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This project addresses meta-questions posed by the program in Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs by highlighting the interplay among religion, imagined futures, and technological innovation. More specifically the project seeks to accomplish the following goals:

• reveal the transformation of traditional Judeo-Christian motifs in the presumably secularist discourse of transhumanism;
• highlight the causal relationship between visions of the eschaton and interpretation of technological innovation;
• explore how the imagination of the future mobilizes human behavior in a given socio-cultural context, especially in regard to innovation;
• shed new light on the connection between religion and innovation in the modern world;
• expose the internal contradictions within the transhumanist imagination; and
• offer a critical vantage point from which to assess the cultural impact of transhumanism and from which to discern the wider cultural and historical moment of which transhumanism is an expression.

Transhumanism serves as a particularly noteworthy expression of the postsecular moment, and thus as a fruitful context through which to interrogate the interplay of eschatological vision, projects of technological innovation, and forms of normative imagination in modern secular societies.

The project is directed by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Ben Hurlbut and is supported by a grant from The Historical Society's program in Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.