Protecting God from Science and Technology: How Religious Criticisms of Biotechnologies Backfire

Many religious critics argue that biotechnology (such as cloning and genetic engineering) intrudes on God's domain, or plays God, or revolts against God. While some of these criticisms are standard complaints about human hubris, I argue that some of the recent criticism represents a "Promethean" concern, in which believers unreflectively seem to fear that science and technology are actually replicating or stealing God's special deity–defining powers. These criticisms backfire theologically, because they diminish God, portraying God as an anthropomorphic superbeing whose relevance and special nature are increasingly rivaled by human power.     

Heaven on Earth: The Mind Uploading Project as Secular Eschatology

This paper addresses the greatest aspiration of the transhumanist movement: achieving immortal life through a procedure known as mind uploading. This procedure consists in keeping our minds fully and indefinitely operative after death by transferring them to a non-biological substrate that allows man to be liberated from his bodily confinement. My main thesis is that the mind uploading project presupposes a secular eschatology, consummating the Promethean utopia according to which human beings could redeem themselves, expelling God definitively from their existential horizon. On this basis, the paper offers meaningful contrasts between the uploading as secular eschatology and the Christian tradition.     

人类文明审美化道路之寓言 --以《神话研究》中普罗米修斯"神话创作"为例的述评

在布鲁门贝格看来,神话创作是推动文明发展的一个充分条件。它的充分性体现于它出于文化目的论的内在要求——征服现实绝对主义。这是神话创作性的合法性。惟其充分性而非必要性,对文明的书写只能是一种审美神话的寓言。这是神话创作的非法性。因此,审美神话的寓言式书写困境承诺斯替主义二元论而来,在西方审美思想史上绵延不绝的普罗米修斯神话创作中见出。在通盘重构西方审美思想史之后,布氏提出了令人不安的审美神话之后的解释学问题。     

The transcendent function in Spitteler’s Prometheus and Epimetheus

In August 2020, John Beebe and Steve Myers met via Zoom to discuss their differing interpretations of psychological typology and the different sources within Jung’s writings that influenced their books: Integrity in Depth: Energies and Patterns in Psychological Type (Beebe), and Myers-Briggs Typology vs Jungian Individuation (Myers). The discussion centred on Spitteler’s epic poem Prometheus und Epimetheus, which forms the basis of chapter V of Psychological Types. This is both the largest chapter and one of two chapters that Jung highlighted in the Argentine foreword as containing the essence of the book. Jung’s book is primarily about the transformation of personality rather than the categorization of people. Although it contains a critical psychology that deconstructs the nature of consciousness, that is only one half of the book and a stepping-stone to the other half, which is the reconciliation of opposites with particular emphasis on the relation of consciousness and the unconscious. Jung assumed that readers were already familiar with Prometheus und Epimetheus, an understanding of which sheds light on the nature of the transformation that Jung described – the development of a new attitude towards attitude itself.     

Man in the age of technology

Abstract :  This paper argues that technology is no longer merely a tool for man's use but has become the environment in which man undergoes modifications. The author traces the role of technology from the Greeks to the present day. For the Greeks, Nature was governed by necessity and therefore unchangeable whereas in the Judeo-Christian tradition, nature was entrusted to man for him to dominate. Modern science studies the world in order to manipulate and dominate nature through the use of technology which has now become an end in itself, governing the solution of political problems and confronting us with problems beyond our competence to resolve. The ethical impact of technology has been to create a change from 'acting' which assumes responsibility for one's actions to 'doing' which is concerned only with the effective execution of a 'job' without concern for the wider consequences. It can no longer be argued that technology is good or bad according to the use we make of it since technology now makes use of us and thus transforms our ethics, social relationships and psychological being.