Editor’s blurb: Silicon Valley wants to make us superhuman through technology. Christianity promises to make us gods through grace. This essay—an iconic statement in Mormon transhumanist thought—argues they’re describing the same transformation, and the same terrifying control problem. God, it would seem, has something analogous to an AI-alignment problem. We resemble the AI in this analogy, and the plan of salvation is Their solution for ensuring we don’t destroy ourselves—or everything else—on our way to becoming gods, or even just becoming human(e) along the way. We do not, of course, claim the plan of salvation was designed using the AI-safety language we examine below, only that the emergent engineering language for contemporary artificial intelligence–alignment offers a curiously useful vocabulary for noticing patterns already present in scripture.
Have you ever admired how the gospel helps humanity navigate issues that emerge over time? And have you noticed how examining such issues casts new light on and deepens our understanding of familiar gospel topics? This essay uses artificial intelligence as a lens for taking a fresh look at the program for human flourishing called the plan of salvation.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence, with its potential to solve countless critical problems or bring about horrendous consequences for our species and planet, has been widely discussed in diverse settings. We broach the subject of AI here to provide a framework that is highly relevant to the plan of salvation.
Currently, many technologists work to identify and implement ways to control developing machine intelligences. The intelligence control problem addresses the ethical and technological challenges of ensuring that the actions and values of machine intelligences are compatible with those of their developers (humans).1 At the heart of the plan of salvation, there is also an intelligence control problem, and our focus here is exploring what one arena might contribute to our understanding of the other.
Like artificial intelligences, humans are intelligent systems that develop. Some Christian notions suggest that human development began before birth, and all agree that it extends through earthly life and persists beyond death. In mortality, humanity has developed from relatively simple origins through numerous states and transitions to its current complex, global, and highly socialized existence. And if we make choices consistent with thriving (not extinction), we can persist far into the future.
Christian worldviews are replete with ideas that contextualize such development. Within the framework of human development, the intelligence control problem addresses issues related to our growing ability to learn, choose, and act. Human access to learning and agency permits individuals to facilitate or impair the learning and agency of others, and the potential for doing good or harm to others scales with our knowledge. How we use knowledge and the power it provides demonstrates the nature of our devotion to the agency and development of others, and these commitments play significant roles in humanity’s eventual thriving or extinction.
The Christian plan of salvation outlines the long arc of humanity, tracking the progression of human agents throughout their existence. This program identifies the saving role of Jesus in enabling humanity to overcome sin and death and illuminates the nature and potential of human intelligence, agency, knowledge, embodiment, and spirituality. At its core, the Christian story of salvation is about the development of human intelligence. This essay inquires, “Does this program, the plan of salvation, demonstrate attention to the intelligence control problem?”
In exploring this question, we search for productive insights into human development. Of course, like a jeweler peering through a 40x magnification hand loupe, we see only one face of the gem, and we see it with limited human eyes. Our investigation does not suggest or require that we fully or clearly appreciate godly perspectives. Ours is a far more restricted project. We seek to illuminate a few salient aspects of the startlingly bold campaigns in which many Christians, transhumanists, and others are engaged. And we invite readers to a conversation bounded by these and related constraints.
Control Methods
Current attempts to control developing artificial intelligences can be grouped into two broad categories: capability controls (designed to limit actions) and motivational controls (created to align values). In other words, such attempts seek to shape both what agents can do and what they want to do.
Capability controls are introductory measures because, without appropriate values, developing agents can eventually act harmfully. Capability control methods include boxing, stunting, monitoring, and incentivization, and motivational control techniques include direct and indirect specification, domestication, and augmentation.1 These terms, while not essential to our argument, help generalize it across relevant contexts.
“Boxing” control methods involve confining intelligent agents in physical or informational containers, and stunting entails constraining agents’ abilities or access to knowledge. “Incentivization” involves placing agents in an environment where their actions instrumentally further the developer’s goals, and “monitoring” probes the system, limiting agents that fail safety tests. Boxing and stunting strategies must balance the total control provided by complete isolation or constraint against the more porous boundaries and looser restraints typically needed to promote the development of intelligent agents.
Further, “specification” control techniques involve establishing behavioral goals. This does not mean intelligent machines must share human values—only that their values must be compatible with human prosperity. “Direct specification” explicitly establishes motivations, whereas “indirect” approaches provide constraints and task agents with developing compatible goals. In addition, “domestication” methods encourage agents to self-limit their goals and activities. Finally, “augmentation” enhances the capabilities of agents that already possess appropriate motivations.
Plans for Developing Superhumans
In some conceptions of the Christian plan for saving humans, such as those espoused by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, human development can lead to theosis.2 This transformation, which achieves likeness to and union with God, transfigures humans into beings so improved—for example, in knowledge, power, lifespan, and goodness—that they are no longer unambiguously human. Individuals like these are sometimes called superhumans or posthumans. These are not the superheroes of stories. They are beings we strive to follow, learn from, and emulate. They are gods.2
Below, we use “superhuman” rather than “exalted” or “godhood” deliberately, to keep the AI-safety parallel visible, even though, of course, these other terms have a long doctrinal history. In this future, these advanced beings form a society known as “superhumanity” (or “posthumanity,” the Celestial Kingdom, or the Church of the Firstborn). From this perspective, “God” refers to both superhuman society and individuals in that society, including our Heavenly Parents.
