Post-human by David Simpson

Post-Human (November 23, 2011)

Trans-Human (November 23, 2011)

Sub-Human (August 15, 2012)

Human Plus (March 10, 2013)

  

I’ve downloaded several free books (especially science fiction and fantasy) on my Kindle, and I have even enjoyed a few of them.  One particular deal was forwarded to me by a friends – upon the release of Book 5 of his Post-Human series, David Simpson was giving away the first four books for free (for a limited time – a time that is now past).

It took me a while to start them, and whenever I would finish one, I would pick up something different to break up the series.  While the first three books were not mind-blowing in any way, they were good enough to warrant continued reading.  I’m glad I did, because the fourth book, Human Plus, actually is exceptional.  It’s an adventure story, set in a world of cyberspace and artificial intelligences, and the action in all of the books is very good.  They are very readable, and the pacing is very nice.

But there are also some deeper questions being asked, and that is why I’m writing about it here.  The common question to these books is simply this – what it is that makes us human? 

Are we still human when we have implanted computer systems to make us work more efficiently and live longer?  Are we still human when we rely on nanotechnology to run our bodies?  What about if we are a saved version of ourselves that has been reconstructed from a computer?  What about when there is nothing biological left in us?  And finally, can an artificial intelligence, created by humans, be in some way human?

All of which are very interesting questions, and, when it comes to science fiction as a genre, these are some of the great classic questions that have been asked at least since “Helen O’Loy,” if not long before that.

The only problem is that Simpson rejects the only rational way to answer the questions – and that is with the Triune God of Scriptures.

So why am I bringing it up?  I mean, there are tons of books and films with an improper worldview.  Well, I’m bringing it up because the questions being asked are the right ones – he’s just starting at the wrong place to have any hope of answering them.  And oddly enough, the answers he finds normally hint to something greater than his own worldview will allow.

What does it mean to be human?

As I said above – the question is a good one, and frankly, a foundational one. 

With all the talk in these books about being post-human, trans-human, whatever-human, the common element is the humanity, and that part of us is something in the books to be embraced and maintained.  The reason the question is asked is because the characters go through multiple transformations and are at different levels of technological evolution, and they wonder at what point they cease to be human.  In other words, in all the encouragement the book gives to advance technologically, it doesn’t actually encourage us to lose that whatever that makes us human.

Furthermore, the characters want their technology to emulate that.  The AI in the story (not giving anything away here) is praised when it acts human, but criticized when it is does not.  Some of these qualities that are praised are drawn out in one conversation from Human Plus (and the dialogue is edited here to remove references to events and names so it doesn’t give anything away plot-wise):

“I’d still sacrifice myself.”
 “Why?  That would be illogical.”
 “It appears logical to me.  The one who has the power to choose who lives and who dies should use that power to save others.  To do otherwise would still be selfish.  It would still be monstrous.”

The first thing we should note here is that the first speaker is wrong – there’s nothing in logic that demands self-sacrifice.  Well, okay, that point aside, look at how much is assumed here to be good.  First of all, logic itself is assumed to be true.  That cannot be proven without using logic to prove itself, and it runs contrary to an evolutionary worldview.  There’s a lot of material on this, and I’m not going to spend a ton of time on it, but naturalistic materialism cannot explain something that is immaterial and universal.  That is definitional to the worldview.  Things that are immaterial, by necessity, have to be explained as just the thoughts and musings of a person or people, some of which work better than others.  It cannot be the universal product of a purely naturalistic universe.  It’s, quite frankly, the chemical reactions of a bag of protoplasm.  So things that are immaterial must be individual or cultural in nature and nothing more.  Logic claims otherwise for itself – that it is universal.

But we don’t stop there.  The quote assumes things about the way people should act in certain situations.  Again, we are appealing to an immaterial absolute – a moral standard that does not depend on our own minds, but rather is outside of us.  Under naturalistic materialism, the best we can say is that we prefer when people are nice, but there’s no absolute moral standard by which we can say that Hitler was wrong, or that rape is wrong, or anything of the sort.  We can only say that we don’t like that.

Lastly, self-sacrifice here is applauded, which is actually something that goes against evolutionary thought.  The goal in evolution is to survive and pass on the genes.  That’s what keeps the whole system moving.  There isn’t a lot of room in that system for dying for the sake of others.  It doesn’t really make sense.

But it does make sense, and it makes sense because naturalistic materialism isn’t true.  We have immaterial universal concepts because the world isn’t wholly material.  We have a concept of something special in humanity because we were created that way.

All these elements are based on the God of Scripture.  And Romans 1 tells us that all of natural reflects his divine attributes, and we all recognize them.  We are without excuse.  Some people suppress the knowledge of God, but they cannot hide it.  They constantly give evidence of God’s image upon themselves by living according to the biblical worldview, even while professing a different one.

Are those who subscribe to naturalistic materialism logical, good, generous, and self-sacrificing?  Quite often, yes, but it is despite their worldview, not as a result of it.  They are reflecting something greater.

These books make that very clear.  If you really believe in the naturalistic materialism worldview, it would make it very difficult for you to cheer for the humans in the first two of these books.  You very easily might find yourself cheering of our destruction.

Let me repeat that – without the God of Scripture, why should we want the humans to win out in the end instead of machines, programs, aliens, or whatever?  There is no reason to not side with the bad guys here.

So what does make us human?

So what’s the real answer then?  What is it that sets us apart of human?  The books are right – it’s not the body.  Someone who has a leg amputated is not suddenly a little less human.

So what is it?  The Scriptures teach us what sets us apart from the result of creation – we image of God:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
 -Genesis 1: 26-27

I think CARM has a fine definition of what that means here:

The image of God is generally held to mean that people contain within their nature elements that reflect God's nature: compassion, reason, love, hate, patience, kindness, self-awareness, etc. Man was made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26). Though we have a physical image, it does not mean that God has one. Rather, God is spirit (John 4:24)--not flesh and bones (Luke 24:39).

Well, that explains a lot better what is sought in these books.  When the books praise the self-sacrifice of someone, they are indeed commenting on what makes us human, but it’s to the image of God, the image of the One who would sacrifice Himself on our behalf.  When it speaks of love, of compassion, of how we should treat one another – that is what is being seen there.

Conclusion

One of the characters actually speaks about inconsistencies in stories in general in Human Plus, saying, “Humans are storytelling animals, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are very good at it.”

Ironically, this quote applies very well to Simpson’s own work here.  He set out to explore what it means to be human from a materialist worldview, and his answers don’t actually make any sense without God.

Thankfully, we do live in a world where love and compassion makes sense, because this world is not a result of physical forces reacting on one another merely, but instead the creation of a loving and compassionate God.