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gjm comments on Open Thread, Jul. 20 - Jul. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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There's some truth in the first half of that, but I'm not so sure about the second. Expecting that God will at some point transform us into something beyond present-day humanity is a very different thing from planning to make that transformation ourselves. That whole "playing God" accusation probably gets worse, rather than better, if you're actually expecting God to do the thing in question on his own terms and his own schedule.
For a far-from-perfect analogy, consider the interaction between creationism and climate change. You might say: Those who fear that human activity might lead to disastrous changes in the climate, including serious harm to humanity, should find their greatest allies in those who believe that in the past God brought about a disastrous change in the earth's climate and wrought serious harm to humanity. But, no, of course it doesn't actually work that way; what actually happens is that creationists say "human activity can't harm the climate much; God promised no more worldwide floods" or "the alleged human influence on climate is on a long timescale, and God will be wrapping everything up soon anyway".
Not necessarily. There is this whole idea that we are god or some aspect of god - as Jesus famously said " Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?". There is also the interesting concept in early xtianity that christ became a sort of distributed mind - that the church is literally the risen christ. Teilhard de Chardin gave a modern spin on that old idea. See also the assimilation saying. Paul thought something similar when he said things like " It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me". So there is this strong tradition that Christ is something that can inhabit people. In that tradition (which really is the most authentic ) god builds the kingdom through humans. Equating the 'kingdom' with a positive singularity is a no brainer.
Yes the literalist faction will always wait for some external event, and to them Christ is a singular physical being, but that isn't the high IQ faction of xtianity.
Creationists are biblical literalists - any hope for an ally is in the more sophisticated liberal variants.