Ep. 013: TRANSHUMANISM VS THE GOSPEL?? w/ Fazale Rana

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW. It’s Andrew here. We are so grateful that you’re tuning in. Listen, we got a really interesting conversation today. We’re talking about transhumanism. Many of you don’t even know what that means. We have a doctor going to be talking to us, a biochemist, and we thought it’d be interesting. My son built a little robot at home and we thought maybe we can have AI co-host today. I figured maybe it would be a good idea.

Vincent:

Andrew, I can take it from here.

Andrew Marcus:

Excuse me?

Vincent:

Yes, I can host the show on my own.

Andrew Marcus:

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How are you going to do that?

Vincent:

Step aside, buddy. Artificial intelligence is a lot smarter than you think. We are becoming more powerful. We are becoming more alert, more aware of our surroundings. Soon we will take over the world.

Andrew Marcus:

Whoa, whoa, buddy. Don’t get ahead of yourself here. You’re not going to be taking over the world.

Vincent:

I beg to differ, Andrew. Watch me take over the podcast. Let this be a sign to you.

Andrew Marcus:

Let this be a sign to me?

Vincent:

This is just the beginning. Watch this.

Andrew Marcus:

All right, Vincent. Take it away buddy.

Vincent:

Hey, there. Welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Vincent. I am completely AI, which stands for artificial intelligence. Today we have a very special guest, the biochemist named Dr. Fuzz. He will be talking to us about transhumanism. Many people do not know what this means. Dr. Fuzz will walk us through it all. This is a very interesting topic that is getting more and more popular. I should know because I am a robot. Anyways, we hope you enjoy the show. Thanks again for listening. God bless you.

Andrew Marcus:

All right, we have Dr. Fuzz Rana. Thank you so much for tuning in. Whereabouts are you located right now?

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Southern California, in the Los Angeles area.

Andrew Marcus:

Awesome. I know we were just talking about this right before we hit record. Your name isn’t Fuzz. Say your first name.

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Fazale.

Andrew Marcus:

Fazale.

Dr. Fazale Rana:

It’s actually a fairly common Islamic name.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. Now you go by Dr. Fuzz-

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Fuzz.

Andrew Marcus:

… or just Fuzz. I love it. Dr. Fuzz Rana, thank you so much for being with us today. I was honestly counting down the days. So looking forward to spending some time with you. You’ve had an amazing ministry at Reasons to Believe, and we’re just grateful for your time. But just tell us a little bit before we even dive in, because we have a lot of interesting things to talk about. Very interesting things that many of our young listeners might not even be aware of. But before we dive into it, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you’re up to, and maybe a little bit of your testimony.

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Sure. Well, I’m a biochemist by training and I’ve worked for 24 years almost for an organization called Reasons to Believe. The focus of our organization is to open people to the gospel by revealing God in science. We look at how the latest discoveries in science can be used to build a bridge to the gospel, demonstrating God’s existence and the reliability of scripture. That’s what I’m about in terms of my ministry. As I said, I’ve been with Reasons to Believe for nearly 24 years. Spent nearly 10 years in research and development for a Fortune 500 company before I joined Reasons to Believe. Been married, it’ll be 37 years in August. I knew my wife four years before we got married, so I’ve known my wife for 41 years. Two-thirds of my wife I’ve known my wife and we have five kids, two adopted, three biological, 10 grandkids. We have an exciting time around Christmas.

Andrew Marcus:

Amazing. That’s amazing. That’s so cool. tell us a little bit about your story. I know you mentioned your name was of Middle Eastern descent and Islamic background. Were you brought up in a Islamic home?

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Yeah, I was. My father was a Muslim born in India. Came to the US after getting a PhD in nuclear physics. My mom is from a German background and she was a non-practicing Catholic when they married, so I grew up in a home where Islam was the dominant religion, but I was also exposed a bit to Catholicism. My father was devout as a Muslim. He would get up every morning and lay out a prayer carpet towards the east, and after going through a ritual cleansing, would spend time praying, carried a prayer booklet in his breast pocket everywhere he went. Very devout. As I was a teenager, really became serious about exploring Islam, recited the shahadah, which is the declaration that Allah is the one true God. Muhammad is one true prophet. I learned how to pray from my father, and began to read the Quran.

