Human Identity At The Intersection Of Science Technology And Religion
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Human Identity at the Intersection of Science, Technology and Religion by Dr Christopher C Knight,Professor Nancey Murphy Pdf
Humans are unique in their ability to reflect on themselves. Recently a number of scholars have pointed out that human self-conceptions have a history. Ideas of human nature in the West have always been shaped by the interplay of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. The fast pace of developments in the latter two spheres (neuroscience, genetics, artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering) call for fresh reflections on what it means, now, to be human, and for theological and ethical judgments on how we might shape our own destiny in the future. The leading scholars in this book offer fresh contributions to the lively quest for an account of ourselves that does justice to current developments in theology, science, technology, and philosophy.
Human Identity at the Intersection of Science, Technology and Religion by Christopher C. Knight Pdf
Humans are unique in their ability to reflect on themselves. Recently a number of scholars have pointed out that human self-conceptions have a history. Ideas of human nature in the West have always been shaped by the interplay of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. The fast pace of developments in the latter two spheres (neuroscience, genetics, artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering) call for fresh reflections on what it means, now, to be human, and for theological and ethical judgments on how we might shape our own destiny in the future. The leading scholars in this book offer fresh contributions to the lively quest for an account of ourselves that does justice to current developments in theology, science, technology, and philosophy.
Religion, Neuroscience and New Physics in Dialogue by Darren Marks Pdf
Can we live with being merely a brain with a history of being souls? Can our supra-nature, learnt in the crucible of religion and expressed in theology, survive without being exiled to the quantum mysteries of consciousness? Our very survival depends on these questions being answered and in a manner by which a non-expert can understand. The book explores these ideas and posits how we might be able to understand ourselves as merely brain without the confusion of pixie dust in the nanotubules, reorienting ourselves to the idea of Nature, and our humane ethical response. By looking at the challenge of neuroscience to identity and our souls, the book explores the tension of being scientific and theological and helps guide the reader to what can be said by either front in our axial age.
What's with Free Will? by Philip Clayton,James W. Walters Pdf
Are humans free, or are we determined by our genes and the world around us? The question of freedom is not only one of philosophy’s greatest conundrums, but also one of the most fundamental questions of human existence. It’s particularly pressing in societies like ours, where our core institutions of law, ethics, and religion are built around the belief in individual freedom. Can one still affirm human freedom in an age of science? And if free will doesn’t exist, does it make sense to act as though it does? These are the issues that are presented, probed, and debated in the following chapters. A dozen experts―specialists in medicine, psychology, ethics, theology, and philosophy—grapple with the multiple and often profound challenges presented by today’s brain science. After examining the arguments against traditional notions of free will, several of the authors champion the idea of a chastened but robust free will for today, one that allows us still to affirm the value of first-person experience.
Human Rights Law and Personal Identity by Jill Marshall Pdf
This book explores the role human rights law plays in the formation, and protection, of our personal identities. Drawing from a range of disciplines, Jill Marshall examines how human rights law includes and excludes specific types of identity, which feed into moral norms of human freedom and human dignity and their translation into legal rights. The book takes on a three part structure. Part I traces the definition of identity, and follows the evolution of, and protects, a right to personal identity and personality within human rights law. It specifically examines the development of a right to personal identity as property, the inter-subjective nature of identity, and the intercession of power and inequality. Part II evaluates past and contemporary attempts to describe the core of personal identity, including theories concerning the soul, the rational mind, and the growing influence of neuroscience and genetics in explaining what it means to be human. It also explores the inter-relation and conflict between universal principles and culturally specific rights. Part III focuses on issues and case law that can be interpreted as allowing self-determination. Marshall argues that while in an age of individual identity, people are increasingly obliged to live in conformed ways, pushing out identities that do not fit with what is acceptable. Drawing on feminist theory, the book concludes by arguing how human rights law would be better interpreted as a force to enable respect for human dignity and freedom, interpreted as empowerment and self-determination whilst acknowledging our inter-subjective identities. In drawing on socio-legal, philosophical, biological and feminist outlooks, this book is truly interdisciplinary, and will be of great interest and use to scholars and students of human rights law, legal and social theory, gender and cultural studies.
Religion and Human Enhancement by Tracy J. Trothen,Calvin Mercer Pdf
This collection vigorously addresses the religious implications of extreme human enhancement technology. Topics covered include cutting edge themes, such as moral enhancement, common ground to both transhumanism and religion, the meaning of death, desire and transcendence, and virtue ethics. Radical enhancement programs, advocated by transhumanists, could arguably have a more profound impact than any other development in human history. Reflecting a range of opinion about the desirability of extreme enhancement, leading scholars in the field join with emerging scholars to foster enhanced conversation on these topics.
Social Sciences and Cultural Studies by Asunción Lopez-Varela Azcárate Pdf
This is a unique and groundbreaking collection of questions and answers coming from higher education institutions on diverse fields and across a wide spectrum of countries and cultures. It creates routes for further innovation, collaboration amidst the Sciences (both Natural and Social) and the Humanities and the private and the public sectors of society. The chapters speak across socio-cultural concerns, education, welfare and artistic sectors under the common desire for direct responses in more effective ways by means of interaction across societal structures.
