In The Beginning...
C.S Lewis describes the human as "the human machine" in an attempt to illustrate the way morals help guide the human, even if they seem to contradict our "natural inclinations". But why when he invokes the human, does he also invoke the machine?In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine. That is why these rules at first seem to be constantly interfering with our natural inclinations.
-C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity (69).
This project sets out to critically analyze the category of "the human" as it applies to the study of religion. I look at two sets of data, The Reimagined Battlestar Galactica series and the Mormon Transhumanist Association to answer the question: Is "the human" a unique category in the study of religion? If so, how are we as scholars to analyze it? If not, then what?
To discuss what the human is or is not, I began with studying what I believed was not human, contrary to C.S Lewis's example: the machine.
Only, I encountered a serious ideological dilemma: If the machine is not human, what happens when the machine appears more human than the humans around it?
Answering this question led me down the rabbit-hole that is posthumanism.
