M18-306 International Society for Science and Religion
Theme: Human Enhancement: Biological Frameworks and Cyborg Theologies
Saturday - 4:00 PM-5:30 PM
Fairmont Copley Place-State Suite A (Lower Lobby Level)
This event features two new books with the authors in dialogue with a critical assessment and with the audience. The first book, The Myth of the Moral Brain by Harris Wiseman (2016), asks whether human enhancement technology can make human beings more moral. Can it save us from our animal nature so that we can live safely with all our other technologies? Wiseman argues that moral functioning is complex, embodied, and “enworlded.” It is mediated by biology but not determined by it. He argues that we must constrain grandiose hopes regarding moral bioenhancement, while allowing room for the fruitful exploration of the biology of morality.
The second book, Cyborg Theology: Humans, Technology and God by Scott Midson (2017), observes that today, we see ourselves as part of nature and, at the same time, as radically transformed by technology. Midson draws on some of the deeper nuances of Donna Haraway's work to suggest that the cyborg idea can rejuvenate theology, mythology, and anthropology in order to challenge the anthropocentrism directed towards nature and the non-human in our society. Through an imaginative reading of the myth of Eden, Midson proposes that it is indeed possible for humanity to be at one with the natural world even as it vigorously pursues novel, “post-human” technologies.
Jennifer Thweatt is the author of Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman(Routledge, 2012).
For more information, please contact Ron Cole-Turner at coleturn@pts.edu.
Panelists:
Harris Wiseman, International Society for Science and Religion
Scott Midson, Lincoln Theological Institute and University of Manchester
Responding:
Jennifer Thweatt, Flagler College
