This is not an academic paper about religious Transhumanism. I find myself less interested in discussing religious transhumanism and more interested in doing religious transhumanism. Consider this a sermon written by a religious Transhumanist diving into the why, how, and what of where religious transhumanism might lead—God.

You may or may not believe in God. It might even be a word you wish to eradicate from your vocabulary. Whether a believer or not, one shouldn’t be ignorant of the cyclical pattern of the birth and death of Gods. Gods are constantly being destroyed and created by human imagination and action.

When a destroyer demolishes a God, chanting along the way, “God is dead! God is Dead!”, a new God is eventually birthed from the rubble by a creator. Gods are created from the remnants of past hopes, dreams, aspirations—the corpses of dead Gods. We need creators and destroyers alike. The destroyer depends on the creator to create something worth destroying, and the creator needs the destroyer to provide the rubble necessary for creation. The creators and destroyers are not enemies, but worthy opponents, even friends. Both work in an alliance against apathy, nihilism, complacency, escapism, and all other manner of meaninglessness. Neither the destruction of God nor the creation of new Gods is the enemy of human flourishing but is the manifestation of human flourishing.

Though I destroy, I am also a creator, an artist. I find beauty in the world, even in destruction, suffering, and pain if necessary, so long as it leads to better vistas. Suffering can be transformative. However, suffering for the sake of suffering is just as pitiful as the prophet who seeks to eliminate all suffering or risk, and in so doing eliminates joy, reward, and meaning. There must necessarily be opposition in all things for meaning to exist, and genuine creation necessarily requires destruction.

I find meaning in God, not just any or all Gods, but a transhumanist God birthed from material theism. This God exists inside space and time, unlike the metaphysician’s God who is aimlessly suspended in an immaterial abyss of nothingness. I find meaning in what I can possibly know, understand, and become. I find meaning in a transhumanist God. You may have no interest in the word “God” or “transhumanist.” If so, feel free to liken these parables unto yourself. Replace “God” with “superhumanity” or “posthumanity” and the message will still be delivered. Replace “transhumanism” with “theosis” or “material theism” if it makes the message more relevant. I’m a pluralist when it comes to esthetic preferences.

I have found past Gods, particularly my own, to be wanting. Birthed from the mouths of patriarchs was a tyrant and they called that tyrant GOD! That God, He, was made in the image of my oppressor. Like the destroyer, I killed that God—the God of the patriarchs. His hot blood spilled onto the frozen ground. Crimson steam rose off His corpse as I stood in a pool of His blood, and I called myself atheist. God really is dead, I killed Him myself!

It was self-defense, you see. He sought to annihilate my existence in the name of so-called love, so said His patriarchs, the false prophets. It was either Him or me, and I won. In death, with His blood pooled around my feet, I won. No God could match my intellect, logic, semantics, and philosophies. I absorbed His blood through the pores of my bare feet. Power was mine.

Yet, the victory was empty. Is there ever victory in death—even a necessary death? I found no meaning in His death. Even after feasting off His blood, my womb was hollow. This was not the first time I knew a hollow womb after death. Like a mother that necessarily miscarried an unviable embryo which threatened her very life, I mourned the loss of potential. In my rush to destroy the patriarch’s God, had I destroyed potential? Had I forgotten how to create? Even though I necessarily destroyed what which had no business calling itself “God,” I am a mother, an artist. I am called to create. My love of potential calls for a new God. If for no one else, at least for me. I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t try. A mother is the antithesis of nihilism. She creates, grows, progresses, and loves potentiality. She loves the past, present, and future of creation.

As a mother, I birth a new God laced with blood of Him whom I killed. I didn’t do this alone, of course. All creators depend on their fellow destroyers and co-creators. A worthy creator is never a singleton. The singleton is a tyrant whose power is gained through the oppression and subjugation of others. The singleton neglects their peers, their friends, and those who make Godhood possible. The singleton hubristically claims the title “God” without His community. He is a vain God, unworthy of our emulation lest we become tyrants or even worse, the tyrants over sheep. Sheep only know how to follow and obey. They cannot destroy or create. Patriarchs worship the singleton tyrant creator for they seek their own glory above all others, and it shows in the God they worship. However, a God who is birthed from innumerable parents, gestated in the minds of genuine creators, is a God of potential worth far more than patriarchs. Mothers and fathers, wives and husbands all assist in the process of creation. It takes a village, but the singleton God destroyed His village without regard to the fact that His village made His Godhood possible. Though I killed that God, I cannot deny His imperfections, impulses, and blood which was now mingled with mine own. Any new God I birth could not deny its past but must seek to overcome it.

The time has come. We are in the process of creating a transhumanist God. As our myths, aspirations, and technologies copulate, humanity and machine are gestating a material God. This God is not a metaphysical, untouchable, unreachable projection. That God wasn’t even worth killing because it had no body, no material, and no substance to destroy. The God we are creating is as real as you and me, or at least as real as we will be in the future. This God is necessarily material. It exists in space and time, because we exist inside space and time. This God must be plural, lest we recreate the singleton God, the tyrant. This God is dynamic and intelligent. This God evolves, changes, and grows, perhaps even exponentially. God’s development and growth depends on us when we are co-eternal with God.

