In the lecture Dr. Rickabaugh notes a correlation between an increase in technological prowess (“exterior” knowledge) and a decrease in moral (“interior”) knowledge. Dr. Rickabaugh is no luddite. He commends the good of technological progress, but as a philosopher, his concern has to do with the depersonalizing and dehumanizing philosophies and narratives driving technological progress. Dr. Rickabaugh covers a range of topics from AI, to large language models, to “spirit tech” to argue that Jesus’s philosophy of technology prioritizes the internal dimensions of the human person over the kinds of external measures and regulatory emphases of philosophies of technology. He notes that, “Jesus’s way out of this was to push back against structures–technological ways of measuring the spiritual life–and bringing it back to the person, principally Himself.”
01. Accessible resources on formation and technology
Andy Crouch, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World.
Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place.
Justin Earley, The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction.
Felicia Wu Song, Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age.
02. DWRC Book Award winner and other academic resources related to the lecture
Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science.
Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life.
*J.P. Moreland and Brandon Rickabaugh, The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism.
Bronislaw Szerszynski, Nature, Technology and the Sacred.