SECULARIZING DEMONS: FUNDAMENTALIST NAVIGATIONS IN RELIGION AND SECULARITY

Since the turn of the millennium, theologians and secular scholars of religion have increasingly begun exploring the relationship between transhumanism and religion. However, analyses of anti‐transhumanist apocalypticisms are still rare, and those that exist are situated mainly among broader explorations of religious and secular bioconservatism. This article addresses this lack of specificity by drawing analyses of transhumanism and religion into dialogue with explorations of contemporary demonology through a close study of the beliefs of the evangelical conspiracist Thomas Horn and the anti‐transhumanist milieu around him. Exploring the milieu's multifaceted demonology of the secular world in light of genealogies of religion and secularity, the article situates Horn's demonology as one attempt to negotiate these genealogies, using what Sean McCloud terms a “‘supernatural’ hermeneutics of suspicion” that sees spiritual forces as the structural base of reality. It argues that, while fringe, milieus like Horn's illuminate broader cultural tensions and genealogical relations surrounding the place of religion in a secular(izing) world.     

What Does Heidegger Mean by the Transcendence of Dasein?

Abstract

In this paper, I shall examine the evolution of Heidegger’s concept of ‘transcendence’ as it appears in Being and Time (1927), ‘On the Essence of Ground’ (1928) and related texts from the late 1920s in relation to his rethinking of subjectivity and intentionality. Heidegger defines Being as ‘transcendence’ in Being and Time and reinterprets intentionality in terms of the transcendence of Dasein. In the critical epistemological tradition of philosophy stemming from Kant, as in Husserl, transcendence and immanence are key notions (see Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 1907, and Ideas I, 1913). Indeed, ‘transcendence in immanence’ is a leitmotif of Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl discusses transcendence in some detail in Cartesian Meditations §11 in a manner that is not dissimilar to Heidegger. Heidegger is critical of Husserl’s understanding of consciousness and intentionality and Heidegger deliberately chooses to discuss transcendence as an exceptional domain for the discussion of beings in his ‘On the Essence of Ground’, his submission to Husserl’s seventieth-birthday Festschrift. Despite his championing of a new concept of transcendence in the late 1920s, Heidegger effectively abandons the term during the early 1930s. In this paper, I shall explore Heidegger’s articulation of his new ontological conception of finite transcendence and compare it with Husserl’s conception of the transcendence of the ego in order to get clearer what is at stake in Heidegger’s conceptions of subjectivity, Dasein and transcendence.     

EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF SPIRIT AS A MODEL FOR THE GOD-WORLD RELATIONSHIP IN THE AGE OF GENETICS

Abstract. The cultural impact of genetics focuses the intellectual and moral challenge of science to theology. Many traditional images of God and the God-world relation are inadequate to represent religious ideas in a world whose self-understanding has been transformed by genetics. Such images also lack the power to help in approaching the ethical challenges of this new era. The way conceptions of the God-world relation can be modified in the light of genetic knowledge is explored by examining how far a new conception of Spirit can function alongside contemporary genetic views of human life in nature. The relationship between genetic theories of human behavior and evolution is related to the revised conception of Spirit.     

Is our Universe Deterministic? Some Philosophical and Theological Reflections on an Elusive Topic

Abstract. The question of whether or not our universe is deterministic remains of interest to both scientists and theologians. In this essay I argue that this question can be solved only by metaphysical decision and that no scientific evidence for either determinism or indeterminism will ever be conclusive. No finite being, no matter how powerful its cognitive abilities, will ever be able to establish the deterministic nature of the universe. The only being that would be capable of doing so would be one that is at once transcendent and immanent. Such a being is compatible with the God of the Christian tradition, which yields that a deterministic worldview is compatible with (yet does not necessarily lead to) a deterministic worldview. A more important point is that because science is never able to establish the determinism of our universe, it can never definitely rule out divine action except on metaphysical grounds.     

GORDON KAUFMAN,FLAT ONTOLOGY,AND VALUE: TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL THEOCENTRISM

Gordon Kaufman's theology is characterized by a heightened tension between transcendence, expressed as theocentrism, and immanence, expressed as theological naturalism. The interplay between these two motifs leads to a contradiction between an austerity created by the conjunction of naturalism and theocentrism, on the one hand, and a humanized cosmos which is characterized by a pivotal and unique role for human moral agency, on the other. This paper tracks some of the influences behind Kaufman's program (primarily H. Richard Niebuhr and Henry Nelson Wieman) and then utilizes the flat ontology that emerges in the work of philosopher/sociologist of science Bruno Latour and of environmental philosopher Timothy Morton in order to point toward a reconstructed immanent theocentrism that no longer stakes meaning and value on the unique place of the human. Such a theology remains theocentric, but is now fully ecological.     

Response

Abstract

The panelists in the foregoing discussion raise questions and possibilities for which the author is profoundly grateful. This brief response considers just a few of the ways in which questions of location, including those related to immanence vs. transcendence, panentheism, the opening of wounds, and the shattering of secure foundations might play out in relation to one another.     

Stories and Theories: A Scientific Challenge to Theology

Stories about the divine are meant to help our imagination cope with what is ultimately not fully imaginable. In the process we make use of metaphors that rely on quantitative relationships to express the qualitative difference between the reality accessible to us and the transcendent reality of God. For example, because we have no notion of what it would mean to "be outside of time," eternity tends to be explained in terms of infinite temporality. With the increasingly bizarre and unimaginable worldview of contemporary physics, it is perhaps no longer clear what the difference is between the unknown and the unknowable, or even whether it is possible to articulate a meaningful difference. Science appears to have outrun theology in creating stories that engage our imagination. How to overcome the difficulties this raises, particularly with respect to a widening gulf between academic analysis and popular belief, is at present not clear. A "flight from metaphor" into formalized theory, although apparently valid in science, leads to a dead end in theology. A re-thinking of many traditional concepts, such as immanence and transcendence, seems to be indicated.