We can agree to disagree on that last sentence. Just because there is no CURRENT way to transfer consciousness to another vessel doesn’t mean one will not appear – and soon!

Reverse time two hundred years and tell someone their great great great grandchildren will take for granted the ability to get in an aluminum container and cross the globe in a few hours at 30000 feet above the earth. Same reaction most people today have to the idea of extended or infinite lifespans with the ability to make a backup copy of yourself.

Would you really want everybody to live forever, including the people mentioned in your previous post? Regrettably, those people are all enfranchised, and will demand that government, rather than the free market, determines who gets to live forever. I don’t know about you, but I estimate that government is confiscating somewhere between 40 and 50 per cent of my meager salary already. Were government to demand 90 per cent for the support of immortal welfare recipients and their immortal offspring, I’d probably eat my shotgun.

It seems that much of what we call consciousness is associated with electrochemical activity in the brain. When the electrochemical activity stops, so does consciousness. There’s no empirical evidence that consciousness exists independently of the brain. So it seems unlikely that anyone’s going to move his consciousness to another vessel. The best you can do is to preserve the vessel you’ve got for as long as possible.

If you pulled out your Bible and started trying to explain something contained within I assume you would want the person you are trying to communicate to actually think through whatever it is you’re trying to explain rather than dismissing it out of hand.

I think that is all most transhumanists would ask from you. We don’t have to agree on every facet of life to experience rich relationships based on mutual respect.

There are certainly some ideas, beliefs and creeds that do not deserve any consideration whatsoever. If you find transhumanism to be one of those than certainly – “who cares” is the right thing to say.

I’ve encountered Christian transhumanists, which I find odd, but I don’t let it bother me. I don’t think the Bible is God’s infallible word – some people are angry at me when they find this out – and I don’t let that bother me either. If I want to live 1,000 years or more and you want to die of natural causes it shouldn’t bother either one of us much.

You are correct that God helps those who help themselves is not in the Bible. It is, however, highly practical advice which, if I were in charge, would be inserted into the Bible where the Song of Solomon currently resides.

I do however want to mention that “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the Bible…never was. Not sure where that came from.