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the assumptions of the scientific materialist, which reduce human per-
sons to their biological parts and biotechnological enhancements.
This reductionism is reinforced by Damien Broderick in his discus-
sion of the mind-body problem and the phenomenon of consciousness
when he argues for equating the mind with the brain on the basis of
the dominant scientific materialism of the cognitive neurosciences:
The fleshy body is not a prison for some impalpable mind-stuff. That is
the error of dualism; philosophy and science alike have taken centuries to
escape it. Mind is flesh, we know of no other kind [emphasis added].32
Biotechnology and Competing Worldviews 43
Broderick recognizes that reducing consciousness to material prop-
erties is the subject of significant philosophical debate today yet accepts
the system that he calls   the unfinished materialist account of cognitive
science.  He contrasts what he calls   ancient dogmas  from both East-
ern and Western religious traditions supporting an immaterial aspect in
a person with what he calls transhumanists   materialists who main-
tain that mind is indeed nothing other than the sublimely complex
workings of the physical brain and its bodily extensions.  He asks:   If
that is what we are, what is to prevent us from copying mapping our
neurological complexity into some more durable, swifter material sub-
strate?  33 This process he calls uploading, a concept addressed by a vari-
ety of the futurist advocates of biotechnology, and it too presumes a
materialist view of the world. He does exactly that when he presupposes
that   mind and passion and soul are indeed the body, that whirling
composite of matter and force and energy, in motion in the world.  34
Here he clearly reduces what are commonly taken to be immaterial
components of a person to their physical properties and argues that that
is all they are.
One technology envisioned by many of the futurist advocates of bio-
technology is the process of uploading the information contained in
one s brain into another body. Kurzweil and others suggest that at
some point it will be possible not only to have neural enhancements
but also to scan the brain with its entire neural system and transfer it
to a computer or to another body, a process they term instantiation.
Although Kurzweil argues that identity is not a function of the parts
but rather   the pattern of matter and energy we represent,  identity is
still ultimately reducible to the materia.35 He envisions what would hap-
pen if a person s neural material were scanned and transferred, then
subsequently destroyed after it had been instantiated in a new body or
computer. This, he suggests, might be killing the person or having that
person commit suicide, which implies that the essence of the person is
subsumed in the brain. He clarifies this equation of the person with the
brain when he argues that when the neural material is instantiated in
another medium, a   newly emergent person  will appear. In his work,
he links spiritual experience with the brain and suggests a neurological
44 CHAPTER THREE
basis for spiritual experience, insisting that the next generation of ma-
chines will   connect with their spiritual dimension.  36
In his most recent volume, the massive 650-page The Singularity Is
Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Kurzweil prophesies that the
  singularity  may be upon us by 2045. The Singularity is a future pe-
riod that   will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological
thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is
still human but that transcends our biological roots.  In this world,
maintains Kurzweil,   There will be no distinction . . . between human
and machine or between physical and virtual reality.  37
Limitations and Contradictions of Philosophical Naturalism
It would be difficult to imagine a worldview more at odds with Chris-
tian theism than philosophical naturalism. In terms of Christian meta-
physics, God is the ultimate reality, and there is a realm of reality that
is not material. Epistemologically, what can be empirically verified
clearly does count for knowledge but knowledge is not limited to that
realm. God reveals Himself and His truth both through general revela-
tion in His world and through special revelation in His Word. Those
aspects of revelation also count for real knowledge and cannot be dis-
counted or marginalized as   belief.  From a Christian perspective,
human beings are made in God s image, the result of the intimate spe-
cial creation by God, not random forces apart from divine intention and
intelligence. Human beings have special significance by virtue of being [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]