The term cultural revolution identifies one of the greatest controlling influences upon humanity over the past one hundred years. Over the past fifty years this manipulative revolution throughout the fabric of society has accelerated. We must take a moment at the outset of this article to unfold the breadth and far-reaching magnitude of this term, for increasingly in our contemporary it has become all-encompassing as far as man’s hopes for the future.
The Cultural Revolutions of History
Previous cultural revolutions have paved the way for what we are going to witness in the future. We certainly acknowledge the will of God in either speeding up, slowing down, or even negating the results of these past cultural revolutions. Truly God must permit the rise of man’s end-time city of Babylon and the building of his tower to reach only a certain height unto heaven.
In his detailed description of the end-time apostasy in 2 Timothy 3, the apostle Paul acknowledges that man will come to a concluding point in the depth of his sin and darkness declaring, “But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men” (v. 9). Even in the depth of the workings of Antichrist (when he arrives on the scene of history), Daniel is clear to record that only a certain amount of time will be given to him. These restraints do not imply that man in his dark depravity would eventually overthrow God; these restraints are a mercy keeping man from destroying himself and everything on this planet. We must remember that sin’s end is death, destruction, and suicide. Perhaps all the potential of what man wants to accomplish away from God and despite God falls under this word culture.
We tend to think of culture in the context of the refinement of feelings, thoughts, tastes, or manner of living that affects our dress, our expressions, our preferences in art, poetry, music, and even the architecture of our home and the keeping of that home. While it is the grace of God that brings man’s natural living to dignity, respectability, and nobility, sin tends to bring him to wretchedness in the outworking of his feelings, thoughts, tastes, and manner of living. What would be the result of all cultural revolutions converging together in a singular, orchestrated defiance of God? What culture would arise in the world whereby man has successfully redefined his existence without any consciousness of God in the earth?
Men such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin ushered in another ideological cultural revolution called communism, which at its height controlled over half the world’s population. Communism’s singular purpose of life without God affected every aspect of life, including economy, productivity, business, lifestyle, allegiance, and collectivism.
There was also the revolution of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). After communism took over China in 1949, Mao Zedong ushered in another cultural revolution. Believing the elitists in leadership were leaving the communist revolution that had come to China at that time, Mao started his Cultural Revolution (1966–67) to bring it back to the revolution’s purpose. As a result, over 30 million Chinese were killed.
The 1960s Rock group the Beatles (particularly John Lennon) will go down in history as bringing about a cultural revolution to an entire generation in the earth. In the ensuing years, Western civilization radically began declining in its outward manifestation to a lower level of thinking, dressing, working, and the very living of life itself.
In the past fifty years America, as well, has seen several cultural revolutions. Silent cultural revolutions have subtly and secretly swelled to massively shift the entire fabric of cultural thought throughout American society. For example, there has been the cultural revolution of the use of drugs and their controlling effects upon humanity. Likewise, there has been a cultural revolution regarding views of marriage. In 2002, 41 percent of Americans believed that to have a child out of wedlock was morally acceptable; today, this acceptability is 61 percent. The cultural revolution of sodomy (in all its various shades of strangeness) has brought to America the perversion of same-gender marriage. Just nine years ago, 39 percent of America tolerated sodomy; now the Gallop poll places this tolerance at 60 percent. The bombardment of the media has educated at least 51 percent of Americans to believe that sodomites are born genetically with this proclivity. Ironically, if you are a baker in America, you can refuse to cater a sodomite wedding for almost any reason you please. But if you simply say, “I don’t approve of such a marriage,” you’ll be both vilified and bankrupted by society’s response. America has come to believe that we must not judge others for anything, even if what they’re doing is destructive.