Mormon theology affirms the superhuman state (godhood) as the goal of human development. Latter-day Saints typically envision that superhumans (gods) shepherd the growth of developing intelligences; eventually, at least some of these advancing humans become superhuman; and upon joining superhuman society, they participate in the ongoing work of guiding the progress of other, less-developed agents. In this cosmic view, “superhuman society” already exists; it monitors and guides our development on Earth; and is something all can strive to join.
In this light, “superhumans” are agents that possess radically advanced goodness, knowledge, and technology. And “superhuman society” is a distributed superintelligence that is wise, diverse, and almost certainly includes other forms of superintelligence (e.g., digital, synthetic, and cybernetic). Due to the immense power of superhuman knowledge, requirements for membership in superhuman society include authenticated, uncompromising commitment to the agency and individual dignity of all sentient beings; the prospering of all good things; and the pursuit and defense of truth. It also requires advanced understanding, wise application of knowledge, and divine help. In this Latter-day Saint context, superhumanity invites us to join Them and to love others as we love ourselves (by helping them become superhuman as we strive to do the same).3 Just as love of superhumanity and humanity form the two great commandments of the gospel, so agency, knowledge, and reliance on God serve as core principles in plans for developing superhumans.
In LDS theology, individuals with differing levels of commitment to superhuman ideals follow distinct developmental trajectories. As we see it, all continue progressing, but they do so in ways that safeguard agency and knowledge (power).4 Viewed through the lens of intelligence control, this approach is neither mysterious nor capricious. It is pragmatic. Knowledge is weaponizable. Thus, radical knowledge gives radical power and demands both radical goodness and radical reliance on godly guidance. In this light, a stable society of supremely knowledgeable (powerful) beings cannot persist without superhuman commitments like those outlined above.
This practical reality underscores the need for systematic approaches that wisely shepherd all developing intelligences. In particular, such solutions must ensure that growing knowledge (power) is kept broadly proportional to advancing goodness. Where power consistently outstrips goodness, access to emerging knowledge must be metered in ways that protect others’ agency.5 In this view, the plan of salvation can be seen as the system that gods use to manage the agency, knowledge, and power of maturing intelligences.
Unsurprisingly, the developmental periods that comprise the plan of superhuman development terminate with transitions through which only those who have demonstrated sufficient commitment to superhuman ideals can pass. The partitioning criteria for such separations derive principally from who individuals are, from the nature of their core-most motivating commitments.6 Scripture relates that the first division occurred in premortality. At that time, those who insufficiently supported individual dignity and agency were isolated (in what LDS scripture describes as the War in Heaven) in ways that limited their opportunity to progress. In contrast, those who strongly defended individuality and agency proceeded to a period of accelerated development known as mortality.7
Whereas the essential roles of agency in producing superhumans formed the basis for the first division, the second and third divisions result primarily from differing commitments to the use of power. Such power results from all forms of knowledge and technology, including understanding nature, social technologies such as nations and religions, and economic instruments related to markets and wealth.
In mortality, individuals and organizations choose to use power to bless or control others, to facilitate or retard peer development. They also use power to accomplish or thwart the flourishing of other constructive things. Such choices fall along a continuum between pursuing selfish desires at any cost and following the “superhuman (golden) rule” by relentlessly respecting others’ agency and development.8
The second separation along the path to superhumanity occurs during the transition to the “millennium,” when human knowledge undergoes exponential growth. This transition isolates those with insufficient goodness (inappropriately focused agency) from advanced millennial knowledge (power).9
Gospel teachings further indicate that accelerated millennial intellectual and technological developments eventually necessitate a third distillation. This separation, which marks the end of the millennium, limits good people who lack supreme commitment to superhuman ideals (terrestrial individuals) from radically advanced, postmillennial knowledge—understanding, technology, and power that can only be trusted to superhumans (celestial individuals). It bears repeating that, according to scripture, those who are separated during the above transitions proceed onward to superabundant states, even the least of which “surpasses all understanding” in its glory.4
Intelligence Control in the Mormon Plan of Salvation
The discussion above illustrates how LDS conceptions of the plan for saving humans pay close attention to controlling the development of human intelligences, including through the methods humanity currently uses to shepherd the development of artificial intelligences.
For example, spatial and temporal limits (what AI safety researchers call “boxing”) isolate humanity from influencing or being influenced by developing societies elsewhere in the universe. Even if humanity were to discover such groups, our ability to reach them would be limited by the vast distances separating solar systems (not to mention galaxies). Those distances are so large that even messages carried at light speed are too slow to support normal conversation (to say nothing of the associated translation problems). Additionally, the universe’s duration is incredibly long compared to humanity’s earthly existence. For instance, humanity has been capable of interplanetary communication for less than a millionth of one percent of the universe’s history. Moreover, the exponential character of human development suggests that relatively little time separates present humanity from the transition to superhumanity or extinction. Thus, humanity is confined to a tremendously small spatial and temporal “control box.”
