Created, Not Constructed Transhumanism, the Imago Dei, and the Preciousness of Human Life

Abstract

Transhumanism can promote the preservation and enhancement of life, but those aims cannot by themselves establish the unconditional worth of every human being. This article argues that a theistic account grounds human worth more adequately than the technological utopianism associated with Yuval Noah Harari because it locates dignity in the creature’s relation to God rather than in capacities, preferences, or social recognition. Read through the doctrine of the imago Dei, human dignity is given rather than achieved and therefore belongs equally to the powerful and the vulnerable, the enhanced and the unenhanced, the productive and the dependent. The argument does not reject technology or deny the moral seriousness of secular ethics. It distinguishes therapeutic care from projects of mastery and contends that Christian theological anthropology offers a more fruitful account of embodiment, finitude, transformation, and hope. Harari’s secular eschatology identifies genuine human longings but cannot secure the inviolability of lives that resist optimization. Christian hope, by contrast, judges technology by the good of persons whose worth precedes every technological intervention.