Posthuman Blues

I pulled into the library parking lot this evening and immediately sighted a copy of Dawkins' "The God Delusion" in the passenger seat of the car next to mine. It didn't look like a library copy, either -- I think the car's driver had actually purchased it. Finding this vaguely heartening, I scanned the back of the car for Jesus fish decals. None. Not even a NASCAR sticker.





I've maintained for some time that religion is the single-most threatening obstacle to the continued survival of our species. Either we grow out of it -- which seems unlikely -- or we choke to death in the womb. Maybe not in 20 years, although the seeds are most definitely germinating, but certainly within 150. It's become a race -- and an unfair race at that, because practitioners of tribal religiosity have access to the same exponentiating technology as those who are at least marginally "enlightened."

I'll be donning my "optimist" persona at the New Frontiers Symposium. I pretty much have to, if for no other reason than talking about exciting, progressive ventures is vastly more fun than considering that we're in the midst of a century-long end-game.

But once I've elaborated on humanity's potential for greatness I'll probably assume a less glamorous outlook: one in which intelligence -- human, posthuman or otherwise -- doesn't have much of a say. Because we'll be gone, our presence reduced to a scribbling of curious fossils and a varnish of chemicals.