On Thursday, December 7, at 7:00 pm, in Sussman Theater (Olmsted Center), Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Director of Jewish Studies and Irving and Miriam Lowe Professor of Modern Judaism at Arizona State University and author of “Transhumanism as Secularist Faith,” will speak about “The Preciousness of Being Human: A Judaic Perspective on Embodiment, Death, and Immortality.”
Please find below a recording of the lecture and powerpoint!
Below, please find a response to Dr. Tirosh-Samuelson’s lecture by Dr. Seth Villegas.
On Saturday, December 2, from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, The Comparison Project hosts a “meditation workshop and dialogue” in Meredith Hall on Drake’s campus. The event, which is free and open to the public, features meditation instructors representing different religious and spiritual traditions and techniques. Light breakfast fare will be available.
Attendees will have the opportunity to learn and practice three different meditation styles at concurrent sessions during the first half of the event. Instructors of these sessions collectively represent the meditative traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Christianity, as well as Transcendental Meditation and other meditation practices unassociated with religious traditions. During the second half of the event, all nine of the instructors will be available for dialogue and Q&A
On WEDNESDAY, November 15, at 7:00 pm, in Sussman Theater (Olmsted Center), Muhammad Faruque, the Inayat & Ishrat Malik Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati, and author of Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing (Michigan, 2021), will speak on “Immortality through AI? Transhumanism, Human Nature, and Islamic Philosophy.”
Muhammad U. Faruque is Assistant Professor and a Taft Center Fellow at the University of Cincinnati. He also holds a Visiting Scholar position at Harvard University. His highly acclaimed book Sculpting the Self (University of Michigan Press, 2021) addresses “what it means to be human” in a secular, post-Enlightenment world by exploring notions of selfhood and subjectivity in Islamic and non-Islamic literatures, including modern philosophy and neuroscience. Dr. Faruque is the author of three books and over forty-five academic articles, which have appeared (or are forthcoming) in numerous peer-reviewed journals. He gives public lectures on a wide range of topics such as climate change, AI, ethics, and selfhood. He is also a recipient of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the prestigious Templeton Foundation Global Philosophy of Religion grant and the Title IV Grant, U.S. Dept. of Education.
Immortality through AI? Transhumanism, Human Nature, and the Quest for Spiritual Machines
In a series of publications such as The Age of Intelligent Machines (1990), The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999), and The Singularity Is Near (2005), the MIT-trained futurist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil argues that at some point in the not-too-distant future, there will be a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence which is going to create artificial super-intelligence (ASI). Moreover, he envisions a transhumanist future in which technology will enable human beings to transcend the human condition by way of the Singularity (i.e., merging human intelligence with machine intelligence). According to Kurzweil and other transhumanists, the Singularity will generate many solutions to human limitations including the problem of aging. Drawing on Islamic philosophers’ insights on human nature, I first analyze and then argue against Kurzweil and others’ reductionist views of consciousness. In contrast to most contemporary theories of consciousness that either treat it as an epiphenomenon or psychologize it in terms of qualia and subjective feel, I argue that consciousness forms the bedrock of reality, which is at once self-luminous and self-cognizant. The problem of AI and transhumanism ultimately hinges on how we define our values, selfhood, and personhood, which are the ultimate determinants of what it means to be human in a google-driven world.
See below for a recording of Dr. Faruque’s PPT presentation and audio:
Below, please find a response to Dr. Faruque’s lecture by Seth Villegas.
On Sunday, November 5, from 1:00-3:30 pm, the Des Moines Zen Center (6901 SW 14th St, Des Moines) will be hosting an open-house, including a reception and tours of the center.
Members of the “teacher rotation group” will lead small groups around the building to view the space and see the zendo, library, dokusan room, children’s room, and more. They will talk about how Americans came to practice Zen Buddhism, the history of Zen in America, the establishing of Ryumonji Monastery, and the history of the Des Moines Zen Center.
The Des Moines Zen Center (DMZC) is an American Zen Center. It celebrated its 30-year anniversary in 2022. In 2021 it received recognition as an international temple of Soto Zen Buddhism by the Japanese Soto Zen School. The temple is called Shinsenji, which translates “Deep River Temple.”
On Saturday, October 21, from 5:30-7:30pm, the Hindu Cultural and Educational Center (1940 E Army Post Road, Des Moines) will be hosting a celebration of the annual festival of Navaratri (for the Hindu goddess Durga) that includes bhajan singing and dancing.
Join the local Bhutanese Hindu community for a bhajan celebration as part of a Navaratri celebration, a nine-day festival for the Hindu goddess Durga (the other events of which guests are also welcome to attend—see the image below). Guests are welcome to join in the dancing and singing. (Wear comfortable, though modest clothes; remove shoes at door; do not point outstretched legs toward the statues of the deities or the priests.) A traditional meal (“prashad”) will be served at the conclusion of the service.