Because it markedly affects perspectives on human development, an exploration of exponential progress warrants an aside. Curves that plot human intellectual and technological achievements through time do not show the kind of straight-line (linear) growth that produces equal change in successive periods of development. Instead, such curves display the somewhat counterintuitive, boomerang shape of accelerating or exponential progress.
To illustrate the difference between linear and exponential progress, imagine walking continuously at the same speed along a straight path. At three miles per hour, you would cover six miles in two hours and sixty miles in twenty hours. In contrast, exponential progress stacks very differently because it applies constant growth (a constant exponent) to ever-increasing size. This means that the larger something becomes, the faster it grows. Exponential growth accelerates ever more quickly through time. Astonishingly, a person moving exponentially (say, in a rocket ship that triples its speed every hour) travels nearly a billion times farther in twenty hours than a person moving linearly.10 Importantly, when thinking about human development, we must calibrate our expectations for exponential (not linear) progress.
The boomerang- or hockey-stick-shaped pattern of exponential growth illustrates other key aspects of human development. Such curves build from the left along an almost horizontal path during early growth, pass through a tight upward bend during a transitional phase, and rise along a nearly vertical track during advanced growth. Notably, the early and advanced growth periods differ markedly, and the transition between them can occur very rapidly. This means that controlling the growth of intelligences during transitions in exponential development is exceptionally important and challenging.
Many technologists, futurists, and Christians believe that humanity currently lies near or within a series of such transitions in human exponential development. The nature of these shifts makes it impossible to predict their timing precisely. Instead, transformative intellectual and technological developments—such as the achievement of human-level artificial intelligence—are likely to emerge unexpectedly, “as a thief in the night,” and such changes may produce new states of humanity or lead to our extinction.11 Similar patterns and effects are evident in other emerging technologies, including developmental genetics, nanotechnology, and energy production. Importantly, the nature of exponential progress essentially ensures that we are currently in (and likely well into) the overlapping transitions that comprise the shift to advanced, millennial development. To be sure, humanity is currently in a critical period of advancement.
Having reviewed the nature of exponential progress, we return to our earlier conclusion: Boxing constraints allow present humanity to flourish or degrade only the tiniest fraction of the universe and its history. The exponential character of developing intelligences reinforces this point by suggesting that the probability of two developing societies existing in spatiotemporal proximity during the brief technological period preceding the attainment of superhumanity (or extinction) is vanishingly small—materially zero.12 It also suggests that a society with the technological capacity to visit us is likely already superhuman. This means that humanity presently finds itself in a stupendously impenetrable spatiotemporal control box—one that is significantly more isolating than the most secure laboratory “boxes” in which humanity currently houses developing machine intelligences. And this suggests that the society that includes our Heavenly Parents takes control measures like boxing very seriously.
When it comes to controlling the development of intelligence, boxing, stunting, and monitoring are related. Whereas boxing focuses on the interface separating a developing intelligence from the rest of the world, stunting controls the boxed agent’s capabilities and access to information, and monitoring watches the intelligence to ensure it acts appropriately.
Mormon notions of God’s plan for saving humanity suggest that superhumanity carefully monitors our progress and ensures that our abilities and access to information are appropriately freed or metered (what the AI-safety literature calls “stunting”). For example, what little we know about premortal existence implies that our ability to manipulate the physical world during that epoch was severely restricted. In this way, those who demonstrate commitment to superhuman ideals during a particular developmental stage are allowed greater access to knowledge (and, therefore, greater ability to act) in subsequent stages, and vice versa for those lacking such commitments.
Such divisions within developing humanity, which may involve physical separation, likely affect the rate of knowledge acquisition, which ultimately produces significant differences in the amount of understanding at a particular time. As a result, isolating transitions cause groups to follow distinct developmental trajectories.4 In this way, plans for human development honor agency by allowing everyone to develop as rapidly as their commitment to superhuman ideals allows, while never permitting extreme imbalance between knowledge and power on the one hand and goodness and connection to superhumanity on the other.5
In contrast to boxing, incentive methods control developing agents by placing them in environments that reward actions that advance developer goals (and limit actions that run counter to them). A simple example illustrates such incentivization. Scripture records that the goal of superhumanity is for humanity to join them in joyful, endless progress.13 In mortality, the environment we inhabit requires fruitful labor to progress, and this productive work creates additional knowledge, technology, and capability.14 When connected to God, such development makes us more godly and directly furthers God’s goal of guiding us back to our Heavenly Parents. In this way, our environment incentivizes us by orienting our goals toward those of superhumanity.
