This is a speech given by Leon Kass, former chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics to The Manhattan Institute:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/wl2007.htm
Honestly I think that this is just as much an argument for transhumanism as it is against it. Mr. Kass quotes brilliant and articulate scientific minds, and then makes vague and emotional appeals against them. He names his enemy “Scientism”, which one can only assume is the belief in empirical evidence through repeated experimentation. Mr. Kass is dead wrong in several of his statements, such as:
“Unlike a normally curious child, cosmologists do not ask, “What was before the big bang?” or “Why is there something rather than nothing?” because the answer must be an exasperated “God only knows!”"
While the study of what happened prior to the big bang is actually a very active and exciting field of study. Also he argues on and on about “God” and the “Soul”, which to me seems a bit strange. The man is not only a scientist, but the chairman of the board of the bioETHICS council. It seems that in his position he would make a lot of sound ethical arguments against transhumanism, but instead he has decided to take the low and easy road of religious and overtly emotional appeals.
All in all his arguments are coherent, but that is about it. He seems to have no trouble sacrificing his scientific integrity to make a weak point or a bad joke. Some may accuse me of setting up a straw man, but honestly, as weak as this man’s arguments are, I have yet to see anything better.
