Author: Timothy Knepper

On Sunday, February 18, from 3:00–5:00 pm, Drake University’s The Comparison Project, in conjunction with the “Iowa Interfaith Exchange,” hosts a “Roads to Religion” in the Olmsted Center (Parents Hall) on Drake’s campus. The event, which is free and open to the public, features dozens of local religious communities, collectively representing 10+ religious traditions. These communities will be arranged throughout the hall as if on a map of the metro area. Visitors will receive a map to guide them in their exploration of them.

The event will also include a four musical and recitational interludes, one each by the Java Jews, the Hindu Cultural and Educational Center, Masjid an Noor, and St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church. Food and drink will be provided by Drake’s catering service.

The Comparison Project engages in the practice of comparative philosophy of religion, increases understanding of local-lived religion, and cultivates interfaith literacy and leadership. It is supported by Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Drake’s Center for the Humanities, Drake’s Stringellow and Hay Lectureships, Drake’s Slay Fund for Social Justice, Drake’s Principal Cener for Global Citizenship, Humanities Iowa, and Cultivating Compassion: The Dr. Richard Deming Foundation.

The ”Iowa Interfaith Exchange” includes Drake’s The Comparison Project and three other local nonprofits: CultureALL, the Des Moines Area Religious Council, and Interfaith Alliance of Iowa.

On Thursday, April 11 at 7:00pm in Sussman Theater (Olmsted Center, Drake University) Seth Villages, Postdoctoral Fellow for Boston University’s Computing and Data Sciences, will offer our “Comparative Philosophical Conclusions”

Seth Villegas is a postdoctoral fellow for Boston University’s Spark! Program and the Computational Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Initiative. In this role, Seth teaches data science ethics in Spark! courses and acts as a risk consultant on Spark! projects. He designed an assessment process that helps undergraduates to understand the risks associated with their projects.

Seth earned his PhD in Theological Studies at Boston University. His research interests include the ethics of experimental life-extension technologies and of posthumous chatbots, AI companions designed to mimic lost family members and friends. Seth hosts a podcast, called DigEthix, that he hopes can demystify the ethical challenges of emerging technologies.

Below find the audio and PPT of Seth’s lecture.

On Thursday, March 21 at 7:00pm in Sussman Theater (Olmsted Center, Drake University) Jennifer Huberman, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at University of Missouri-Kansas City, will speak on “The Magic, Science, and Religion of Pet Cloning: An Homage to Malinowski.”

Jenny Huberman is a cultural anthropologist with wide-ranging research interests. Her first ethnography, Ambivalent Encounters: Childhood, Tourism and Social Change in Banaras, India (Rutgers University Press 2012), explored interactions between Western tourists and children working in the informal tourist economy in the city of Banaras, India.  Her second book, Transhumanism: From Ancestors to Avatars (Cambridge University Press 2020), examines the values and visions animating the Transhumanist Movement in the United States. It shows how transhumanist attempts to use science and technology to usher in an enhanced post-human species speak to long-standing concerns within the discipline of cultural anthropology. Jenny’s third book, The Spirit of Digital Capitalism (Polity Press Forthcoming 2022), explores the ideological transformations that have accompanied the rise of digital capitalism, and it asks, how are digital technologies making new forms of capital accumulation and domination possible? Jenny has also published numerous chapters and articles on death in the digital age, and in the future, she plans to explore how and why boredom has emerged as a central dis-ease of contemporary society. She likes to remind her students that the one of the great things about studying anthropology is that “the grist” for “the anthropological mill” is only as limited as their imaginations.  

This talk explores how Bronislaw Malinowski’s seminal essay, Magic, Science and Religion offers anthropologists new perspectives on the phenomenon of cloning. Taking ViaGen Pets as a case study, I show how cloning is conceived as a technology of immortalization that enables pet owners to secure continuing bonds with their deceased pets. I also argue that while making of clones may begin as a technoscientific endeavor, predicated upon cell cultivation technologies in a laboratory, it is only completed in and through “the magical thinking” that pet owners bring to the process. Pet cloning thus reminds us, that magic, science, and religion, as Malinowski famously proposed, can and do exist together because they each fulfill different needs.

Below, please find a recording of Prof. Huberman’s PPT and talk (audio).

On Thursday, February 22 at 7:00pm in Sussman Theater (Olmsted Center, Drake University) Phillip Reed-Butler, Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems at Iliff School of Theology, will speak on “Space Dust: Blackness, Its Expansion, and Transfinite Exploration.”

Philip Butler is an international scholar whose work primarily focuses on the intersections of neuroscience, technology, spirituality and Blackness. He uses the wisdom of these spaces to engage in critical and constructive analysis on Black posthumanism, artificial intelligence and pluriversal future realities. He is also the founder of the Seekr Project, a distinctly Black conversational artificial intelligence with mental health capacities. Philip has theorized artificial cognitive architectures for synthetic evolving life forms (SELF), presented on emotionally regulating and spiritual experience inducing brain computer interfaces, and has constructed block chain protocols and conceptual logistics infrastructures for a world leader in the industrial hemp space.

Dr. Butler is Partner Director of Iliff’s AI Institute where he leads the 8020 project, where the institute works to change how computers see people, relate to culturally iterative languages and build the bones for a data ownership model that hopefully creates a relational framework for the way AI is made around the globe.

He is also the author of Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Spirituality and Technology and most recently the editor of Critical Black Futures: Speculative Theories and Explorations. He has published in journals such as The Black Scholar, Journal of Posthuman Studies, and the Journal of Future Studies. He is currently working on his second monograph Still Black Posthuman: A Theory of Uncertainty and Disorder.

Below, please find a recording of Dr. Butler’s lecture with powerpoint.

Below, please find a response to Dr. Butler’s lecture by Dr. Seth Villegas.

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.