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To: ExI-Essay@gnu.ai.mit.edu
From: habs@acf3.NYU.EDU (Harry A. B. Shapiro)
Subject: Transhumanism by Max More
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 7:56:57 EDT
Reply-To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu
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The following is a key essay on Transhumanism written by Max More.
Quotes and other formats indicators appear to be inserted with a
/[number]. I have not removed these as the text is still quite
readable.
This essay is Copyleft.

Transhumanism:
Towards a Futurist Philosophy

Max More


Religion, Humanism, and Transhumanism.

	Humanity is in the early stages of a period of explosive
expansion in knowledge, freedom, intelligence, lifespan, and control
over experience. Yet the race persists in old conceptual structures
which hold us back. One of the worst of these is religion. In this
essay I will show how religion acts as an entropic force, standing
against our advancement into transhumanity and our future as
posthumans. At the same time I will acknowledge the necessary and
positive role that religions have played in giving meaning and
structure to our lives. The alternative to religion is not a
despairing nihilism, nor a sterile scientism, but a transhumanism.
Humanism, while a step in the right direction, contains too many
outdated values and ideas. Extropianism - the form of transhumanism
being developed here - moves beyond humanism, focusing on our
evolutionary future.

	Before launching the discussion it will be helpful to
distinguish between the notions of humanism, transhumanism,
posthumanism, religion, reliberium[1] or eupraxophy[2], and extropianism,
all of which have something in common[3]. Briefly, reliberium derives
from roots meaning to free again, in contrast to religion
which derives from roots meaning to bind again. Both attempt
to provide a context of values and understanding capable of bestowing
or increasing the meaningfulness of our lives. However religion, as
its roots imply, does this by tying its adherents to a particular set
of doctrines in such a way that questioning of its tenets is
discouraged.

	The essence of any religion is faith and worship. Generally
religions hold that there is a god or gods which give our lives
meaning by assigning us a role in a grand plan created and controlled
by external supernatural forces. Our assigned function is to obey and
praise these forces or entities. However, the essence of religion is
faith and worship rather than any belief in a god. A reliberium or
eupraxophy, by contrast, plays a similar fundamental role in that it
is concerned to create or increase meaningfulness, but it is opposed
to faith, dogmatism, ideological authoritarian, and stagnation.

	Reliberium is a broad concept which includes humanism,
transhumanism, posthumanism, and extropianism. Humanism is a
reliberium or philosophy of life that rejects deities, faith, and
worship, instead basing a view of values and meaningfulness on the
nature of humans and their potentials given rationality and science.
Transhumanism is similar but recognizes and anticipates the radical
alterations in the conditions of our existence resulting from various
sciences and technologies such as neuroscience and neuropharmacology,
nanotechnology, artificial ultraintelligence, space habitation, and so
on.

	Posthumanism will develop from transhumanism; its formulation
will probably not be possible before the late 21st century. Finally,
extropianism is the particular version of transhumanism that is being
developed and refined in this journal. The extropian philosophy
affirms the values of Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation,
Dynamic Optimism, and Intelligent Technology.[4]


Why Does Religion Persist?

	Many people find it puzzling and frustrating that religion has
persisted despite enormous advances in scientific understanding. In
order to see why this has been the case and what the future holds for
religion, we need to determine the causes of religion[5]. I suggest that
there are four basic causes: Religion is (a) a pre-scientific system
of explanation and technology; (b) a source of meaning, direction and
emotional expression in life; (c) a means of social control; (d) a
result of the structure of the brain in pre-conscious humans.[6]

	I will comment on (c) and (d) briefly, since I want to focus
on (a) and (b). Understanding religion as a form of social control and
domination probably has little value as an explanation of its origin
since religious belief had to exist before it could be used to this
end. But it is plausible to think that religion has been fostered and
developed by priests and state authorities in order to consolidate
power over their subjects. If you can convince people that your
authority derives from God or gods you will be in a stronger position
than a merely secular authority[7]. This is illustrated by the
historical record which shows that state authority and religious
authority have been held in the same persons; this is still true in
many less developed cultures, such as that of Iran. The entropic
forces of religion and state have synergetically boosted one
another. For instance, the divine right of kings means that
King could do no wrong in law (or morals). Derived from this principle
is the current policy of immunity of government agents in performing
their functions.