Every choice we make leads us toward a future of our own creation. It may feel like nobody is behind the wheel when everyone is behind the wheel, but we are all prophets manifesting a self-fulfilled prophecy. Every moment of actuality is the death of innumerable potentials, yet also the birth of innumerable potentials. Where will the actualities of our potentialities lead us? What do we worship? If not the projections of our best and most noble selves, what else then would we worship? Is this not God? What do we emulate? What do we desire? What do we desire to desire? What will our desires create, if not a God? What kind of transhumanist God will greet us in the future?

Beware of the hedonist’s God. There is no suffering or weeping with this God. Only pleasure. This God is conceived with the recklessness of a hurried tumble in the sheets for carnal gratification. In that future, God is a wirehead unable to pull themselves away from the unrestrained masturbatory pleasure-centers of the brain. Unwilling to expose themselves to their community in any meaningful sense, they lack intimacy. Pleasure over intimacy is the mantra of that God. The hedonist’s God is not free, but a slave to pleasure and knows no love beyond themselves and what they can get for themselves. These Gods are not singletons, but they might as well be when they are isolated from their community. The hedonist God does not know the intimacy of staring into the iris of a lover at the pinnacle of their pleasure. They are too concerned with selfish pleasure to relish in the joy of another. They lack compersion for their lover or their lover’s lover. The hedonist selfishly cries out, “No one can have what is mine!” Your gain is my loss. Your loss is my gain. The hedonist regards love as a finite resource to be hoarded for oneself in a system of competition, rather than mutually caress a lover in a network of cooperation.

Beware of the rapist’s God. That God is the afterbirth of stolen agency. The imposed insemination of morals and values is rape if it’s not consensual. The rapist’s God is not a singleton, but they are even worse. They do not respect agency, freedom, diversity, and reconciliation. Reconciliation among the body of Christ is lost, no, it’s meaningless when the rapist can take what they want for themselves. Rape becomes reconciliation. There is nothing to reconcile when outliers are forced into submission. Righteousness, for the rapist’s God, is homogenization, conversion therapy, colonization, and compulsory mandates. That God declares, “All will be saved by me, my values, my standards, and ye will submit whether you like it or not.” This God forces its will upon others, using its technologies to violently rape minds and bodies into submission. That God is built on the back of slaves and the annihilation of difference.

Beware of the reaper’s God. This God worships death as a means of escaping responsibility. Some worshipers of the reaper’s God sing, “It will all work out after we die. No need to cry, fret, or even work. Death will save us all, come the afterlife. Long may we worship the saving power of death.” They do not truly live, they only relish in their relinquished accountability. They do not see that the future they worship is predicated by an endless series of todays. They are not so different than those who sing, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. And it shall be well with us.” Both justify their procrastinations with the promised release of death. Whether there is an afterlife or not, they worship death as their savior who carries the load of accountability and responsibility for the present. Some worship the reaper’s God claiming death necessarily makes meaning. They only live for the sake of dying, and in so doing are dead already. They are procrastinators of meaning, and death is the only possible deadline that liberates them from slothfulness. They are living for the sake of death, not living for the sake of life.

Some worship the reaper’s God, Death, in fear not in love. They fear Death so greatly they twist their necks backwards, gouge out their eyes, stick burning rods in their ears, and cauterize every nerve in their body so they do not have to confront the great lord and master, Death. They injure their loved ones and others who raise up arms against Death. They protect that which they fear. Their fear of Death is greater than their love of life. In their fear they inadvertently bow down and worship, cowing before Death’s power. They kneel, eyes to the floor in reverence, and pray, “Blessed be the reaper’s God, for you are powerful. I wish to die and dare not confront thee, O great one.” Escapism replaces the true Comforter for the worshipers of Death. If you do fear God, you ought to fear God to the extent that you fear your own great potential, which is indeed great! Oh, ye of little faith, do you not believe you are greater than death? Do you not believe you have the power to crush its head, even though it may bruise your heal? Do you not believe in your divine nature? You say, “O yes, I believe” yet you worship death as your path to divinity. The reaper’s God is a God of death not life.

I’ll ask these questions again. What do we emulate? What do we desire? What do we desire to desire? What will our desires create, if not a God? What kind of transhumanist God will we create?

As a child, I was taught the wise true God is love. Love of God is love of your fellow beings. When you do unto them, you do unto God. Our future, God, superhumanity, and posthumanity depends on our ability to love. No technology can save us from ourselves. We must save ourselves from ourselves, which will require the power of our love amplified by work, ingenuity, and technology to manifest a truly divine future. This is a future where diseases are cured, youth endures, health prevails, and families are forever. This is superhumanity—where good is amplified, and evil is overcome. God is our future selves, our posterity, or perhaps better put our sincerest hopes and aspirations of what we could become. Let love of life and your highest hopes for yourself be your God. This is the lover’s God. The God of Life. Emulate the lover’s God. Faith without works is dead. If we believe in, have faith in, trust in a better future our works will be reflected our sincerely held beliefs. Transhumanism is the works to faith. Transhumanism is worshiping what we revere. Transhumanism is emulation of God, which is the highest form of worship. One can say they love God, but without their works their proclamations drip from dishonest lips. Keep your lips honest by using your hands.

My lips are honest. Indeed, God is dead! I killed Him myself. But no, God lives too! I created Them with you, and I will birth Them with you. Hold steady during these labor pains and I will birth Them with you.

Let the worshipers of life, the lover’s God, a transhumanist God, sing in praise, “Love well, learn well, work well. We are happy in our labors for we have faith in our divine potential. God lives! God lives! God lives! So long as we have breath in our lungs to sing it, God lives!”