In Interplay of Things Anthony B. Pinn theorizes religion as a technology for interrogating human experiences and the boundaries between people and other things. Rather than considering religion in terms of institutions, doctrines, and creeds, Pinn shows how religion exposes the openness and porousness of all things and how they are always involved in processes of exchange and interplay. Pinn examines work by Nella Larsen and Richard Wright that illustrates an openness between things, and he traces how pop art and readymades point to the multidirectional nature of influence. He also shows how Ron Athey's and Clifford Owens's performance art draws out inherent interconnectedness to various cultural codes in ways that reveal the symbiotic relationship between art and religion as a technology. Theorizing that antiblack racism and gender- and class-based hostility constitute efforts to close off the porous nature of certain bodies, Pinn shows how many artists have rebelled against these attempts to counter openness. His analyses offer a means by which to understand the porous, unbounded, and open nature of humans and things.
What is the 'posthuman'? Is becoming posthuman inevitable-something which will happen to us, or something we will do to ourselves? Why do some long for it, while others fearfully reject it? These questions underscore the fact that the posthuman is a name for the unknown future, and therefore, not a single idea but a jumble of competing visions - some of which may be exciting, some of which may be frightening, and which is which depends on who you are, and what you desire to be. This book aims to clarify current theological and philosophical dialogue on the posthuman by arguing that theologians must pay attention to which form of the posthuman they are engaging, and to demonstrate that a 'posthuman theology' is not only possible, but desirable, when the vision of the posthuman is one which coincides with a theological vision of the human.
Reaching for Immortality: Can Science Cheat Death? by Sandra J. Godde Pdf
At the forefront of science and technology there lie competing ideologies as to the nature of humanity and the future of human flourishing. Will technology become the ultimate savior, or has the work of salvation already been accomplished? Are we only creatures of mind and body or are we spiritual beings at our core? Reaching for Immortality bravely examines the agenda and ideals of the transhumanist movement, and compares and contrasts these with the biblical vision of a physical resurrection and a divine upgrade of the entire created order. Which vision of the future will inspire you, and capture your allegiance? This book is a primer to provoke deep thought about the impact of technological change on human personhood, and asks crucial questions facing our age: -What does it mean to be human, in light of exponential technological growth? -What is transhumanism and where is it leading us? -How important is embodiment for our personal identity? -How would the biblical understanding of personhood survive in a posthuman future?
Public theologians are already thundering like prophets at climate change and racial injustice. But the gale force winds of natural science blow through society as well. The public theologian should be on storm watch.
Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing by Erik Parens,Josephine Johnston Pdf
International uproar followed the recent announcement of the birth of twin girls whose genomes had been edited with a breakthrough DNA editing-technology. This technology, called clustered regularly interspaced short palindrome repeats or CRISPR-Cas9, can alter any DNA, including DNA in embryos, meaning that changes can be passed to the offspring of the person that embryo becomes. Should we use gene editing technologies to change ourselves, our children, and future generations to come? The potential uses of CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene editing technologies are unprecedented in human history. By using these technologies, we eradicate certain dreadful diseases. Altering human DNA, however, raises enormously difficult questions. Some of these questions are about safety: Can these technologies be deployed without posing an unreasonable risk of physical harm to current and future generations? Can all physical risks be adequately assessed, and responsibly managed? But gene editing technologies also raise other moral questions, which touch on deeply held, personal, cultural, and societal values: Might such technologies redefine what it means to be healthy, or normal, or cherished? Might they undermine relationships between parents and children, or exacerbate the gap between the haves and have-nots? The broadest form of this second kind of question is the focus of this book: What might gene editing--and related technologies--mean for human flourishing? In the new essays collected here, an interdisciplinary group of scholars asks age--old questions about the nature and well-being of humans in the context of a revolutionary new biotechnology--one that has the potential to change the genetic make-up of both existing people and future generations. Welcoming readers who study related issues and those not yet familiar with the formal study of bioethics, the authors of these essays open up a conversation about the ethics of gene editing. It is through this conversation that citizens can influence laws and the distribution of funding for science and medicine, that professional leaders can shape understanding and use of gene editing and related technologies by scientists, patients, and practitioners, and that individuals can make decisions about their own lives and the lives of their families.
The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology by Jay R. Feierman,Lluis Oviedo Pdf
This book takes a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary approach to religion, religiosity and theology from their earliest beginnings to the present day. It uniquely brings together the natural sciences and theology to explore how religious practice emerged and developed through the four sections into which the book is organized: Evolutionary biology; Philosophical linguistics, psychology and neuroscience; Theology and Anthropology. The volume features an international panel of contributors who develop an innovative picture of religion as a culturally-created social institution; religiosity as a more personal and subjective anthropological element of people expressed through religion; and theology as the study of god. To survive in changing times, living systems — a good characterization of religion, religiosity and theology — all must adaptively evolve. This is a vital study of a rapidly burgeoning field. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars in religious studies and theology as well as in the psychological, sociological, and anthropological study of religion.
Science and Faith within Reason by Jaume Navarro Pdf
Scientists, historians, philosophers and theologians often engage in debates on the limitations and mutual interactions of their respective fields of study. Serious discussions are often overshadowed by the mass-produced popular and semi-popular literature on science and religion, as well as by the political agendas of many of the actors in these debates. For some, reducing religion and science to forms of social discourse is a possible way out from epistemological overlapping between them; yet is there room for religious faith only when science dissolves into one form of social discourse? The religion thus rescued would have neither rational legitimisation nor metaphysical validity, but if both scientific and religious theories try to make absolute claims on all possible aspects of reality then conflict between them seems almost inevitable. In this book leading authors in the field of science and religion, including William Carroll, Steve Fuller, Karl Giberson and Roger Trigg, highlight the oft-neglected and profound philosophical foundations that underlie some of the most frequent questions at the boundary between science and religion: the reality of knowledge, and the notions of creation, life and design. In tune with Mariano Artigas’s work, the authors emphasise that these are neither religious nor scientific but serious philosophical questions.