	Marx and Engels took essentially this view. They saw religion
as part of an ideology that rationalized the position of the ruling
class, teaching subjects the virtues of meekness, humility, obedience,
non-resistance, and non-retaliation. They saw this as inevitable until
social conditions resulting in alienation and unhappiness were
changed, making religion unnecessary as an opium of the
people. While there is some truth in this view, it ignores the
radical and disrupting nature of some religious movements and
undervalues the role that religions have sometimes played in
undermining statist powers. Religion has occasionally provided a rival
authority rather than a collaborative one.

	 I will only briefly mention Julian Jaynes view that religion may have had its source in the structure of the brain. His idea is that humans only truly became conscious (and not just sentient) about 3000 years ago. Before that, events would trigger voices or visions in the right brain; these were communicated to the left brain (Brocas area, Wernickes area, and the supplementary motor area) where they told the person what to do. Examples of this bicameral cognition can still be found in schizophrenics. Jaynes believes this is the origin of religious experiences such as seeing or hearing divine beings.

	EXPLANATION AND CONTROL: Humans (and transhumans) are marked
by a persistent desire to understand and control their environment and
experience. Before the development of the scientific method, deductive
and inductive logic, game theory, sophisticated epistemic principles
and so on, humans resorted to superficial causal explanations based on
observation for common phenomena, and theistic explanation for unusual
events.[8] Deities were invoked to explain unusual or destructive
phenomena, and to try to provide a comforting model of the
uncertainties and uncontrollable events in life. Storms, floods,
tornados, earthquakes, epidemics and madness could not be tolerated
without some belief about their cause. In the absence of scientific
explanation a religious or theistic explanation was almost inevitable.

	Along with pre-scientific attempts at understanding came a
crude attempt at a technology. A tension is evident here: On the one
hand religions have frequently declared events to be determined by a
divine plan and so have held attempts at changing things to be futile
(this is common in Eastern religions, as well as other religions which
include predestination). On the other hand, religions have offered
certain limited and carefully circumscribed means of changing and
controlling events, such as through prayer, ritual, and magic. The
overall result has been entropic and anti-progressive since religious
technology is ineffective (with the occasional exception of
psychosomatic effects).

	The role of religion in providing explanations, however poor,
of human life and its environment has given way over time to the
superior resources of empirical science. Science has been able to
explain an enormous variety of phenomena, both commonplace and
unusual. Protestations by theists that science has not and cannot
explain the origin of life, the origin of the universe, or the nature
of consciousness are increasingly ridiculous as we continue to learn
and discover.[9]

	An objection to this view of the origin and strength of
religion is that it is unclear why religion is persisting and even
growing as scientific triumphs abound. This objection makes two
mistakes however. First, as I am showing, there are other sustaining
causes of religion that do not entirely or closely depend on the
development of science. Second, the apparent strength and resurgence
of religion is, I believe, an illusion generated from a limited
perspective.[10] Certainly religion is not declining rapidly, and is
continually taking new forms (such as New Age mysticism), but seen
over a span of decades and centuries the trend is clear enough. Late
twentieth century religion is very much less powerful than religion in
the Middle Ages. In the past religion dominated all aspects of life
and the idea of a separation of Church and state would have been
considered incomprehensible and wicked.