Around the world there is also the cultural revolution of eclecticism that seeks to break down the distinctions of race, religion, and even concepts of thought. The threat to mongrelize all the nations seeks to destroy patriotism and allegiance to any nationality or culture. Men even use allegiance to a culture or race as a weapon to ultimately destroy all allegiances. This form of cultural revolution methodically uses other races and cultures to chisel away one race or culture. Once it is destroyed, they work against another one until all distinct races and cultures are destroyed. Cultural revolutions destroy cultures and every facet and concept identified with them.
Purveyors of Cultural Revolution: The 2045 Initiative
Wealthy philosophical leaders of the world have come to mutually believe (amidst all of history’s cultural revolutions including contemporary arenas of science, technology, and medicine) that there must be a final cultural revolution whose superlative achievement is the final overthrow of God and His memory on this planet. This postmodern global environment has done away with all concepts of right and wrong and the questioning of ethics. Man is now placed in a position that he can choose to do anything without being morally questioned or judged. This self-rationalization of the universe and world around him has created a moral relativism. The global presupposition of man’s full autonomy has now opened a whole new world where he is his own god. Science and technology are aggressively pressing in every field of epistemology to mutually come to a final frontier in their collaboration of all human accomplishments to declare men in their thinking to be God. By doing this, they can now create the future of what man is to be.
The sins of mankind that pervade every aspect of humanity are now crying for another cultural revolution of humanity itself. Rather than created in the image and likeness of God, these wealthy and powerful leaders are seeking to make a world society in their own likeness. They hope to speed up the so-called “evolutionary process” of man to bring him to a perfection never known before. It is a perfection of body, mind, and personality; it is a disease-free, genderless (or bi-gender) perfection; they envision a perfect human consciousness that will never die. Such men believe that all of this can be done without God and without His redemption.
In the March-April 2017 issue of Straightway, we introduced the 2045 Initiative founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov. We alluded to the fact that this Russian multi-billionaire initially sought to bring together Russian specialists to create artificial organs and systems for the human body, including the adaptation of neural interfaces and robotics. But this Initiative has now become a global network of researchers in the field of what is being called “life extension” and “evolutionary transhumanism.” It is the hope that this Initiative will be in place fully by 2045. This would include android robots replacing people in manufacturing tasks, even securing robotic servants in most homes. One of the additional hopes is “thought-controlled” avatars that would provide “telepresence in any place of the world” and abolish the need of business trips. Amidst the talk of flying cars, there is the strong belief that thought-driven mobile communications built into the body or sprayed onto the skin will become the norm. It is the belief that just a few years beyond 2045, bodies made of nanorobots will be able to take any shape arising alongside of hologram bodies. Believing this reality will bring forth a new humanity, the man of the future will have no need of war and violence. The final frontier will be man’s development of “spiritual” self-improvement.
Itskov’s opening speech at the 2013 Global Future 2045 International Congress declared their powerful objectives:
We, the team of the 2045 initiative, have a special name for this strategy: We call it Evolutionary Transhumanism. In realizing this Evolutionary Transhumanism, we need to create and carry out two revolutions. Firstly, a spiritual revolution, we need this to make sure that people will benefit from the technologies, and that we raise the level of public consciousness, to be safe with the kind of technology that we hope to develop. The other revolution is techno-scientific, and the aim of it is to develop the means of transferring one’s personality/one’s consciousness to a non-protein, more capable body carrier.
People call me a dreamer, and even some colleagues of mine call me a dreamer, but this dream, this huge future that we are going to create, I think it is worth dreaming of, because in this future people will be young, beautiful, they will not suffer from illnesses and diseases. They will have multiple bodies, not just one. The biological body will be able to live on earth and the non-biological body will be able to travel the cosmos. In the hologram-like body, people can stay in places where you cannot stay in the physical body. This kind of body will probably be radiant, as the Russian scientist Tsiolkovsky called it. He was known to probably have a similar dream, because he wanted humanity to be transformed to a kind of radiant humanity, which will be not even material, but a sort of energy.
