Emil Cioran (1911 – 1995) was a Romanian philosopher born in the Transylvanian village of Rasinari. His early work was written in Romanian, but when he moved to Paris in adulthood, he switched to writing in French. He is an essayist and aphorist, best known for his unrelenting pessimism, lyrical prose, and acerbic wit. His prose is often reminiscent of the other great Continue Reading …
Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 4)
We've seen that the New Testament exhibits contradictory versions of Satan. By the time of the Church Fathers, though, this indeterminate species of Satan will become extinct, and the Devil will become evil incarnate—Tempter but never Tester. A work that cannot be ignored in this development is The Life of Adam and Eve. According to Forsyth, the original book, now lost, was Continue Reading …
Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 3)
We've seen that there are few traces of the Lucifer we’ve all come to know and loathe in the Old Testament. We will have to dig through the somewhat obscure books of intertestamental literature to find the sketchy outlines of a familiar likeness. The intertestamental period covers the 400 or so years that span the writing of the last book of the Old Testament and the Continue Reading …
Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 2)
In our previous installment, we saw that there never was any Lucifer in the Old Testament. So who, then, was Satan? The word debuts in the Book of Numbers. I say “word” rather than “name” because satan originally was not a name but an office. As Elaine Pagels explains in The Origin of Satan: …the Hebrew term the satan describes an adversarial role. It is not the name of a Continue Reading …
Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 1)
But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most? —Mark Twain Whole episodes of history may very well hinge on a letter—a capital letter that completely altered the understanding of the word it began and signaled a theological shift and an attendant cosmological revision. Before we can appreciate Continue Reading …
Should We Always Seek to Forgive?
Some time ago, five men were jailed for their part in a failed attempt to break into the wine cellar of famed collector Michel-Jack Chasseuil. The men threatened Chasseuil with a Kalashnikov rifle, punched him, and broke a few of his fingers. With the ordeal behind him, Chasseuil commented: "Je pardonne mais je n’excuse pas" (I forgive but I do not excuse). What did Continue Reading …
Myths, Miasma, and Global Warming: Follow Your Nose
Scientists today spend little time learning about prescientific or debunked scientific theories; these are studied by historians and philosophers of science and largely ignored in the hard sciences. However, in his book Is Water H20? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism philosopher of science Hasok Chang calls for a plurality in science aimed at keeping multiple systems of Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 23: #SimulatorShowdown
The twenty-third and final installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. Welcome to the final installment of our series, Saints & Simulators. All along we've been exploring the overlap between modern high technology, traditional religion, and all the contested philosophical battleground in between. Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 22: #ThePerennialPhilosophy
The twenty-second installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. As we sink deeper and deeper into the realm of religion, we find ourselves forced to face up to a core religious dilemma of the modern, globalized world, the same dilemma glossed over by Pascal in his wager: In a world Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 21: #TheProblemOfEvil
The twenty-first installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. (Last time, we looked at ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and the Neoplatonic interpretation of his work as focused around illuminating the nature of a single divine ideal.) The reason Plato believes the Great Good Thing exists, and the Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 20: #theOne
Twentieth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. Out of the two objections we raised against the concept of God as the "Lonely Dungeon Master" (at the end of our last segment), the conceptual complexity of the Dungeon Master’s world is perhaps the easier one to address. In our outline of the Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 19: #TheLonelyDungeonMaster
Nineteenth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. In the last essay, we talked about the eerily godlike role played by the simulator in Nick Bostrom's theory that posits we all exist only within a computer simulation, and the fact that, even so, it would be unknowable what kind of god the simulator might be. But is it Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 18: #Gaia
Eighteenth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. The reason, perhaps, that Professor Nick Bostrom’s demonstration of the probability of God’s existence has received so little attention and notice (especially as compared to the stir and commotion caused by his demonstration of the probability Continue Reading …
Can Meditation Help Enable Human Flourishing?
A few years ago, philosopher Owen Flanagan appeared on the Partially Examined Life podcast to discuss his 2011 book, The Bodhisattva's Brain. In this work, he argues that the Buddhist theory of human flourishing, when rendered in naturalistic terms, should be of interest to many in the West. For Flanagan, implicit in Buddhism is the promise that one can achieve “a stable sense Continue Reading …
Saints and Simulators 17: #PascalReloaded
Seventeenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here. Last week we discussed Newcomb's Paradox, a thought experiment about the rational response to an omniscient being, and also Roko's Basilisk, the frightening digital boogeyman the paradox spawned in the minds of those who pursued the train of thought too far. It Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 16: #ScaryAI (Roko’s Basilisk)
Sixteenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. In 1969, philosopher Robert Nozick first popularized what would go on to be quite a famous thought experiment. Soon known as "Newcomb’s Paradox," after its inventor, physicist William Newcomb, it asks us to imagine two boxes, one of Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 15: #WiseAI
Fifteenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here. Another possible strategy for fending off the robot apocalypse is to ask if there are characteristically human traits or characteristics that are humanity-preserving, and if so, can those be passed along to our machines? What is it that has given us our identity Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 14: #FriendlyAI
Fourteenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. Given how likely killer robots are, and how clearly the paths we are currently embarked on lead to that eventuality, can this destiny be averted? Can the killer robots be stopped? The most obvious answer is just to commit not to building Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 13: #PushyAI
Thirteenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. For a more realistic portrait than Kurzweil’s of what a future dominated by technology might look like, one plausible place to start is with our present domination by technology, and how it is already transforming us as human beings. For example, consider the Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 12: #BadAI
Twelfth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here; the next episode is here. In 1989, Star Trek: The Next Generation, the second major iteration of the durable televised Star Trek science fiction franchise, introduced a terrifying new villain called the Borg. An unhallowed melding of a humanlike life form with Continue Reading …