Transhumanism marriage is the marital wedlock of both humans and machines – that is, a natural man marrying robotic machines or a natural woman being married to robotic appliances.
The rate at which technology is gradually taking over what used to be routines in human affairs is alarming. I was at the airport recently and tried to make a call. I discovered I was offline as my local network couldn’t work internationally. So, I asked the lady attendant for assistance. She just casually exclaimed: “no internet, no life”. Hard to accept, but true! I pondered!
Again, in a recent occasion, after a program, my host was describing to his wife how to get back home because he would have to drop me off in the hotel. But his wife could not get the description. Suddenly, their 10-year old daughter interjected their discussion and said, “mum, just google the address on your phone set and follow the map, you’ll get home”. Chai! I exclaimed, how has the world changed! Little did we know such things could happen just five decades ago!
Now if life is as these in the twenty-first century, how would life be in another five decades or five centuries to come with the current exponential rate of technological advancement?
Going by the trend of events in today’s marriage and relationships matters, it’s been discovered that some men prefer robotic damsels than natural female companions! The same thing applies to the womenfolk. Some of them rather satisfy their libido with mechanical devices such as dildos and vibrators than have real relationships with men.
No doubt, explorations into the field of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and augmented assistance are going to permanently change life and alter our ways of living in the near future in direct opposite as they are these days. In few years to come, most people are likely to consult their artificial “second-brain” implants in making day to day decisions. Because it will be so glaring that with the correct data inputs, accurate, precise and reliable decisions can come up than that of their biological brains.
In other words, with the continuous advancement in genetic engineering, someday, some people are likely to replace their genetic brains with artificial cyber-brains because they function far better. Though the future may be difficult to predict but with the current daily incremental advancements in technology, the generation of transhumanism is here.
Already, as at now, scientists are inventing implants that could be inserted into the head which could possibly replace the human brain and even work better. Inventions such as bionics, cyborgs, cybernetics and robotic bodies are combining biology and technology together to make electromechanical devices that will result into a “third person“.
With daily improvements in nanotechnology, scientists are exploring how to elongate human life. They are developing synthetic body organs which can not and would never be infected by viruses and bacteria that cause diseases. In few years to come, the world as it is today will possibly be full of transhumance who can’t be affected with sicknesses. Almost all the devices are available.
Medically, these days, there are prosthetic arms, limbs, ears, and almost all organs of the body and body parts that could function as biological human organs and parts. As a matter of fact, there are artificial heart devices that could work as biological ones. So, what more? What is in vogue these days is a revolution of the fusions of both nature and technology.
Human life in the future will possibly have to be redefined. A “handicapped person” or “disabled person” in the future may be the normal person now because most people may likely become voluntary amputees since prosthetic limbs, for instance, will likely perform far better than biological limbs.
The girl who wants amputation so that she can compete in the Paralympics
Socially, robots, with the aid of latest computer programming, are being equipped with devices that will make them independently respond to human stimuli and emotions such as anger, joy, excitement, hatred, love, pains, etc. These are in addition to excellent communication skills being perfected on robotic machines.
The days of self-driven automobiles are here. Flying-cars are no more fictions. Clean and green energy are replacing crude oil and gasoline energy. These are the days when guns are shot through electromagnetic rays.
Plans are rife to host parties in the skies, just to go up there in the “air” to eat, drink, dance and then come back to the earth. These are future voyages to space hotels, up in the skies – a distance of about 450 kilometers above sea level like the International Space Station.
One of the immediate challenges the age of transhumanism poses is the effect it will have on marriage and relationships. No doubt, biological reproduction will be challenged. With the availability of all kinds of assisted reproductive devices such as synthetic wombs and genetic modifications of human body, “procreation” as we know it today will possibly be replaced with “planned creation“.
In such a world, for instance, anyone with nanotechnological reproductive devices and gadgets can always have children at will, anyhow for that matter, with little or no recourse to traditional marriage institutions as we know it today. This are products of transhumanism in reality!
