Henry Ehlebracht September 6th, 2017 - 5:29 PM

This new four track EP Unusable Love from El Ten Eleven and Emile Mosseri is a crisp and focused effort full of laid back organic tracks that fit very well together. El Ten Eleven have released a number of well-received projects over the past 10 years with six full length albums and a couple EPs under their belt. This is only a small taste compared to an album, but El Ten Eleven still have the ability to deliver something fresh and exciting despite the short length. Something that immediately sets this apart from their other projects is the addition of Emile Mosseri from The Dig. If youre a fan of either El Ten Eleven or Emile Mosseri, definitely check this out.

Unusable Love is the first track on the EP and it sets the mood for whats to come throughout the project. Organic guitar strings mix with a slow, brooding electronic beat and grumbling synths to create a reflective and melancholy feeling. While the lyrics convey these feelings clearly, the instrumentals also make this a very relaxing song. In contrast to the melancholy lyrics of Unusable Love, Im Right Here has a tender touch to its lyrics. More acoustic strings blend together wonderfully with the spacey effects on the singers voice and the great bass line. With great singing, lyrics and production this is definitely one of the standout tracks from this album.

In contrast to the stellar second track, Shes a Live One falls a bit flat. The uninspired vocals at the beginning of the track really drag the energy of the song down. The dull voice of the vocalist at the beginning of the track just doesnt match the image that the lyrics paint. On the other hand, something that this song does well is how its intensity builds on itself naturally. El Ten Elevens choice of instruments and production techniques really shine here. Finally Delicate Friend is a return to form because of its strong lead guitar melody and the great vocals brought to the table. You can really hear the strain and emotion in the singers voice which elevates this song above Shes a Live One.

All in all this is a successful collaboration, but there are some caveats. One annoying thing on the album is the mix on a couple of the songs. There is a grainy texture in the background that sticks out when you play certain songs loudly like in the car stereo. One other problem is that for a short project like an EP these songs are a bit too similar sounding with a vibe that doesnt change for most of the tracks on here. It would have been great to hear more versatility from this group of artists. That being said, this is definitely a project worth checking out if you like chill, relaxing electronic music with an acoustic touch.

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El Ten Eleven Unusable Love (feat. Emile Mosseri) - mxdwn.com

Nancy Hastings nhastings@hillsdale.net nhastingsHDN

Nearly all Americans understand that relaxation time is essential to good health, yet most of us dont spend nearly enough time unwinding.

After just observing a relaxing Labor Day weekend in southern Indiana, I pondered the origins of work. Being able to do some work remotely was still an option.

Work has, after all, been around since the creation of heaven and earth. Quite simply, God worked and created man to work. In the fall of man, work was not a punishment. God cursed the land to produce thorns and weeds, but didnt curse the work. Unfortunately, most Americans do.

Many Americans work continuously in jobs they dont enjoy. Often our work can be full of thorns, but we wouldnt grow if we didnt have adversity to overcome. When we like our work, it's rewarding, but breaks are important.

So yes, taking time to relax is paramount. After all, God rested on the seventh day after creating the universe. A Sunday sermon topic out of Ecclesiastes covered how the sleep of the laborer is sweet work in harmony with God and work is a blessing, but it requires rest.

While our society acknowledges that kicking back is indispensable, we dont seem to be practicing what we preach. Indeed, 99 percent of Americans think relaxation is important, yet they actually spend less than five percent of their day relaxing, according to an independent research study.

The goal of the research was to better understand the latest trends about how many of us actually relax and how we go about doing it.

Nearly half of Americans report theyre more stressed than their significant other, with a whopping 82 percent of men indicating that their partner is the stressed out one. Finding ways to de-stress is the key.

Music topped the list of relaxation techniques for those surveyed, with 48 percent reporting music helps them take it easy. Interestingly, only 18 percent find exercise is a good relaxation tool.

For me, yoga works wonders when its time to decompress. Stretching out the trapezius (extrinsic back muscle) or the latissimus dorsi (another extrinsic back muscle) also brings me rejuvenation.

