What will happen when technology allows us to direct our own evolution? Transhumanists advocate for the development and distribution of technologies that will enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities, even eliminate aging. What if the dystopian futures and transhumanist utopias found in the pages of science journals, Margaret Atwood novels, films like Gattaca, and television shows like Dark Angel are realized? What kind of world would humans have created? Maxwell J. Mehlman considers the promises and perils of using genetic engineering in an effort to direct the future course of human evolution. He addresses scientific and ethical issues without choosing sides in the dispute between transhumanists and their challengers. However, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares reveals that radical forms of genetic engineering could become a reality much sooner than many people think, and that we need to encourage risk-management efforts. Whether scientists are dubious or optimistic about the prospects for directed evolution, they tend to agree on two things. First, however long it takes to perfect the necessary technology, it is inevitable that humans will attempt to control their evolutionary future, and second, in the process of learning how to direct evolution, we are bound to make mistakes. Our responsibility is to learn how to balance innovation with caution.

Mediating Black religious studies, spirituality studies, and liberation theology, Philip Butler explores what might happen if Black people in the United States merged technology and spirituality in their fight towards materializing liberating realities. The discussions shaping what it means for humans to exist with technology and as part of technology are already underway: transhumanism suggests that any use of technology to augment intellectual, psychological, or physical capability makes one transhuman. In an attempt to encourage Black people in the United States to become technological progenitors as a spiritual act, Butler asks whether anyone has ever been 'just' human? Butler then explores the implications of this question and its link to viewing the body as technology. Re-imagining incarnation as a relationship between vitality, biochemistry, and genetics, the book also takes a critical scientific approach to understanding the biological embodiment of Black spiritual practices. It shows how current and emerging technologies might align with the generative biological states of Black spiritualities in order to concretely disrupt and dismantle oppressive societal structures.

Should technology be used to improve human faculties such as cognition and longevity? This thought-provoking dialogue between "transhumanism" and religion examines enhancement technologies that could radically alter the human species. "Transhumanism" or "human enhancement" is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates the use of emerging technologies to change human traits. Although they may sound like science fiction, the possibilities suggested by transhumanism are very real, and the questions they raise have no easy answers. If these enhancements—especially major ones like the indefinite extension of healthy human life—become widely available, they would arguably have a more radical impact on humankind than any other development in history. This book comprises essays that explore transhumanism and the issues that surround it, addressing numerous fascinating questions posed by scholars of religion from various traditions. How will "immortality" or extreme longevity change our religious beliefs and practices? How might pharmaceuticals enhance spiritual experiences? Will "post-human" technologies be available to all persons, or will a superior "post-human race" arise to dominate the human species? The discussions are as intriguing as the future they suggest.

Christians have always been concerned with enhancement—now they are faced with significant questions about how technology can help or harm genuine spiritual transformation. What makes traditional and technological enhancement different from each other? Are there theological insights and spiritual practices that can help Christians face the challenge of living in a technological world without being dangerously conformed to its values? This book calls on Christians to understand and engage the deep issues facing the church in a technological, transhumanist future.

John Hammett’s and Katie McCoy’s Humanity is built on four assumptions: that humans are creatures, that they can only be understood in light of the intentions of their Creator, that the Creator’s intentions are revealed in the pages of Scripture, and that humans enjoy a truly and fully human life only when they live in accordance with their created nature. Thus, this work seeks to offer a biblical perspective on human nature as designed by God.

Should transhuman and posthuman persons ever be brought into existence? And if so, could they be generated in a good and loving way? This study explores how society may respond to the actual generation of new kinds of persons from ethical, philosophical, and theological perspectives. Contributors to this volume address a number of essential questions, including the ethical ramifications of generating new life, the relationships that generators may have with their creations, and how these creations may consider their generation. This collection's interdisciplinary approach traverses the philosophical writings of Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, alongside theological considerations from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. It invites academics, faith leaders, policy makers, and stakeholders to think through the ethical gamut of generating posthuman and transhuman persons.

This work studies three twenty-first century novels by Richard Powers, Dave Eggers and Don DeLillo as representative of a new trend of US fiction concerned with the topic of the technological augmentation of the human condition. The different chapters provide, from the double perspective of the optimistic transhumanist philosophy and the more balanced approach of critical posthumanism, an overview of the narrative strategies used by the writers to explore the possibilities that biotechnology, digital technologies and cryonics open up to transcend our human limitations, while also warning their readers of their most nefarious consequences. Ultimately, the book puts forward the claim that even if the writers approach the subject from a variety of perspectives and using different narrative styles and techniques, they all share a critical posthumanist fear that an unrestrained and unquestioned use of technology for enhancement purposes may bring about disembodiment and dehumanization.