transhumanism | Heterodoxology

Religion and Transhumanism conference – May 10

May will be a busy travel and conference month for some of us. One event that I regret having to miss is the newest initiative of the Brighter Brains Institute (the guy[s] who do the Transhuman Visions series): “Religion and Transhumanism”. I’ve been writing and speaking about this topic on and off for about a year, and was sorry to have to turn down an offer to speak at this event. It should be interesting:

“14 speakers from different Faiths – Islam, Raelism, Lutheran, Mormon, Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, Buddhist, Wicca, Urantia, Terasem, Atheism, Agnosticism – will discuss the similarities and contradictions of Religion and Transhumanism. 3 panels + plenty of time to get your questions answered.”

For others in or around the Bay Area who might be interested, the event takes place on May 10, from 9am – 9pm at Piedmont Veteran’s Hall, 401 Highland Avenue, Piedmont, California.

Published in:

on April 29, 2014 at 10:02 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: Brighter Brains Institute, Raelism, Terasem, Transhuman Visions, transhumanism, transhumanism and religion

Religion in the Age of Cyborgs. An essay and a lecture

What happens to religion if the future belongs to the cyborgs? I’ve just written a weird essay addressing this topic, and am currently finishing up a lecture on the same topic for the Transhuman Visions conference in Piedmont on Saturday. The published piece is a response essay that I was asked to write for The Religious Studies Project, answering to an interview with the influential cognitive neuroscientist / evolutionary psychologist Merlin Donald. It’s a strange concoction of evolutionary theory, cultural history, futurist forecasting, transhumanism, distributed cognition, extended mind hypothesis, and cognitive science of religion. Pretty speculative all over, in fact, but fun to write. Check it out if you’re into that sort of thing. The talk to the transhumanists is going to be even more speculative, so you’re warned!

Published in:

on February 26, 2014 at 8:48 pm Comments (5)
Tags: cyborgs, distributed cognition, extended mind, forecasting, futurism, Merlin Donald, religion and the future, Religious Studies Project, Transhuman Visions 2.0, transhumanism

Transhuman Visions – Heterodoxology goes to Silicon Valley

I haven’t been long in the vicinity of high tech’s ground zero, but here it is: my occasional work on transhumanism is getting a new spin. It appears I’m scheduled to speak at a transhumanist conference in the East Bay – with such profiles as Max More and Natasha Vita-More giving keynotes. The headline teaser promises a spectacular circus of speakers:

BRAIN-HACKING CHEMIST / POWERLIFTING CRYONICIST / PSYCHEDELIC PHILOSOPHER / IMMORTAL CARTOONIST / SINGULARITY PROPHET / POLYGAMIST / MORMON / AI REVOLUTIONARY / TRANSCENDENCE HYPOTHESIZER / SCANDINAVIAN OCCULTIST/ + Much Much More

Guess which one is me.

(more…)

Published in:

on January 9, 2014 at 9:49 am Comments (4)
Tags: Brighter Brains Institute, cryonics, futurism, futuristic Mormonism, Hank Pellissier, Max More, Natasha Vita-More, psychedelics, singularitarianism, transhumanism, Zoltan Istvan

The Magus of Silicon Valley – multiple afterlives of a conference paper

Transhumanism and religion proves a popular topic. I started exploring some aspects of the transhumanist movement from the perspective of a scholar of religion and esotericism earlier this year, in connection with a conference. I have never had more responses from so many different audiences to a conference paper. After uploading my “Magus of Silicon Valley” paper to Academia.edu this summer, I’ve had private messages, emails, reblogs and comments (including a few annoyed transhumanist reactions) – several requests for spinoffs. First of this was a public lecture in the occulturally oriented Forum Nidarosiae in Trondheim. There’s also been interest from more old-fashioned humanists (the type that’s not too impressed by flashy prefixes such as trans-, post-, or neo-). Thus, a spin-off article is underway with the Norwegian secular humanist magazine Humanist, while another has just now been published in the Australian online magazine MercatorNet – describing itself as being of “dignitarian” orientation, which I take to be a non-confessional, non-partisan, cross-worldview form of humanism (the editor in chief, Michael Cook, is open about his Catholic leaning – while justifications appear to be classic European Enlightenment: no revelation, just reason, evidence and critical practice).

So if you haven’t read it yet, “The Magus of Silicon Valley” is now relaunched in a new medium – slightly edited and modified for the occasion (the jargon should be a little less Academese this time around). They also added a link to a very recommendable documentary on Ray Kurzweil: “Transcendent Man”. Watching it a few years back contributed to my interest in doing something on the movement from a religious studies perspective.