Overall, laughter is really my way to decompress. When Im feeling the walls close in, I find humor in the situation and suddenly its not as important or as earth shattering as what I initially thought. Ive found it prevents burnout, irritability, back pain and the desire to overeat.

After hanging out with extended family and friends over the Labor Day weekend, laughter was my medicinal tonic. It can also help when giving advice to a friend dealing with caregiver stress for whose aging parents are facing the autumn season of their lives. Many baby boomers face stress because they are dealing with caregiver overload from taking care of parents and then are parents themselves.

Even so, the studys most surprising findings were that relaxation causes 62 percent of parents to feel guilty and that nearly one third of Americans surveyed reported being stressed out simply by the thought of relaxing!

Many of us suffer with the inability to take the time and just be. There is a such a strong temptation to fill our lives, (and our kids lives) with activities, so that no time is wasted. Weve become very efficient at being efficient.

When it all feels like too much, it usually means it is. That is when surrender is the best answer, and that is when it's time to just be.

When writers experience writers block, when a pregnant woman is put on bed-rest, when an athlete tears a muscle, when creativity juices stop flowing, its ones body telling them its just all too much at that given moment. When this happens, just stop. Theres always tomorrow.

There is nothing wrong with a little down time every now and then for anyone.

Nancy Hastings is a Daily News staff writer and can be reached at nhastings@hillsdale.net Follow her on Twitter: @nhastingsHDN

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Labor needs relaxation - Opinion - The Daily Reporter - Coldwater ... - Coldwater Daily Reporter

By Peter Molenaar

Visits to the Lake Street YWCA have become familiar to me, in the aftermath of thirty-five years hard labor at Smith Foundry. However, when worn ankles dictate, treadmills and elipticals wont do. It is from the vantage of a stationary bike that I am allowed to discreetly observe.

As for aerobics, evidently there are many women who have surpassed what I once was. One wonders why a world-wide movement of women has not been mobilized to fight ISIS. Sending our young men to war tends to make matters worse.

Recently, en route to burning 100 calories at 95rpm, the caption line on the big screen flashed BREAKING NEWS: NORTH KOREA THREATENS GUAM WITH MISSILE ATTACK. Amazingly, the elipticals and treadmills kept churning.

I happen to garden with the Koreans who founded the Community Peace Garden, at the junction of Highway 94 and Cedar Avenue. From them I received a copy of the spring issue of the Korean Quarterly with the front page caption: WAR PROVOCATION. The sum of Christine Hongs The Long, Dirty History was most impressive.

Unsurprisingly, few media outlets have reported on North Koreas overtures to the U.S., even as these, if pursued, might result in meaningful de-escalation on both sides. To be clear: peaceful alternatives are at hand. Far from being an intractable foe, North Korea has repeatedly asked the U.S. to sign a peace treaty that would bring the unresolved Korean War to a long-overdue end

Clearly, it is we who threaten them not they who threaten us. JUST SAY NO TO NUCLEAR WAR. Please. Yet, even I will return to the marvelous machines of the YWCA, as I intend to breathe for another thirty years.

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The Aerobics Beyond the Y - Alleynews

Sara MyersFaith Editor

Submitted Photo: Victoria Gazzillo

Seniors Victoria Gazzillo (left) and Mary Kate Halligan (right) co-founded prayer workouts as first-year students.

Seniors Mary Kate Halligan and Victoria Gazzillo began hosting Prayer Workouts two and a half years ago, during the Spring 2015 semester. Today the workout class has morphed into something Halligan said is much different than what they expected.

Prayer workouts are like many other workout classes, but also have a prayer component. Halligan this component said makes it unique from anything she had experienced before. She explained that during each class, they offer up the workout for a special intention.

The burn that you get from the workout the out of breathness, the feeling of wanting to give up thats something that we can offer up, so you can see the positive in the pain and use it as a prayer, Halligan said.

