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Chasing Methuselah

Author: Todd T. W. Daly

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-02-04

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1532698003

The quest to live much longer has moved from legend to the laboratory. Recent breakthroughs in genetics and pharmacology have put humanity on the precipice of slowing down human aging to extend the healthy life span. The promise of longer, healthier life is enormously attractive, and poses several challenging questions for Christians. Who wouldn’t want to live 120 years or more before dying quickly? How do we make sense of human aging in light of Jesus’ invitation to daily take up our crosses with the promise of the resurrection to come? Is there anything wrong with manipulating our bodies technologically to live longer? If so, how long is too long? Should aging itself be treated as a disease? In Chasing Methuselah, Todd Daly examines the modern biomedical anti-aging project from a Christian perspective, drawing on the ancient wisdom of the Desert Fathers, who believed that the incarnation opened a way for human life to regain the longevity of Adam and the biblical patriarchs through prayer and fasting. Daly balances these insights with the christological anthropology of Karl Barth, discussing the implications for human finitude, fear of death, and the use of anti-aging technology, weaving a path between outright condemnation and uncritical enthusiasm.

Dangers to the Faith

Author: Al Kresta

Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor

Published: 2013-05-28

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1612783252

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A storm has been brewing in society and its treatment, views, and activities toward the Catholic Faith. Some are subtle, others are more brazen -- New Age thought, questionable spirituality, "creedless" Christianity, relativism, scientific skepticism, the triumph of technology, and even the self-styled spirituality of Oprah Winfrey. All these masquerade as "truth," making it tough for the average Catholic to know how to resist, let alone respond. No one is more qualified to pull back the curtain on the challenges the Catholic Church faces today than Al Kresta, popular Catholic author, speaker, and radio show host. A revert to Catholicism, Kresta is well known for his rigorous examination of topics in art, religion, academia, and business. Dangers to the Faith: Recognizing Catholicism's 21st Century Opponents is the perfect springboard for discussing the new world in which the Catholic Church exists today. Learn how to better carry out the missionary mandate of the Church. The question isn't whether you will be a witness to Christ, but whether you will be an effective witness.

Aging in America

Author: Lawrence R. Samuel

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2017-01-31

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0812293657

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Aging is a preoccupation shared by beauty bloggers, serious journalists, scientists, doctors, celebrities—arguably all of adult America, given the pervasiveness of the crusade against it in popular culture and the media. We take our youth-oriented culture as a given but, as Lawrence R. Samuel argues, this was not always the case. Old age was revered in early America, in part because it was so rare. Indeed, it was not until the 1960s, according to Samuel, that the story of aging in America became the one we are most familiar with today: aging is a disease that science will one day cure, and in the meantime, signs of aging should be prevented, masked, and treated as a source of shame. By tracing the story of aging in the United States over the course of the last half century, Samuel vividly demonstrates the ways in which getting older tangibly contradicts the prevailing social values and attitudes of our youth-obsessed culture. As a result, tens of millions of adults approaching their sixties and seventies in this decade do not know how to age, as they were never prepared to do so. Despite recent trends that suggest a more positive outlook, getting old is still viewed in terms of physical and cognitive decline, resulting in discrimination in the workplace and marginalization in social life. Samuels concludes Aging in America by exhorting his fellow baby boomers to use their economic clout and sheer numbers to change the narrative of aging in America.

Theologically Engaged Anthropology

Author: J. Derrick Lemons

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-23

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0192518747

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After years of discussion within the field of anthropology concerning how to properly engage with theology, a growing number of anthropologists now want to engage with theology as a counterpart in ethnographic dialogue. Theologically Engaged Anthropology focuses on the theological history of anthropology, illuminating deeply held theological assumptions that humans make about the nature of reality, and illustrating how these theological assumptions manifest themselves in society. This volume brings together leading anthropologists and theologians to consider what theology can contribute to cultural anthropology and ethnography. It provides anthropologists and theologians with a rationale and framework for using theology in anthropological research.

Transhumanism and Transcendence

Author: Ronald Cole-Turner

Publisher: Georgetown University Press

Published: 2011-09-29

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1589017943

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The timeless human desire to be more beautiful, intelligent, healthy, athletic, or young has given rise in our time to technologies of human enhancement. Athletes use drugs to increase their strength or stamina; cosmetic surgery is widely used to improve physical appearance; millions of men take drugs like Viagra to enhance sexual performance. And today researchers are exploring technologies such as cell regeneration and implantable devices that interact directly with the brain. Some condemn these developments as a new kind of cheating—not just in sports but in life itself—promising rewards without effort and depriving us most of all of what it means to be authentic human beings. “Transhumanists,” on the other hand, reject what they see as a rationalizing of human limits, as if being human means being content forever with underachieving bodies and brains. To be human, they insist, is to be restless with possibilities, always eager to transcend biological limits. As the debate grows in urgency, how should theology respond? Christian theologians recognize truth on both sides of the argument, pointing out how the yearnings of the transhumanists—if not their technological methods—find deep affinities in Christian belief. In this volume, Ronald Cole-Turner has joined seasoned scholars and younger, emerging voices together to bring fresh insight into the technologies that are already reshaping the future of Christian life and hope.