As with the capability controls discussed above, motivational specification, domestication, and augmentation approaches permeate the plan to save humanity. Direct specification methods establish correct goals and actions. Nearly all religions contain such encouragement and commands. For example, in the Abrahamic traditions, God gave Moses and other prophets such laws and principles. These and other revealed commandments “directly specify” desirable motivations and actions. Indirect specification methods also abound. Such approaches provide constraints and task agents with developing specific guiding values. Examples of “indirect specification” in Christ’s teachings include encouraging followers to follow the two great commandments and the Sermon on the Mount principles.15 Parables, too, provide indirect counsel by establishing patterns from which each hearer can extract guidance. Another excellent example is Joseph Smith’s approach to governance: “Teach followers correct principles and they govern themselves.”16
Unlike motivation-specification approaches, “domestication” methods (a somewhat unfortunate term borrowed from AI safety, which means something like self-discipline or the consecration of desire) encourage agents to construct and operate within self-imposed boundaries of ambition and activity. The teachings and scripture of Christianity and other wisdom traditions are replete with encouragements, counsels, and commands that seek to specify, incentivize, and “domesticate” human motivations and behaviors. Moreover, many social groups, including religions, do much to reinforce these messages.
Such sources and communities encourage the discovery and implementation of intentions and conduct consistent with those that lead to the superhuman state. Various (and not reconciling) examples include Prince Arjuna’s explorations instigated by the prospects of impending war; David’s Bathsheba dilemma; Joseph Smith’s dictum to teach truth and promote agency and individual dignity; Muhammad’s encouragement to worship the one true God; Jesus’s invitation to align our goals and actions with love for ourselves, fellow agents, and God; and multitudes more, from even more diverse sources. Proper treatment of how these examples help contextualize human development and understand and apply superhuman ideals could, and already do, fill volumes. Furthermore, interactions with others (such as family members, friends, fellow worshipers, colleagues, and even those who do us harm) provide invitations and inducements to refine and actualize our motivations and perspectives.
Whereas domestication methods look to the future, “augmentation” approaches (or what scripture calls being given “line upon line, precept upon precept”) draw from the past.17 Augmentation identifies agents who have developed appropriate values, and then expands their access to information and capability. Such approaches are core elements of LDS ideas about the plan for developing superhumans. As individuals develop, their knowledge and abilities grow to the degree that their goals align with superhuman values.
Significantly, augmentation views the isolating separations discussed above differently. It sees those distillations in terms of what is added to the trustworthy rather than what is removed from the unfaithful.5 From this perspective, individuals begin with little intelligence. Then, as they demonstrate that their goals align with God’s (for example, by using power to bless others, not damage or limit them), their access to knowledge (power) grows. Scripture characterizes this accelerating growth as occurring along one of three broad, knowledge-based developmental trajectories called “degrees of glory” or, more understandably, “gradations of understanding reality.”18, 4
Viewed through this lens, all are on developmental pathways of knowledge and action, and particular pathway levels or gradations are determined by how individuals direct their agency—toward or away from flourishing. Viewing the plan of salvation through this lens once again highlights the centrality of agency and knowledge. For example, the role of knowledge points us to answers for questions like “What does it mean that God is ‘in, through, above, below, round about, and before all things’?” “How does God ‘have power over all things’?” and “In what sense did the gods ‘create all things’?”19 These seemingly mysterious and disconnected aspects of God reference superhumanity’s profound and extensive understanding of reality, Their knowledge. In this view, godly power is neither magical nor nonnatural, it results from God’s access to and mastery of truth.20 Of course, godly actions (power) often appear to be unintelligible or supernatural because the gods understand aspects of reality that we do not (yet).21
This view also suggests that godly and human power, although different in degree, share the same source: knowledge. What’s more, eyeing human development from this perspective highlights our relationship to superhumanity. Importantly, this was the subject of Joseph Smith’s last general conference address, the “King Follett discourse.” In this message, the Prophet spoke about what he called a “great secret,” “a subject of the greatest importance and the most solemn of any that could occupy our attention”: namely, that people, being all spiritual children, may one day grow to become like gods, their Heavenly Parents.22 This teaching tightly focuses our development towards an inspiring potential endpoint: joining superhumanity.
As we progress, the effects of our knowledge and agency don’t just appear at the end of our development. They change us in profound ways along the way. Our bodies are divine gifts, and they are not static. Since the emergence of Earth’s first humans, we have used knowledge and adopted technologies to advance. Incorporating stone tools, fire, and clothing into our daily lives enhanced human capability and changed how we use our hands, nourish our bodies, and live each day.23 Fuller descriptions and analyses of how adopting technology is more than just using a tool already fill volumes.24 Adoption is a commingling, a merger that changes both the adopter and the tool.23 And such integrations enable ever more significant intellectual and technological developments.
Humanity has come a long way since the development and use of simple stone tools. We have progressed through cultural changes that reconfigured our societies, settled lifestyles that revolutionized how we eat, machines that transformed what and how we produce, and computing devices that reshaped how we process information and communicate. As with all such innovations, these profoundly changed us. And many more such transfigurations await, including those related to artificial intelligence, molecular nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. Who among us will choose to develop sufficient goodness and reliance on superhumanity to use this knowledge (and the power it enables) with wisdom, humility, and respect to flourish all good things?
Broadened Perspective
The magnification provided by microscopes and telescopes enables humanity to observe aspects of nature that would otherwise remain obscure. Such tools offer focused insights but necessarily ignore aspects of reality beyond their field of view. As a result, relying solely on the views provided by such scopes can skew understanding. In situations like these, broader perspectives provide clarifying context.