She stressed that aside from the prayer aspect, they are typical high intensity interval training workouts using body weight. They involve exercise such as push-ups, squats and burpees. The instructor counts of their set of repetitions, while the participants do whatever they can in that same amount of time. She said completing the intervals for time rather than repetitions makes the class more accessible to different fitness levels.

Thats why its good for any fitness level you could do 2 push-ups or you could do 25, and no matter what, everyones getting to a point where they are pushing themselves and its giving them something to offer up throughout, Halligan said.

Prayer workouts began after Gazzillo approached Halligan with an idea inspired by Hard As Nails Ministry, whose primary way to minister to people is through this type of workout. Having met in a faith context and knowing that Halligan was interested in fitness, Gazzillo reached out and the prayer workout classes began.

When the class first started, Halligan said it was primarily the two leaders and their friends. After printing posters and quarter sheets to reach out to a larger base, they have had people from faculty members to first year students participate in the workouts. She said the diversity contributes to a different dynamic each time.

As different offices around campus became more interested in the Prayer Workouts, they began to offer sponsorships and donations. Since the classes require no equipment and have no expenses, Halligan and Gazzillo have taken to using the sponsor money to provide fresh produce for local food pantries.

The produce is donated to the St. Francis of Assisi Food Pantry in downtown Scranton and the Leahy Clinic in Leahy Hall. The reasoning behind this unconventional use of donations, Halligan said, came from the very nature of the classes.

Because it is a class focused on thinking outside yourself, not focusing on what you want to do but looking outward, thats kind of what we did, she explained. We looked outward, and we thought we might as well see if theyll still be willing to give money to do something like that.

Prayer Workouts are held every Monday at 7 p.m. and every Friday at 6 p.m. in the Byron Center Aerobics Room.

Meet Mary Kate Halligan

Mary Kate Halligan will begin the Doctoral of Physical Therapy program at The University next fall. Unlike most students who will enter that program and are currently exercise science majors, Halligan is a biology major. Growing up playing sports and greatly enjoying science, Halligan said she chose Physical Therapy because it marries those two field. She said she is particularly excited for the opportunity to get to know her patients, whom she will see three times a week for a couple of months, an opportunity which she explained not many other fields in the health care profession have.

Outside of academics and prayer workouts, Halligan enjoys participating in intramural club sports including volleyball, field hockey, softball, and baseball. She also particularly enjoys the retreats which are held at the Chapman Lake Retreat Center. Halligan said that her trip to the Mexico border with the International Service Program was probably the coolest thing she had done at The University thus far. She also is starting to interpret at the Leahy Clinic this semester.

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Prayer Workouts go beyond aerobics room - The Aquinas

Manchester United have announced plans to beef up security at their training ground.

The club are proposing a range of new security measures at their 44 hectare Carrington base in Trafford including 11ft high gates, new automatic lift barriers, bollards and modifying existing fencing.

The club say these are necessary to manage those coming in and out of the site and ensure players and staff safe, especially given United's 'high profile.'

Planning documents submitted by the club to Trafford Council last month say: "These measures will upgrade existing security measures that are in place.

"This level of security is required due to the high profile of Manchester United and to continue to ensure that visitors are controlled and the complex remains secure.

"The gates will provide the complex with a secure boundary."

They add: "The proposed works are required to ensure that the world class status of the AON Training Complex is maintained.

"There are very special circumstances which clearly and demonstrably outweigh the minimal harm the proposals will have on the Green Belt."

A decision on the planning application is yet to be made.

After the Manchester Arena attack in May, United bosses introduced new security measures at Old Trafford with increased searches and nothing bigger than a 'small handbag' allowed inside.

Last May, the stadium had to be evacuated and their final Premier League game of the season against Bournemouth abandoned after a mock explosive device was found in a toilet block, which had left behind after a training excercise.

Around the same time the club successfully applied to erect new 26 foot high fences around the training base in a bid to keep prying eyes away from their sessions.

