scholarly journals Paul's Idea of the "New Man" and Transhumanism

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 62-69
Author(s):  
Dušan Krcunović

By setting the relationship between human and divine reality in a whole new way, Christian anthropology has provided an authoritative framework for understanding and valuing the dynamics of human life as moving “from the old to the new man”, according to the famous phrase of the apostle Paul. Other great European humanistic traditions with their ideas of man and visions of his progress can be placed in the critical perspective of this Pauline anthropological formula. One of those traditions that relatively recently entered the stage of European intellectual culture is the so-called “Transhumanism”. In this article, a contrast is made between Paul’s understanding of the dynamics of human life and the human enhan­cement with the help of technology in transhumanism.

Author(s):  
Kathryn Tanner

The current configuration of capitalism, in which finance plays a dominant role, has the capacity to shape people in ways that hinder the development of any critical perspective on it. This book explores the various cultural forms of finance-dominated capitalism and suggests how their pervasive force in human life might be countered by Christian beliefs and practices with a comparable person-shaping capacity. In this way, the book reverses the project of the German sociologist Max Weber in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, while employing much the same methods as he used for discussing the relationship between religious beliefs and economic behavior. Weber showed how Christian beliefs and practices, by way of its work ethic, could form persons in line with what capitalism required of them. This book demonstrates the capacity of Christian beliefs and practices to help people resist the dictates of capitalism in its present, finance-dominated configuration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
Markus Lipowicz

Abstract Although supporters of transhumanism present their agenda as a secular movement that specifically challenges the basic ontological and ethical premises of Christian metaphysics, there are also techno-progressive thinkers who claim that Christians should endorse a moderate version of biotechnological human enhancement. The main objective of this essay is to scrutinise this claim by outlining the relationship between transhumanism and Christian anthropology from the perspective of Joseph Ratzinger’s thought. The order of this analysis is constituted by three steps: first, I will critically analyse Benedikt Paul Göcke’s main arguments in favor of a Christian transhumanism; secondly, I will discuss the normative foundation of the techno-progressive agenda with regard to Ratzinger’s/Benedict XVI’s critique of the modern concept of freedom and its anthropological implication – the technological “new man”; finally, I will refer the notion of the posthuman to Ratzinger’s theo-evolutionary image of Jesus Christ as the “man of the future.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 76-91
Author(s):  
E. D. Solozhentsev

The scientific problem of economics “Managing the quality of human life” is formulated on the basis of artificial intelligence, algebra of logic and logical-probabilistic calculus. Managing the quality of human life is represented by managing the processes of his treatment, training and decision making. Events in these processes and the corresponding logical variables relate to the behavior of a person, other persons and infrastructure. The processes of the quality of human life are modeled, analyzed and managed with the participation of the person himself. Scenarios and structural, logical and probabilistic models of managing the quality of human life are given. Special software for quality management is described. The relationship of human quality of life and the digital economy is examined. We consider the role of public opinion in the management of the “bottom” based on the synthesis of many studies on the management of the economics and the state. The bottom management is also feedback from the top management.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-137
Author(s):  
Mustaqim Makki

Zakat merupakan salah satu sendi pokok ajaran Islam. Urgensi zakat yang merupakan anjuran agama Islam untuk menunaikan zakat dan memberikannya kepada yang berhak dengan ketentuan mencapai nishabnya, (kadar minimum harta tertentu) mempunyai nilai sangat signifikan dalam kehidupan manusia. Seorang insan yang sarat akan segala permasalahan pada fitrahnya menuntut untuk selalu berinteraksi kepada sesama, baik berupa materi maupun non materi. Zakat merupakan maliyah ijtima’iyyah yang mengandung nilai-nilai filantropi yang sangat tinggi, karena ketika mengaplikasikan kewajiban zakat kita telah membantu sesama serta mengurangi kesenjangan yang disebabkan beberapa sifat manusia diantaranya adalah sifat kikir, dengki dan iri hati. Menguatnya kembali harapan banyak kalangan terhadap implementasi filantropi Islam, baik dalam bentuk zakat, infak, sedekah, dan wakaf, memiliki keterkaitan erat dengan kondisi bangsa yang belum sepenuhnya bangkit dari keterpurukan sebagai dampak dari krisis ekonomi yang berkepanjangan. Kondisi ini berakibat kesenjangan penguasaan perekonomian antar warga negara menjadi kian lebar. Pada saat itulah, ziswaf (zakat, infak, sedekah, dan wakaf) kembali dilirik dan diharapkan menjadi alternatif solusi terhadap problem kemiskinan umat. Manusia sebagai khalifah fil ardh dalam Al Qurán menekankan muatan fungsional yang harus diemban oleh manusia dalam melaksanakan tugas-tugas kesejarahan dalam kehidupannya di muka bumi. Kaitan dengan konsep tersebut, ada dua fungsi manusia. Pertama: Manusia sebagai hamba (ábid), dituntut untuk sukses menjalin hubungan secara vertikal dalam hal ini hubungannya dengan ketuhanan (Teologis). Kedua adalah manusia sebagai khalifah, dituntut untuk sukses menjalin hubungan secara horizontal dalam hal ini hubungan terhadap manusia.Kata kunci: tafsir ayat zakat, filantropi, ekonomi keummatanAbstract:Zakat is one of the main points of Islamic teachings. The urgency of zakat which is suggested by Islam to fulfill and give it to those who are referred to with the provisions to reach their nishab, (minimum level of certain assets) has a very significant value in human life. A person who is full of all problems in his/her natural demands will always get interaction with other people, either material or non-material. Zakat is maliyah ijtima’iyyah which contains very high philanthropic values, because when applying the obligation of zakat we have helped others and reduced the gaps caused by some human traits including miser, jealousy and envy. The reinforcement of the expectations (estimation) from any levels on the implementation of Islamic philanthropy, which in the form of zakat, donation, alms and endowments, has a close relationship with the condition of the country that has not fully risen from bad economic adversity due to economic crisis. This condition causes a widening of the economic mastery among the citizens. At that moment, ziswaf (zakat, infaq, alms, and waqf) was again given a serious attentition and expected to be an alternative solution to the problem of poverty among citizens. Humans as khalifah fil ardh in the Qur'an emphasize the functional content that must be carried by humans in carrying out historical tasks in their lives on earth. In accordance with this concept, there are two human functions. First: Humans as servants (ábid), are required to succeed in establishing a vertical relationship in this case the relationship with God (Theological). Second, humans as caliphs, are required to succeed in establishing horizontal relationships in this case the relationship to humans.


EMPIRISMA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Arif Dan Yuli Darwati

This paper will try to explain the relationship between religion and culture. These two topics are the most important items that are inseparable in the history of human civilization from the classical to the modern period. Religion is ahuman belief system that is related to God. If the rule comes from God, then it cannot be said to be a culture, because it is not human creation, but God’s creation that is absolute. Religion is interpreted as part of the life (culture) ofindividuals or groups, each of which has the authority to understand religion and apply it. With the characteristics as indicated by Fazlur Rahman, wherever religion is located, it is hoped that it can provide guidance on values or moralsfor all activities of human life, whether social, cultural, economic or political. Not infrequently also religion becomes a determining factor in the adhesive process of social cultural interaction of the community as well as unifying thenation. Culture and religion are something different but can influence each other so that new cultures or mixing of cultures emerge. The opinion of Endang Saifudin Anshari who said in his writing that religion and culture do notinclude each other, in principle one is not part of the other and each consists of itself. Between them, of course, they are closely related like us, we see in everyday life and human life. As also seen in the close relationship between husband and wife who can give birth to a son but the husband is not part of the wife, and vice versa. Religion and culture are two different things but cannot be separated. The existence of a religion will be greatly influenced and affect thepractice of a religion in question. And conversely, a culture will be greatly influenced by the beliefs of the society in which culture develops. Therefore religion is not only an individual problem but religion is also a social affair whichultimately religious people are not only able to give birth to individual piety but also must be able to give birth to social piety.Key words: Interaction, Religion, Culture,