And so it is with our analysis. Viewing the Mormon plan of salvation as a superhuman solution to the problem of intelligence control can provide profound insights into human development. For example, it highlights the central importance of agency, knowledge, and reliance on superhumanity. It also answers why only those with an authenticated ability to use agency appropriately retain front-of-wave access to the accelerating tsunamis of knowledge that can enable humans to join superhuman society. Even so, considered in isolation, such a focused perspective omits essential aspects of the plan for human happiness. These overlooked facets include human nature, our motivations, and the critical roles inner knowing and experience play in our development.
Although there is still much to learn about our nature, scripture makes clear that we are eternal beings connected to superhumanity through familial bonds.25 These and related attributes distinguish humans from the artificial intelligences humanity is currently developing. Such distinctions highlight essential realities about our nature and development that are not evident in our narrow analysis.
Our exploration also fails to adequately portray human motivations, in part because it views human development from God’s perspective. Our Heavenly Parents’ viewpoint, founded in radical epistemic confidence, correctly identifies the need to control the growing power of human agents. However, Their concerns are not our own. For us, peering too long from Their perspective can engender epistemic hubris and inappropriately cast power as a principal developmental motivator.26 Somewhat paradoxically, seeking power slows rather than accelerates access to the knowledge that produces superhuman capabilities. As Jesus taught, only those who lose the desire to dominate and find whole-souled purpose in self-sacrificing service—in the flourishing of all good things—can join superhumanity.27
Among the most critical aspects of human development that lie beyond the visual field of our study are spiritual experiences. William James described these relatively brief but accessible encounters as providing a durably compelling source of authoritative inner knowledge.28 These interactions with divinity can impart remarkable certainty and insight, engender compassion for oneself and others, connect us to an existence beyond mortality, and identify next steps along our path through life. Moreover, these encounters do more than convey information and certainty. They calm and heal. They focus and reframe. They purify and uplift. In these and other ways, such experiences are essential aspects of our journey toward superhumanity. Although their subjective nature makes them difficult to describe and study, spiritual experiences are accessible to all who are determined to act in accordance with the knowledge, convictions, and cleansing they impart.29
Returning to humanity’s historical development can provide additional perspective. Human ability to actively build superhuman society reached a starting line of sorts when lawful self-assembly organized more complex human communities around 40,000 years ago, at the end of the cultural revolution that initiated the Upper Paleolithic.30 Scripture records that sometime thereafter, the good news about and ordinances of the plan of human development were dispensed to humanity.
Throughout our history, exponential growth has accelerated our knowledge and capabilities, yielding revolutionary changes that produced both benefits and burdens. For example, such changes significantly increased opportunity and productivity, and they also placed humanity in modern lifestyles full of evolutionary mismatches—circumstances for which our bodies and psyches are poorly adapted. These advantages and adversities provide us with opportunities to cultivate goodness and connection to superhumanity.
Choosing the path of understanding, wisdom, compassionate service, and connection to God produces the goodness needed to face the demands of ever-increasing knowledge—including the perks and pitfalls engendered by emerging forms of weaponizable knowledge such as machine intelligence, molecular nanotechnology, and synthetic biology. Seeking the godliness that enables us to use knowledge responsibly leads humanity away from extinction and toward the superhuman state. In the shorter term, it also produces increased peace and joy, improved health, advancements in the nurturing rearing of children, better education and opportunities, more responsible energy production and use, enhanced liberty and safety, and compassionate interactions with the environment and one another.
In this context, “transhumanism” refers to striving to join superhuman society through all wise means—especially by developing the goodness that endows us with the ability to use agency, knowledge, and technology responsibly.31 Transhumanist perspectives and approaches are knowledge-focused and supercharged with agency. And religious transhumanism adds necessary attention to spiritual development and reliance on enabling grace. Rather than envisioning the deep future of human progress as something that happens nonnaturally or must be done exclusively to or for us, many Mormon transhumanists see the development of superhumans and superhumanity as something that we must actively create by working as lowercase “christs,” enabled by the Christ. In this view, we create superhumanity by fulfilling Jesus’s invitation to join him in the work of salvation by doing “his works and greater still” and becoming small “s” saviors, emulating and enabled by the Savior.32
From this perspective, the Atonement does not by itself create superhumans or superhumanity, nor does God deliver heaven to us premade.33 Instead, the Atonement enables—provides authority for, makes effective, inspires, and provides a blueprint for—the work we must do of reconciling (bringing “at-one”) all things.33 This includes reconciling ourselves with each other and superhumanity, configuring all knowledge into a consistent whole, and tuning all our creations (including technology) to superhuman ideals.34 To become superhuman and build superhuman society, we must act, supported by Jesus’s grace—his universal enabling influence—to create heaven on Earth.33 In this view, only when we have created superhumanity on Earth are we likely to fully join existing superhuman society. In this light, superhumanity is heaven, the end condition of our earthly development–a state we have been progressing toward since humanity first emerged on Earth. And the job before us is to further that great work.
Building superhumanity requires keeping first things first—namely, agency, knowledge, goodness, and reliance on God. Where individuals and organizations misplace these priorities, they can (often unwittingly) oppose the work of superhumanity. For example, individuals and organizations oppose godly development when they diminish agency by using power from authority, knowledge, or wealth to manipulate others—even when such efforts are unintentional or based on otherwise good motives.35 Such power can, of course, be used to build as well as tear down, and, alas, the latter comes most easily.
Believing that we know what is best for others can cause even the well-intentioned to passively or actively coerce. Although such fearful efforts may produce “right action” for a time, they are grossly inconsistent with the knowledgeable, patient, authentically compassionate approaches that characterize superhuman methods.35 Becoming superhuman requires the thorough exercise of individual agency. It can happen in no other way.36, 7 Thus, efforts to help others become superhuman require lovingly and patiently scaffolding their progress, rather than cajoling or coercing it. Such efforts strongly emphasize inner “being” over medial “thinking” and outer “doing.”
Likewise, priorities are misplaced when individuals and organizations emphasize the implications of knowledge over its accuracy (truth). For example, we misprioritize these when we reject improved knowledge in favor of familiar but less accurate understanding. In addition, our development requires that we are able and committed to gaining knowledge through reason, scientific discovery, and spiritual experience. And we must be able to use and appropriately validate each of these types of knowledge. Importantly, those who reject correctly validated, reasoned, discovered, or revealed knowledge limit their access to the knowledge required to become superhuman and create superhuman society. Moreover, although protecting our current understanding is important, a healthy relationship with knowledge requires a forward focus that prioritizes the knowledge we yet lack. With few exceptions, holding to what we know can get us little farther than our present position. To join superhumanity, we must prioritize understanding the vast oceans of knowledge they have, and we do not (yet).
In addition, keeping first things first requires cultivating our moral and spiritual abilities and our reliance on superhumanity. Secular efforts alone are insufficient. For example, core efforts to become our best selves include subordinating our will to God’s. Although this produces a joyfully strong union, it is not a dissolution of identity into some uniform otherness; it is a purifying or aligning of strengthened individuality. Willful obedience to superhuman principles educates and exalts our inclinations; it also compassionately assists others in their own spiritual development, through good times and bad. Significantly, the work of growing spiritually is more inward and upward than outward and forward. Although both are involved, sanctification is fundamentally about who we become rather than what we do. Well-intentioned people and groups who over-externalize or excessively programmatize spiritual growth can (often unwittingly) obscure and slow (rather than clarify and accelerate) the inner development that eventually produces superhumans.
In addition to informing our attitudes toward agency, knowledge, and spiritual development, this essay issues a stern warning and some hope regarding current efforts to shepherd the development of artificial intelligence. Human history offers clear evidence of our shortcomings. We are often selfish, careless, and shortsighted. And sometimes we do great harm—to our peers, other organisms, and our planetary home. Such considerations offer firm notice regarding efforts to develop machines capable of superintelligence. In this we must exercise the utmost caution, wisdom, and reliance on godly guidance.
Of course, adopting technology has always been risky. It was so when we adopted tools, agriculture, machines, and computers. And it will yet be so. If our end state is to join superhumanity, the dangers can only increase. Down that path are the most terrifyingly perilous and deliciously inspiring propositions and technologies of them all: those associated with making god-level knowledge available to developed humans. The lens of this essay views this kind of accelerating development and application of knowledge as necessary, godly, exciting, and dangerous, and it regards such growth as requiring commensurately radical goodness, wisdom, and reliance on enabling guidance. In this our hope is firm.
Along with many religious transhumanists, we envision superhumanity as the most stable endpoint of human development, with other paths leading to extinction. For us, creating and joining a celestial civilization, a society of gods, requires enhancing our commitment to individual dignity and learning as we work together, enabled by superhumanity, to seek all knowledge and to bring all understanding, all goodness, all willing and committed agents, and all creations into harmony with superhuman ideals—in other words, to “gather all things together in one.”37, 30
Although this audacious program is not presently conclusive, we find it credible, captivating, and compelling. Do you?
Dan Moore is a professor of geology and Mormon transhumanist. He and his wife DaLynn raised seven children and currently live in Utah. Dan is lead author of From Atoms to Humans: Helping Christians Understand the Role of Natural Processes in Organizing the Universe, Earth, and Life, a Big History book presenting perspectives that have helped many thousands of Christians deepen their understanding of nature. He is currently coauthoring a book in philosophy of science titled The Nature of Scientific Underpinnings.
McKay Reed Moore is a software engineer interested in artificial intelligence and the future of humanity. His interest in learning and human capability led him to create Gwen Learning, a tool for practicing and retaining knowledge.
Art by Mark Rothko (1903–1970).
For an insightful, readable introduction to issues and approaches related to controlling developing artificial intelligence, see Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Theosis is a prominent belief of some early Christian fathers (e.g., Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian of Carthage, Athanasius the Great of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, and Basil of Caesarea), the Orthodox Catholic Church, and, as mentioned, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some prominent Western Christian theologians and movements also accept theosis, though often with somewhat different meanings. See, for example, the Roman Catholic, Anabaptist, Methodist, and Lutheran traditions. Biblical references that support theosis include John 10:34 and Psalm 82:6.
