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Transhumanism (also referred to as "posthumanism") is the idea that in the distant future, science and technology will allow human beings to gain one or more of the following qualities:

  • Immortality except in the most severe and rare circumstances (such as falling into a star)
  • Invulnerability to sickness, injury, or rapid ability to heal and regenerate except in the most severe and rare circumstances (such as being trapped in orbit around a star)
  • The ability to adapt to almost all environments that could possibly exist in the universe without any protection (e.g. being able to live in the hard vacuum of deep space without a space suit or space craft)
  • Super strength
  • Super speed
  • Powered flight within a gaseous or liquid medium or even hard vacuum
  • Ability to absorb, store, and utilize a wide range of possible energy sources from ambient heat to cosmic rays (this would also entail the ability to perceive these energies)
  • Enormous raw processing power and speed of thought relative to a modern human brain
  • Thought transference with any species
  • The ability to manipulate matter at the molecular or even atomic level with total precision which would entail
    • the ability to change shape and color and resemble any object of equal mass perfectly
    • the ability to move through dense solid objects
    • the ability to replicate any object given sufficient available raw mass with all necessary constituent elements
    • the ability to clone one's self and merge with one's clones to form back into a single being
    • the ability to merge with other life forms into one being

Secular Objections

Some argue that a technological state where such things are possible will never be achieved while others says such power should never be allowed for anyone to possess even if it was possible. There are also sentimental reasons for why people object to the idea of transhumanism ranging from the prospect that sex will become obsolete to the idea that transhumans will be cold and indifferent to what we would call "humanity" in a way similar to the character Dr. Manhattan, from the graphic novel The Watchmen, behaved. Some fear that the concept of a transhuman is so alien in relation to the modern human that it would be analogous to an ant that becomes a human who still wants to have normal interaction with their ant society; however, the reality of the transition from modern human to transhuman would be gradual and come in stages, with the gradual replacement of tissues and organs with cybernetic tissues and organs over many decades.

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