The evergreen exploratory nature of human beings is setting the stage. There is an insatiable sexual quest in humanity. Anything sexual has always been a centre of desire and exploration; and as it was from the beginning of creation, so it is now: humanity has always been showing more sexual interest in anything other than co-human beings of the opposite sex. And with the rate of development in technology and perennial human aversion for traditional marriages, humanity cannot but be gearing towards the age of conjugal unions with robots.
And to compound the issue, in designs, sex robots are deliberately constructed and manufactured to be much more beautiful and handsome than humans in the real world. Sex robots are always without “spots or wrinkles” in advertisements.
What does the Bible say concerning transhumanism marriages? Can a priest or pastor officiate and solemnize a transhumanism marriage? Can an individual having all or some of the following features marry or be married:-
With prosthetic arms, legs and limbs
Plus artificial heart and lungs
Plus head implants being used as “second brain”
Plus plastic face and artificial hairs and
Plus electrical currents perfectly wired all over his or her body to replace blood circulation.
In other words, what percentage of natural body parts as against artificial body parts that must be present in a man or woman before a marriage can be solemnized for such an individual?
For short, the question is can a man marry or a woman be married to robots?
In answering this controversial poser from the angle of the Scripture, there’s need to define who a man or woman is. According to Genesis 2:7, man is a tripartite being. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
The first component of man is the body. The body of man was made of the dust of the ground. This is the body parts, made up of both external and internal organs. These are the body parts that can be seen, touched, felt, held and sensed. They are the tissues, ligaments, bones, blood, and up to the minutest microscopic cells of the body. These are what will go back to the earth to become dust at death because it was taken out of the dust of the ground according to Ecclesiastes 12:7 “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
The second component of man is the “spirit“. This is that aspect of man that makes man to be in the likeness of God. According to Genesis 2:7 quoted above, this is the “breath of life breathed into man’s nostrils”. This is what makes man different from animals and things. “Things” are non-living because they don’t have spirits and souls.
But as for animals, they are living because they have life as such from God; but not life of God. Animals have life, no doubt but can never have eternal life like man. At death, the life of animals ceases but that of man lives on. Hence, Ecclesiastes 12:7 quoted earlier states that “…and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” Thus, the spirit of man, which is the breath of God in man, goes back to God at death irrespective of who the person is.
The third and last component of man is the soul. This is the real being that makes man to be human being. And according to the same Genesis 2:7, the “soul” came into being when the “breath of God” was breathed into the nostrils of man made of the “dust of the ground“. So, the mix of the breath of God and the dust (man’s caricature) makes the soul to be.
To throw more light on this, let’s look at someone dreaming while asleep. Number one, his body lays on the bed. Number two, with his spirit, he still breaths in and out on the bed. And number three, out there in the dream-land, his soul goes out moving from one place to another until the soul comes back to the body, it’s then that he wakes up from sleep.
Another illustration: When someone dies: firstly, his body decays; secondly, his spirit goes back to God; third, his soul can’t go back to his body because it’s rotten; rather, it either goes to paradise or goes to hell. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ said in respect of the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Like 16:19-31. In this story, Lazarus’ soul was resting on Abraham’s bosom while the rich man’s soul was suffering in hell.
Now, back to the scriptural rightness or wrongness of transhumance marriage:
Firstly, it is evident that robots have bodies made up of the finest of all gadgets but they do not have souls nor spirits. Even if advanced robotic appliances can converse, respond to external stimuli and express emotions, these are artificial and not natural. So, applying the laws of kinds, marital unions should be mankind to womankind and not mankind to robot-kind nor womankind to robot-kind.
Moreover, humanity is different from “things”. Robots are “things” and not “beings“. When the first man on earth was to be married, in spite of the fact that there were many “things” in the garden of Eden, according to Genesis 2:23, the woman was taken out of man and not out of “equipments”. “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
