In the Holy Bible's Old Testament, God gave this instruction to the Prophet Daniel: "But you, Daniel, keep this prophecy a secret; seal up the book until the time of the end, when many will rush here and there, and knowledge will increase."
The Holy Book's prediction of increased knowledge marking the start of the apocalypse may be coming true at present, as a famous Christian leader warned against the potentially disastrous effects of a scientific effort called "transhumanism."
In an article on Charisma News, Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, equated this scientific movement to an effort to "artificially evolve" humans into a higher state, which he said is against God's will.
"We're flawed human beings, so we have no infallibility like God does as to what's a good trait and what's a bad trait," Land, one of the top 100 most influential Christian leaders in America, explained.
"The fact that we're trying to do this is, to me, really high-tech eugenics," he added.
An article in The Huffington Post described transhumanism as a scientific movement composed "of life extensionists, techno-optimists, singularitarians, biohackers, roboticists, AI (Artificial Intelligence) proponents, and futurists who embrace radical science and technology to improve the human condition."
The same article likewise stated that the "most important aim for many transhumanists is to overcome human mortality, a goal some believe is achievable by 2045."
Land further likened this effort to modify human intelligence to the Tower of Babel described in the Book of Genesis, which prompted God to make people speak in different languages.
"When we start permanently altering the genetics of the people involved, that's going to have catastrophic consequences," the Christian leader warned. "You can see where that goes, it leads to Frankenstein monsters."
He further said that transhumanists should not play God.
"If, as Christians assume, man is the special creation of God with a soul and a spirit, bearing the image of God, no matter how flawed and warped it may be by sin, then human beings cannot be reconstructed by other humans as mere machines—virtual or otherwise. There is indeed a divine spark in human beings that no man-created machine or technology can reproduce," he said.
