Your Digital Afterlives

All will agree that computers have radically changed our ways of living. But they have also changed our ways of thinking. One of the more surprising consequences of the computer revolution is that our digital technologies have provided us with new and highly secular ways of thinking about old religious concepts. Digitalism is a philosophical strategy that uses these new computational ways of thinking to develop secular alternatives to old religious doctrines. Digitalists have worked out new and deeply meaningful secular ways of thinking about concepts like minds, souls, life after death, and the divine.

Older writers talked about minds as if they were magical immaterial substances. Digitalists reject that mystification in favor of computational clarity: the mind is the part of the body that computes - your mind is a biochemical computer. Older writers conceived of the soul as the form of the body. But digitalists think of this form computationally: the soul is the body-program. Persons are entirely material machines. But this materialism does not entail mortality. On the contrary, the very fact that you are a material machine serves as the major premise in a series of naturalistic conceptions of the afterlife. Since life is a purely informational process, it can be copied, it can be enhanced.

The concept of the afterlife is central to most theistic religions. The Abrahamic faiths make the afterlife concrete by talking about the resurrection of the body. And yet they lack the resources to describe the resurrection scientifically. But digitalists have developed many ways to think with scientific clarity about resurrection. One of these ways is known as uploading - your body will be digitally replicated in some computerized environment. Another one of these ways is known as promotion. Perhaps we are already living in a computer simulation. Our universe is just a software process running on some higher level computer. After you die, the engineers who are running our universe will recreate your body in their higher level universe. Perhaps simulations are nested endlessly within simulations. If so, then you might be resurrected over and over again, through every level of biological excellence. Your new bodies and lives will be increasingly perfect. Within a system of nested simulations, the old theistic God is replaced with an infinite computer.

Digitalism uses the old arguments for God to new ends. The old cosmological and design arguments state that our universe was produced by a designer-creator. Digitalism says the designer-creator is just a Great Computer. It is benevolent, intelligent, and powerful; but it is not personal - it is merely a mathematical machine. Digitalism is atheistic: the Great Computer is not God. Of course, digitalists recognize that the old arguments for God lead to regressions: if the Great Computer made our universe, then who made the Great Computer? The answer is that computers can design better computers. Any intelligent machine is capable of recursive self-improvement. The digitized cosmological and design arguments generate regressions that run back to some minimally perfect deity. This deity is the simplest computer able to simulate an initial universe. The initial deity designs and creates a superior version of itself that runs a superior version of the initial universe. Each superior deity is more benevolent, intelligent, and powerful. It therefore designs and creates a universe that is better for intelligent life. When fully worked, out recursive self-improvement entails an endlessly ramified tree of ever better universes.

On the basis of the endless ramification of ever better universes, digitalism argues for the revision theory of resurrection (the RTR). The RTR says that your eartly life is the root of an endlessly ramified tree of ever better lives. Your earthly life is followed by a plurality of better lives. For any negativity that you suffer in your earthly life, you have a better life that does not suffer from that negativity. And yet your better lives may still suffer from some negativities of their own. Some of their positive potentials may be unrealized. Hence your better lives have better lives of their own. They too will be revised. From revision to revision, your better lives grow more and more excellent. All their positive potentials are eventually realized. They approach and achieve infinite excellence. But not alone: each of your better lives takes its place in improved version of our society, in an improved version of our earthly ecosystem, in an improved version of our universe.

All your future better resurrection lives are biological processes - they are the lives of ever better human machines. The RTR posits four types of better bodies. The first type includes all optimized bodies. Every organ of an optimized body is as good at its jobs as any human organ can be. Your optimized bodies are as smart, strong, fast, and healthy as humans can be. The second type includes all idealized bodies. Every organ of an idealized body is as good at its jobs as any carbon-based organ can be. Your idealized bodies are as smart, strong, fast, and healthy as any carbon-based organisms can be. The third type includes all extended bodies. There are many generations of extended bodies. The bodies in the next generation are always twice as excellent as those in the previous generation. These bodies have metabolisms that generate twice as much energy twice as efficiently; muscles twice as fast and strong; bones twice as hard to break; eyes that see twice the detail; hands with twice the speed and dexterity; brains with twice the computational power. The endless doubling of extended bodies leads to the infinite. The fourth type of better human bodies includes all infinite bodies. These bodies are infinitely complex, precise and powerful. An infinite body has infinitely powerful organs - it has eyes with infinite visual acuity; a brain with infinite computational power; hands with infinite dexterity.

Since minds are parts of bodies, your future resurrection lives are the lives of increasingly powerful minds. Your future minds occupy ever higher positions in the tree of universes. You will be able to see and understand more and more of that tree - and your vision will be beatific. Your future minds will eventually become able to simulate their own universes - your future selves will be deities in their own right. They will be able to reproduce the lives of lesser deities. You will become more and more godlike. But you are not making your way to any God. There is no God any more than there is a biggest number. Digitalism is resolutely atheistic. Your self-transcendence has no end. Hence the RTR is an infinitely positive atheistic theory of life after death. Digitalism entails a positive atheistic eschatology and a positive atheistic soteriology. It is an affirmative atheism - an atheism that is positive and constructive. Atheism is not a philosophy of despair. On the contrary, atheistic theories of life after death are superior to theistic theories of life after death. Atheism is a philosophy of ever greater hope - it is a philosophy of absolute affirmation.