Page - 45 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

ficially create a human being goes off the rails, confronting the scientist and his contemporaries with unforeseen moral problems. In a similar manner, Crake en- gineers a new humanoid race which is genetically freed from the human flaws he primarily sees in symbolic thinking and representation. According to him, these human traits have led to the will to dominate others and nature in a vi- olent manner – ironically, this is exactly what he does himself through his act. In the end, however, Crake’s plans fail, as his creatures breed with the humans that have survived in spite of the plague; the Crakers even start to develop ar- tistic and symbolic forms of representation, as well as a quasi-religious creed, in which – all the more ironically – he functions as a god-like figure, even though “Crake was against the notion of God, or of gods of any kind, and would surely be disgusted by the spectacle of his own gradual deification”.51 However, in dia- logue with one of the Gardeners, Crake’s wish to assume god-like power under the guise of scientific feasibility is foreshadowed: “‘Illness is a design fault,’ said the boy. ‘It could be corrected.’ […] ‘So, if you were making the world, you’d make it better?’ [Ren] said. Better than God, was what [she] meant. […] ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, I would.’”52 Here it becomes evident that the un- fettered belief in a world which is fully explainable and controllable through the paradigm of the natural sciences is comparable to a religious creed, yet without metaphysics or a god. The centre of this belief system is instead occupied by humanity. Therefore, Crake and his worldview symbolise a form of humanism that tran- scends the biological boundaries of the human through science and technolo- gy, and therefore becomes a kind of transhumanism. Francesca Ferrando states that “philosophically, transhumanism roots itself in the Enlightenment, and so it does not expropriate rational humanism. By taking humanism further, tran- shumansim can be defined as ‘ultra-humanism’”.53 Instead of aspiring for more conventional transhumanist goals such as radical life expansion and enhance- ment of intellectual capabilities,54 which he only uses as dummy “carriers” for his real designs,55 Crake’s transhumanism runs in the opposite direction: back to what is conventionally thought of as a more “primitive” stage of evolution because the Crakers’ intellectual capabilities are somewhat limited, they have a very short lifespan, and their physiology is fit for eating nothing but leaves. Hence, Crake’s redefinition of what is “good” and what progress means for the 51 Atwood 2004, 126. 52 Atwood 2010, 176–177. 53 Ferrando 2013, 27. 54 As depicted on the website of the transhumanist movement https://humanityplus.org/ [accessed 12 October 2018]. 55 Crake uses a pill he calls “BlyssPluss” as a carrier for his deadly disease and advertises it as prolonging youth, among other effects. Just Popular Entertainment or Longing for a Posthuman Eden? | 45www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 31–50