17AR22-07

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AR 22:7 - Transcending the limits of reason and mortality

In this issue:

APOLOGETICS - "affirming the ultimate rationality of mysteries while also accounting for the way we make sense of the everyday world"

MORMONISM - why its growth rate has slowed in the past 25 years after decades of increase

TRANSHUMANISM - the profound human longing to transcend ... death

Apologia Report 22:7 (1,327)

February 15, 2017

APOLOGETICS

"The Rationality of Faith: How Does Christianity Make Sense of Things?" by Alister E. McGrath (Science and Religion, Oxford Univ.) -- his plenary address at the 14th Annual Evangelical Philosophical Society's apologetics conference <epsapologetics.com> held in San Antonio, TX (Nov 17-19 '16).

McGrath opens: "I speak to you as a lapsed atheist - someone who once believed that Christianity was utterly and irredeemably irrational and that atheism held an intellectual monopoly on rationality." The abstract explains: "This paper explores the 'rationality' of the Christian faith, focusing on the capacity of the Christian 'big picture' to colligate and coordinate personal experience and observations of the world. ... It is argued that the Christian faith offers a 'metarationality,' which affirms the ultimate rationality of mysteries such as the doctrine of the Trinity while also accounting for the way we make sense of the everyday world."

As for the Trinity, "For many outside the Christian community, this doctrine is a classic instance of the irrationality of the faith. Augustine of Hippo offered us one of the finest accounts of the limits of our ability to capture God in neat formulae. 'If you think you have grasped God, it is not God you have grasped'.... Anything that we can grasp fully and completely *cannot* be God, precisely because it would be so limited and impoverished if it can be fully grasped by the human mind. ...

"I am suggesting to you that we think of the distinct Trinitarian logic of the Christian faith as the greater framework - a way of understanding ourselves and our worlds which transcends the limits of human reason, yet at the same time helps us position what we might call our 'native' or everyday rationality within an informing context. Human rationality operates within limits - it distorts and impoverishes our understanding of God and our universe. ...

"I have focused on some themes in the natural sciences, which seem to me to be helpful in public discussions of the reasonableness of faith. Yet these are only part of a much richer vision of reality which stands at the heart of the Christian faith, capable of capturing the imagination as well as nourishing the mind.

"The public rhetoric of the moment means that we need to reaffirm the rationality of our faith, without reducing the gospel to what C.S. Lewis once called a 'glib and shallow rationalism.' It can be done! The gospel allows us to make sense of our world, and inhabit it meaningfully, while at the same time giving us a vision of hope for a greater world and vision of reality which await us in the New Jerusalem." Philosophia Christi, 18:2 - 2016, pp395-409.

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MORMONISM

"New temple highlights Mormon church growth, bucking national trend" by Weston Williams -- the LDS "rate of growth has slowed in recent decades, recently hitting its lowest level in more than 70 years. But the steady increase still marks a significant contrast to many other denominations, as fewer and fewer Americans choose to identify with an organized religion.

"The first Mormon Temple in Connecticut, set to open this week, is the latest reflection of expansion for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is only the second in New England, joining one in the suburbs of Boston. ...

"According to a Gallup poll published in December 2015, 75 percent of Americans identify with a Christian sect of some kind. However, that number had dropped from 80 percent in 2008, a rapid decline for a country dominated by Christian Protestantism since before it had even declared its independence from Britain in 1776. Younger generations form the largest concentration of those without a formal religious identity in the US today, indicating that the downward trend in traditional religion is likely to continue over their lifetimes.

"This drop stands in stark contrast with statistics posted <www.goo.gl/X4L2Gm> on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' official website, which declares a membership of over 15.6 million church members worldwide, in more than 30,000 congregations. As of 2011, 2 percent of American adults say they identify as Mormon. ...

"After decades of dramatic growth in the twentieth century, the church's growth rate has slowed in the past 25 years, Religion News Service reported <www.goo.gl/z7PEbX> this spring; recently, it hit 1.7 percent – the lowest rate since 1937. But that dip is the result of intentional shifts in outreach and baptism," explained Matt Martinich, the co-founder (with David Stewart) of the LDS Church Growth blog <ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com>. Christian Science Monitor, Sep 29 '16 <www.goo.gl/e28JMB>

For more updated insights from Martinich, see also "Mormon growth slowing in U.S., researcher reports" by Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune, Jan 3 '17 <www.goo.gl/llE2jp>

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TRANSHUMANISM

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death, by Mark O'Connell [1] -- according to the publisher, "Once relegated to the fringes of society, transhumanism (the use of technology to enhance human intellectual and physical capability) is now poised to enter our cultural mainstream."

Publishers Weekly (Nov 7 '16) begins: "Transhumanism - defined here as 'a liberation movement advocating nothing less than a total emancipation from biology itself' - is scrutinized in this compact, provocative exploration of the techniques and technologies currently being advanced to extend human intelligence and life spans. Slate columnist and debut author O'Connell takes an open-minded but skeptical approach to his subject as he leads the reader on a tour of modern facilities devoted to enhancing the human 'meat machine': cryonics storehouses that freeze brains and bodies for future resuscitation, whole-brain emulation labs studying the scanning and uploading of human consciousness, robotics researchers attempting to create simulacra capable of human function, cyborg 'grindhouses' crafting renegade interfaces between the body and smart technology, and gerontology institutions that are trying to 'cure' aging. O'Connell writes with an intellectual curiosity that makes his esoteric subject matter accessible to lay readers, and he tempers his observations with the existential anxiety that the concept of transhumanism evokes, as when he describes it as 'an expression of the profound human longing to transcend the confusion and desire and impotence and sickness of the body, cowering in the darkening shadow of its own decay.' His book is a stimulating overview of modern scientific realities once thought to be the exclusive purview of science fiction." [3]

Also on transhumanism, this week's New York Times Magazine offers O'Connell's feature article "600 Miles in a Coffin-Shaped Bus, Campaigning Against Death Itself," which profiles "Zoltan Istvan, [who] ran for president with a modest goal in mind: human immortality." (Istvan <zoltanistvan.com> is now running for governor of California.) Feb 9 '16 <www.goo.gl/0N5nAO>

James A. Herrick of Hope College is an important evangelical commentator on transhumanism and its implications. Watch him at <www.goo.gl/1eAXvC>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death, by Mark O'Connell (Doubleday, 2017, hardcover, 256 pages) <www.goo.gl/XQAptI>

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