July 6- 31, 2020

(we will be meeting every weekday over Zoom at 9:00 am US Pacific time)

Week one: Philosophical Reflections on the Virtual Age

Monday July 6: Introduction;

  • Introduction to the co-evolution of religion and technology
  • Models for understanding technology’s relationship to society

Tuesday July 7: communication technology and religion

  • Mimetic religion
  • Oral Religion
  • The Axial Revolution

Wednesday, July 8: Critique of Scribal Religion Mimetic Sacrifice

  • Archaic Religion: Mimetic Desire, Violence and Religious Sacrifice
  • Plato’s Axial Critique
  • Jesus’ Axial Critique

Thursday, July 9: The Print Revolution

  • Paper and Print
  • Print Christianity

Friday, July 10: Rational Religion

  • Medieval Axial Arguments for the Existence of God
  • Geometrical reason—objective orientation
  • Deism and Design—third person orientation

Week Two: Theological Reflections on the Virtual Age

Monday July 13: The religion of subjectivity

  • The apotheosis of the self: first person orientation
  • Romantic Critiques of Industrial Technology: second person orientation

Tuesday, July 14: The virtual self.

  • Virtual self
  • Demons of the virtual self

Wednesday, July 15: Cyberpsychology: Patrick

  • Cyberpsychology and Virtual Therapy

Thursday July 16: Virtual ontology

  • Distributed agency and the internet of things
  • Distributed cognition: embodied, embedded, extended

Friday : July 17: Latour’s philosophy of religion

  • The Technology of Religion
  • The Religion of Technology

Week Three: Virtual Theology

Monday July 20: spirituality online: Nithin and Artur

  • Religion as Refuge
  • On Virtual Ritual

Tuesday,July 21:  Transcendence: technological and religious.

  • Artificial intelligence and the singularity
  • Teilhard and Transhumanism

Wednesday, July 22: introduction to the second axial age

  • Inter-religious dialogue as a model for evangelizing a secular and pluralistic digital culture.
  • Laudato Si’s critique of technology and adding ecology to faith and justice

Thursday. July 23: Virtual Theology

  • Virtual trinitarianism: God as a network of divine personae
  • Creation: Our Reality as God’s Virtual Reality

Friday, July 24: Virtual Theology (2)

  • Avatar Christology
  • Virtual Mysticism

Week four: Digital Evangelization

Monday, July 27: High school and college digital ministry

High school digital evangelization: Christian Astran (Jesuit High, LA, ministry)

College digital evangelization: Meredith McKay (Gonzaga Mission and Ministry

  • Virtual Ecclesiology

Tuesday, July 28: Digital evangelization around the globe

Wednesday, July 29: student presentations:

Thursday, July 30: Student presentations:

Saturday August 1: debrief?

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