The Revolt against Humanity: Imagining a Future without Us

THE REVOLT AGAINST HUMANITY: Imagining a Future without Us by Adam Kirsch. New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2023. 104 pages. Paperback; 16. 00. ISBN: 9781735913766. *In Eden, the serpent lied to Eve about the forbidden fruit. She was told that disobedience would allow her to "be like God. " Already bearing God's image and likeness, Adam and Eve swallowed the serpent's lie, together with the forbidden fruit. Wanting to be more than mere creatures, wanting life on their terms, they sinned against their creator. Likewise, their son Cain wants his way. God rejects Cain's sacrifice but does not reject Cain. Instead, God points to the root cause of Cain's sin and lays out the path to restoration. Cain's response? He kills his brother. *Throughout humanity's long rebellion against God, these two aspirations have persisted, together with their common result. The first, the desire to "be like God, knowing good and evil, " goes beyond intellectual assent to intimacy with evil. And just as "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, " intimacy with what God forbids gives birth to death. Then, unable to sin without consequences, the second aspiration is to destroy, to deface the created order and kill, to embrace death as an escape from God. *The Revolt against Humanity presents and analyzes the latest versions of these longstanding evil choices: transhumanism and Anthropocene antihumanism. Adam Kirsch well describes the heart of the transhumanist vision: the aspiration to transcend our creaturely status. Ray Kurzweil, Max More, and others seek release from all human suffering through science and technology. By human reason alone, they would obtain godlike powers, but not to please God, not to love God and neighbor. Instead, they would overturn God's decree, summarized in Ezekiel 18, that "the soul who sins shall die. " *What do transhumanists think of God? Well, most have no use for the holy God of the Bible. Instead, they would create "spiritual machines, " to use Kurzweil's term, or they would "create God" as members of the "Terasem transreligion, " founded by Martine (formerly Martin) Rothblatt, whose disdain for traditional accounts of humanity and human limitations is expressed in her book, From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Form. With such a god, transhumanists believe that even the heat death of the universe is not an obstacle. Science will surely reveal ways to alter the very laws of the universe, won't it? *Ready to join the transhumanist movement? Few believers would. Instead, they would agree with Christina Bieber Lake's analysis of transhumanism, including the claims of so-called Christian Transhumanism. Her plenary address at ASA's 2021 virtual annual meeting--with responses from John Wood, William Hurlbut, and Brent Waters--shows how its eschatology fails. Technoscientific hyper-postmillennialism presumes that salvation is achievable by human effort. It has no use for Christ's sacrifice for our sins, destroying fundamental Christian doctrines, such as hope in God and divine grace. *Kirsch is no transhumanist. Instead, he sees transhumanism as an optimist's escape from the problems of this world. Yes, those problems may, at least in part, be traced back to science and technology run amok: the depletion of natural resources, pollution and climate change, species extinction, and the broader degradation of nature. These ills threaten what matters most to transhumanists: the mind, with its ever-expanding knowledge, driven by science. *What is the transhumanist solution? Acknowledging that science and technology can be problematic, they still believe more will do the trick, especially as they produce advances in computers and information technology. After all, though minds have emerged from our brains, they see no reason why they must be biological; artificial intelligence will serve just as well, nay, even better. After the singularity, when computer intelligence exceeds that of human beings, biological life will be obsolete. In its place, life will continue in computational systems, human minds being uploaded, either from the living or the dead, their brains preserved through cryonics. *Is transhumanism too optimistic? Perhaps, but Kirsch is concerned about a darker alternative: Anthropocene antihumanism. It sees humanity as an unfortunate and unnatural infestation of Earth. Rather than enhancements to human life, it believes eliminating humanity is the answer. Nature, interpreted as inherently good and robust, would recover. Its wonders would thrive, even if no humans were around to observe it. Indeed, antihumanists seek to eliminate human perspectives of what it means to thrive; anthropocentric definitions got us into this mess, so it is critical to move past them. *Kirsch concludes with a quick survey of the spiritual dimensions, broadly defined, of the rebellion by anti- and transhumanists. He mentions the apocalyptic elements of Christianity and other religious traditions, the hopelessness of H. G. Wells as he anticipated the extinction of human life, Nietzsche's nihilism, Foucault's concerns about "biopolitics, " and the general loss of meaning that has accompanied the rise of godless modern experimental science. With this background, Kirsch looks to the future, but not with confidence. "We can only hope that we don't have the bad luck to be born into the last generation, the one that sees humanity as we have known it disappear. " *Kirsch does not offer a Christian response to the revolt he describes; his spiritual commitments are not clear. Still, The Revolt against Humanity offers a provocative look at where progress has taken us, one Christians should consider. Advances in science and technology offer new ways to fulfill the first and second great commandments, respectively. However, apart from faith in God as their source, they cannot address the despair of a frustrated world. *I recommend Kirsch's book to Christians that view science and technology as inherently good and beneficial. Its few pages are thought-provoking, giving believers many opportunities to reflect and check their Bibles for God's answer to human sin: the gospel of Jesus Christ. I also recommend a "Thinking in Public" interview by Albert Mohler: "The New Religion of Artificial Intelligence and Its Threat to Human Dignity--A Conversation with Adam Kirsch, " recorded April 12, 2023. It is available online at https: //albertmohler. com/2023/04/12/adam-kirsch. *Reviewed by David C. Winyard Sr. , Department of Engineering, Grace College & Seminary, Winona Lake, IN 46590.