It’s time to sit back and await the first accusations of being in league with this or the other vested interest, dissing the transhuman visionary movement – or perhaps even supporting the coming Inquisition against it.

This blog post by Egil Asprem was first published on Heterodoxology. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Published in:

on October 6, 2013 at 2:12 pm Comments (3)
Tags: dignitarian, ESSWE4, Forum Nidarosiae, Humanism, MercatorNet, Ray Kurzweil, Silicon Valley, Singularity, transhumanism

“2045, Rapture of the Nerds!” A public lecture in Trondheim, Norway

If you’re in Trondheim next week, I am giving a public lecture on some aspects of the transhumanist movement. It’s organized by the excellent club- and lecture initiative Forum Nidarosiae. The lecture will be in Norwegian, but I attach an English translation of title and blurb below:

(more…)

Published in:

on September 3, 2013 at 11:40 am Comments (7)
Tags: apocalypticism, artificial intelligence, Forum Nidarosiae, nanorobots, Ray Kurzweil, space colonization, the Singularity, transhumanism

The biggest esotericism conference yet – ESSWE4 and the schizophrenic life of academics

A few days ago I returned from Gothenburg, Sweden, after the fourth international conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (or #ESSWE4 for those following the tagboard). It was slightly larger than the three previous conferences (in Tübingen, Strasbourg, and Szeged); more than 90 papers were presented, there were discussion panels, keynotes, and night-time events. The conference was spread out over four days, and it needed every minute of the daily 9-hour schedule.

(more…)

Published in:

on July 5, 2013 at 10:25 am Comments (5)
Tags: Allison Coudert, Aren Roukema, conference life, Damon Lycourinos, Dylan Burns, Elizabeth Lowry, ESSWE, ESSWE4, Jimmy Elwing, Johan Nilsson, Matt Twigg, Per Faxneld, Sandra Rudman, Sarah Veale, schizophrenia, Shawn Gray, transhumanism

Getting ready for ESSWE4: interdisciplinary panels, international networking, magickal musick – and the transhuman apocalypse

ESSWE4: Gothenburg, Sweden, June 26-29, 2013.

I’m only doing one conference this summer season, but that is already turning out to be a massively busy and exciting event. Now that the final program is available, and the book of abstracts can be downloaded, the ESSWE4 conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, stands out as everything that an international conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism should be: strongly interdisciplinary (the inclusion of historians of science and medicine is particularly noticeable, and a greater number of sociologists and anthropologists is also a highly welcome development), with a rich and varied program that includes panel sessions, discussion groups, roundtables, and keynotes. There is also a dinner in the Masonic Hall and a final esoteric concert event: Genesis P-Orridge and Carl Abrahamsson (known in the esoteric world as editor of The Fenris Wolf) perform live with their act, White Stains. P-Orridge and Abrahamsson will even appear in a half-hour discussion group at the conference itself on the final day, entitled “Music and Esotericism from the Inside Out”.

Browse the program on the website to find out more.

In addition to that, you should check what people are saying about the event in social media on this Tagboard (join the conversation with the tag #ESSWE4). This promises to be the first ESSWE conference with live twitter feeds to follow, so do check that out and contribute if you are going! (I hear there will be free wifi available, so no need to worry about insane roaming charges) .

(more…)

Published in:

on June 23, 2013 at 10:48 am Comments (2)
Tags: Carl Abrahamsson, CEEO-UNASUR, ContERN, eschatology, ESSWE, ESSWE4, European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, Francis Fukuyama, Genesis P-Orridge, Google, Gothenburg, INASWE, nanobots, NSEA, Ray Kurzweil, Silicon Valley, Singularity, SNASWE, Tagboard, The Fenris Wolf, transhumanism, White Stains

Giants’ Shoulders #29: Esoteric Science Special

Athanasius Kircher's museum

Heterodoxology is proud to present the twenty-ninth installment of your favourite History of Science Blog Carnival: The Giant’s Shoulders. This time featuring an Esoteric Science Special, dedicated to all those esoteric pursuits of superior knowledge; a celebration of all strange, alien, and counterintuitive methods that have been attempted to dissect, read, or tame nature’s secrets, from renaissance natural philosophy to present-day Grand Unified Theories – from the cleverly inventive, through the hopelessly megalomaniac, to the simply misguided.

(more…)

Published in: