This session will center around emerging religious engagement with transhumanism, including religious transhumanisms and the language used to frame and understand technological ideas and developments. One paper will focus on new forms of religious transhumanism, particularly in Mormon and other Christian communities, and the theological and structural arguments behind those movements, while the other will consider questions of de-extinction, climate change, and ethical responsibility for maintaining species and climate when those become possibilities.
In this paper, I will reveal Rodney Stark’s ten principles that make up his theoretical model of new religious movements. I apply this model to the Mormon Transhumanist Association (MTA). I conclude that this model is inadequate at capturing the intricacies of the MTA, and the model fails to predict the success of religious transhumanist groups more broadly. To foreshadow my arguments in this paper, here are my main objectives: first, I show that the MTA can appropriately be categorized as a new religious movement. Second, I show the ways in which the MTA (and religious transhumanism broadly) challenges traditional concepts within the scholar of religions theoretical toolkit. Third, I attempt to sketch a model that is applicable to religious transhumanists groups since there is not an adequate model that is explanatorily fruitful.
Drawing upon existing scholarship in conservation studies, genetics, and ethics, this paper argues that de-extinction reinforces an anthropocentric view of nature. Furthermore, the pursuit of de-extinction makes it more likely that extinctions caused by human activity will continue and perhaps increase, because de-extinction will be seen as a viable alternative to proactive measures to prevent extinction in the first place. Finally I will look to astrobiology and how scholars are thinking about the exploration and use of other celestial bodies in order to make recommendations regarding de-extinction on Earth as well as potential life elsewhere in the universe. The conclusion will point to how these recommendations also can contribute to discussions of gene editing, human enhancement, and transhumanism.