Religion and Human Enhancement

Tracy J. Trothen is Associate Professor of Religion at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She currently co-chairs the American Academy of Religion “Human Enhancement and Transhumanism” Group. Calvin Mercer is Professor of Religious Studies, East Carolina University, USA. He is co-editor of Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and Its Successors and founding chair of the American Academy of Religion “Human Enhancement and Transhumanism” Group.

• 1. Coming into Focus: An Introduction to the Collection.- 2. In Extropy We Trust: A Systems Theory Approach to Identifying Transhumanism’s Religious Philosophy.- 3. Christian Transhumanism.- 4. Mormonism Mandates Transhumanism.- 5. Technological Apocalypse: Transhumanism as an End-Time Religious Movement.- 6. A Theological Assessment of Whole Brain Emulation: On the Path to Superintelligence.- 7. Is Transhumanism a Distraction? On the Good of Being Boring.- 8. What Exactly Are We Trying to Accomplish? The Role of Desire and Aversion in Transhuman Visions.- 9. Genesis 2.0: Transhumanism, Catholicism, and the Future of Creation.- 10.  “Have You Believed Because You Have Seen?” Transhumanist Qualms about Enhancement of Religious Experience through Alterations to the Visual Field.- 11. The Myth of Moral Bioenhancement: An Evolutionary Anthropology and Theological Critique.- 12. Ancient Aspirations Meet the Enlightenment.- 13. Unfit for the Future? Sin, Salvation, and Moral Bioenhancement in Christian Perspective.- 14. Enhancing Moral Goodness: Towards A Virtue Ethics of Moral Bioenhancement.- 15. Moral Bioenhancement From the Margins: A Feminist Christian Reconsideration.- 16. Technologizing Transcendence: A Critique of Transhumanism.- 17 Must We Die? Transhumanism, Religion and the Fear of Death.- 18. Dining and Dunking the Dead: Post-Mortem Rituals in First-Century Hellenistic Society and What They Reveal about the Role of the Body in Christianity.- 19.  Making Us Better: Believe It or Not?