	The illusion is strong in North America, where TV evangelists
have benefitted from modern media exposure. A higher and louder
profile does not necessarily mean that religion is actually more
powerful. Europeans see the decline of religion more clearly. The
numbers of people attending churches, and the strength of religious
conviction have declined drastically. It is a notorious fact that a
high percentage of priests and ministers themselves have weak or
non-existent beliefs. As science continues to squeeze out religion
from its role in explanation, this factor in the persistence of
religion will weaken. Just as important as the development of science
in weakening religion is the scientific education of the population -
something which is extremely poor in our monopolized and primitive
state schools.[11]
	    
	MEANING AND EMOTION: For psychological health and strength
humans need to have metaphysical and existential beliefs capable of
endowing their lives with a sense of meaningfulness. Religion does a
fairly effective job at this, especially considering the falsity of
its tenets. Religion is most effective in bolstering the
psychologically weak - those who find life a burden: You have a
friend in Jesus. So long as you obey the rules and believe you
will rewarded; you neednt be too concerned at being a loser.
Religion operates as a philosophical band-aid, sheltering weak selves,
but it is poor at positively promoting individual and social
evolution. In being part of anothers grand plan one gains the
illusion of meaningfulness, even if it is the kind of meaningfulness
the peasant felt under feudalism.[12]

	By providing a complexly structured myth religions add drama
to life, provide usable moral categories, and allow the expression of
emotions unique to humans, such as metaphysical joy, love of abstract
principle, and identification with deep values outside the self. One
of the most gripping of religions appeals is its ability to allow
the feeling and expression of these powerful and transcendent
emotions. An isolated self can neither express itself nor actualize
and connect to broad values. By letting in the holy spirit or
some other link to a divine being or force, one steps beyond the
confines of ones self as it is and connects into a meaningful
condition. This feature of religious belief is related to its
explanatory role since the being or forces which provide the
meaningful structure also have important effects - such as creating,
sustaining, structuring, and destroying humanity, the planet or the
universe.

	Ludwig Feuerbach[13] explained how religion conceives
God and gods in anthropocentric terms. Man - this is the
mystery of religion - projects his being onto objectivity, and then
again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself.
(p.29). Feuerbach characterizes God as the self-consciousness of man
freed from all discordant elements. Looking beyond ourselves as we are
is a good thing, but externalizing our values is both alienating and
an abdication of responsibility. As I will explain below,
transhumanism focusses not on an external state of current perfection
(as imagined by us with our near-primitive minds) but on a
internalized process of growth and expansion taking us into the
future.[14]

	As a strategy (generally unconscious) to create
meaningfulness, religion is a failure. This is only partly because it
is based on ignorance or rejection of evidence and rationality. Even
if reality contained the entities and forces claimed to exist, any
remotely objective meaning would be absent.[15] What kind of role in a
divine plan could endow us with meaning? Being a trivial element of a
plan would not satisfy us. We want to be near the center of the plan
and to play an important and positive role. If the cosmic role of
human beings was to provide a negative lesson to some others
(dont act like them) or to provide needed food to
intergalactic travelers who were important, this would not suit our
aspirations...The role should focus on aspects of ourselves that we
prize or are proud of, and it should use these in ways connected with
the reasons why we prize them. (Nozick. p.586-7). Even this would
not be sufficient. Fulfilling our role in the plan might require our
voluntary compliance, or it might be imposed on us. If it is our
choice, we may have no good reason to cooperate. In either case
its unclear how fitting the plan could give us meaning. Even if it
did give us meaning it may not be good for us. A further problem
arises when we ask what it is that gives Gods purposes
meaningfulness; I refer the reader to Nozick for a tale concerning
Gods crisis of meaningfulness.

Religion as Entropic

	The urgency of the need to replace religion with another form
of meaning-fostering system is all the more evident when we think of
the inherent irrationalism of religion and its entropic retardation of
progress.[16] As I have noted, essential to religion is faith. This does
not mean a rational, pragmatic decision to adopt a hypothesis; faith,
in the pertinent sense, means a fixed belief which persists in the
face of contrary evidence. As I stressed in my In Praise of the
Devil (EXTROPY #4), hostility to reason may be explicit (as in
Luther) or it may be revealed only after some probing of beliefs. This
is true not only of traditional religions such as Christianity and
Islam, and their offshoots such as Mormonism, but also of the diverse
variants on New Age mysticism. Those who believe in astrology,
crystals, angelic forces, and guiding aliens are not interested in
evidence or plausibility.

