On Sunday, April 16, we will celebrate the annual holiday of Vaisakhi from roughly 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm with the Sikh gurdwara in West Des Moines, the Iowa Sikh Association (1115 Walnut St.).
The service will include many of the elements of a typical Sunday worship service: the signing of hymns (kirtan), reading from sacred scripture (Guru Granth Sahib), community prayers (aardas), and the sharing of the sacred sacrament (karah prashad, the so-called “holy pudding”), after which a free vegetarian meal will be served (langar). Dress modestly, remove shoes at door, and don a head scarf (available at the door for both women and men). Also, refrain from pointing outstretched legs toward the holy book/altar.
On Thursday, February 23, from 7:00–8:30 pm, in the Reading Room of Cowles Library, we host our first scholar lecture of the semester in our “Transhumanism, Religion, and Immortality Series.” Gereon Kopf, Professor of Religion at Luther College, will speak about “Trans-humanism, AI, and Memory: Zen Buddhist Ruminations on Digital Immortalities.”
Transhumanism is not a controversial topic in Japanese Buddhism. To the contrary, one could say that many Buddhist texts advance a transhumanistic, or as Masao Abe would say, “de-anthropocentric” worldview. The idea of the six realms of saṃsāra imply that human existence is not separate from but continuous with many life forms. Many forms of Mahāyāna Buddhism believe that the divine, whether it is Kannon Bodhisattva or the Buddha Mahāvairocana, can take one any form, and Japanese Buddhists celebrate memorial service not only for departed human beings but also for animals and objects. Subsequently, it is of no surprise that, in general, Japanese Buddhists are quite open to the idea of digital immortality and trans-humanism.
In this presentation, I will explore, first, the practice of digital immortality in the context of Buddhist beliefs and practice concerning death and the afterlife in Japan and, second, introduce an innovative heuristic schema based on Japanese Buddhist philosophy to understand digital immortalities and trans-humanism in general. Concretely, my presentation will consist of four sections introducing 1) the context: beliefs and practices concerning death and the beyond in Japan, 2) the new landscape: the role of AI and digital immortality in Japanese religion, 3) the conception of digital memory as 3rd, 1st, 2nd, and 4th person memories, and, finally, 4) the attempt to conceptualize the relationship between AI and human beings. It is my hope that this heuristic schema will contribute to the general discussion on digital immortality in particular and trans-humanism in general.
On Sunday, February 19, from 3:00–5:00 pm, we kick off our Spring 2023 programming with “Roads to Religion,” a two-hour open house at which visitors can meet members of 30 local religious communities collectively representing 10 religious traditions. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on the upper floor (Parents Hall) of the Olmsted Center on Drake’s campus. The room will be set up like a map of the metro area, with the participating communities located accordingly. Visitors will receive a map and guide to the communities in the hall. Food and beverages will be served by Drake’s food service. Parking is available in the Olmsted Lot, which is located on the north side of University Ave. in between 28th and 29th Streets.
Thanks to Jim Zeller for all the pics below (except the first one, which is Catalina’s):
On May 11, from 7:00–8:30pm in the Reading Room of Cowles Library, we host the third lecture of the semester, “Sexbots Playing the Imitation Game: Mormonism, Transhumanism, and the Turing Test as Trolley Prize,” by Jon Bialecki, Lecturer in Anthropology, University of California-San Diego.
Jon Bialecki, J.D., 1997, Ph.D., is a continuing lecturer in the UCSD department of anthropology. His first monograph, A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and Variation in an American Charismatic Movement, is a study of the miraculous and differentiation in American religion, with a focus on ethics, politics, language, and economic practices; it was awarded the 2017 Sharon Stephens Prize by the American Ethnological Society and Honorable Mention in the 2018 Clifford Geertz Prize by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. A second book, Machines for Making Gods: Mormonism, Transhumanism, and Worlds Without End, addresses religious transhumanism, and was published 2022 by Fordham University Press.
With recent public attention to advancements in generative text programs such as Chat-GPT and Bing/Sydney, the ‘Turing Test’ has returned as an object of discussion. What these discussions, mostly centered around anxieties concerning whether these artificial intelligences are sentient, obscure is the fact that the Turing Test is not just an answer to the question as to whether “machines can really think.” The Turing Test is also implicitly a test of what moral obligation we may owe an artificial intelligence. This talk lays bare this aspect of the Turing Test through a presentation of Mormon transhumanists’ debates regarding (admittedly hypothetical) sexbots and similar artificial life forms; Mormon Transhumanists tend to be sharply opposed to the creation of such entities — but not for the reasons that one might expect.
Here is a recording of Prof. Bialecki’s lecture:
And here is a video recording of Seth Villegas’s response to Dr. Bialecki:
On Sunday, March 19 from 11:00 am–1:00 pm (roughly), we will join the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center (33916 155th Lane, Madrid) in the annual celebration of Holi. Guests will be able to tour the temple, observe the Holi fire ritual (Holika Dahan), throw colored powered at one another, and dance. (Please dress accordingly if you are going to participate in the throwing of colors.) Lunch is available for purchase from the temple. (This event is part of the “Meet My Religious Neighbor” series, which is co-programmed with CultureALL, the Des Moines Area Religious Council, and Interfaith Alliance of Iowa.)