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Escotet Espinoza

UNSTRUCTURED Over half of Americans report looking up health-related questions on the internet, including questions regarding their own ailments. The internet, in its vastness of information, provides a platform for patients to understand how to seek help and understand their condition. In most cases, this search for knowledge serves as a starting point to gather evidence that leads to a doctor’s appointment. However, in some cases, the person looking for information ends up tangled in an information web that perpetuates anxiety and further searches, without leading to a doctor’s appointment. The Internet can provide helpful and useful information; however, it can also be a tool for self-misdiagnosis. Said person craves the instant gratification the Internet provides when ‘googling’ – something one does not receive when having to wait for a doctor’s appointment or test results. Nevertheless, the Internet gives that instant response we demand in those moments of desperation. Cyberchondria, a term that has entered the medical lexicon in the 21st century after the advent of the internet, refers to the unfounded escalation of people’s concerns about their symptomatology based on search results and literature online. ‘Cyberchondriacs’ experience mistrust of medical experts, compulsion, reassurance seeking, and excessiveness. Their excessive online research about health can also be associated with unnecessary medical expenses, which primarily arise from anxiety, increased psychological distress, and worry. This vicious cycle of searching information and trying to explain current ailments derives into a quest for associating symptoms to diseases and further experiencing the other symptoms of said disease. This psychiatric disorder, known as somatization, was first introduced to the DSM-III in the 1980s. Somatization is a psycho-biological disorder where physical symptoms occur without any palpable organic cause. It is a disorder that has been renamed, discounted, and misdiagnosed from the beginning of the DSMs. Somatization triggers span many mental, emotional, and cultural aspects of human life. Our environment and social experiences can lay the blueprint for disorders to develop over time; an idea that is widely accepted for underlying psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. The research is going in the right direction by exploring brain regions but needs to be expanded on from a sociocultural perspective. In this work, we explore the relationship between somatization disorder and the condition known as cyberchondria. First, we provide a background on each of the disorders, including their history and psychological perspective. Second, we proceed to explain the relationship between the two disorders, followed by a discussion on how this relationship has been studied in the scientific literature. Thirdly, we explain the problem that the relationship between these two disorders creates in society. Lastly, we propose a set of intervention aids and helpful resource prototypes that aim at resolving the problem. The proposed solutions ranged from a site-specific clinic teaching about cyberchondria to a digital design-coded chrome extension available to the public.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1867
Author(s):  
Emilie Sophie Le Caous ◽  
Fenghueih Huarng

Living in a world where we can expand our economic wealth and the richness of human life is the core of the human development concept. Greater well-being for all can be achieved by improving people’s capabilities and more importantly, by giving individuals the ability to use their knowledge and skills. The economic complexity index (i.e., ECI) is a new indicator that defines a country’s complexity. Through a vast network, citizens can transfer an enormous quantity of relevant knowledge, leading to the creation of diversified and complex products. However, the relationship between economic complexity and human development is not that simple. Thus, this paper aimed to understand it deeper—international migration and logistics performance are used as moderators. Hierarchical linear modeling was the statistical tool used to analyze two groups of countries from 1990 to 2017. For robustness and to deal with possible endogeneity issues, different year lags were also included. The results show that international migration and logistics performance are decisive moderators as they change the relationship between economic complexity and human development.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 5227
Author(s):  
Yu Sawada ◽  
Motonobu Nakamura

Daily lifestyle is a fundamental part of human life and its influence accumulates daily in the human body. We observe that a good daily lifestyle has a beneficial impact on our health; however, the actual effects of individual daily lifestyle factors on human skin diseases, especially skin cancers, have not been summarized. In this review, we focused on the influence of daily lifestyle on the development of skin cancer and described the detailed molecular mechanisms of the development or regulation of cutaneous malignancies. Several daily lifestyle factors, such as circadian rhythm disruption, smoking, alcohol, fatty acids, dietary fiber, obesity, and ultraviolet light, are known to be associated with the risk of cutaneous malignancies, malignant melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, and Merkel cell carcinoma. Although the influence of some daily lifestyles on the risk of skin cancers is controversial, this review provides us a better understanding of the relationship between daily lifestyle factors and skin cancers.


1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Frederick Sontag

For some time it seemed as if Christianity itself required us to say that ‘God is in history’. Of course, even to speak of ‘history’ is to reveal a bias for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of thought. But the justification for talking about the Christian God in this way is the doctrine of the incarnation. The centre of the Christian claim is that Jesus is God's representation in history, although we need not go all the way to a full trinitarian interpretation of the relationship between God and Jesus. Thus, the issue is not so much whether God can appear or has appeared within, or entered into, human life as it is a question of what categories we use to represent this. To what degree is God related to the sphere of human events? Whatever our answer, we need periodically to re-examine the way we speak about God to be sure the forms we use have not become misleading.


Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-275
Author(s):  
Martina Zimmermann ◽  
Sebastian Muth

AbstractIn this special issue, we bring together empirical research that takes a critical perspective on the relationship between language learning and individual aspirations for future success. In doing so we aim to initiate a debate on how neoliberal ideology and mode of governance permeate language learning as part of a wider neoliberal project that postulates the ideal of the competitive and self-responsible language learner. The four contributions illustrate how neoliberal desires about entrepreneurial selves play out differently within different social, political, or linguistic contexts. They do not only address different languages individuals supposedly need to teach or acquire for a successful future within a specific context, but also concentrate on the discourses and social relations shaping these entrepreneurial aspirations. Ranging from vocational training in Japan, early education in Singapore, healthcare tourism in India, to higher education in Switzerland, the contributions all illustrate the role of language as part of the struggle to improve either oneself or others. While the research sites illustrate that investments in language are simultaneously promising and risky and as such dependent on local and global linguistic markets, they equally highlight underlying language ideologies and reveal wider structures of inequality that are firmly embedded in local, national and global contexts.


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