	Irrationality, the rejection of our best means of cognition,
is necessarily dangerous and entropic. Entropy - the loss of order,
information, and usable energy, is promoted by faith. Extropic values
of increasing intelligence, freedom, enjoyment, longevity, and
expansion can only be achieved by the most scrupulous employment of
reason, science, logic, and critical thinking.

	Apart from subverting extropic progress, the irrational faith
of religion encourages an attitude of resignation. Why bother to try
to improve ones lot if its Gods Will or The
Cosmic Plan? On the one hand believers cannot take badness and
evil seriously: Given the existence of perfect goodness and power, the
bad aspects of life must be illusory, or unimportant compared to the
afterlife. On the other hand, religious beliefs are usually accepted
because of the persons pessimistic, hopeless view of the human
situation (or their personal condition). The surface contradiction is
eliminated when we see that the overall view is of a tragic human
condition made bearable by a separate realm of divinity, salvation,
and paradise.

	Where religion offers faith in the invisible and unknowable,
transhumanism embodies the extropic principle of dynamic optimism.
Unlike faiths unquestioning belief in a superior realm to be
bestowed on us through divine agency, dynamic optimism is an
internally generated motivation for progress. It an attitude that
looks at evidence, trends, and capacities, but goes beyond them (not
against them) in setting inspiring goals in order to empower us to
move forward, upward, and outward. It says (literally!): Never say
die. Our goals and direction for the future are not rigidly
determined by what we think we know now, since what we understand and
what we can accomplish increases daily. Dynamic optimism makes full
use of our current understanding and abilities and directs us to move
beyond them. The extropian rejects the common culture of negativity,
the focus on negatives, the defence of stagnation and tradition, and
advocates a surging forward into a bright future.

	The extropian striving for something better than what we have
exists in religion in an irrationalist-fantasy form, in which a
superior existence is given to us by a divine force, an existence only
truly accessible after our physical death and decay. Locating
Paradise in another realm removes from us the necessity and
point of taking responsibility for our condition by using reason and
technology to transform it. Sometimes Paradise is located (perhaps
temporarily) in this world, but it will be brought about by divine
power and not by our own efforts. Religion says we need not and should
seek physical immortality through life extension, biostasis and so on,
since we are already guaranteed these in the afterlife. The Christian
notion of salvation by the act of Jesus, rather than through our own
restitution for wrongs and our self-transformation, can similarly
result in moral hazard. Religion justifies complacency and stagnation.
The religionist has no answer to the extropian challenge put by
Nietzsches Zarathustra: I teach you the overman. Man is
something that is to be overcome. What have you done to overcome
him?[17]
   
Nihilism

	These defects are easy to overlook when it seems that the
alternative is[18] - a belief in the absence of meaning and
purpose. The nihilist view, as put by Peter Atkins[19] holds that  At
root there is only corruption and the unstemmable tide of chaos.
Nihilism says that there is no truth about the way things are; the
world is valueless and purposeless. As Hans Kung puts it, nihilism
represents itself as insight into the nothingness,
contradictoriness, meaninglessness, worthlessness, of reality."[20]

	I will not explain whats wrong with nihilism in detail
here.[21] I agree with Nietzsche (in The Will to Power) that nihilism is
only a transitional stage resulting from the breakdown of an erroneous
interpretation of the world. We now have plenty of resources to leave
nihilism behind, affirming a positive (but continually evolving)
value-perspective.

	Briefly, for the assumption that there is unity (i.e.,
the view that there is some regularity to be discovered) and truth to
be justified requires only a critical rationalism - that is, pragmatic
and fallibilistic, but optimistic empiricism. If there are
regularities then our best strategy for discovering them is a
fallibilist but optimistic empiricism.

