We cannot continue for many generations in our current consciousness and survive. Like a baby in the birth canal, we must be born. The only question is how. Some scientists see an Anthropic Principle, a finely tuned universe designed to produce self-reflective life. The universe appears more and more as if it is grounded upon a nonphysical and ideational act of creation.
Molecular biology holds the promise of life extension, conscious reproduction, and life enhancement.
Nanotechnology gives us the potential power to release the obsolete industrial technologies and begin to build as nature does, atom by atom, with the ability to heal, regenerate, resurrect from DNA, clean the environment, live and work in outer space aesthetically and ecologically. In the Gaia Hypothesis James Lovelock recognizes the whole Earth as an intelligent, self-regulating living system. We learn that ecology is not the study of an environment outside ourselves but is the awareness of the whole Earth including ourselves as one living body, in a universe that itself is a Whole System. To the ancients, unleashing a storm, healing, the sick, leveling a city, or foretelling the future would have been ample demonstrations of divinity. Flight, television, a corneal transplant that restores sight, even high explosives would have once been considered godlike.