Hi Kyle,

I think I remember you saying that you were agnostic. If so, I think I need your definition of that term since it appears to conflict with mine. But, I do like your thoughts on the subject...

***I believe that we will colonize other worlds well before our sun passes its main sequence, and we will create artificial components that interface with our biological selves, and artificial intelligence systems that interface with our consciousness to both enhance it, and allow us to communicate to each other more directly, mind-to-mind. I believe that we will become a sort of meta-organism, where all of humanity acts in concert in the pursuit of common goals. Individual freedoms, while certainly existent and nurtured, are recognized to be within the context of something much greater. We will direct our own future evolution on different extrasolar environments via technology (including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, megascale engineering (terraforming), and new technologies which we do not have foundations for yet). Eventually, I am convinced that we will encounter other intelligent life that arose independently of us, elsewhere in the universe, almost certainly within our own galaxy first.***

Hmm... Terminator meets ET? Could work I suppose, but it sounds like a cold and sterile future. It doesn't sound as good as the Christian version of Christ's second coming to bring harmony and peace to humanity and living forever in a New Jerusalem. But, I guess that this is the difference between a scientific-like religion and a religious-like religion.

***When we achieve the status of a Class I or II Civilization, then I think we will face a new stage in 'cosmic evolution' where we may compete with other life forms within our own galaxy, in the same way that we competed with other life forms in our terrestrial evolution. Whether it occurs by co-existence and collaboration or competition and extinction, or synthesis and intermixing, somehow there will be a dominant mega-consciousness in our galaxy in some far-removed era, deep into time's future.***

I suppose if we were single-cell organisms sitting on the bottom of some shallow seas 2 billion years ago, any notion that we would become multi-cellular organisms competing with other multi-cellular organisms outside our shallow seas turf would seem pretty psychodelic too. I can't rule out this possibility, but I would like to think that natural selection has less impact to intelligent caring creatures and that competition is a vestige of our evolutionary heritage. Maybe not.

***In a nutshell, we will become God.***

For a second I thought you'd say we would become Steven Spielberg, but his movies have been duds lately so I can see why you would look to comparing us to God.

***Once we have reached this state, perhaps several billion years from now, we could essentially manipulate physics to 'resurrect' any person who has ever lived (by artificially simulating their precise consciousness) and synthesize them within the meta-consciousness (this meta-conscious state being analogous to theistic concepts of heaven).***

That would be a cool trick. Do we send the 'evildoers' to a synthesized meta-hell? Just kidding.

***I would greatly appreciate anyone's responses and comments on these thoughts.***

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"

Harv