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Manchester United announce plans for ring of steel around their Carrington training ground - Manchester Evening News

Having fouled Earth with the works of their modern substitute for religion, science and technology, liberals imagine they can build a perfect world in outer space by means of science and technology that are now more advanced than they were in the past, or so it is boasted. It is what NASA has been about since the agencys inception. The effort has been joined in recent years by billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with space projects of their own financed by them. However, there is a fly in the liberals ointment.

It is that their planned perfect world would be inhabited by imperfect human beings, men and women who are often irrational, some to the degree that they persist in holding to the preposterous notion that a Palestinian peasant two thousand years ago was God, and all of them subject to emotions which can be unruly and lead to messy situations. This, despite liberalism with its belief in the perfectibility of man, having long ago replaced religion as the core around which the life of society is lived.

Some very rich and powerful men, not to speak of scientists and technologists of like mind, think there is now a solution to the problem (as they see it) of human imperfection. It is called transhumanism. Perhaps you have heard of it. The literature of transhumanism is quite extensive. Heavily funded foundations promote it. References to it show up regularly in mass media. Persons under forty are apt to talk about it at social gatherings when they want to appear to have intellectual interests.

Like Christianity ever since the so-called Reformation shattered the unity of the Faith, sectarian differences exist within transhumanism, but all its adherents believe in, work toward, or otherwise support an undertaking of the kind that could only be conceived in a post-Christian age like ours: melding human beings and computers. The idea is to upload artificial intelligence (A.I.) into men so they will become, transhumanists say, more than human. Christians would say it will make them, if successful, less so, but were not going to get into that here.

Not all Christians would say it anyway. Although most transhumanists are atheists, they recognize the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin as a precursor. To anyone looking for clarity of thought and expression the woolly verbiage of Teilhards writings make them difficult to read, but it is possible to get his drift. It appeals to the kind of Catholics who strive to reconcile truths taught by the Church with science and technology in order to rationalize their dependence on machines to transport them, cool them, make things for them, entertain them, keep them alive in some circumstances, do more and more of their thinking for them.

Being a paleontologist, Teilhard was a great believer in evolution. What he envisioned, decades before the development of the internet and worldwide web, was all machines linked in a network by which, and in which, human minds would merge, all consciousness becoming unified so that it would eventually break through the material framework of Time and Space and arrive at what he called Omega Point the Divine, Christ. Of course at that point human beings would not be as we know them and as they have always existed.

Julian Huxley, the famed British eugenicist, was a close friend of Teilhard, but a non-believer. In a 1951 lecture he presented a secularized version of Teilhard: Such a broad philosophy might perhaps be called, not Humanism, because that has certain unsatisfactory connotations, but Transhumanism. It is the idea of humanity attempting to overcome its limitations and to arrive at fuller fruition

Oh, those irksome limitations! (i.e., irrational beliefs and emotions.)

Many transhumanists see Christian belief in particular as positively threatening. Simon Young, one of their leading thinkers, has written: The greatest threat to humanitys continued evolution is theistic opposition to Superbiology in the name of a belief system based on blind faith in the absence of evidence.

Perhaps the most influential transhumanist thinker is Ray Kurzwell, a director of engineering at Google. A book he wrote in 1999, The Age of Spiritual Machines, is a kind of bible of the movement. The twenty-first century will be different, he said therein. The human species, along with the computerized technology it created, will be able to solve age-old problemsand will be in a position to change the nature of mortality in a postbiological future.

Change the nature of mortality? He means his spiritual machines will live forever, their bodies incorruptible, immune to disease and decay. To acquire knowledge, all theyll have to do is upload it effortlessly to their brains.

Kurzwell calls the point in evolution where this happens Singularity. It is analogous to Teilhards Omega Point.

Some transhumanists, including Kurzwell, talk about resurrecting the dead. Theyll do it, they think, using the DNA we all leave behind. This is where space travel comes back into the picture, though in a way unforeseen by the men who launched NASA: What with the dead being brought back to life and everybody living forever (as spiritual machines), it wont take long before Earth really is overpopulated. Migration to other planets will be necessary.

