Dr Gerard Casey, former head of the Department of Philosophy at UCD recently addressed a meeting organised by The Iona Institute called ‘Christians in a post-human world: a sneak look at our near future’.
Dr Casey described how our world is changing even more rapidly than we realise. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) develops, there is growing talk of a ‘trans-human’ or even ‘post-human’ future, in which humans, merged with technology, will transcend their own physical and intellectual limits and even achieve a kind of immortality.
Some thinkers welcome this and look forward to a time when humans will be ‘post-human’. They believe humans have had a destructive impact on the planet overall and evolution has given us a nature that is too violent and competitive.
But what are Christians to make of all this? Should we embrace post-humanism or reject it as an attack on how we are created by God?
In his talk, Dr Casey discussed these vital questions. (The talk was delivered in the Central Catholic Library, Dublin, on June 27th, 2023).
You can listen to what he had to say here [1].
Picture by Gerd Altmann [2] from Pixabay [3]