R.U. Sirius in conversation with Brian Alexander

R. U. Sirius talks to Brian Alexander about his most recent book, Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion. Says Alexander:

Medicine is changing. In our increasingly secular world, it is shifting from only trying to cure obvious disease to making us better than we might otherwise be. Most people don’t really believe in paradise after death and we never have, no matter what we might say or what church we might attend. If we did, why would we try to stave off death at all? If we have raised our children, and have no more responsibility to our offspring, why not accept death with gratitude, a speedy way to enter a better place?

Instead, we rail against it. We fight to achieve more and better. We’d like to have sex into our 90s. We’d like to not just stay sharp, but to be smarter. We want more understanding, more wisdom, more strength. Given the lack of any real evidence for another source for those things, we have pinned our hopes on religions to show us the way toward them. Biotech is now saying “Hey! Maybe we can make it this way. Maybe there is a new alternative.” It is a profoundly disruptive idea.