“In a newly-resurfaced interview, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and longtime ally of President Donald Trump, Peter Thiel [former CEO of PayPal], said he believes Biblical concepts like the Antichrist and Armageddon stem from the potential of catastrophic technologies that could lead to a totalitarian one-world government.”

Thiel sees Christianity supporting many of his own underlying beliefs.

Biblical Reality – Of course “Biblical concepts like the Antichrist and Armageddon” do not come from man’s paranoia, but from God’s inerrant Word. However, the rest of his premise on “catastrophic technologies” remains valid.

Thiel, when asked the question, “Should the human race continue?” responded by saying what many see as the holy grail within the transhuman community… that humanity is a terminal condition as it presently stands and transhumanism is the ultimate solution for our immortality. He sees the Christian doctrines of redemption and resurrection as precursors for a total transformation by concurring death entirely.

Transhumanists believe that the mind is the most important part of the human body, and it will be the last organ mankind will have the ability to replace. However, once successful, we will achieve immortality.

Biblical Reality – Our soul is, instead, the single most important part of mankind and only God is charged with establishing our immortality (Matthew 16:26, 10:28, 2l Timothy 1:10).

Transhumanism Looking Forward

The concept of replacing human body parts has been around for a very long time. The first lung transplant took place in Jackson Mississippi, in 1963, and the first heart transplant (1967) in Cape Town South Africa. Today, our kidneys, liver, pancreas, intestines, corneas, skin, bone marrow, and tendons can all be transplanted. The brain and central nervous system remains the only major organ(s) that currently are non-replaceable as a single unit.

Of course, there are many ongoing research projects in the areas of neural interfaces, stem cell manipulation, brain mapping, and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) as precursors to understanding the operations of our brain. Many outside the transhumanism community believe that replacing our mind with an electronic surrogate will eventually happen, but not in our lifetime. Those with a broader view of Artificial Intelligence disagree with the expectation that applying AI to the challenge will significantly reduce the lead time.

The term “brain uploading” (or whole-brain emulation) is what many see as the pathway to earthly human immortality. It involves making a comprehensive map of the brain’s neural connections.

A Biblical Christian Consideration

Of course, to many, all this is talk of humanity escaping death under its own technology seems ridiculous, and for good reason. We have always been taught that the human mind is beyond our ability to fully comprehend. It is, in large part, what makes us human in the first place… especially true for those who do not see God’s hand in creation.

However, as the sciences of biology, artificial intelligence, and medical advances continue at an accelerated pace, it is hard to predict when the sum total of our life experiences will not be digitally mapped and recorded in an “off-line” storage device. Ethical and moral considerations will be shoved aside when man begins to have hope that it is possible to avoid death. At that point, the real question becomes… will God allow man to create his own eternal life or will He crush it as He did at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9).

POSTSCRIPT: A reader brought to my attention that Peter Thiel is NOT an atheist. He considers himself a Christian and has stated, “I believe Christianity to be true. I don’t feel a compelling need to convince other people of that.” This was my mistake and thanks to the reader who caught the error and cared enough to challenge me on it. This post has been modified to reflect that correction.