Re: FAQ: CULTURAL VIEWPOINT

Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Sun, 26 Jul 1998 13:30:44 +0000

At 08:51 AM 7/25/98 EDT, Greg wrote:

<beautifully expressed stuff, as always>

>Transhumanists do not see mankind as a fallen angel, somehow divorced and
>alienated from a romanticized "nature", but rather as merely the current
>leading edge of a process of progressive evolution in the natural world.
The
>transhumanist world view is a redemption of the optimism of the Enlightenment
>of the 18th Century, a New Enlightenment reinvigorated by a deeper
>understanding of consciousness as an integral part of natural evolution.

This flies in the face of almost every accepted technical understanding of evolution. `Progressive evolution' is *exactly* the prime instance of `a romanticized "nature" ', I'd argue. It sounds more like Theosophy than science. (Sorry.)

Damien Broderick