'Transcendent Engineering' by Giulio Prisco in (2011) 6(2) Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness is promoted thus -
Giulio applies his insightful transhumanist and engineering vision to the crossroad of science and religion in that future technologies may create a pathway to resurrecting the dead.Resurrecting the dead? At least that's an advance on the Ervin Laszlo claim that the dead aren't really dead - they're just not "in a familiar form".
Prisco's article begins -
In “Engineering Transcendence” I argued that science may someday develop the capability to resurrect the dead and build (and/or become) God(s), and proposed to base a “transhumanist religion” on this idea.
I also argued that the ultra-rationalist, aseptic engineering language dear to most transhumanists does not seem able to have an emotional impact on the majority of other people. This means that “traditional” transhumanist ideas will remain confined to a very small minority of technically oriented nerds, and never make a difference to the rest of humanity.
This is a pity as I think our ideas are beautiful and could give happiness, hope, a sense of wonder, purpose and peace of mind to a multitude of seekers. To do this, we must develop formulations and interpretations of transhumanism more emotionally appealing to persons with artistic and spiritual inclinations.
The “transhumanist religion” is addressed to persons with spiritual sensibilities and needs. It is designed to appeal to their sensibilities, and fulfill their needs, while at the same time remaining firmly grounded in the scientific worldview. Instead of “their”, I should of course say “our”: I am a person with spiritual sensibilities and needs. At the same time I am a physicist and an engineer by training and by inclination (and my worldview is strictly materialist), with no room for the supernatural.
I have been a member of the Extropy mailing list since the late 90s. Ever since, the Extropy list has been one of my main sources of intellectual stimulation and enjoyment. I was also interpreting transhumanism in a spiritual sense at that time, and remember thinking of Extropy as a beautiful and powerful new religion for the new millennium. I also remember my very first post to the Extropy list, it was about the possibility of a technological resurrection of the dead; it received some encouraging replies.He goes on to indicate the "cornerstones of the transcendent engineering 'religion'" -
- Mind uploading --- someday it will be possible to transfer entire personalities from their original biological brain to more durable and powerful engineered substrates.
- Time-scanning --- someday it will be possible to acquire very detailed information from the past. Once time-scanning is available, we will be able to resurrect people from the past by “copying them to the future” via mind uploading. Note: time-scanning is not time travel, and it is free from the “paradoxes” of time travel. Time-scanning is just a form of archaeology --- uncovering the past by means of available evidence and records. Of course the very high definition form of time-scanning proposed here is orders of magnitude more powerful and sophisticated than archeology as we know it, but the concept is the same.
- Synthetic realities --- someday it will be possible to build artificial realities inhabited by sentient life. Perhaps future humans will live in synthetic realities. Perhaps we will wake up in a synthetic reality after having been copied to the future. Or … perhaps we are already there.
- Transcendent engineering offers not one, but two possibilities of resurrection: We may be copied to the future by our descendants by using time-scanning and mind uploading; or, we may already be living in a synthetic reality and the system admins may make a backup copy of interesting patterns every now and then. Hope in resurrection is, I believe, a necessary component of any effective alternative to traditional religions.
- If we live in a synthetic reality, then in a certain sense, we cannot even rule out the supernatural, or miracles. The simulators, the system admins, cannot violate their laws of physics, but they can violate our laws of physics if they want. It seems that the supernatural, which we have kicked out of the back door of superstition, may come back through the main door of science.
In Hedley v Spivey [2012] WASCA 116 the Court states
2 The appellant is a litigant in person. He is one of a number of self-represented litigants, in this and other State courts, who continue to rely on eccentric legal theories relating to the authority of State courts and State judicial officers. Ordinarily, their oral court submissions are made in the presence of their supporters.
3 After a four-day trial in the Magistrates Court the appellant was convicted of obstructing a police officer in the execution of his duty and was sentenced to a conditional release order.
4 The prosecution case at trial was that on 29 April 2010 the appellant and a female were in the back of court no 1 of the Kalgoorlie Magistrates Court which had been closed due to the disorderly behaviour of another person. The presiding magistrate had left the court. Various police and court security staff were attempting to gain control of, and to get people to leave, the court. The appellant intervened in the arrest of another person and was asked to step back. It was alleged that he shoved a senior constable in the chest with a briefcase, not particularly hard. The constable stepped forward to deal with the appellant and was punched by him. Another police officer came to the constable's assistance and the appellant resisted arrest, trying to grab the officer's firearm.