The billionaire Elon Musk identifies as a transhumanist. Besides developing the Tesla electric automobile, he is best known for Space X, a project for developing reusable rockets with a view to their eventually transporting men and material to Mars for human colonization of the Red Planet. (Since there is no oxygen on Mars, vehicles on the planet will have to be powered by electricity. Hence the Tesla.)

Peter Thiel is another billionaire transhumanist and financial angel to enterprises like Future of Humanity Institute and Singularity University. Although he was given a speakers slot at last years Republican National Convention, he is less well known to the public than Elon Musk. Born in Germany and now a citizen of New Zealand, he was a co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, is openly gay, a huge fan of Tolkein (he says he has read Lord of the Rings more than ten times), was a member of the Libertarian Party until 2016, and seems to have an unerring instinct for placing himself where power and influence can be had. His membership on the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group shows that. So did his being named to the executive committee of Donald Trumps transition team after Trump won last Novembers election (he had contributed $1.25 million to the Trump presidential campaign). It is known that he is a partner of Jared Kushner in one of the latters investment operations. Oh, he also describes himself as a Christian but acknowledges that his beliefs are not orthodox. His financial contributions to transhumanism are weighted toward life-extension and age-reversal projects. (At one point, pre-PayPal, Thiel was a speech-writer for William Bennett when the former drug czar and U.S. Secretary of Education was marketing himself as a morality guru with books like The Book of Virtues and The Childrens Book of Virtues, but grew tired of the job and quit before the public learned that Bennett was a compulsive gambler who had blown millions of dollars at Las Vegas casinos.)

The defense of civilization requires vigilance, but guarding against treachery from within is hard. Western Christian civilization has been undone by leaders who were really Judases, beginning with the priests, bishops and princes who led millions out of the Church at the time of the Protestant revolt commonly called the Reformation. They were followed by the Revolution which first overthrew Christian government in France in 1789 and has continued to unroll so that it does not now exist anywhere. More recently there were the culture wars, which Christians could never have won, not with the weight of modernity against them.

Why? The Judas factor again. Christianity demands sanctification for entrance into Heaven; and self-denial, self-abnegation, self-discipline are requisite to it. Too many modern Christians, faith and belief run out of them, including belief in Heaven except maybe as a place where everybody will go anyway, have preferred self-aggrandizement instead. What they want is all that will make things easier for self or, better yet, enhance it. What could do that to a greater degree than the promise of immortality, especially immortality without pesky emotions and irrational beliefs to mar its perfection?

The trouble is that only a computer could see such a state of things as perfect.

Footnote: Transhumanists argue among themselves as to whether the right of anyone to stay human, especially for religious reasons, should be respected and protected. If these people ever exercise more power and influence than they already do, the argument will probably prove pointless. When most remaining Christians arent Christian enough to face life without the benefits of modernitys existing appurtenances smartphones, processed foods, automobiles, television, air-conditioning, etc., etc. how many will choose Heaven in whose existence they can believe only by faith over the scientific certainty of life in the here and now forever and ever?

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Transhumanism - Catholicism.org

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.

Its the book that gives you tomorrows news today! Get your autographed copy of The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians and the End of the Age.

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.'

One of the greatest mysteries in Scripture solved at last! Discover the terrifying truth behind the shadowy identity of one of the greatest horrors of the end times. New York Times bestselling author Joel Richardson reveals the secret of Mystery Babylon, available now in the WND Superstore.

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.

An incredible story about finding Gods light in a time of darkness. Dont miss this testimony about faith in the midst of the Holocaust. Trapped In Hitlers Hell, now available as a book or documentary now in the WND Superstore.

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.

Extraordinary events predicted centuries in advance are unfolding now. Here is your guide to the incredible prophecies being fulfilled before our very eyes. Dont miss the bestselling sensation from one of Americas most prolific and beloved pastors. When the Lion Roars: Understanding the Implications of Ancient Prophecies for Our Time by Carl Gallups, available now in the WND Superstore.

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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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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

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.

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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.

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Christian transhumanism? Yes, says pastor - WND.com