God and Gaia

Author: Michael S Northcott

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-22

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1000816931

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God and Gaia explores the overlap between traditional religious cosmologies and the scientific Gaia theory of James Lovelock. It argues that a Gaian approach to the ecological crisis involves rebalancing human and more-than-human influences on Earth by reviving the ecological agency of local and indigenous human communities, and of nonhuman beings. Present-day human ecological influences on Earth have been growing at pace since the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, when modern humans adopted a machine cosmology in which humans are the sole intelligent agency. The resultant imbalance between human and Earthly agencies is degrading the species diversity of ecosystems, causing local climate changes, and threatens to destabilise the Earth as a System. Across eight chapters this ambitious text engages with traditional cosmologies from the Indian Vedas and classical Greece to Medieval Christianity, with case material from Southeast Asia, Southern Africa and Great Britain. It discusses concepts such as deep time and ancestral time, the ethics of genetic engineering of foods and viruses, and holistic ecological management. Northcott argues that an ontological turn that honours the differential agency of indigenous humans and other kind, and that draws on sacred traditions, will make it is possible to repair the destabilising impacts of contemporary human activities on the Earth System and its constituent ecosystems. This book will be of considerable interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, history, and cultural and religious studies.

Chasing Methuselah

Author: Todd T. W. Daly

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-02-04

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 153269802X

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The quest to live much longer has moved from legend to the laboratory. Recent breakthroughs in genetics and pharmacology have put humanity on the precipice of slowing down human aging to extend the healthy life span. The promise of longer, healthier life is enormously attractive, and poses several challenging questions for Christians. Who wouldn't want to live 120 years or more before dying quickly? How do we make sense of human aging in light of Jesus' invitation to daily take up our crosses with the promise of the resurrection to come? Is there anything wrong with manipulating our bodies technologically to live longer? If so, how long is too long? Should aging itself be treated as a disease? In Chasing Methuselah, Todd Daly examines the modern biomedical anti-aging project from a Christian perspective, drawing on the ancient wisdom of the Desert Fathers, who believed that the incarnation opened a way for human life to regain the longevity of Adam and the biblical patriarchs through prayer and fasting. Daly balances these insights with the christological anthropology of Karl Barth, discussing the implications for human finitude, fear of death, and the use of anti-aging technology, weaving a path between outright condemnation and uncritical enthusiasm.

The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Human Enhancement

Author: Fabrice Jotterand

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-08-01

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 1000901866

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The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Human Enhancement provides readers with a philosophically rich and scientifically grounded analysis of human enhancement and its ethical implications. A landmark in the academic literature, the volume covers human enhancement in genetic engineering, neuroscience, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, bioengineering, and many other fields. The Handbook includes a diverse and multifaceted collection of 30 chapters—all appearing here in print for the first time— that reveal the fundamental ethical challenges related to human enhancement. The chapters have been written by internationally recognized leaders in the field and are organized into seven parts: Historical Background and Key Concepts Human Enhancement and Human Nature Physical Enhancement Cognitive Enhancement Mood Enhancement and Moral Enhancement Human Enhancement and Medicine Legal, Social, and Political Implications The depth and topical range of the Handbook makes it an essential resource for upper-level undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in a broad variety of disciplinary areas. Furthermore, it is an authoritative reference for basic scientists, philosophers, engineers, physicians, lawyers, and other professionals who work on the topic of human enhancement.

Human Flourishing in a Technological World

Author: Jens Zimmermann

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-08-23

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0192657828

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Human Flourishing in a Technological World addresses the question of human identity and flourishing in the light of recent technological advances. The chapters in Part I provide a philosophical-theological evaluation of changing major anthropological assumptions that have guided human self-understanding from antiquity to modernity: How did we move from a religious and mostly embodied anthropology of the person to the idea that we can upload human consciousness to computing platforms? How did we come to imagine that machines can actually be intelligent, or even learn in human fashion? Moreover, what metaphysical changes explain our mostly uncritical embrace of a technological determination of being and thus of how reality "works"? In Part II, the focus turns to the practical implications of our changing understanding of what it means to be human. Covering some of the most pressing current concerns about human flourishing, these chapters deal with the impact of technology on education, healthcare, disability, leisure and the nature of work, communication, aging, death, and the nature of wisdom for human flourishing in light of evolutionary biology. The volume includes the text of a lecutre by virtual reality engineer and computer scientist Jaron Lanier, and a discussion between Lanier and other contributors.

The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Law

Author: John Witte, Jr.

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 921

ISBN-13: 019760675X

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This volume tells the story of the interaction between Christianity and law-historically and today, in the traditional heartlands of Christianity and around the globe. Sixty new chapters by leading scholars provide authoritative and accessible accounts of foundational Christian teachings on law and legal thought over the past two millennia; the current interaction and contestation of law and Christianity on all continents; how Christianity shaped and was shaped by core public, private, penal, and procedural laws; various old and new forms of Christian canon law, natural law theory, and religious freedom norms; Christian teachings on fundamental principles of law and legal order; and Christian contributions to controversial legal issues. Together, the chapters make clear that Christianity and law have had a perennial and permanent influence on each other over time and across cultures, albeit with varying levels of intensity and effectiveness. This volume defines "Christianity" broadly to include Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox traditions and various denominations and schools of thought within them. It draws on Christian ideas and institutions, norms and practices, texts and titans to tell the story of Christianity's engagement with the world of law over the past two millennia. The volume also defines "law" broadly as the normative order of justice, power, and freedom. The chapters address natural laws of conscience, reason, and the Bible and positive laws enacted by states, churches, and voluntary associations. Several chapters focus on Christian engagement with specific types of law: canon law, family law, education law, constitutional law, criminal law, procedural law, and laws governing labor, tax, contracts, torts, property, and beyond. Other chapters take up cutting edge legal issues of racial justice, environmental care, migration, euthanasia, and (bio)technology as well as fundamental legal principles of liberty, dignity, equality, justice, equity, judgment, and solidarity.