5 The appellant appealed against his conviction in the Magistrates Court to a single judge of the Supreme Court under pt 2 of the Criminal Appeals Act 2004 (WA) (CAA). His grounds of appeal were that the magistrate was wrong in law and in fact:
- When he refused to sit under ch III of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution 1901;
- When he failed to swear his oath of allegiance to the Crown in accordance with the third schedule of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1901; and
- When he refused to state where in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution 1901 his authority to sit in the court comes from without having sworn an oath of allegiance to the Crown.
6 It is difficult to provide a coherent summary of the appellant's contentions. A few excerpts from a document filed by the appellant in the single judge appeal entitled 'Presentation for Scott Hedley in Summation' (the summation) conveys something of their flavour:
[T]he State Government of Western Australia is a company with the ABN 66 012 878 629,
[B]oth the State Government of Western Australia and the Attorney Generals Office of Western Australia are subsidiary companies of the Commonwealth of Australia which is registered as a corporation with the US Securities and Exchanges Commission number 00 00 80 51 57,
[T]here are no courts in Australia at this time that sit under and comply with Chapter III of the Constitution of Australia except the High Court of Australia,
[N]o decision of any court in Australia is valid because there is no separation of powers between the governments and the courts,
[N]o court in Australia can make rules of court and apply them with any force to stop the Sovereign people exercising their rights or will as would grant legislative powers to the courts contrary to s 71 of the Constitution of Australia ... ...
[Officers] of the courts, Judges and Lawyers swear an oath to the State of Western Australia and the Law Society, BUT (not the constitutionally valid oath to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II her heirs and successors),
[I]n 2003 the Lion and Unicorn Royal Seal (the Royal Identifier) was replaced with the State of Western Australia Kangaroo's Emblem,
[B]ecause the oath of allegiance was repealed from the Supreme Court Act of Western Australia no court including the District Court and the Magistrates Court meet the requirements of Chapter III of the Constitution of Australia ...
7 On 24 November 2011, McKechnie J refused leave to appeal, correctly characterising the proposed grounds of appeal as vexatious and having no basis in law: Hedley v Spivey [2011] WASC 325 [19]. The grounds and variants thereof have been repeatedly held to be completely devoid of legal merit: Shaw v Jim McGinty in his capacity as Attorney General [2006] WASCA 231; Glew v Shire of Greenough [2006] WASCA 260 (special leave refused: Glew v Shire of Greenough [2007] HCA Trans 520); Glew Technologies Pty Ltd v Department of Planning and Infrastructure [2007] WASCA 289; Glew v City of Greater Geraldton [2012] WASCA 94; Glew v Frank Jasper Pty Ltd [2012] WASCA 93; Krysiak v Hodgson [2009] WASCA 114; Glew v The Governor of Western Australia [2009] WASC 14; Glew v Frank Jasper Pty Ltd [2010] WASCA 87; O'Connell v The State of Western Australia [2012] WASCA 96 [92].
8 McKechnie J described the appellant's trial in the Magistrates Court as getting completely out of control with the appellant attempting to question the magistrate 'wanting his constitutional rights upheld' and the magistrate trying to maintain order [8]. See also [11].
9 The appellant filed an appeal to this court from the decision of McKechnie J. His grounds of appeal are in these terms:
The coram Justice J McKechnie was wrong in law and fact:
(a) When he failed to acknowledge and rule on all the inherited law;
(b) The Imperial Acts and Letters Patent;
(c) All the statutes;
(d) All references to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900; and
(e) All decisions of the High Court of Australia.
11 The submissions in support of the grounds are in the following terms:
I attended at the court on 24 November 2011 before Justice J McKechnie and made submissions into all the following issues:
(a) He refused to acknowledge inherited law
(b) He refused to accept Imperial Acts and Letters Patent
(c) He refused to accept all statute law put to him,
(d) He refused to abide by all references to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900
(e) He ignored all decisions of the High Court of Australia put to him. ...
12 The appellant's grounds of appeal and written submissions are unintelligible. They do not comply with the requirements in the Supreme Court (Court of Appeal) Rules 2005 (WA), r 32(4) and r 32(5).
