first people to contact me through my website," Emma said.

"I couldn't believe it. We started speaking and hit it off straight away.

"I went to her house and have been helping her to stay on track since then. People have noticed the difference in her and Kerry has referred me to other people too."

Emma is a certified NLP (neuro linguistic programming) practitioner and uses proven NLP and personal development psychotherapy techniques to help people lead happier and more successful lives.

This could be for overcoming a trauma, achieving long-term goals, coping with the stresses of everyday life, or just generally making positive and lasting changes for the better.

Although Emma has all the qualifications to back up her abilities, she first turned to life coaching because she found she had a natural talent for helping people get the most out of life.

The mum-of-two believes her own difficult childhood and struggles in life have given her a unique understanding and appreciation of how coaching can make a real difference.

Emma said: "I didn't have a great childhood. I had no role models and left school at 15 with no qualifications. I was a single mother by the age of 19 and was headed down a road I didn't like.

"However, the birth of my first child motivated me to build a better life for us.

"I started to read self-help books because I didn't want to continue down the path I was on.

"My driving force was to give my son a better life and be the role model that I didn't have growing up. That motivated me to work hard and achieve my goals."

Earlier this year, she decided to take the plunge by giving up her job as a sales consultant and devoting all her time to her career as a life coach.

"I'm passionate about helping other people achieve their goals, just as I have achieved mine and I believe my own experiences enable me to help bring out the best in others."

For more information about Emma visit http://www.emmacrosscoaching.co.uk.

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Kerry Katona made 'whole again' by Tamworth personal development coach - Tamworth Herald

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training. After working in an estate agent's office for a while he moved to London as a young man (1876), where he established himself as a leading music and theatre critic in the eighties and nineties and became a prominent member of the Fabian Society, for which he composed many pamphlets. He began his literary career as a novelist; as a fervent advocate of the new theatre of Ibsen (The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891) he decided to write plays in order to illustrate his criticism of the English stage. His earliest dramas were called appropriately Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). Among these, Widower's Houses and Mrs. Warren's Profession savagely attack social hypocrisy, while in plays such as Arms and the Man and The Man of Destiny the criticism is less fierce. Shaw's radical rationalism, his utter disregard of conventions, his keen dialectic interest and verbal wit often turn the stage into a forum of ideas, and nowhere more openly than in the famous discourses on the Life Force, Don Juan in Hell, the third act of the dramatization of woman's love chase of man, Man and Superman (1903).

In the plays of his later period discussion sometimes drowns the drama, in Back to Methuselah (1921), although in the same period he worked on his masterpiece Saint Joan (1923), in which he rewrites the well-known story of the French maiden and extends it from the Middle Ages to the present.

Other important plays by Shaw are Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), a historical play filled with allusions to modern times, and Androcles and the Lion (1912), in which he exercised a kind of retrospective history and from modern movements drew deductions for the Christian era. In Major Barbara (1905), one of Shaw's most successful discussion plays, the audience's attention is held by the power of the witty argumentation that man can achieve aesthetic salvation only through political activity, not as an individual. The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), facetiously classified as a tragedy by Shaw, is really a comedy the humour of which is directed at the medical profession. Candida (1898), with social attitudes toward sex relations as objects of his satire, and Pygmalion (1912), a witty study of phonetics as well as a clever treatment of middle-class morality and class distinction, proved some of Shaw's greatest successes on the stage. It is a combination of the dramatic, the comic, and the social corrective that gives Shaw's comedies their special flavour.

Shaw's complete works appeared in thirty-six volumes between 1930 and 1950, the year of his death.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

George Bernard Shaw died on November 2, 1950.

To cite this pageMLA style: "George Bernard Shaw - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 6 Sep 2017. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1925/shaw-bio.html>

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George Bernard Shaw - Biographical - G.B.Shaw Nobel Prize

Mr. Carroll, 51, represents a curious blend of familiar and radical: He is best known stateside for the original practice Globe productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III that he brought to Broadway in 2013, which hewed as closely as possible to the staging choices made at the turn of the 17th century.

But he is also a founding member of the British guerrilla theater known as the Factory, which once staged a Hamlet in which any actor could end up performing any of the roles on any given night.

The Shaw Festival actors presumably knew their parts for the Secret Theater performances, about which all parties have been tight-lipped. Mr. Carroll finally allowed that one such event asked the audience to walk around Niagara on the Lake with a map, as scenes popped up around them.

Basically, our new mission is to celebrate the work and spirit of George Bernard Shaw any way we want, said Mr. Carroll, who is known throughout the company as T.C. If that includes recent works by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins or Will Eno (a fine-boned rendition of his 2010 Middletown) in its 11-play season, so be it.

Mr. Carroll has stepped into the role on the heels of two consecutive years of operating deficits. Ticket sales have followed a gradual decline over the last decade here, and plans are currently on hold to build a new theater on a tract of land that the festival purchased for $3.63 million in 2014.

One casualty of his arrival is the festivals much-discussed mandate. The first three years of its existence were devoted solely to Shaw, and for decades the repertory was confined to works written during his lifetime. (He lived to the age of 94, giving the festival quite a bit of latitude.)

Over time, the definition expanded to include contemporary works set during Shaws lifetime as well as plays on Shavian themes. It had become a bit of a running joke, about the ever-expanding mandate, Mr. Carroll said. (In fact, next years season includes a work by a playwright who missed Shaws lifetime by some 240 years: William Shakespeare.)

The repertory acting system, however, remains a hallmark of the festival. On this particular day, Jonathan Tan was assaying a smug Lord Chancellor in Shaws Saint Joan less than two hours after hopping around the stage as a frog in a charming family adaptation of Oscar Wildes tales for children. Three of Mr. Tans Wilde Tales co-stars got a longer break before making up the cast of that evenings surprise performance, 1979, a comedy about Joe Clarks absurdly short tenure as prime minister of Canada.

Still, it is Mr. Carrolls innovations that have become the talk of this towns many coffee shops and wine bars and ice cream parlors. It is not unusual to find audience members who have been attending the Shaw Festival for decades. And unsurprisingly, opinions among these stalwarts vary widely.

Change is hard, especially for people who are older, said Betty Schaeffer of Rochester, who has been coming with her husband for 31 years and had seen two previous festival stagings of Saint Joan before this years streamlined production, directed by Mr. Carroll. It all feels very, very different all of a sudden. I like it.

But Leslie Varnick and Michael St. Clair, who have been visiting from Cleveland for nearly as long, warned that the unique nature of the festival is in jeopardy.

Anyone wants to come in and put their stamp on things, of course, Ms. Varnick said. But I want the work to be honored, and a lot has been lost. It can feel a bit like a circus now.

Mr. Carroll will be the first to admit that the new approach is a work in progress. Some people in the company would rather not try something until weve worked out exactly how to do it, he said. And I say to them, Lets just get it wrong this year. And then next year, it will be much easier to get it right.

The festivities begin before each play starts. Rather than use the typical recorded preshow announcement, Mr. Carroll enlists a member of the festivals cast, crew or staff to speak live.

Gray Powell, who performed for 10 seasons under the previous artistic director, Jackie Maxwell, recently gave his first of these impromptu addresses. Its an experiment, but then, all theater is an experiment, said Mr. Powell, who has roles in Middletown and Saint Joan this season. The important thing is that T. C. has gotten people off the backs of their seats and closer to the front.

And while Mr. Powell has relished the Secret Theater forays, he occasionally balks at interactive works like Mr. Carrolls Androcles, in which the actors will elicit stories from audience members at intermission and then include them in the text.

There are certainly times when I feel like, I dont want to talk to you. I just want to look at you, he said.

When audience members ask Mr. Carroll how Shaw might have reacted to these changes, he has an answer at the ready a letter Shaw wrote in about 1930 to Barry Jackson, who wanted to name his own summer theater festival in England after the dramatist.

Shaw said, Dont do that, because you shouldnt be held back by what I am doing or have written, Mr. Carroll said. People like me and Ibsen shouldnt be sat in the road, blocking the way of the new young generation.

And if longtime festivalgoers feel that Mr. Carroll is in the way, he has thoughtfully provided plenty of juggling balls, perfect for chucking.

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Stodgy No More? The Shaw Festival is Full of Surprises - New York Times

By:David Gordon | September 06, 2017

"Mine is better than ours."Benjamin Franklin

Tom Bethell, here as often before, uses sturdy common sense to challenge experts in their own field. In a controversial article many years ago, he dared to suggest that evolutionary biologists have exaggerated the evidence for Darwinism. Though roundly criticized by supporters of orthodoxy, Mr. Bethell manifested an uncanny ability to ask disconcerting questions.

That ability is continually on display in The Noblest Triumph. Here, he indicts economists because they have failed to set forth in detail an answer to what should be a basic question of their discipline: Under what institutions will a society prosper? Since the days of Adam Smith, economists have neglected to analyze property rights, which are, in Mr. Bethell's view, the key to economic success. Classical economists such as David Ricardo continued Smith's policy of taking property rights for granted, and with John Stuart Mill, the last of the classics, things got worse. Mill often criticized private property and seemed to look forward to the onset of socialism, although Mill's ambiguous prose mirrored his dithering on the issue. Of course, Karl Marx said a great deal about property; but his fervent denunciations contributed little to understanding. The Austrian school, including Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, stands out as an exception to Mr. Bethell's catalogue of neglect of property, while in recent years, public choice economists have written with illumination on the topic. But in large part the record of the economics profession in discussing property is blank.

This is surprising, since, Mr. Bethell holds, the case for private property is easily made. To grasp the role of private property, an essential truth must be kept in mind. Human beings have a fixed nature, which governments thwart at their peril.

Very well, then: human nature is not so malleable as Bernard Shaw and the Webbs held. Few today would deny this, but how does the fact of a fixed human nature suffice to make the case for property? In Mr. Bethell's view, the argument is simple. People tend to place their own well-being, and that of their families, above a murky "common good" defined by the state. Thus, if property is made collective, disaster will quickly follow. Under a system without private property, an individual has little incentive to conserve resources. Instead, he will seize as much as he can for his immediate benefit; if he does not, others will quickly step into the gap. Moreover, only a regime that mandates individual property rights can avoid what Garrett Hardin has memorably called the "tragedy of the commons." With secure property rights, an owner will not scuttle his long-term gains through indiscriminate exploitation of land. Instead, he will endeavor to maintain his property since it is as an economic asset.

