The Abolition of Man in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanism

C.S. Lewis Speaks to Us Today

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We've mastered our environment; let us master ourselves and choose our own destiny. - C.S. Lewis

From beyond the grave, C.S. Lewis speaks to us today.

Perhaps no other Christian author was so prescient to our current moment. Powerful artificial intelligence and transhumanist dreams are not just ships on the far horizon—they are anchored in the harbors of our cultural imagination and shaping our lives.

Is artificial intelligence capable of operating on universal, shared, objective moral values and principles? It is the doctrine of objective value—the belief that certain attitudes are really true and others really false—the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.

As I prepare for an event tomorrow night at TCU entitled Man or Machine: What it means to be human, Lewis' The Abolition of Man (1943) holds me within its gravitational grip. The piece serves as a Christian apologetic for universal natural law and objective moral values against the backdrop of a post-human reality.

Lewis refers to Natural Law and objective moral values as the Tao. As long as humans conform to the Tao, reality and the world make sense; human life is livable. We know the difference between right and wrong, and so on. When some men (he calls Conditioners) decide to step outside the Tao to enact their will to conquer nature, they are untethered from what it means to be human. Ethics become based on instinct and power. Chaos and destruction are sure to follow for humanity.