“Have You Believed Because You Have Seen?”: Human and Transhuman Desires for Alterations to the Visual Field and Religious Experience

Abstract

Insofar as perception is integral to religious experience, the alterations to perception anticipated by transhumanists will also enable alterations of religious experience. This chapter reviews three plausible types of alterations to the visual field: (1) increased visual acuity, (2) native perception of public data, and (3) induced private hallucinations. Comparisons with contemporary analogues suggest that (3) holds more promise for enhancement of religious experience than do (1) and (2). However, physicalist transhumanists have good reasons to favor (1) and (2) and to deprecate (3). Murphy suggests that this tension is helpfully explained by the distinction, more pronounced in certain theological ethics than elsewhere, between well-ordered human desire and disordered human desire.