In this world of the future there will be no diseases, no death, no hunger, no wars, no tensions between nations, and on the contrary there will be abundance, freedom, creativity, and everyone will be concentrating on spiritual self-improvement, I believe. Scientists are very rational and they don’t actually like talking about dreams, they prefer to deliver, and not to overpromise from the very beginning. But what I want to emphasize is that this dream helps the speculation that we have in the project, and can actually drive the science. Throughout the whole history of humanity, curiosity and the thirst for new discoveries have actually driven science and encouraged science. So obviously, what we are going to develop through the realization of the Avatar project is not speculation at all. It is realistic and I hope the Congress will show that we have enough ground to claim that it is realistic.
The Worldview of Transhumanism
In recent years, a group of self-professed “body hackers” have gathered in Austin, Texas, to host annual conventions they call BDYHAX (“BodyHacking Convention”). Their purpose is to bring “together a collection of people who share in the idea of using technology to augment our biological capabilities and enhance the human experience.” To them, biohacking is the next step in human evolution. Up to this point in science, the human body has been enhanced by mechanical devices such as pacemakers to stabilize and improve basic biological functions. But now the future has unlimited scope and vision for augmenting our bodies and merging ourselves with the very tools we create. Transponders implanted into hands can allow doors to be opened, cars to be started, or computers to be unlocked. One of the influential men in this field of biohacking is Amal Graafstra, CEO and founder of the biohacking company called Dangerous Things. He has developed such implantable transponders. At a recent BodyHacking Convention, several other devices were debuted including “North Sense,” a device that “allows people to feel where north is like a homing pigeon.” Also debuted was an “eyeborg,” a camera that can be embedded into a human eye socket.
Part of these biohacking conventions includes discussions that fall under the growing movement known as transhumanism. Transhumanism is said to facilitate “the next step in our evolution as we go from human to something beyond human.” The organizations that are committed to transhumanism suggest three core tenants that must control the future: (1) science and technology should be the basis for decision making, not ideologies; (2) government’s main responsibility is to eliminate “existential threats” to life on earth; and, (3) the promotion of science and technology is to be for the betterment of all.
Among the more conservative camps of technology and science, there is the strong fear that factional politics and certain philosophical camps within science will either destroy humanity, or that we will become slaves to the very organizations and technologies we are creating.
It is interesting to note that one of the main supporters for such technology is the military community designated as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agencies), which has been in existence for more than fifty years. Its purpose is to make investments in breakthrough technologies for national security. Dedicated to being a key innovator to precision weapons and stealth technology, DARPA dates back to the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Today, it is heavily investing in the creation of universal soldiers equipped with a range of “bionic sensors encased in indestructible exo-suits effectively making them superhuman.” Such soldiers are hoped to be at the forefront of the next global war.
Many other organizations believe that by augmenting our biology and merging man with technology we can free ourselves from many of the inconveniences of life, ridding ourselves of disease, and even become our own god to grant eternal life to ourselves and to create the “future” man in man’s own image and likeness.
One of the complex questions that science now is facing is “What does it mean to be human?” From biology’s perspective, the simple answer is that if your DNA is homo sapien, then you are human. But there are other schools of thought in science that associate humanity with the possession of sociological or psychological behaviors. As Christians, we believe that God created man with both a soul and a human nature. This soul and human nature not only include the body and its intricate aspects but also the breath of the Almighty! Today’s humanistic and atheistic society only believes that man is a product of evolution and that naturalistically, man is a composite. Though complex and nuanced more than simple nature, all of what they think man is can be “created” by man when they have full control of his entire bodily existence. Where does this approach cross the threshold from humanity into inhumanity? The evolutionists believe they are on the verge of answering this question.
Transhumanism today is a cultural and intellectual movement that believes it can (and should) greatly improve the human condition and existence using advanced technologies. At the very core of transhumanism is the concept of life extension. Life extension is the belief that through genetic engineering, nanotechnology, cloning, and other emerging technologies, “eternal life” may soon be possible for humans. It also believes that the physical, intellectual, and psychological capabilities of man can be vastly increased. From this hope comes the term transhuman. Even the exploration of speeding up reaction times and learning (via computers) is part of their transhumanist hope. Some of this has already been used by the US military to train snipers. Could the future bring about a computer that would be able to upgrade the mind to a capacity greater than human intelligence?
