Critical Thinking for the Common Good

We Champion Scholarly Excellence and Moral Responsibility

Craig Gay

Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Regent College

Modern Technology and the Diminishment of the Human

Thursday, September 26, 2019,  4:00 p.m., Woodward (IRC) Room 3

 

Audio File of Craig’s Lecture

Abstract

From the plow to the printing press, technologies have repeatedly revolutionized human life and shaped our understanding of our purposes and possibilities. Recent advances in automatic machine technology have further revolutionized our understanding of the human prospect. Yet have recent technological developments actually encouraged embodied human flourishing? By exploring the implications of the Christian doctrines of creation, incarnation, and resurrection, Dr. Gay retrieves a foundation from which to evaluate and critique modern technological development without asking us to unplug completely.

Biography

 Craig Gay lectures in the area of Christianity, Society, and Culture, and directs Regent’s ThM degree program. He is the author of With Liberty or Justice for Whom?,Eerdmans, 1991, The Way of the (Modern) World,Eerdmans, 1998; Cash Values: The Value of Money the Nature of Worth,Eerdmans, 2004; Dialogue, Catalogue and Monologue,Regent College Publishing, 2008; and Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal, IVP Academic, 2018. Craig was the co-editor (with C. Peter Molloy) of The Way of Truth in the Present Age, Regent College, 1999. He has contributed chapters to a number of collections on the subjects of modernity, secularization, economic ethics, and technology, and his articles and reviews have appeared in Christian Scholar’s Review, American Journal of Sociology, Crux, and Markets & Morality.

Co-sponsored with Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation

From the beginning, machine technology was developed to function automatically…. designed and deployed  to function independently of unauthorized human interference and unimpeded by human frailties, inconsistencies, and irrationalities…. Modern technological development has as a result been moving away from ordinary embodied human existence for some time…. From within the technological [machine] worldview, human embodiment is simply not a particularly high priority. This, I want to suggest, betrays serious confusion about the nature of the created order as well as confusion about the human place and task within the created order.

~Craig Gay

Other Scholars interested in Technology and Culture

George Grant

Quentin Schultze

Albert Borgmann

Jacques Ellul

Sherry Turkle

Bob Doede