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Futures Podcast #3: Transhumanism and Risk, with Professor Steve Fuller

Humanity 2.0 starts to chal­lenge a lot of the assump­tions of Humanity 1.0, espe­cial­ly in terms of issues hav­ing to do with lim­i­ta­tions. So in oth­er words, you might say there are two ways to go on Humanity 2.0. And in my writ­ing, I asso­ciate these with the tran­shu­man and the posthu­man, respectively. 

The Conversation #54 — Charles Bowden

I don’t under­stand the fear. And that’s the biggest threat. And the rea­son it’s a threat is it makes your judg­ment bad. You nev­er make good deci­sions when you’re afraid. And it destroys your abil­i­ty to clear­ly look at the facts and do some­thing. You choke, in oth­er words.

Defying Faith

The chal­lenge for the Church and for the the­olo­gians was to say okay, per­haps that’s what is writ­ten. But for exam­ple if you con­sid­er that God has deliv­ered the Creation in sev­en days, know­ing that nowa­days Amazon can deliv­er every­thing on Earth overnight, it means that Jeff Bezos has defeat­ed God? Or does it mean some­thing dif­fer­ent? And I think it means prob­a­bly some­thing different.

The Conversation #51 — Phyllis Tickle

Historians get real­ly ner­vous about pat­terns. That’s chang­ing a bit now. And the truth of it is there’s not much way to avoid the 500-year cycle. You almost have to work too hard to unsay it, it’s so obvi­ous­ly there in every way. And if you say every 500 years we go through one, then you imme­di­ate­ly say we’re in the 21st cen­tu­ry and baby are we going through one.

Religion and World Politics part 20
ISIS and the Fight for Westphalia

As we enter May 2017, the city of Mosul, held stub­born­ly by ISIS forces, has still not fall­en. What has become a siege of the city is now a fight almost on a street-by-street basis for the old city.

Religion and World Politics part 19
Hamas and the Nationalist Project

As Israeli Zionism began acquir­ing a greater and greater ortho­dox deter­mi­na­tion, a deter­mi­na­tion to expand bor­ders to what they were at the height of the Biblical sense of what had been Israel under­neath King Solomon, the response of the Arab states and the response of the Palestinians was very divided.

Religion and World Politics part 18
Zionism and Its Discontents

It’s an emo­tive term, a value-laden term, every time we men­tion Zionism. In fact, as a mod­ern doctrine—and that’s what it is, quite a mod­ern doctrine—it’s only real­ly been around a rel­a­tive­ly short time. Really it came into being at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, where pres­sure groups and Jewish con­gress­es led by peo­ple like Herzl began to con­tem­plate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a home­land for the Jews.

Religion and World Politics part 17
Islam in China

As we speak today, the Chinese author­i­ties are crack­ing up a very very large-scale and what promis­es to be an inces­sant secu­ri­ty dri­ve in Xinjian Province in north­west China against what the Chinese gov­ern­ment calls Islamic extrem­ists. What in fact the Chinese gov­ern­ment means is it’s launch­ing a dri­ve against dis­sent from the Uighur peo­ple who’ve lived there for centuries.

Religion and World Politics part 16
Confucius and the Hierarchical State

At the time when he lived in 500 BC, [Confucius] was the epit­o­me of good gov­er­nance. He was the epit­o­me of pro­gres­sive ways towards a peace­ful and just order. And he pio­neered many things that we would regard today still as extreme­ly important.

Religion and World Politics part 15
Fundamental Buddhism

It seems a very strange thing to label Buddhism as some­thing fun­da­men­tal­ist. As if by being fun­da­men­tal­ist it might also be accused of caus­ing the same kind of car­nage and dif­fi­cul­ty that we asso­ciate with fun­da­men­tal Islam. And yet the very gen­tle reli­gion, the reli­gion of peace, the reli­gion of com­pas­sion, is also a reli­gion which is just as capa­ble as oth­er reli­gions of caus­ing car­nage, of caus­ing atroc­i­ty, and caus­ing great loss of life. 

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