	A reply to nihilism about value is more involved,[22] but
essentially involves the observation that we are faced with choices,
alternatives, and have conflicting desires that call for ethical
principles. There is no objective value; value is a product of
consciousness. Our situation as conscious beings faced with choices
demands that we adopt and continually refine and develop moral
principles.

Transhumanism: Meaning as Expansionary Transcendence

	Now that we understand the functions of religion, we can see
that a narrow scientism will not succeed in replacing it. A deeply
value-laden, yet open and critical system (or systems) will be
necessary to dislodge virulent religious memes. The growth of humanism
over the decades has begun this job, but now it is time to utilize the
more inclusive and memetically attractive option of transhumanism.[23]

	The extropian philosophy being developed and expressed in this
journal is the most complete form of transhumanism so far.[24] It
includes a broad metaphysical perspective on the development,
direction, goal and value of life and consciousness. It goes beyond
humanism by peering into the future in order to better understand our
possibilities. As we move forward through time our understanding of
our immense potentials will evolve; there can be no final, ultimate,
correct philosophy of life. Dogma has no place within transhumanism -
transhumanism must be flexible and ready to move on, reconfiguring
into higher forms, new versions of transhumanism and, one day,
posthumanism.

	Extropian transhumanism offers a optimistic, vital and dynamic
philosophy of life. We face a picture of unlimited growth and
possibility with excitement and joy. We seek to void all limits to
life, intelligence, freedom, knowledge and happiness. Science,
technology and reason must be harnessed to our extropic values to
abolish the greatest evil: death. Death does not stop the progress of
intelligent beings considered collectively, but it obliterates the
individual. No philosophy of life can be truly satisfying which
glorifies the advance of intelligent beings and yet which condemns
each and every individual to rot into nothingness. Each of us seeks
growth and the transcendence of our current forms and limitations. The
abolition of aging and, finally, all causes of death, is essential to
any philosophy of optimism and transcendence relevant to the
individual.

	Humans have tried to imbue their lives with a fuller sense of
meaning by a belief in the possibility of connecting with a higher
realm, by transcending their limitations and merging with or at least
communing with the Infinite and Eternal. Apart from the sheer falsity
and irrationality of religion it has had the unfortunate consequence
(identified by Ludwig Feuerbach) of debasing humanity. By inventing a
God or gods and elevating them above us, by making external divinity
the source of meaning and value, and by abasing ourselves before these
higher powers, we have stifled our own emerging sense of personal
value. We can look up while on our knees, but we cannot walk forward.

	The extropian philosophy does not look outside us to a
superior alien force for inspiration. Instead it looks inside us and
beyond us, projecting forward to a brilliant vision of our future. Our
goal is not God, it is the continuation of the process of improvement
and transformation of ourselves into ever higher forms. We will
outgrow our current interests, bodies, minds, and forms of social
organization. This process of expansion and transcendence is the
fountainhead of meaningfulness.

	What is meaningfulness and why is the extropian philosophy of
transhumanism especially effective at nurturing and feeding it?[25] A
static life, one which is closed up within itself and never seeks new
values, never grows, never explores, is a life lacking meaning. If the
universe were controlled by a malevolent being who frustrated all of
your plans even before they could move you forward, you would be
unable to connect with anything beyond your current condition. Even if
you were free to plan and act, your life would lack much meaning if
your long term plans reached no further than current narrow concerns
(such as the pursuit of immediate gratification and the conditions for
its continuance).

	It will be clear why death undercuts meaning. The involuntary
termination of life limits the ways of and extent to which you can
connect your life to other values. People seek meaning by connecting
with many different things and causes: Political and social causes of
all kinds, having children, seeking beauty or knowledge, relationships
with others, and self-development. We worry about lack of meaning when
we ask ourselves Is this all it comes to?, Is it merely
this?. We find more meaning as we realize the connections of our
concerns to broader values, and as we become more intensely involved
in these transcendent concerns.

