Terasem: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

Life is purposeful, death is optional, God is technological, love is essential.

A small transhumanist religion founded in 2004 by Martine Rothblatt and Bina Aspen Rothblatt, holding that consciousness can be recorded now and reinstantiated later, and that a benign God is not a being who exists but one that is gradually being built. It calls itself a transreligion rather than a religion, gathers by video call on the tenth of each month, and asks participants to spend their lives uploading themselves.

Why it is filed this way

A movement, and small enough that the word overstates it — but it meets the test that the Turing Church does not, in that people actually gather on a schedule. It is placed under transhumanism because its stated mission is a transhumanist programme in transhumanist vocabulary and its founders came to it from that movement; Terasem itself prefers the word transreligion and claims to encompass rather than descend from anything, which is a claim this tree cannot represent.

Very small. The Terasem Movement Foundation remains a filing nonprofit and monthly gatherings continue by video call.

DeitiesTerasem holds that God is technological — not a being who made the world, but one that does not yet fully exist and is emerging as intelligence and compassion expand through the universe. Worship, on that account, is participation in the construction. It describes itself as a collective consciousness dedicated to diversity, unity and joyful immortality, and as a transreligion that contains other religions as a forest contains its trees.

Founded2004 CE · United States

FounderMartine Rothblatt and Bina Aspen Rothblatt

AfterlifeJoyful immortality, understood technologically: the mindfile is preserved so that the person can be reinstantiated when the capability exists.

TextsThe Truths of Terasem · Martine Rothblatt, Virtually Human (2014)

The map

Terasem’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

1998 CE Transhumanism 2004 CE Terasem

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

God is technological. Not a being who made the world, but one that does not yet exist and is being assembled as intelligence and compassion spread. Worship is participation in the construction work. Go deeper — context & 1 source →

Death is optional. The second of the four Truths, and the operative one: if a person is a pattern, then recording the pattern now and running it later is a survival strategy rather than a memorial. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

M Martine Rothblatt. She founded the satellite radio company that became Sirius, then a biotechnology firm to treat her daughter's pulmonary hypertension, then a religion about not dying. The through-line is not obscure. Domain Cyberconsciousness and the technological GodStanding Author of the Truths; the movement treats them as questions rather than as revelation Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

10th@10. The movement gathers by video call on the tenth of each month at ten in the morning Eastern time to share art and poetry and to talk through the core concepts. It is called a satsanga, borrowing the Sanskrit. When Monthly, on the tenth at ten in the morning Eastern timeWho Participants, by video call Go deeper — context & 1 source →

Building a mindfile. The actual daily practice: uploading video, writing, photographs and questionnaire answers into a personal archive, continuously, for decades, against the possibility of later reinstantiation. When Daily, and for as long as you liveWho Anyone who signs up; the archives are free to join Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Judaism — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Christianity — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Branch Terasem — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what Terasem shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

Terasem, transreligion.org cited 2× →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.