Back to the Future

I wonder what God thinks... And does He even have to? (think, that is)
  --Random Thought of the Day from @theologetical 

[With apologies to Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown, this post's title is a double entendre.]

Last night I happened to catch most of an episode of a series called Year Million on the National Geographic Channel. I thought it was pretty interesting, but the content raises some difficult questions. I find most fascinating the potential for nanobots to repair our broken bodies from the inside out, the pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality, designer children, and the notion of extending our life expectancy (quixotic as it may be) hundreds of years or more; however, I cannot see how humans will ever achieve a perfect-- or even near-perfect-- existence.

What is equally as disturbing to me (as it is fascinating to me) is the concept of one's self (as opposed to the pronoun oneself) as a commodity, rather than a unique entity-- this particular episode I caught offered a hypothetical glimpse into the far-flung future, where present-day manifestations of human imperfection will no longer exist or even be a threat. Cancer, addiction, Alzheimer's. All physical evils will be eradicated, like smallpox. There was even talk of uploading one's mind-- memory, knowledge, skills, and all-- to something referred to as a "Matrioshka brain," an AI repository for one's consciousness. Theoretically (though light-years away from realistically), a person-- and I use term loosely-- could reside forever in a virtual reality world.

But what makes us who we we are, sentient creations aware of our surroundings, singularly different than others with whom we share so many commonalities? Humans have a brain, but also a mind. Each of us has a unique genetic signature, as well as a unique personality. Predilections, phobias, abilities, and faith vary greatly among our species. Who is to decide what, exactly, constitutes human perfection (or, to rephrase more secularly, the perfect human)?

Each person on this Earth has a consciousness and, if you are willing to believe, a soul (that ineffable part of a human unlimited by the body). Tinkering with genes is one thing, but how can a person's mind, with or without consciousness (if that's even possible), be transferred into some virtual realm minus the soul? It's all sounds very sketchy to me, yet I must admit, again, that the content of this episode does pique my curiosity. (And what will happen to faith if the world actually believes that Man has succeeded in creating Heaven-- even if only a SimCity version-- rather than the other way around?)

There just something about an existence in the Year Million that has a lightning bolt scar on its forehead and bolts in its neck-- the kind of stuff that turns heads and draws crowds, but at the same time repulses basic human sensibility and places God closer to the vanishing point. (And the way I see it, you can get rid of death or you can get rid of God, but you cant get rid of both!)

A closing note from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity:

“The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”

С Богом!