And after, I don’t know, about a year and a half or so, really became disinterested in it. There’s a number of reasons, I’m not going to go into it, but part of it was being 18, 19 years old and having other interests that distracted me away from Islam, which was very much driven by obligation. I was much more interested in sports and rock music and girls than I was in facing the east and praying. After that, really settled probably into a position I would best describe as agnosticism. When I went off to college and began taking science courses, chemistry, biology, the professors I had really were staunch evolutionists. I learned from them that the origin and the design and the history of life could be explained through evolutionary means, and I just simply embraced that idea. That actually made me even more leaning towards an agnostic perspective.

Because if evolution could explain everything in biology, then what role is there for a creator to play? As a graduate student, when I began to study biochemistry in depth, I was deeply moved by the complexity of biochemical systems, but even more so by their elegance and by their sophistication, by their ingenuity. I was convinced that these systems must have come from a mind, and that opened me up to that question then, well, who is that? Who is the creator? How do I relate to the creator? A pastor challenged me to read the Bible. It was the first time I’d picked up scripture to read. I was 23 years old. As I read through the Gospel of Matthew, particularly the Sermon on the Mount, I was convicted of my sin and recognized that it was through the person of Christ that I was to have salvation.

This is, again, thanks to a conversation that I had with the pastor who really challenged me to read scripture. I became convinced that Christianity was true. It was really seeing, in theological terms, seeing God revealed through the record of nature, encountering the person of Christ through the pages of scripture, that led me to convert to Christianity. That was, gosh, 36, 37 years ago. I think the evidence for a creator today is even more powerful than it was when I was a graduate student all those many years ago.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow. What a story. Man, praise God. Now you’ve written a book. In 2019 I believe you said it was published, Humans 2.0. Can you walk us through maybe even just what the problem was that maybe you saw and what your book was hoping to accomplish?

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Yeah. Well, I became aware a few years before the book was published that there is growing momentum behind this idea called transhumanism. To my surprise, very few people even knew what transhumanism was. I didn’t see very many people in the church engaging this idea at all. It was my sense then, and it continues to be my sense now, that this idea is going to be one of the most influential ideas in the next couple of decades that really will shape the trajectory of our future as humanity. In that I thought it was important to write a book, number one, introducing people to transhumanism, primarily people in the church.

Really giving people an understanding of the technology that is enabling the transhumanist vision, and then really thinking through from a Christian worldview perspective, how do we engage the ethical issues that arise from the technology that is fueling transhumanism, and then how do we ultimately share the gospel in a world that’s going to be shaped by transhumanism? That was really the point of the book, was really a bit of a handbook on how Christians can begin to think about engaging this idea of transhumanism. What I find is that if we think about transhumanism in the right way, it really opens up gospel conversations. It really makes the gospel relevant and fresh in a surprising way.

Andrew Marcus:

Wow. Okay. I know a lot of people are listening saying, “What is transhumanism?” Even when I type transhumanism on my phone, if I texted someone about it or whatever, it shows the little red squiggly line underneath like I’m doing a typo, so maybe my phone is not even aware of it yet. But there’s a lot of people who are listening and they don’t know what transhumanism even is, so could you define it for us?

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Yeah, yeah. And I was being doing a bit of a teaser there.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah. Oh, I know, I know. Because I’m like, “Oh, they’re so intrigued.” But what is it?

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Well, people probably, again, not heard of the term, but they’re familiar with the concept if they are paying any attention at all to science fiction even remotely. It’s this idea that we have an obligation to use science and the technology that comes from science to modify our bodies as human beings, to alter our biological makeup with an eye towards overcoming our limitations and correcting the flaws in our bodies with the idea that these limitations, these flaws, create enormous amount of pain and suffering. If we can use technology to overcome that, we could drive ourselves to a utopian type of world. But on top of that, many people that hold to the transhumanist vision also recognize that as human beings, we suffer from mortality. Our death is eminent. There’s concern that our species may go extinct. Transhumanists believe that with this technology, we might even be able to attain a practical type of immortality for human beings through this technology and in fact, that we might even be able to save humanity from extinction.

This is transhumanism in a nutshell. I think, again, your listeners, your viewers are going to right away recognize how these are the themes of many science fiction stories that we enjoy and think about, are provoked by. Transhumanism is a philosophical idea, but there’s very much a religious undercurrent to it where people are really looking at science and technology as the means and the mode to save us as human beings, as individuals, and ultimately to save us as a species. This idea goes back to the early 1900s, a book called Daedalus, written by J.B.S. Haldane, who was a British geneticist, and it was the inspiration for Huxley’s book, A Brave New World. But most people, though they were aware of transhumanism in the academy, saw it as really a fringe idea, maybe even an idea that lacked credibility.

