Spirituality

Most forms of religion revolve around ideas of infinity: omnipotence, omniscience, immortality. These features become the distinguishing characeristics between the Godhead and mortals, and hence define the parameters of divinity and the Self. Descartes' God is just this: he is the infinite that encompasses all things, and gives human beings the notion of limits through his own limitlessness.

Speaking from a Christian background, I can best relate religion back to this model. In christianity, there is this clear division between God and humanity, Heaven and Earth, with the difference harking back to infinity and perfection. God is the Creator of all things, he has existed forever and will exist for ever, and is perfect and good. Humanity, on the other hand, is seen as limited, full of error, mortal, and often subject to follow the commandments of God.

Now we come to the age of the cyber-. Humans can create their own, very convincing, worlds, in which other humans can reside. They can become immortal through Gibson's "constructs", having their soul/mind translated into bytecode and distributed into the Matrix, or resident in a box. Increasingly, knowledge becomes more abundant and accessible than is even conceivable, and the brain can be physically augmented to process greater and mroe diverse forms of knowledge.

What remains to call God, if not the cyborg?