Templeton Research Lectures

Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Arizona State University
Templeton Research Lectures

Science can inspire greater reverence, wonder, and awe. It also poses with urgency traditionally religious questions of meaning and purpose, of virtues and values. Science provides a continuous stream of remarkable insights into the nature of reality across a wide range of domains. By giving rise to astonishing transformations, science changes both our world and our worldviews. As the pace of scientific discovery and innovation accelerates, there is an urgent cultural need to reflect thoughtfully about these epic changes and challenges in a constructive dialogue involving the world's religious and theological traditions. One of the greatest challenges of our age is to bridge the compartmentalized departments of the modern university, engaging in an integrative dialogue among all of the sciences, humanities, and religious disciplines.

  1. 09/04/2012

    The Transhumanist Imagination: Innovation, Secularization, and Eschatology - Session II

    The term "transhumanism" denotes an ideology of extreme progress, giving coherence to the accelerated pace of advances in science and technology. As a future-oriented outlook, transhumanism offers a vision of and for humanity in which genetically enhanced humans will live extremely long, intensely happy lives, free of pain and disease. In this imagination of the future, humans will be liberated from the constraints of embodiment and will triumph over death by uploading the mind into machines. Transhumanism is, fundamentally, an eschatological narrative with ramifications that go well beyond the transhumanist community itself. It draws together a range of religious and secular motifs around an ideology of innovation, thereby giving rise to distinctive social practices, norms, policies and institutions with implications for human flourishing now and into the future. Some of the questions to be examined during this workshop include: 1. How does the transhumanist (religious?) narrative about the posthuman future stimulate technological innovations? 2. To what extent does the techno-social imagination illustrate the hybridization of religious and secular discourses? 3. What are the social and political ramifications of the transhumanist project, especially for liberal democracies? 4. Does transhumanism manifest the post-secular moment? 5. How should we study socio-technical imaginaries comparatively? 6. How do transhumanism and posthumanism reconfigure the relationship between modernism and postmodernism? Prior to the conference, a faculty seminar will be engaging these questions by focusing on the works of Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Cary Wolfe, and some essays about socio-technical imaginaries by Sheila Jasanoff, William Bainbridge, and Ilya Klieger and Nasser Zakariah. Recommended reading includes: Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (2003) Jürgen Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in the Post-Secular Age (2010) Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? (2010) Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (2003) Introduction- Ben Hurlbut Robert M. Geraci 4/9/12 - 10:15am - 11:00am "It's Virtually the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine): Games, Play, and the Transhuman Inclination" Colin Milburn 4/9/12 - 11:00am - 11:45pm "Molecular Necromancy: Nanoscience and the Postmortal Conditionon" William Grassie 4/9/12 - 11:45am - 12:30pm Closing Discussion

    9 sec
  2. 09/04/2012

    The Transhumanist Imagination: Innovation, Secularization, and Eschatology - Session I

    The term "transhumanism" denotes an ideology of extreme progress, giving coherence to the accelerated pace of advances in science and technology. As a future-oriented outlook, transhumanism offers a vision of and for humanity in which genetically enhanced humans will live extremely long, intensely happy lives, free of pain and disease. In this imagination of the future, humans will be liberated from the constraints of embodiment and will triumph over death by uploading the mind into machines. Transhumanism is, fundamentally, an eschatological narrative with ramifications that go well beyond the transhumanist community itself. It draws together a range of religious and secular motifs around an ideology of innovation, thereby giving rise to distinctive social practices, norms, policies and institutions with implications for human flourishing now and into the future. Some of the questions to be examined during this workshop include: 1. How does the transhumanist (religious?) narrative about the posthuman future stimulate technological innovations? 2. To what extent does the techno-social imagination illustrate the hybridization of religious and secular discourses? 3. What are the social and political ramifications of the transhumanist project, especially for liberal democracies? 4. Does transhumanism manifest the post-secular moment? 5. How should we study socio-technical imaginaries comparatively? 6. How do transhumanism and posthumanism reconfigure the relationship between modernism and postmodernism? Prior to the conference, a faculty seminar will be engaging these questions by focusing on the works of Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Cary Wolfe, and some essays about socio-technical imaginaries by Sheila Jasanoff, William Bainbridge, and Ilya Klieger and Nasser Zakariah. Recommended reading includes: Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (2003) Jürgen Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in the Post-Secular Age (2010) Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? (2010) Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (2003) Introductions by Linell Cady and Hava Samuelson. Ronald Cole-Turner 4/9/12 - 8:30am - 9:15am "Conflicting visions: speciation and hybridization in religious and secular eschatologies" James Hughes 4/9/12 - 9:15am - 10:00am "The Politics of Transhumanism and the Techno-Millennial Imagination, 1626-2030"

    6 sec

About

Science can inspire greater reverence, wonder, and awe. It also poses with urgency traditionally religious questions of meaning and purpose, of virtues and values. Science provides a continuous stream of remarkable insights into the nature of reality across a wide range of domains. By giving rise to astonishing transformations, science changes both our world and our worldviews. As the pace of scientific discovery and innovation accelerates, there is an urgent cultural need to reflect thoughtfully about these epic changes and challenges in a constructive dialogue involving the world's religious and theological traditions. One of the greatest challenges of our age is to bridge the compartmentalized departments of the modern university, engaging in an integrative dialogue among all of the sciences, humanities, and religious disciplines.

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