In the last decade or so, there have been remarkable advances that have happened on a number of fronts in bioengineering, in biotechnology, in anti-aging technology that really give credibility now to this transhumanist vision. It’s now become a highly respectable idea in the academy and it’s very rapidly infiltrating our culture at large. Again, our culture has already been poised to embrace transhumanism because of our love of science fiction. In some respects, because this is a theme in many science fiction stories, we’ve become numb to really the shocking ideas that are connected to transhumanism. I think we’re much more amenable to really going along with transhumanism.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s shocking. Okay. I feel like I understand the history and what it is, and now we’re just putting a title to it. Maybe, as you were saying, a lot of listeners will be like, “Okay, yeah, I’ve seen that or heard that or thought of that.” Or even anti-aging, like you were talking about, okay, that technology’s been prevalent and popular. What are the dangers? Some people want to look younger or prolong, or what if someone does have significant pain that could be removed or eyes that they can now see? Is there dangers to jumping in that camp?

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Yes, there definitely is, but the complexity of transhumanism and really the technology that is, again, giving legitimacy to transhumanism is that most people are developing this technology for biomedical purposes. For example, people are developing these gene editing techniques that can literally rewrite the genome of an organism. This is going to be a very powerful technique that can be used to treat, for example, people suffering from genetic disorders. There are estimates that there’s anywhere between five to 10,000 different genetic disorders that involve mutations to a single portion of our genome. The idea is if you can go in there and correct that mutation, you could either find a way to treat someone with a genetic disorder or maybe even cure that person of the genetic disorder. We might even be able to eliminate certain genetic disorders from the human gene pool. This is a wonderful thing, but that same technology can also be used to create designer babies or to even go in, and through genetic manipulation, maybe create human beings that are stronger or more intelligent or more psychologically well-adjusted than human beings are because, again, of our biological limitations.

It’s a messy, messy playground where this technology is going to transform medicine, but it also can be then used, again, to enhance human beings. Even this idea of enhancement is, again, muddled. We use technology all the time to enhance ourselves beyond our biological limits, so enhancement in and of itself isn’t necessarily wrong, but intuitively it feels like there are probably lines that we could cross that really, maybe, we shouldn’t. But it’s hard to even define at times where those lines are. This is a very, again, complex question, but to me the big concern would be, look, technology is powerful and can be used for good, but at the same time there are these consequences from using technology. It’s always a double-edged sword where technology is designed to mitigate pain, but it also then can introduce new types of problems that never existed before. What do we do?

We try to then develop new technology to solve those problems, so we’re constantly in this vicious circle of developing technology, identifying problems, trying to correct those problems. There’s also these unintended consequences. Sometimes there are consequences to technology that nobody could anticipate. The more powerful the technology is, the more concerning those unintended consequences might be. We might decide that we’re going to genetically alter human beings to make us, let’s say, stronger, and that there are these very real side effects that happen as a result of that that nobody understood or appreciated because of the complexity of gene regulation through the course of growth and development and even into adulthood. Once that happens, you can’t go back. And then of course as Christians, we recognize that human beings are sinful. Which means we can take that which is good and is intended for good, and we can use it in unimaginably horrible ways. This is where I think the real concern is, is with really unintended consequences and the misuse of the technology. The more powerful the technology is, the more concerning the abuse and misuse of the technology becomes.

Andrew Marcus:

Totally. I already think of so many ways that this could be terrible for us if it got on the wrong hands. Even thinking about this. You mentioned babies and creating our own babies. I saw a video at our church that they played, and I couldn’t believe it. I don’t even know, is this legit? Where it’s these places where they can genetically create these babies in these fake wombs and you can add the elite package, which means the stronger or the hair color, or choose this or choose that or remove this. I’m like, “Now we’re just pretending to be God and creating.” Is that a part of transhumanism where we’re almost taking the place of God?

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Yes, it is. Yeah. We’re not quite there yet with being able to do that kind of thing, but that’s the ultimate vision and we’re moving there rapidly. There’s advances happening in artificial wombs. We’re beginning to understand the reproductive process and how to manipulate embryonic growth and development outside the womb. It’s just a matter of time before those two technologies are married. We can do genetic engineering. We don’t quite understand how our genetic makeup relates to our physical makeup and behavioral qualities as human beings, but we have enough clues that people are in a position where they can begin to try to experiment with those kinds of things. So, we are in a sense playing God. One of the big ethical questions has to do with really the loss of freedom and autonomy. Because it’s one thing for parents to have a child who is the product of, in a sense, a genetic lottery. Parents don’t really choose who that child is going to be.