If society came to such a life extension where every human does not die, what problems would this produce? If we stopped giving birth to babies, again what problems would arise globally? Without birth and without death, would society continue to grow and “evolve”? Or would humanity stagnate with the world filling with transhumans who would be “full of themselves” in pride and sin? Who would have access to the powerful, intelligence-boosting drugs? Who decides who should live forever? Yes, society would have a mess on its hands. It would no longer be viewed evolutionarily as “survival of the fittest,” but rather, who would be the chosen ones for eternal life—the rich, the famous, the politically correct?
It is evident that man has gone beyond the moral and ethical framework of life and is aggressively pursuing those cultivations that only God should be involved in. For the Christian, life decisions will become more complicated in the future concerning how far he submits himself to the system of science and medicine. How far should we go concerning the transplanting of organs or the implementation of artificial organs or systems of the body?
We must not conclude that anything should be viewed as being right or okay if God permits man to do it. God permitted the city of Babel to begin, as man endeavored to make himself a name to take the place of the Name of the Lord. However, then God said,
And this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city (Gen. 11:6–8).
There is a point somewhere out there that God is going to bring confusion and a scattering, but how far will He let them go?
God’s silence today does not mean He agrees with what men are doing. Man has entered areas in his cultural revolutions that we never thought God would permit, such as the mapping of human DNA or the cloning of animals. As man stretches forward to the realm of transhumanism, what will be God’s limit?
Conclusion
How should we then live in days of the demise of honorable culture? A biblical worldview must still be maintained in the Christian’s mind and heart. We must not let the world and its various impressive technologies and accomplishments overthrow our faith in God’s Word. We must always embrace biblical thinking and never worldly thinking. It is not that the world does not have enough evidence about God to believe in His existence. This world has intelligently suppressed its knowledge of God! It does not like to retain God in its knowledge.
From the Christian perspective, “In the beginning God” is the foundation for all meaning. Our worldview further proclaims that this powerful, intelligent God who created all things in heaven and earth is the same one who took upon Himself human form in the person of Jesus Christ. Only the creationist perspective can account for the design in nature (even the robotic avatars have a designer). One of the unique principles that all of science and technology must have to work is a unanimity of the universe in intricate harmony of law, order, design, purpose, and beauty.
How should we then live in these days when honorable culture has not only been brought to death, but the estate has been given over to those who hate God? Such individuals will use the laws and the principles of His providence to destroy man, unless God intervenes to save man from the inevitable suicide of humanity.
How should we then live? We must live in light of the belief in the Personal, Eternal God. We must live in the reality that the first man disobeyed his Creator and thus plunged himself into sin, bringing upon him the law of sin and death. We must live in the light that our problems are not the imperfections of a Creator; man has brought himself into his own corruption, his own depravity, his own destruction.
God is our only hope for salvaging our culture and everything it stands for. When Christ comes into the life, He not only brings a right relationship between man and his Creator, but also a right life, a changed life, a recovered life, and a Christian-perfection life. Only God can bring to man eternal life, both in its quality and duration.
Transhumanism is not what we need! Our greatest need is transformation and transfiguration of life in Christ and conformity to His image! This is our only hope for man, and when the God-Man, Christ Jesus, comes to set up His Kingdom, it will be ruled in peace and knowledge and love. Dear reader, God created us in His image and likeness; He gave us a personality of intellect, emotions, will, and a self-entity. He wants to save both our souls and lives to be poured out to Him, not to the world that has rejected Him and all that He is.
The psalmist declared, “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Ps. 100:3, emphasis added). How should we then live? We are to live for Him, and in Him, and have our being, our existence, unto Him.