Without the Holy Spirit there is no church, no church service, no pastor, no sermon, no ministry, and no life. All you then have is just humanistic mush. But we now want to replace even God in our lives, and some churches are happy to go along with this. Sorry, no true Christian ever will. God words without God are nothing. ‘Church services’ without God are nothing. Religious rituals and ceremonies without God are nothing.

Many of the folks pushing things like transhumanism, AI, posthumanism and so on have often made clear the religious nature of their endeavours. They see all this as a new religion offering full and final salvation – but of a radically different sort than traditional religion does.

While many atheists and secularists are enthralled by the bright promises of a new technological future, others with a religious bent are also a part of all this, and are quite happy to tell us how old religions are being transcended and replaced in this world of AI and techno-futurism.

A critic of all this, James Herrick, has written extensively about these matters. In one 2017 collection of essays he offered this summary statement: “Transhumanists speak confidently of achieving goals such as technological immortality, creating computer deities, and radically altering the human race through technological enhancements including genetic and nanotechnological interventions.”

And in another 2017 book he puts it this way:

Religious categories such as miracle, resurrection, eternal life, and God are now contested territory, with old-style spiritual religionists pitted against new-style technological ones. It is no longer a question of science vs. religion, but of new scientific religions vs. old traditional ones.

 A number of observers have suggested that we are currently witnessing the emergence of a powerful new technological religion. Some embrace the possibility while others detect in it serious dangers. As narratives that mingle an aggressive technological agenda with spiritual aspiration, technofuturist myths address the longing expressed by artificial intelligence specialist Hugo de Garis to “invent something” that would satisfy spiritual longing “and satisfy the criteria from your intellect, from your knowledge, from your science.” For de Garis this dream of wedding spiritual longing to technological realities constitutes “a kind of scientifically-based belief system that energizes, that creates a vision, that excites.” De Garis labels this hope, “the idea of god building.” Neuroscientist Sebastian Seung, a critic of Transhumanism, secures the point in writing, “The Bible said that God made man in his own image. The German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said that man made God in his own image. The transhumanists say that humanity will make itself into God.” Yet, the ethical details of this new technological religion are conspicuously absent from the discussion. De Garis, Seung, and many others raise the question: How should we think about the religious aspirations present in the Transhumanist vision?

Two recent items making headlines around the world illustrate the sort of brave new techno-religious worlds we are heading to. And these matters should concern not just Christians but all of us who care about the road we are now travelling on.

The first comes from something Yuval Noah Harari recently has said. You remember him: the atheist, homosexual historian who is often associated with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum and the Great Reset mob. He routinely says stuff that is all rather shocking, and his latest offering was no different. As one report states:

Harari — who has written Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century — spoke last month about the future of AI and said it may soon greatly influence spirituality:

 “It’s the first technology ever that can create new ideas. You know, the printing press, radio, television, they broadcast, they spread the ideas created by the human brain, by the human mind. They cannot create a new idea.

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