Samford University’s Center for Science and Religion will host a conference on “Transhumanism and the Church: Theological Reflections on Technology and Human Enhancement” September 24-26. 

Transhumanism is the movement that embraces the opportunity to transcend humans’ physical and mental limits through new technology. Its most optimistic advocates predict a future in which death has been defeated through the power to reverse biological processes or offload mental states onto computers.

The Samford conference, funded by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, will consider the ways the church might respond to Transhumanism and the technologies that could revolutionize our understanding of human nature.

Keynote Speakers will include:

Jeffrey Bishop, author, Chasing After Virtue: Neuroscience, Economics, and the Biopolitics of Morality

Michael Burdett, author, Eschatology and the Technological Future

Ron Cole-Turner, editor, Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement

Steve Donaldson, author, Dimensions of Faith: Understanding Faith Through the Lens of Science and Religion

Joel Garreau, author, Radical Evolution:
The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to be Human

Steven Kraftchick, author, Biblical Theology: Problems and Prospects

Christina Bieber Lake, author, Prophets of the Posthuman: American Literature, Biotechnology, and the Ethics of Personhood

Jeanine Thweatt-Bates, author, Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman