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Lincoln Cannon

Lincoln Cannon

著者： Lincoln Cannon
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概要

 Lincoln Cannon is a technologist and philosopher, and leading voice of Mormon Transhumanism.2025-2026 Lincoln Cannon スピリチュアリティ
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  • Carl Youngblood from the Depths

    Carl Youngblood from the Depths
    2026/02/09
    My friend Carl Youngblood has finally published his long-promised blog, From the Depths. The title comes from Psalm 130: De profundis clamavi ad te Domine – “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” It’s a fitting name for what Carl has been working out over the past two decades. Carl is a founder and current president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. He and I have been thinking together since before the MTA existed, when a small group of us began asking what it should look like to live a more practical faith, to take seriously the prophetic visions of immortality, resurrection, and worlds without end. Carl has been essential to that conversation from the beginning. Now, finally, he’s sharing his voice and vision more broadly. As of today, his blog presents articles spanning over a decade, many originally presented at MTA conferences. In them, you’ll read the thoughts of someone wrestling with questions that matter – momentous questions with practical consequence. How do we navigate faith crisis without losing faith’s power? How do we see Christ in the marginalized when our codes tell us to pass by? How do we redeem our past, not just genealogically but morally, confronting the erased and subjugated? How do we think about resurrection as something we participate in rather than passively receive? A few highlights: “ Help Thou Mine Unbelief ” draws on Paul Tillich to articulate the postsecular challenge facing Mormonism, calling for “disciples of the second sort” who develop doctrine rather than merely repeat it. “ Celestial Forensics ” is a meditation on quantum archeology and participatory resurrection, rendered as devotional prose – and echoing the haunting vision: “There will come a day when it’s harder to stay dead than alive.” “ Algorithmic Advent ” and “ What Is Intelligence? ” engage AI through Mormon theology, applying the Grand Council narrative to alignment, and exploring intelligence as eternal, organized, and multifaceted. “ Religion as Social Technology ” provides a theoretical foundation, drawing on Habermas, Bellah, and William James to explain why religion persists and why it matters. Carl writes with warmth and accessibility. His articles parallel my own with similar ideas, different voices, and complementary emphases. Together, we’ve been building a theology to meet the challenges of our technologically accelerating world. I encourage you to explore Carl’s blog, subscribe to his RSS feed, and share his work with others. In some ways, the conversation between theology and technology has just begun. But Carl has been contributing to it for over two decades. I’m happy we can finally see more of his work.
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  • Witnesses to the Creative Power of Prophecy

    Witnesses to the Creative Power of Prophecy
    2026/01/23
    In his poignant personal essay, “ Hope, Fear, & Creation: Living in Response to Prophecy,” my friend Don Bradley shatters the brittle glass of fatalism that often encases religious futurism. Weaving the heartbreak of losing his son, Donnie, with the historical rigor of his research into Joseph Smith, Don crafts a conclusion that is central to the practical faith advocated by Mormon Transhumanists: Prophecy is not a forecast of unalterable doom, but rather a “blueprint for creation.” The Negated Negative Don draws our attention to the story of Jonah, noting a paradox that I’ve called the “ negated negative.” Jonah proclaims to Nineveh, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” No conditions attached, it’s a statement of fact about the future. And yet, when the people change, God “repented of the evil” and spares the city. The purpose of prophecy isn’t to be right. The purpose of prophecy is to be effective. Frightening or ominous prophecies, even if expressed without conditions, are warnings that we should render obsolete by our response. Even while revering them as inspiration from God, we must not concede to interpretations of prophecy that would shackle our agency. We are confronted today by dark visions associated with terrible risks – technological, environmental, and social. But as Don affirms, such visions are “not a statement of fate.” We have scriptural precedent for courageous hope that if we repent, if we change our behaviors that exacerbate risks, we won’t be destroyed. Forth-Telling Not Fore-Telling Don observes that Joseph Smith did not merely stumble into the fulfillment of Isaiah’s “sealed book” prophecy. But rather he acted as a “conscious collaborator” with God. This reminds me of the distinction between forth-telling and fore-telling. Too often, we treat prophecy as fortune-telling: a passive prediction of events that we must simply witness, enjoying the good and enduring the bad. But true prophecy, effective prophecy, is forth-telling. It articulates a vision that provokes contemplation and channels action to interactively co-create the future. Don rightly argues that “scripture is a script.” And we are called to perform its best verses, as moved by the sublime esthetic of the Holy Spirit. We do this, not as passive observers to the dance of the Gods, but rather as active participants. We’re invited actually to dance, to be moved and to move, to join in creation of truth through our intention and action. Mandate of the Co-Creator Ultimately, Don’s essay is a call to embrace our nature as co-creators with and in God. He concludes that we are created to “join in completing the creation of the world.” This is the heart of the New God Argument. We have a practical and moral obligation to trust in our creative potential – even our superhuman creative potential. This trust requires us to use all the means God has given us. And we should not, we cannot practically, shy away from the tools of our age. Already we use technology to build, relate, console, and heal in ways our distant ancestors imagined only God capable. And these increasingly powerful tools facilitate increasingly compelling, increasingly substantiated, visions of the future. Donnie Bradley saw the “path of light” through doubt. He saw that hope is not a passive wish, but an active project. We honor that vision by refusing to resign ourselves to the destruction of our world. We honor it when we work, using all the means provided by the grace of God, to realize visions of transfiguration, resurrection, immortality, and the creation of worlds without end. May we love and build bravely in this prophesied day of transfiguration.
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  • Pope Leo Flatters Sister Death