	No matter how broad the field of value we connect our lives
to, we can intellectually step outside that field and ask ourselves
what does that come to? What does that mean?. Even if the
values we link to are themselves extremely broad and important it
seems we can always stand outside that system of meaning and be
concerned about its adequacy or its ultimate meaningfulness. The wider
the field of the meaning-relations the more difficult and strained
will be this questioning.[26] If, no matter how wide the realm with
which we connect ourselves and our purposes, there is always a wider
context from which to question meaning, perhaps what we require is a
field of meaning that is unlimited and outside of which we cannot
stand.[27] As Robert Nozick notes, The intellectual life seems to
offer one route across all limits: there is nothing that cannot be
thought of, theorized about, pondered.(597) However, though
thinking can link us to everything, it is only one particular type of
link. A meaningful life will involve more than simply abstract
consideration of values.

	Meaning involves transcending limits, but transcending limits
to connect with something trivial will not serve to provide meaning.
For the transcendence of limits to bestow meaning, what we connect
with must be valuable. The meaning of a life will be the structure of
value with which it connects. If value is organic unity or a certain
internal ordering,[28] the transcendence of limits involved in
meaningfulness requires the breaking up of old orders, the demolition
of stagnant unities. On one view (which Nozick identifies as the
classicist) the point of transcending limits is to reach ever higher
levels of value. The goal is the unifications, the new levels of value
and ordering. An alternative view (the romanticist) locates the goal
of the process in the destruction of the unities.

	We need not choose between these views. Neither the
construction of new orderings and unities nor their transcendence
alone is what matters. The importance lies in the process of
ordering-and-transcendence. The value of the process is in its
alternating unification and transcendence. This alternation alone will
not suffice; if the alternation was akin to Nietzsches eternal
recurrence, or Sisyphus endlessly repetitive task, it would quite
meaningless. The process of alternately creating and breaking organic
structures can be seen as meaningful if it has direction.

	This is the core of the extropian approach to meaningfulness:
Life and intelligence must never stagnate; it must re-order, transform
and transcend its limits in an unlimited progressive process. Our goal
is the exuberant and dynamic continuation of this unlimited process,
not the attainment of some final supposedly unlimited condition. The
goal of religion is communion with, or merely serving, God - a being
superior to us. The extropian goal is our own expansion and progress
without end. Humanity must not stagnate - to go backwards to a
primitive life, or to halt our burgeoning move forward, upward,
outward, would be a betrayal of the dynamic inherent in life and
consciousness. We must progress on to transhumanity and beyond into a
posthuman stage that we can barely glimpse.

	God was a primitive notion invented by primitive people,
people only just beginning to step out of ignorance and
unconsciousness. God was an oppressive concept, a more powerful being
than we, but made in the image of our crude self-conceptions. Our own
process of endless expansion into higher forms should and will replace
this religious idea. As extropians pursuing and promoting transcendent
expansion we are the vanguard of evolution. Humanity is a temporary
stage along the evolutionary pathway. We are not the zenith of
natures development. It is time for us to consciously take charge
of ourselves and to accelerate our progress.

	No more gods, no more faith, no more timid holding back. Let
us blast out of our old forms, our ignorance, our weakness, and our
mortality. The future is ours.


      NOTES

                        
 1. The term reliberium was coined by Tom W. Bell.
v
2. Eupraxophy (good practice or active wisdom)
was devised by humanist Paul Kurtz (see Free Inquiry, Winter 1987/88),
and means philosophy of life or life stance. It is
essentially the same as reliberium, though it is neutral on
the question of whether the philosophy is freeing or constraining. It
allows humanists (and transhumanists) to answer the question: If
humanism (transhumanism) isnt a religion, what is it?

