Someone needs to read "Oryx and Crake".
Give me humans every time. They smell, they get sick, they do all sorts of stupid things from time to time, but there's an element of humor and loss and comfortable cheer about human beings. Life among the transhumans would be like Lothlorien as written by Ayn Rand. Brrr.
"Lothlorien as written by Ayn Rand. Brrr."
Wow. I need another cupacoffee just to begin to grasp that concept. Elinor gets the perfect phrase of the week award.
"According to Nick Bostrom, a young philosopher at Oxford and a leading transhumanist:
Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning..."
Well, I'd agree that something here is half-baked...
Wow...the last section of the "Abolition of Man" comes to mind. The 'Conditioners' as Lewis calls them...those with the power choosing what *humanity* is to look like. Amazing how far in the toilet modern philosophical thought has gone. I always thought philosophy was about truth and wisdom...oh well, stupid me...They talk about increasing utility and functionality (like the 6-Million Dollar Man) but they totally miss any thought about *who* we are. I wonder what kind of blather they would produce in response to the Personalist philosophy of JPII and Dr. John Crosby? Can we say vocal flatulence? 
Mike, how about "verbal diarrhea"? Haven't seen so much polysyllabic airy persiflage in a dog's age ... they must have busted the thesaurus on this one! Me humble musician; me not understand such lofty, esoteric discourse ... just 'piano,pianissimo' and 'tacet' (which is Latin or Italian for "shut up, dodos!")
Patricia, LOL! That is the only way they even remotely (and I mean remotely!) sound intelligent.
1. Come up with *really* stupid idea
2. Try to get paid for it.
3. Get *big* dictionary of words
4. Impress all with your *vocabulary*
5. Listen to other *philosophers* (who don't know what the hell they or the originator of #1 are saying ) show *their* intellectual acumen by what StongBad would call 'sophiwizerdry' or gud feudin' :D
What gets me about the secular humanists is that they're almost never humanists (or, I should say, those who self-identify as "secular humanists" aren't humanists. I have non-believing friends who actually are humanists.)
I think Fr. Rutler described SUs as of the world, but not exactly in it.
Um, gee, wasn't that nice . . .
I like the irony of that one fellow changing his name to "More", though. My fiance is a More scholar so I've just been hearing lots about humanists lately, but obviously not this kind of humanist! ;^)
The crafters of humanity ("the conditioners") will never be able to transcend themselves based on themselves. Think "lifting yourself by the ladder you're standing on." It would take a transhuman to achieve transhumanhood.
Further, it should be obvious after a century of social behaviorism/ conditionalism that extrinsic conditiong does little if anything to change a person internally (think Clockwork Orange and the USSR). The only hope is for a seperate agent to gain an internal foothold and work from the inside out. Think the Holy Spirit. We are not actually SELF-conscious; we are conscious of ourselves in RELATION to the other. Hence we cannot be SELF-regulating. We can only submit (think Bob Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody").
This transhumanism has one of two fates: sputter and die in the playpen of academia OR actually get some steam and backfire on the crafters -- in an orgiastic mutiny of transhuman slaughtering (think 2001's HAL and Alien's cyborgs).
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