Transhumanism - a cure for entropy? No - transhumanism is a faith-based ideology

Like most Men though history; I regard "entropy" as the fundamental problem of this mortal life on earth - in other words, what the IV Gospel called "death" or "sin". 

Entropy is the tendency of all entities to undergo change, degeneration, and dissolution - loss of form; for Men to suffer disease and death. 

Entropy is the fundamental problem of mortal life, because it cannot be prevented - or, at least, it never yet has been prevented. 

But transhumanism claims that entropy can be cured - by human effort, and the application of science and technology. 

And transhumanism is - mostly implicitly, and for lack of any "acceptable" alternative - perhaps the dominant ideal and ideology of the developed world today. 

The main basis of this claim to be able, in principle, to cure entropy; is that disease and degeneration has been delayed in many places; and the average age of death has been been delayed considerably. 

In other words, some of the symptoms of entropy have been - in some cases - quantitatively alleviated by extension of technologies of exactly the kind we already have - drugs, surgery, genetic manipulations and so forth. 

On the other hand, the waning of one disease means the waxing of another - e.g. as a smaller proportion of otherwise healthy old people died of pneumonia in their sixties; a much greater proportion of decrepit older people died with dementia in their eighties. 

While average human lifespan has indeed greatly increased globally, and especially in developed nations; maximum human life span seems to be the same as ever (or hardly changed). 

And while people in their fifties and sixties look and behave younger than those of that age did 100 years ago; if they live long enough the signs of extreme old age will come upon them - and with greater rapidity (somewhat as Aldous Huxley described in his Brave New World). 

So, transhumanism is not based on any fundamental insight or empirical discovery; rather it should be considered an ideology (i.e. a "religion" minus the divine) that is intended to, and sometimes does, replace religions - especially Christianity.

In the IV Gospel; the work of Jesus Christ is rooted in his offering an eternal and complete cure for entropy (which is called "death" or "sin") - but on the other side of death and by resurrection.

Transhumanism offers its cures for entropy on this side of death, and without the re-making of self that is resurrection - which is probably the basis of the appeal of transhumanism.

The promise of transhumanism is one of alleviation of suffering and abolition of death soon, and without having to die first.

If this was possible, and true, then the appeal of transhumanism is obvious to anyone who desires above all to escape from disease, degeneration, and death. 

However; at root the transhumanist proposed cure of entropy is purely imaginary, a "nice notion", a wave of the hand, an unfounded assertion...

If entropy is real, then it cannot (cannot) be cured by any possible technology - because all technologies are subject to entropy - and so on, all the way down.

And if entropy is not real... well, that would be something that transhumanists would need to argue explicitly. 

Yet transhumanism passes-itself-off (with its quantitative analogies) as "hard science" or more like "applied technology"; a thing attainable with bureaucratic reliability, by a sufficiently large and well-funded project management of research effort: by directed human effort. 

With transhumanism we have, as so often, unacknowledged metaphysics as the basis of an assumed ideology - an ideology that pretends to be a consequence and inference of solid and inescapable empirical facts. 

Thus people are choosing to be transhumanist purely on the basis of wanting to escape the effects of entropy, and then assuming that it is possible to abolish entropy in this mortal life and world. 

The assumption that entropy can be cured is the basis of all that follows in transhumanism; and, as an assumption, it cannot be disproved - it is a matter of faith.

What I ask is that such an assumption be regarded as an assumption.

The assumption should be made clear and explicit and up-front; rather than hidden-away, implicit - or falsely denied to be "an assumption". 

And consequently the ignorant or dishonest pretence should be dropped that transhumanism is a rational extension of further-developing science, medicine, or technological breakthroughs. 

It is no such thing:   

Transhumanism Just-Is a faith-based ideology; and should be acknowledged, evaluated and judged as such.