In this issue, contributors engage Timothy Murphy’s proposal for irreligious bioethics over against religious bioethics. Two essays take opposing sides in the debate, while a third seeks middle ground. Another essay questions the meaning of the words “religion,” “irreligion,” and “secular.” The final essay examines the religious nature of human existence and its implications for the debate.

With the godlike powers of modern technology, just one bad actor can unleash hell on Earth. In the face of this threat posed by technology, some have proposed moral bioenhancement as a solution. Although moral bioenhancement may at first seem like something Christian should support, it is my contention in this paper that there is at least one significant reason for Christians to be cautious in their appropriation of moral bioenhancement technology: it can at best give us a false apatheia, (...) which runs the ironic risk of destroying our ability to make moral progress. (shrink)

Critiques of transhumanism from Christian theologians and philosophers often focus on the movement’s disdain for the human body. These criticisms are expressed in a number of different ways. Some argue that the transhumanists’ disdain is a new form of Gnosticism, while others argue that it leads to real violence against real human bodies. When such criticisms turn to identify the particular sin of which transhumanism is guilty, they sometimes identify vainglory as the besetting sin, but more often than not pride (...) is the sin named. After all, what is transhumanism – with its various proposals for bringing about the posthuman, which is some future being with capabilities so far beyond the human so as to border on godlike – but the latest iteration of the primal sin of humans wanting to become God on their own terms? -/- While such criticisms are valid, they do not capture the depth of transhumanism’s offense from a Christian perspective. Pride and vanity are indeed two of the deadly sins of transhumanism, but there are others at play as well. Moreover, pride is the root of all sin, so saying that pride is the problem is not necessarily helpful. We must find the particular ways in which pride manifests itself. I will argue that the sin of acedia (sometimes spelled accidie), found in ancient lists of the deadly sins, is a primary sin of transhumanism. In so doing, I hope to contribute to a more complete diagnosis of the transhumanist project from a Christian perspective, and I hope to further show why transhumanism is at odds with Christianity, contra the claims of the Christian Transhumanist Association. It should also be stated up front that this article may raise more questions than it answers. Accordingly, it should be seen as an invitation for further research, not as a definitive assessment of acedia in transhumanism. (shrink)

Taking a cue from Teilhard de Chardin's Christologically inflected speculation, the key question in this issue is whether the project of transhumanism is compatible with Christianity and the Incarnation of Christ. Two articles focus on theological anthropology and the limits, if any, of human perfection in light of Christ's perfection. Another article examines the ontological claims about human nature in transhumanism and its incompatibility with a Christian ontology. The last two turn from more abstract concerns to consider how the use (...) of technology can inhibit or help human moral and spiritual development. (shrink)

In their recent article, Brummett and Muaygil reject Bishop et al.’s framing of the debate over standardization in clinical ethics consultation (CEC) “as one between pro-credentialing procedural and anti-credentialing phenomenological,” claiming that this framing “amounts to a false dichotomy between two extreme approaches to CEC.” Instead of accepting proceduralism and phenomenology as a binary, Brummett and Muaygil propose that these two views should be seen as the extreme ends of a spectrum upon which CEC should be done. However, as evidenced (...) by several inconsistencies within their article, they have failed to fully appreciate the concern animating Bishop et al.’s proposal. Additionally, because of this failure, they do not seem to realize that credentialing ethicists for CEC will only create different problems in Saudi Arabia even as it possibly solves some of the current problems they identify. In this commentary, we highlight and clarify Brummet and Muaygil’s five misunderstandings of Bishop et al. This leads us to conclude that while they claim to be advocating a middle way between proceduralism and phenomenology, in fact they would like for us to standardize another proceduralism, albeit one that incorporates some of the “qualitative” values of American bioethics. (shrink)