THE “RESURRECTION GAMBIT”

November 11, 2024 / Joseph P. Farrell / No Comments

This important story was shared by T.S., and it's about a subject I've blogged about previously, and it's worth doing so again. The subject, as the headline of the blog indicates, is what I think I am going to start calling "the Resurrection Gambit." By this I mean the attempt by scientismists to literally restore extinct species to existence through the techniques of genetic engineering, cloning, and so on. In other words, it's a real life "Jurassic Park" scenario, of scientists "resurrecting" long extinct species, in the case of the "Jurassic Park" scenario, dinosaurs, and for the purposes of putting them in a sort of "megolithic zoo" for entertainment. Most readers here will know the story: the whole thing quickly gets out of control as the dinosaurs view the strange little hairless monkeys snapping pictures of them as ready-made meals-on-wheels. Well, now they want to resurrect the Tasmanian Tiger:

What is interesting here is that one notices a distinctive shift in the type of argument being advanced for bringing back the strange dog-like marsupial, and the counter-arguments being offered by local aboriginal leaders. Here's the case for "de-extinction" of the species:

Known for its distinctive striped coat and dog-like features, the Tasmanian tiger was last seen alive in 1936. As Tasmania’s top predator, it played a critical role in maintaining the island’s ecological balance. With its disappearance, smaller herbivores like wallabies flourished, damaging local vegetation and threatening the ecosystem. Now, researchers argue that bringing back the thylacine could reverse some of these changes by reintroducing a natural predator into the landscape.

In other words, the "de-extinction" is being argued to restore a lost environmental balance caused by the loss of the species(let us call it what it really is, by the name that indicates the ultimate goal of all this scientism: resurrection, and "immortality"). The reader will have noted immediately that there is an implicit assumption in the argument, namely, that the previous situation in Tasmania, the situation obtaining prior to 1936, represented a sort of "ideal balance", which the situation after 1936 and the massive human intervention, does not. And behind this, there is another implicit assumption, namely, that human beings and their activities are somehow something "set apart" from that "environmental balance", except, of course, when that activity is being used to "restore it." But this assumption contains within it a self-contradiction, and it is a contradiction that will not go away: what, exactly, distinguishes one set of human activities on the environment from another? Might not an attempted restoration of that environmental balance that obtained prior to 1936 and the Tasmanian Tiger's extinction result in yet another set of imbalances even more catastrophic?

Ultimately, the "resurrection gambit" thus exposes a fundamental fallacy with all the prognostications about science, mankind's activity, and its environmental impact: the idea of some sort of ideal environmental balance is a metaphysical assumption rather than a product of empirical science, because the latter is perpetually changing, because of human and other factors. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with making metaphysical assumptions; we all do it, all the time, and in many cases they're necessary to human thought. But this also means that it is vital to distinguish them from science per se. This problematic is exposed by the counter-argument that aboriginal Tasmanians are making about the gambit:

The project has also sparked discussions within Tasmania’s indigenous communities, who caution against tampering with nature. Emma Lee, a Tasmanian aboriginal elder and environmental expert, expresses skepticism about what she calls a “colonial approach” to science. She stresses that conservation efforts should prioritize current species and that the thylacine’s extinction itself was a byproduct of European hunting practices. For many, the ethical implications of this project loom as large as its scientific hurdles.

One sympathizes with these people and their concerns about what led to the extinction in the first place: the "colonization" of nature. But note that the concern is to devote efforts to preserve existing species... by more human environmental tinkering. Again, that's neither a good nor a bad thing, it is simply reality. But who is to say that such efforts will not, themselves, create more imbalances.  One thinks of those "species preservation" efforts to save wild wolves or hawks or coyotes. The species, under their protected status, thrive and grow to such an extent that another imbalance is created, an imbalance that the political action needed to address such imbalances cannot keep up with. The "solution"? Turn the whole process over to technocrats? Who create more imbalances that threaten farmers or their crops and livestock. And on and on we go.  But we have wandered far afield from The Resurrection Gambit...

What's the real goal of The Resurrection Gambit? As I've tried to argue in other blogs about this issue, the real goal of all these "de-extinction" experiments is human resurrection and immortality. And here is where a very old metaphysical doctrine comes into play: does "de-extinction" of a particular human organism mean the return of that person? One group would say, yes, because soul and person are equivalent and interchangeable names for the same underlying thing. The other group, a decidedly smaller one, would say that while the two are related and to a degree overlap, they are not, in the final analysis, equivalent nor interchangeable.  Indeed, these two positions lie at the heart of an old debate within Christian theology from the second and third centuries, and they're at the heart of philosophical debates further East as well.

To these considerations one should add the question of just who the scientismists want to "de-extinct". When one does so, the Resurrection Gambit becomes highly problematical, because some of those "who's" could turn out to be individuals far worse than the Tasmanian Tiger.  One need only think of the Boys from Brazil scenario...

See you on the flip side...

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Posted in Transhumanist Scrapbook

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

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