Stuff like this:
> Indeed, since we live in a post religious world now, they will become gods themselves. Transhumanism is a contemporary version of a modern project of human self-deification.
is mostly just sensationalism; most transhumanists I know of don't think like that.
So to me, this is still "human", they still want a long, healthy life, but their means to it is by via negativa: instead of adding things to your body hoping to increase the quality of life, they would avoid the things that are consider harmful.
Contrast that with "transhumanism", whose idea is to be able to control the environment and elements of nature to the point where they can shape everything to their liking, even if it means adding whatever it takes to their bodies. If that's not some sign of trying to outmake our own Maker, what is?
I think most of transhumanist don't think there is a Maker. How could they take this view? I myself am a godless person - religion wasn't even a topic during my childhood, in school, etc. I wouldn't even think about this without you telling me the idea.
The point is, no matter if you believe that life-as-we-know-it is a creation of God or a result of millions and millions of an ongoing evolutionary process; it seems to me that a transhumanist core belief goes beyond the idea of "wanting to live healthy long lives" and that they can take control over their own nature.
It is this "wanting to take control over nature" that, put simply, reflects as an attempt to become a (lowercased) god. You don't need to think "I want to become God" to share that idea. A simple "I don't want to die" or "I want to enhance my intelectual capability beyond any natural limit" would be enough for me to claim the same thing as the author and I don't think it sensationalist in the slightest.
> If we ask who was more correct—the theologians who argued for a Creator-God, or the intellectually unfulfilled atheists who argued that mice spontaneously generated—then the theologians must be declared the victors: evolution is not God, but it is closer to God than it is to pure random entropy.
…
> Well, more power to us humans. I like having a Creator I can outwit.
To me it seems more like falling prey to some very obvious and predictable instinctual drives without being consciously aware of it.
Also the article you linked to does not contradict me:
> The rapture is an eschatological term used by certain Christians, particularly within branches of North American evangelicalism, referring to an end time event when all Christian believers—living and dead—will rise into Heaven and join Christ.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_univers...
Isn't this basically the same as Roko's basilisk?
It isn't really a big difference anyway. Both are pursuing an instant of uplifting immortality. The fact that the 'new' form is non-exclusionary is just like the fact that it's non-religious: unimportant.
> Also transhumanism doesn’t promise immortality. Best case, consciousness would persist until the heat death of the universe. A very long time, but infinitely less time than infinity.
sounds like a distinction without a difference.