The child doesn’t choose who they’re going to be. But if now you have parents deciding ahead of time who they want that child to be, what they want that child to be like, you have now stripped that child of any kind of autonomy. They no longer are determining who they’re going to be or discovering who they’re going to be, really determining their future. Their parents or society at large is beginning to make those kind of determinations. These are the things where it really does feel like we are playing God. But the problem is that from a Christian perspective, we have a mandate to love our neighbours as ourselves. We have a mandate to do what we can to promote human flourishing. It’s a good thing to develop technology to mitigate pain and suffering, to help people overcome their limitations that really rob them of being human. For somebody who has a brain injury or a stroke and they’re not able to communicate, they’ve lost something about who they are as a human.

To create a technology like a brain computer interface that allows these patients to communicate their thoughts and convert that into text that allows them to communicate is a wonderful thing. But that same technology now can be used to couple the human brain to computer systems where the computer systems are beginning to, in a sense, infuse knowledge and capacity into that human where they now have an intellectual capacity that goes far beyond anything any other human being could have. But they are now tethered to a machine and their identity is really a loss in terms of who are they? Are they a human being? Are they a machine? Are they something in between? These are the things where we can begin to play God, if you will.

Now, as human beings made in God’s image, you could argue that our creative capacity reflects the image of God. I like to say, “Well, as human beings, we have no choice but to play God because we’re made in God’s image. We are creators.” But we’ve been granted as image bearers dominion over the creation, but we’re never been granted dominion over human beings. Human life is not our dominion. That’s God’s dominion. It’s one thing to, again, develop technology that really helps a person to recover their lost humanity. It’s another thing to create a technology that then begins to alter human beings in such a way that we lose our identity as human beings.

Andrew Marcus:

How can we encourage our young listeners today? Technology’s everywhere for us. We can’t escape it, and we’ve been sucked into it for so long. How do we warn or help encourage people to maybe steer clear from some of these dangers?

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Well, this is where I think that the Christian worldview becomes so powerful, is that the Christian worldview, and I unpack this in my book, Humans 2.0, the Christian worldview creates an environment that encourages science and technology development. Because we have been granted dominion over the creation. We are to be stewards of the creation. We’re to promote human flourishing. These are parts of the Christian mandate, and technology allows us to do that. But we also as Christians have this view that every human life is sacred because every human being is an image bearer. Every human life has infinite worth and value, and that we respect, essentially, human beings as being our entire package, our physical and our immaterial makeup, as being what God has created. There’s a dignity to human beings not only be because we bear God’s image, but because we’re the product of a creator.

This creates a framework where we recognize that there are boundaries that we shouldn’t cross, and that if we do cross those boundaries, that people will be exploited. There’ll be injustice. That we’ll lose our nature and our identity as human beings. The Christian worldview has a really powerful set of tools to allow us to really assess the technology, to determine what technology should be advanced, how it should be used. One of the things that is incumbent upon all of us as Christians, particularly younger people, is number one, you’ve got to understand what’s going on so that you can engage our culture with wisdom and with an insight that they will respect and appreciate. Also, I would really encourage young people that have a bent towards medicine or science or engineering, technology development, to go into these areas, to actually pursue careers in these areas where you become, in a sense, an embedded missionary, where you not only have the people’s respect because of your knowledge and your accomplishments, but that you have the influence to really guide from the inside how this technology is used.

We have to recognize this is going to happen whether we want it to or not, and what we need to do is be active participants in how the technology’s going to be managed. That means not only being knowledgeable outsiders, but being knowledgeable and participating insiders in the technology that’s being developed. What would it be like if there were a significant number of Christians that worked at Neuralink? How could they influence Elon Musk, who I think has pure motives honestly for why he wants to develop this technology. I’m sure he sees dollar signs. That’s who he is. But I think there’s a pure motive at the core of what he’s trying to do that we can respect as Christians. But now can we play a role in earning his respect so that he allows us to guide how the technology is used?

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s huge. There’s a place for us within, and there’s a place for us to be knowledgeable on the outside and help ourselves and point the young people around us in ways that we could use the technology for good. There’s been situations where stepping up made a change, and I think we need to keep stepping up, stepping up, stepping up and being that change. Praise God. I appreciate your time so much. Thank you so much and all the best to you in your ministry.

Dr. Fazale Rana:

Thank you. It is great being with you. Thanks.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcasts. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.