Date/Time
Date(s) - March 14, 2018
7:00 pm - 8:45 pm
Location
Trinity Western University (Neufeld Science Building)
Categories No Categories
FREE PUBLIC EVENT: Ashley Moyse (PhD, Newcastle; John Templeton Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow of Theology and Science at Regent College) will be guest lecturer in Dennis Venema’s “Biology/Biotechnology 390: Science and Christian Theology in Consonance and Dissonance” course at Trinity Western University.
BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THEOLOGY: INTERROGATING TRANSHUMANIST ANTHROPOLOGY
Biomedical interventions utilize various technologies as integral means for attenuating hearing loss (cochlear implants), epileptic disorders (intracranial electrodes), and amputation (neurologically controlled robots limbs), for example. For some, such interventions only scratch the surface of what is possible when considering the advent and advance of biotechnology. Charismatic h+ [transhumanist] apologists and researchers have vigorously pursued biotechnologies and related disciplines to determine where and how technology might aid human biology and enhance it, even replacing it when possible. For these individuals, such pursuits might allow us to overcome age-old human problems and the profound limitations of biological evolution. Yet such promise does not mitigate the need to interrogate these thinkers and their respective anthropologies. This paper will do just this. As such, my aim will be to examine the related questions, who and what is a human being? I will do so in conversation with those attentive to the h+ promises and with the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In conclusion, Bonhoeffer’s anthropology (and ethics) might help to guide us toward thinking about what it means to be human in (and even for) the technological age.
Ashley Moyse (PhD, Newcastle) is the John Templeton Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow of Theology and Science at Regent College. He has recently been appointed the McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow in Christian Ethics and Public Life and member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. He will take up this five-year post October 2018.