Full Description
In the first two seasons of the HBO series Westworld, human guests pay exorbitant fees to spend time among cybernetic Hosts—partially sentient AI robots—and live out often violent fantasies. In Theology and Westworld, scholars from a range of disciplines within religious studies examine the profound questions that arise when the narrative of Westworld interacts with the study of religion. From transhumanism and personhood to morality and divinity, this book contributes to, confounds, and challenges ideas that are found in the study of religion and philosophy. Taken together, the chapters further our understanding of what it means to live in a world where the hard questions of human existence are explored through the medium of popular culture.
Contents
Chapter 1 Consuming Westworld: Facilitating the Robotics and AI Discussion through Science Fiction
Jaime Wright
Chapter 2 Techno-Transcendence and Artificial Rapture
Olivia Belton
Chapter 3 For the Rest of Time They Heard the Drum
Jacob Boss
Chapter 4 A Comparative Inquiry into the Real
Kristin Johnston Largen
Chapter 5 Will Robots Too Be in the Image of God? Artificial Consciousness and Imago Dei in Westworld
Marius Dorobantu
Chapter 6 On Idolatry and Empathy: An Orthodox Christian Response to the Victimization Fantasies of Westworld
David K. Goodin
Chapter 7 Rethinking the Maze: Africana Religions, Somatic Memory, and the Journey to Consciousness
Amanda Furiasse
Chapter 8 Exile, the Remnant, and a Promised Land without a God
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Chapter 9 "And behold, a black horse": Heaven, Hell, and Biblical Eschatology in Westworld
Tony Degouveia
