Where Tech and Humanity Meet: Practice and Formation in the Church and Posthumanism

Last updated on: February 10, 2020 at 1:22 pm

February 10, 2020 by Guest Contributor

This presentation argues that a Christian incarnational response to posthumanism must recognize that what is at stake isn’t just whether belief systems align. It seeks to relocate the interaction between the church and posthumanism to how the practices of posthumanism and Christianity perform the bodies, affections and dispositions of each. Posthuman practices seeks to habituate: (1) A preference for informational patterns over material instantiation; (2) that consciousness and the self are extended and displaced rather than discrete and localized; (3) that the body is merely a tool, the original prosthesis we learn to manipulate and (4) that human life is organized such that it is seamless with intelligent machines. The Christian performance of embodied life, on the other hand, has Christ as template and, in the Eucharist, Christians are marked by offering, sacrifice and celebration in a community that affirms the integrity of our common incarnate life.

About Michael Burdett

Dr. Burdett is the Co-Director of the Human Flourishing project, Assistant Professor in Christian Theology, University of Nottingham; Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford; and an Associate of the Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford. Before becoming an academic, Michael worked in the aerospace and robotics industries for several years with a firm that had contracts with NASA and JPL. He holds degrees in engineering, physics, and theology and has been given academic and professional awards in each field. His academic interests lie at the intersection of science and technology, theology and philosophy. He has published and presented internationally on continental philosophy, transhumanism, the technological society and Christian theology. You can read more about the author here.