The Mormon Transhumanist Movement (An Interview)

We interview leaders of the Mormon Transhumanist movement, an association of Mormons interested in using technology to improve life. They explain core Mormon beliefs like humans can become gods, the purpose of existence is to bring about immortality/eternal life, and there are multiple heavens you go to based on your desires. We find many similarities with our ideologies and possibilities for cooperation to build intergenerational religious communities.

Lincoln: [00:00:00] The second president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association has what?

Eight children.

Malcolm Collins: Do you know if there's any second generation transhumanist Mormons yet, i. e. kids where this belief system has been successfully passed between generations?

Lincoln: All of my children are Mormon transhumanists. They're all adults.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, wow. So it's working. Okay, then the next thing I really want to talk to you about, cause I think that this is the most interesting thing about it, is the large following in Africa.

Carl Youngblood: Yeah, so that's, that's pretty recent. I was approached earlier this year by a guy in Senegal whose name is Kwasi Ngesen. And he was like, I really love what you guys are talking about. He went to our website and read some things and was really excited about it. And he said, I'd like to spread it to Africa.

And I guess he's a pretty good community builder. So, suddenly we have like, Almost 30 different groups that he has opened up in various African countries and is currently [00:01:00] Sharing some ideas with them

Would you like to know more?

Carl Youngblood: Hello

Malcolm Collins: everyone! We have a very special guest here today that I am really excited and could not be more on topic for our podcast. Or I think of more interest to a lot of our listeners who are interested in the more religious stuff. But we have with us today the Co founders of the transhumanist Mormon branch of Mormonism, or I'd say movement.

I don't like to say movement because I think it's a bit more than that. And I'd really love you guys to introduce yourself. And I'd love to start just by talking about what it is as a concept. And how you see it as contiguous with the traditional Mormon tradition.

Carl Youngblood: Awesome. I guess I'll start.

My name is Carl Youngblood. I'm the current president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. And I'm one of the co founders of the association. But, and Lincoln is as well, but there are several others, so I feel I need to give credit [00:02:00] to The whole group. There's, I think, what was it, Lincoln? Like 14 people or so who co founded the association.

And I do want to clarify that several of us are active Latter day Saints. We consider ourselves to be kind of in the mainstream church, as well. Although it's not required to be a member of The LDS church to be a member of the association. So we have Several active members. We have some who are not active in the church That's a term we use for like whether you are a practicing member.

I should say Sometimes we use this lingo inside Mormonism. That is a little bit confusing. So So yeah, there are practicing Latter day Saints in our, in our midst in the association. There are others who are not practicing and others who've never even been Latter day Saints, but just found a lot of interesting things to talk about in the group and, and kind of gravitated towards us for [00:03:00] various reasons.

And I'll let Lincoln talk a little bit more about it as well. Go ahead Lincoln.

Lincoln: Sure. Thanks, Carl. Yeah, my name's Lincoln Cannon. Like Carl said, I'm one of the co founders of the association, and I served as the association's president for 10 years from its inception until 2016. As Carl pointed out, the, you know, there isn't any necessary strong distinction between a Mormon transhumanist and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I agree. I've been mentioning that I've been figuring that out as I've been talking to more Mormons, where a lot of the beliefs that I see are very transhumanist sounding to me, so it seems like a very natural evolution. If it is such a natural evolution, why make the distinction at all?

Lincoln: Yeah, so, and a valuable part of that is that by making some things explicit.

You emphasize them, you bring them to mind, and you ensure their continuing maybe [00:04:00] virility, or even viability within the culture. And that's one of the things that we cared a lot about, is that we wanted to call attention to aspects genuine aspects of Mormon culture and theology. That we felt were very important, are very important, and that merit more attention than perhaps the average Mormon gives them.

And so, you know, by, by, by organizing a movement around this, we call attention to those things, we emphasize those things, as a consequence, we cultivate those things within the culture.

Malcolm Collins: So can you elaborate or highlight some of the things that you guys would be focusing more on in your framing than a traditional Mormon community would?

Carl Youngblood: Yeah I'll go, I'll share a few things and Lincoln can add to this I think one thing that is very important to us is this notion that there is no distinction between spirit and [00:05:00] matter in Mormon theology, so for example from a philosophical point of view the term for this would be called substance monism, but it's this idea that You know, the dualists in classical philosophy would say that there is such a thing as spirit and such a thing as matter, and they are two separate substances, and they will never meet, and typically they would say that spirit was of a higher order, it was something metaphysical and that everything physical was an approximation of a better reality that was in the, in the realm of the spirit Mormonism, Eradicates that difference and basically says that all things are spirit and all things are matter essentially like that They're all part of the same substance.

So if there is such a thing as a spiritual phenomenon that is happening Mormons Mormon theology would would say that that must be observable, comprehensible, measurable in some [00:06:00] way, or it's not real. So I'd love to,

Malcolm Collins: oh, continue. Well, really

Carl Youngblood: fast, I would just say that would mean that anything that appears to be miraculous.

Would still have some explanation, even if we don't fully understand it yet.

Malcolm Collins: So, I'm gonna, I'm gonna draw a distinction on this point. Are you describing something closer to like, an Orson Pratt perspection of spirit, where spirit can be thought of in like, spirit particles, basically, that could maybe one day be studied, but are still a distinct thing from the material.

Like like what we think of as the material human body or is it more the way Simone and I think of it? Where we think of as the spirit is more like a metaphor for just your genetics and the patterns that are existing within your brain

Lincoln: Yeah, so,

Carl Youngblood: It's interesting. It sounds like I mean, I I'm happy about the fact that you apparently researched some things.

tHere was this period of controversy where Brigham Young and Orson Pratt were arguing over [00:07:00] like what the nature of these, this spirit is, right? And I would say that without getting too dogmatic on any particular Way of conceiving it. I think we're more focused on sort of the pragmatic aspect of how spirit spiritual phenomenon may