    Pope Leo Flatters Sister Death
    2026/01/02
    A few weeks ago, Pope Leo XIV of the Catholic Church criticized Transhumanism during a speech in St. Peter’s Square. Predictably, I disagree with his criticism. Below are some relevant portions of his speech, in quotes, followed by my thoughts. “Death seems to be a sort of taboo, an event to keep at a distance; something to be spoken of in hushed tones, to avoid disturbing our sensibilities and our tranquillity. This is often why we avoid visiting cemeteries, where those who have gone before us rest as they await resurrection.” This may be true of some or even many people. But it’s certainly not true of all or perhaps even most Transhumanists. Some Transhumanists, particularly cryonicists, actually choose to work in locations that function as high tech cemeteries, such as Alcor. And cemeteries, both of the cryonicist and traditional varieties (where I took a film crew to visit my father’s grave), figure prominently in a major recent documentary on Transhumanism. “… one might then think that we are paradoxical, unhappy creatures, not only because we die, but also because we are certain that this event will happen, even though we do not know how or when. We find ourselves aware and at the same time powerless. This is probably where the frequent repressions and existential flights from the question of death originate.” We certainly don’t seem to have much power over death. And maybe we’ll prove to have none at all. But Jesus plainly tells us the opposite, commanding his disciples to raise the dead. This seems like something that all of us, especially the Pope, should take more seriously, trusting that we may actually prove to have increasing power over death. “Praying, in order to understand what is beneficial in view of the kingdom of heaven, and letting go of the superfluous that instead binds us to ephemeral things, is the secret to living authentically, in the awareness that our passage on earth prepares us for eternity.” Surely life itself isn’t one of those superfluous things that we should let go, even if it seems ephemeral at times. Surely life is beneficial in the view of the kingdom of heaven. How could we possibly live authentically, in any coherent way, while characterizing life itself as superfluous or merely ephemeral? I trust that our passage on Earth is indeed preparing us for eternity. But take care not to mistake that as a euphemism for death, an “eternity” in name only. The eternity of which scripture speaks is as real as light and as warm as love. Judging from the resurrected body of Jesus Christ, immortality must be as tangible and embodied as flesh and bone. “Yet many current anthropological views promise immanent immortality …” Jesus called his disciples to raise the dead, imminently. His disciples, notably Paul, prophesied of resurrection to immortality, immanently. Perhaps a couple thousand years has made it too difficult for most of us to trust in such a calling and vision. Maybe we need new prophets, misrecognized as anthropologists, to remind us. “… theorize the prolongation of earthly life through technology. This is the transhuman scenario, which is making its way into the horizon of the challenges of our time.” Humanity has been prolonging Earthly life through technology for thousands of years. Our capacity to do so has been improving, with increasing rapidity. And there’s every reason to trust, actively and cautiously, that we can yet perpetuate this trend. If this is “the transhuman scenario” then humanity has been transhuman since the first tool we used. “Could death really be defeated by science?” Why not? Science is formalized shared knowledge. Presumably God already has such knowledge to defeat death. Why could we not possibly gain the same knowledge? We aren’t God. Sure. But we’re children of God, according to Jesus, invited to become joint heirs with him in the glory of God. So while we don’t yet have such knowledge, there’s practical reason to trust that we may gain it. Faith without works is dead, says the Bible. If we don’t trust in a way that actively expresses itself in action, then our professed “faith” amounts to nothing. If we actually have faith in the prophecies of eventual transfiguration and resurrection to immortality, as the Bible teaches, we ought to pursue them in the actively expressed action of works. Technology is just that. It’s a formalized extension of human works, made possible by the grace of God. We find ourselves in a world that we didn’t create and cannot sustain on our own. But we’ve managed to understand it and apply our knowledge of it in wondrous ways, empowering ways, and life-affirming ways through technology. Of course we can also do evil, even great evil, with the power of technology. All kinds of work, technological and otherwise, can do evil. But that doesn’t make works or their technological extensions evil in themselves. They are just works, to be used one...
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