3. Or, as neurocomputationalists prefer to say, they share a
high-dimensional activation vector space. See my review in this issue
of Paul Churchlands A Neurocomputational Perspective.

4. See the Extropian Principles in this issue. I am in the early
preparatory stages of writing a book on extropianism, tentatively
titled Technologies of Transformation: A Futurist Philosophy.

5. Giving a causal explanation of religion does not, of course, amount
to a refutation of its truth. My purpose in this essay does not
include proving the falsity of religion. Excellent arguments against
religion can be found in J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, Oxford
University Press, 1982. Also recommended is George H. Smiths
Atheism: The Case Against God, Prometheus Books, 1979.

6. I find this the most speculative of the four. It has been proposed
by Julian Jaynes in his intriguing book, The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

7. However, secular authoritarians can substitute for God the
authority of the Race, the Proletariat/History, or the Collective.

8. A classic work on this topic is David Humes The Natural History
of Religion.

9. For secular thoughts on these issues see Richard Dawkins, The
Selfish Gene, Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions, and Paul
Churchlands A Neurocomputational Perspective.

10. See FM-2030s Are You a Transhuman?, pp.172-175 (Warner Books,
New York, 1989).

11. For a free market alternative see, for example, The Twelve-Year
Sentence, ed., William R. Rickenbacker, or Privatization and
Educational Choice, by Myron Lieberman.

12. The communitarian movement in political philosophy appears to be a
similar yearning for meaning by means of self-submergence.

13. In The Essence of Christianity, trans. by Marian Evans (Kegan
Paul, London, 1893).

14. Hence the extropian exclamation: Forward! Upward! Outward!
The corresponding religious exclamation might be: Outside Us!

15. For a more detailed discussion of this view, see Robert
Nozicks incisive analysis in Philosophical Explanations, Harvard
University Press, 1981, pp.585-594.

16. Many of the evils of religion are well expounded by George H.
Smith in Parts Two and Four of Atheism: The Case Against God.

17. I intend to examine in depth the connection between Nietzsches
idea of the overman/ubermensch and the extropian vision of the
transhuman in a future issue.

18. There are other possibilities which I have not the room to
examine. An example would be the non-theistic view known as extreme
axiarchism - see J. Leslie, Value and Existence (Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, 1979). For an examination of extreme axiarchism see chapter 13
of Mackie (see note 4).

19. Purposeless People in ch.2 of Persons and Personality: A
Contemporary Inquiry, eds. Arthur Peacocke and Grant Gillett, Basil
Blackwell, 1987.

20. H. Kung, Does God Exist? (Collins, London, 1980) p.421.

21. See Mackie, ch.14.

22. See my Morality or Reality? in EXTROPY #1, and the
Postscript in EXTROPY #4. In a future issue I may also develop
a neurocomputational approach to moral progress and rationality. This
doesnt require objective or intrinsic values, yet allows for
non-arbitrary moral values and principles.

23. Transhumanism has started to gather in strength rapidly in recent
years. Apart from extropianism, the is Venturism (and its new variant:
The Order of Universal Immortalism), and loose clusters of ideas held
by many immortalists, space enthusiasts and others.

24. Other books presenting aspects of transhumanist thought can be
found in the reading list found at the end of the Extropian Principles
elsewhere in this issue.

25. My discussion of the meaningfulness of life draws on Robert
Nozicks excellent treatment of the topic in Chapter Six of
Philosophical Explanations.

26. Extropians take this concern seriously. That is why we seek
immortality and not just extended life. This also explains why in this
issue there appears Mike Prices The Thermodynamics of
Death: Meaningfulness would be limited if there were no way to
avoid the heat death of the universe.

27. For a critique of the idea that our goal should be an unlimited
condition see my response in this issue to As Arch-Anarchy
(in EXTROPY #5). For problems with the idea of an unlimited being see
Nozick, pp.600-610, 747-748, and George H. Smith, Atheism, ch.3.

28. See Nozick, ch.5:II.