But is not this argument simply an instance of the ancient fallacy, that human beings are narrowly selfish, unmotivated by the good of others? In the guise of a defense of human nature, has not Mr. Bethell attempted to foist on us that discredited construct, homo economicus?

Mr. Bethell readily turns this objection aside. Let us suppose that someone did limit his own use of commonly held land, hoping thereby to aid conservation. He would fail utterly in his purpose. He would merely provide those more self-interested than himself with more land to exploit. The main point is incontestable, and Mr. Bethell ably illustrates his case with many historical examples. These include Plymouth Plantation, where Governor Bradford quickly learned that a community without private property in land was "afflicted by an unwillingness to work," and the New Harmony Utopian socialist colony founded by Robert Owen. Mr. Bethell duly notes that the fortune of that sainted philanthropist rested in part on child labor.

But on one point I must issue a caution. We know, as Mr. Bethell has ably argued, that common property is inefficient. No general argument shows how inefficient it must be when compared with a system of individual property rights: This we must discern from examination of the individual case. Thus, when Mr. Bethell, with a brilliant suggestion, ascribes Irish poverty in the 19th century to the uncertain tenure of land, it does not at once follow from the "tragedy of the commons" argument that he is right. A system of firmly embedded property rights would have led to more efficient land use than the radically uncertain settlement in place there, but how much good such a system would have caused remains a subject for further research. If Mr. Bethell has not fully proved his case on Irish poverty, though, he has immensely aided the discussion through his hypothesis.

A further problem confronts any society that attempts to do away with private productive property altogetherthe famous economic calculation argument advanced by Mises and Hayek. Absent a capitalist market, a centralized economy has no means of deciding how to allocate resources. Engineering calculations alone will not tell the planner whether it is a good idea to construct a bridge with platinum. How can he make the decisions needed to assign economic goods to their best uses? Readers should note that this differs from the "tragedy of the commons." The latter argument involves incentives; the calculation argument does not. Even people totally devoted to the common good would, in a centrally directed economy, confront the calculation problem.

Mr. Bethell locates another difficulty for any regime foolish enough to strike against private property comprehensively.

Mr. Bethell, apparently, cannot for long stay away from incentives, and with good reasonthe issue is crucial. As he notes, this argument received its classic statement in Hayek's Road to Serfdom, but he also suggests that Hayek took over and developed his case from Walter Lippmann's The Good Society. How remarkable that the Great Pundit managed for once in his long career to get something right!

The case for private property goes beyond incentives and efficiency. More broadly, Bethell claims that justice itself demands individual property. He rejects the view of justice as egalitarian fairness, famously advanced by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971), and resolutely adheres to the classical view of Aristotle and Aquinas, who thought that justice gives each person what is his due. Each person in an economy based on private property receives the results of his own abilities and character.

Mr. Bethell dismisses with appropriate scorn Rawls' contention that abilities, since they arise from the "genetic lottery," are collective assets best placed under control of the welfare state. In one respect, though, he pushes his argument too far. He suggests that, contrary to its critics, a market svstem minimizes selfish behavior. "A selfish person is one who takes an unfairly large share of some common good, thereby leaving unfairly small shares for everyone else." Situations that lack well-defined property rights render selfish behavior possible.

The argument is ingenious, and it suffices to explain many cases of selfishnessbut by no means all. Would not a person who assiduously seeks gifts and favors from others, but never acts generously save under compulsion, be considered selfish? And yet no problem of collective goods need be involved in this case.

The argument for private property has many implications for contemporary policy. Mr. Bethell suggests that our high-minded Masters of Wisdom in Washington have made a fetish of democracy. A Western-style political system can function only in a reasonably prosperous society, and this requires private property. A regime that moves toward a free market may have much to recommend it, even if it ranks abysmally on the index of the Americans for Democratic Action. Mr. Bethell's point needs to be taken to heart by self-styled conservatives anxious to embroil the United States in a conflict with China that could only serve further to collectivize both countries.

A few details in the book can be challenged. Wesley Hohfeld's definition of rights has nothing to do with Hegel's philosophy: Mr. Bethell has not grasped the quite simple logic of that influential system of legal categories. To call Frederic Maitland one of those who wrote "at a time when centralism was admired across the board" oversimplifies matters. Maitland (a great legal historian) was greatly influenced by the concept of pluralism, a decidedly anti-centralist trend of thought. To support his incontestably true point that socialism leads to dictatorship over workers, Mr. Bethell frequently refers to a spurious passage from Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed. Some years ago, I quoted the same passage and was properly taken to task by Mr. Williamson Evers of the Hoover Institution.

But these are only minor points. Mr. Bethell has written a clear, cogent book that both sums up and advances our knowledge of property. In learning and suggestiveness. The Noblest Triumph is a triumph indeed.

[The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, by Tom Bethell (New York: St. Martin's Press) 578 pp., $29.95]

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