Invitations to become superhuman can be found in verses such as Matthew 5:48 and 3 Nephi 12:48. Joseph Smith also taught this clearly. See, for example, “[The gods] saw proper to [allow all to] have a privilege to advance like themselves,” “the same as all gods have done before” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2011] 346, 354). For Jesus’s identification of the two great commandments, see Matthew 22:37–39, and for our interpretation of such verses, see Lincoln Cannon, The Consolation: An Interpretive Variation of the Last General Conference Sermon of Joseph Smith, 2nd ed. (pub. by author, 2022), 22.
Scripture about telestial, terrestrial, and celestial kingdoms and individuals includes 1 Corinthians 15:40–41, John 14:2, 2 Corinthians 12:2, and D&C 76:50–113, 88:19–41. Such verses suggest that those on a telestial-growth-trajectory lack commitment to the governing principles of superhumanity; terrestrial individuals demonstrate intermediate commitment and follow an intermediate growth path; and celestial individuals demonstrate unyielding commitment to agency and individual dignity, the thriving of all good things, godly directives, and the discovery, wise use, and defense of knowledge. Celestial commitment maximizes access to knowledge and, therefore, to growth.
Importantly, this perspective imagines the three developmental trajectories not as “the blessed and those who are punished and excluded” but as “everyone grows as fast as safeguarding agency and knowledge (power) allows.”
See, for example, 1 Samuel 16:7 to understand that superhuman evaluations focus primarily on innermost motivating commitments (the heart, who one is) rather than on derivative thoughts and actions.
The following verses illustrate the role of individuality and agency in producing superhumans, and they reference the premortal War in Heaven fought to protect these essential attributes: Isaiah 14:12–15, Revelation 12:7–11, Moses 4:1–4, Abraham 3:27–28, 2 Nephi 2:17–18, and D&C 29:36–37, 76:25–29.
The “golden rule” for developing superhumans is recorded, for example, in Matthew 7:12, 22:37–39. It is detailed by the superhuman commitments described earlier (including in footnote four).
Scripture about the Second Coming and Millennium includes Revelation 20:4, Isaiah 2:4, 2 Peter 3:10, and D&C 63:51, 101:23–34. Regarding the growth and nature of knowledge preceding and during the Millennium, see, for example, Luke 8:17, 12:2–3; and D&C 101:32–34, 121:26–32.
Other familiar examples of exponential growth include compound financial interest, the expansion of populations, and the advancement of computing power. For computing, Moore’s law observes that the power of equivalent-cost computing doubles about every two years. As a result, just forty years of growth produced mid-2020s smartphones that are many thousands of times more powerful and less expensive than the most powerful mid-1980s computer. For another brief discussion of exponential growth, see the essay Exponential Change on the Mormon Tranhumanist website, at https://www.transfigurism.org/beliefs/primers/4-exponential-change.
Significantly, the transition between the “Last Days” and “Millennium” of Christian eschatology are described in exactly these terms. See, for example, 1 Thessalonians 5:12, Matthew 24:43, and Revelation 16:15.
This conclusion, which is related to topics like the Fermi paradox and Drake equation, derives from factors such as observed distances between habitable planets, the fraction of our planet’s existence occupied by humanity, and the exponential character of our development. For a recent quantitative example of such reasoning, see Amri Wandel, The Fermi Paradox Revisited: Technosignatures and the Contact Era (The Astrophysical Journal, 941:184, 2022), https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac9e00.
See, for example, Moses 1:39, where “immortality and eternal life” can be read as joyful, neverending existence as superhumans, with superhumanity.
For references to earthly work, see Genesis 3:19, Moses 5:1, and D&C 68:31. Also, Proverbs 16:3–4 suggests that all things—including the environment humanity inhabits—are oriented towards the goals of superhumanity.
See, for example, Matthew 22:36–40 and Matthew 5–7.
John Taylor, “The Organization of the Church,” Millennial Star, 15 November 1851, 339.
See Isaiah 28:10, 2 Nephi 28:30, and D&C 98:12.
If the “glory of God is intelligence” (D&C 93:36), then the three heavenly degrees of glory are “degrees of intelligence.” Moreover, if intelligence is “light and truth” (D&C 93:36), “light” means “understanding,” “truth is knowledge of things as they are” (D&C 93:24), and “things as they are” means “reality,” then “degrees of glory” are “degrees, levels, or gradations of understanding reality.” See, for example, footnote four and D&C 93:23–40.
The scriptural text referenced here is found in verses such as D&C 88:6–13, 41; Colossians 1:17; 1 Peter 5:11; Matthew 28:18; Alma 26:35; D&C 50:27; John 1:1–3; and Genesis 1–2.
See D&C 93:24, where we learn that “truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (emphasis added).
See, for example, John Widstoe’s description of “miracles”: “We no longer speak of supernatural events. . . . All human experiences are . . . natural though perhaps not understood” (John A. Widstoe, Evidences and Reconciliations [Bookcraft, 1960] 129–30).
