Late in 1999 a book by computer genius Ray Kurzweil hit the book shelves in time for the Christmas rush. The title of the book was "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When computers exceed human intelligence". He points out in the book that the computing power of microchips doubles approximately every 18 months. This is so well an established phenomenon in computer engineering that it has been called "Moore's Law", after the engineer who first reported the phenomenon. At this rate of development by around 2020 computers will have the raw computing power of the human brain.

He discusses three implications of such developments in computer science.

• First, humans will become a wired species, as biotechnology develops.
• Second, the computing power of 2020 or later will make some computers capable of apparent intelligence and sentience.
• Third, it may be possible to provide virtual eternal life by scanning the contents of a persons brain and then letting this human memory file live forever inside a computer generated virtual reality.

Kurzweil suggests that the computer has the possibility of becoming a spiritual machine, in a sense similar to calling our bodies of flesh and blood spiritual machines. From the perspective of the Christian tradition, is this possible?

All of the situations described above are possibilities suggested by current technology. In each case we are confronted with the question, "What is humanity?"