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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Is there something of the divine on the Internet? Conventional wisdom sees a division between the spiritual and the world of the machine. Yet the theological and philosophical theory called "emergence" suggests that the chasm between the two may be of our own creation. Using the writings of the eminent 20th-century theologian Teilhard de Chardin, Jennifer Cobb sees something more in how our technological complexity often produces something elegant and inspired. Rather than seeing creation as a one-time event, some theologians think that the creative power of God can be part of the evolutionary process. That creative power would then extend to the computer and cyberspace.
Is there something of the divine on the Internet? Conventional wisdom sees a division between the spiritual and the world of the machine. Yet the theological and philosophical theory called "emergence" suggests that the chasm between the two may be of our own creation. Using the writings of the eminent 20th-century theologian Teilhard de Chardin, Jennifer Cobb sees something more in how our technological complexity often produces something elegant and inspired. Rather than seeing creation as a one-time event, some theologians think that the creative power of God can be part of the evolutionary process. That creative power would then extend to the computer and cyberspace.
Cobb writes, "Nature has spawned us. We have spawned machines. Any line between these realms quickly becomes arbitrary." She encourages us to reject the sort of dualism between mind and body that has driven so much of Western thought, philosophy, and theology. "Real life," she states, "is never that tidy. As our days unfold, the contents of our boxes--mind, body, God--continually spill into one another, creating both personal confusion and a philosophical morass."
While investigating a wide range of questions that inform spirituality--such as "What is life?" and "Is there something other than us?"--Cobb writes with level-headed exuberance about her own experiences in finding the spiritual in computing. In her chapter on virtual ethics, she lays out a framework that can aid others in making that same connection. This is a unique and intelligent book for those who are concerned with the consequences of technology with regard to our humanity and our spirits. --Elizabeth Lewis
From Kirkus Reviews
A heady, provocative search for the Deity via the Internet. Cobb, a theologian and computer consultant, has a large philosophical framework to work withinand against. She begins by ascribing human beings' preoccupation with materialism to the rise of Modernism, which, not coincidentally, gave way to the ascent of atheism. Cyberspace, however, is less about material objects (i.e., computers) than it is about the spaces in between. We can transcend modern materialism, then, Cobb suggests, by finding divinity via creativity. Here she is describing a kind of divinity not far removed from the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cobb goes on to investigate some very lifelike aspects of cyberspace, such as the ability of certain programs and of artificial intelligence both to mimic life in the traditional definition of the word and to replicate and actually evolve in a neo-Darwinian sense. She cleverly counters the observation that under the canonical definitions these phenomena are not ``life'' by noting that neither is a virus, which self-replicates and can even take over a host, but does not possess the other aspects of life in the taxonomical sense. In this framework, she observes the God-like nature that humans may gain in cyberspace and warns that we must proceed with caution. Cobb's work then deconstructs the Cartesian mind/body dualism that is the backbone of much theology. Virtual reality, she reveals, is a place of neither mind nor body, but of process, and process undermines the tidy rational linearity of the purely scientific worldview. A world of process is a world of relationality, of circularity, a world where all is connected to all. . . . It is an excellent apparatus for dissolving the subject/object nature of human reality and promoting, instead, a more Buberian I/Thou relationship with one's self and, by extension, with one's God. Cybergrace should get tongues wagging about cyberspace in a new, stimulating, and more philosophical way. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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cite this book:
- The Virtual Pagan: Exploring Wicca and Paganism through the Internet by Lisa McSherry in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Significance of Complexity: Approaching a Complex World Through Science, Theology, and the Humanities by Kees Van Kooten Niekerk in Back Matter
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