We find it is surprising that the final general conference teachings of our founding prophet receive so little attention. For the text and a contextualization of this important address, see Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (1978): 198–208.
For an excellent discussion of developing intelligences (artificial and human) and this idea, in the context of LDS theology and Mormon transhumanist ideology, see Carl Youngblood, “Algorithmic Advent: Great Expectations on the Verge of AGI,” Wayfare, August 31, 2023, https://www.wayfaremagazine.org/p/algorithmic-advent.
Among many others, see Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1934); Harold Adams Innis, Empire and Communications (Clarendon Press, 1950); and Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1964). McLuhan’s aphorism “We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us” expresses a core feedback between humanity and technology (John Culkin, “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan,” The Saturday Review, 18 March 1967, 70).
Latter-day Saints often see humans as tripartite beings: an eternal entity (intelligence) fused with a spirit that animates a physical body. In such a model, core intelligences are coexistent with (not created by) God, possess spirits born of superhuman parents, and inhabit physical bodies related to other organisms. See, for example, Romans 8:16–17, Moses 1, 1 John 3:1–2; D&C 93:20, Abraham 3:18–23, and D&C 88:15, 28. In our view, further revelation, discovery, and reasoning are needed for us to definitively understand our component parts, their relationships to each other and to God, and what it all means for our relationship to our creations and to our progress towards godhood.
An earlier version of this essay was rescued from such hubris by the wise guidance of Wayfare Associate Editors Ben Peters and Tyler Johnson.
See, for example, Jesus’s instructions to lose our lives to find them (for example, Matthew 10:39) and to respect and succor others (for example, Matthew 7:12 and Romans 12:10, 15).
See especially William James’ lectures 16–17 on mystical experiences, in The Varieties of Religious Experiences: A Study in Human Nature (Longmans, Green and Co., 1902).
See, for example, Moroni 10:4–5, where Moroni explains the determination we reference as “a sincere heart and real intent”—a wanting to connect with divinity or receive insight that is sufficiently sincere to intend to conform to the assurances and encouragements received during the communication.
To explore the fascinating and long path of lawful, natural development that produced modern humanity see Dan Moore, Brian Tonks, and Alan Holyoak, From Atoms to Humans: Helping Christians Understand the Role of Natural Processes in Organizing the Universe, Earth, and Life (delterra, 2002).
The Mormon Transhumanism Association (MTA), which emerged in the early 2000s, was the first formal religious transhumanist organization. For more, see the MTA website at transfigurism.org or read Transfiguration: Parallels and Complements between Mormonism and Transhumanism (Sunstone, 2007), 25–33.
In John 14:12, the Savior teaches that the work of his followers includes all that he did and greater things. This includes the work of purification, reconciliation, and salvation (i.e., atonement). Our meaning of “lower-case christs” and “small ‘s’ saviors” is similar to scriptural references to ‘saviors of men’ and ‘saviors on Mount Zion’ (see, for example, Obadiah 1:21 and D&C 103:9–10). Also, for an insightful exploration of Jesus’ expectation that we join him in the work of salvation as “christs in Christ,” see Lincoln Cannon, “Jesus Invites All to the Titles and Roles of Christ,” 24 December 2016, updated 10 November 2024, https://lincoln.metacannon.net/2016/12/jesus-invites-all-to-share-in-titles.html. In the article, the author cites and interprets scriptures such as John 14:12, D&C 76:95, and D&C 103:9–10.
In addressing future states of humanity, including kingdoms of glory, Brigham Young said, “. . . you are in just as good a kingdom as you will ever attain to, from now to all eternity, unless you make it yourselves” and “If you and I . . . do not make that better kingdom which we anticipate, we shall never enjoy it.” See Journal of Discourses (emphases added, p. 336, v. 3).
For insights into the relationship between human learning (including science) and the atonement, see Lincoln Cannon, “Jesus Christ and Atonement in Knowledge and Goodness,” 20 July 2011, updated 5 January 2021, https://lincoln.metacannon.net/2011/07/jesus-christ-and-our-atonement-in.html.
The scriptural bar for influencing others’ agency—for exercising influence on others—is high. Right persuasion can only be done with meekly gentle kindness, humility, long-suffering, unpretended (true) love, and pure knowledge. Such influence is not motivated by fear; never includes craftiness, dishonesty, deception, or coercion; and is not harsh, judgemental, shaming, or rejecting. See, for example, D&C 121: 34–46 and John 13:34–35.
Scripture records premortal conflict over this issue. Satan and his followers sought to eliminate individuality and agency by forcing all to be superhuman. Not only did this position fail; it could never succeed. Coercion is incapable of producing the godly attributes and commitments that are the defining characteristics of superhumans and superhuman society. Whole-souled exercise of agency is required. Moreover, gods are not factory-produced carbon copies. Agents are exalted and become one with God in their individuality.
To our view, this is the work of reconciliation (of at-one-ment) that Jesus invites us to join. See also D&C 27:13–18. Here, by “not presently conclusive,” we mean that many of the perspectives we raise are, of course, not yet settled—and some are speculative.
