[jksmith]

Let's just couch it as an intellectual exercise - no assault on religions or followers intended.

Having said that, people of faith spend varying degrees of time trying to know some deity, through study, meditation, revelation, whatever. What I'm suggesting is that technology, and even more so, the human urge that drives it, might yield the same result that people of faith want to reach, except that this technology-driven result is probably not what they expected.

How will people of faith rationalize what the soul is, if we don't need it anymore? It's been replaced by something new and improved, along with our internal organs, limbs, etc.