Ep 28: Robert Walden Kurtz & the Zero Sum Game

The Christian Transhumanist Podcast

Can a Seventh-Day Adventist be a transhumanist? Robert Walden Kurtz, Adventist pastor and Professor of Philosophy, says yes! Join us as we discuss robots stealing your job, mind-mapping Jesus, the hidden threat of washing machines, zero-sum games, hacking the mind, and radical humility.

• Why Singularitarians are like early Seventh-Day Adventists
• The origins of Adventism, and what to do when your apocalypse fails
• The impact of communication on historical cycles in culture, and how this connects the Adventists, Mormons, Ahmadiyya Muslims, and the Bahai
• What's different about utopian expectations this time around?
• Ray Kurzweil & the Transcendent Man Documentary
• Will there always be an economy?
• Redefining what value means
• Transhumanism: the prospect of becoming superheroes. But will it also make us super-villains?
• What happens when you get everything you really want?
• "Earl Grey, hot!" — Star Trek & the world of 3D printing we're now entering
• Altruism isn’t popular — especially in modern Christianity
• Must others fail for you to succeed?
• Zero-sum games — amplifying competition, what about altruism?
• Robots stealing your jobs?
• Washing Machines: the robots already among us!
• Did the washing machine destroy community? What do you do about it?
• Mind-mapping Jesus, The Buddha & Mother Teresa
• Hacking the neural correlates of spiritual experiences, controlling oxytocin, and amping up our pro-sociality
• Prayer and meditation as the original brain-hacking technology
• Why brain modification doesn't make zombies, but can help us overcome our zombie addictions, and become more human
• How Robert became a more effective police officer, and spent 15 years in law enforcement without needing to hurt anyone
• Aubrey De Grey & Calico Labs
• “I have never been okay with accepting death and destruction as somehow beautiful and natural”
• Why Christianity agrees with Ray Kurzweil about the beauty of life, and the ugliness of death
• John 10:10 “…I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
• Adventists pioneered some of the finest hospitals and medical technologies—desiring to extend life and relieve suffering
• David Brin’s Bible study
• David Brin, novelist & futurist, author of The Postman, speaking to atheists about how to communicate with theists
• The biblical motif of God as parent, and humans as growing children
• God saying "not yet" to humans
• But ultimately inviting them into his family business
• Stephen Pinker and The Better Angels of Our Nature
• Darwin — a patron saint?
• Why nature films skew our perception of nature in the direction of conflict
• Schadenfreude — Why people will destroy their own best interest to spite others
• Why humility is the gateway to curiosity
• Does the Big Bang contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
• Do our theologies amuse God?
• Why the criticism of "Playing God" is hypocrisy—and why Christianity calls us to "Play God" better
• For further reading: The Four Gospels!