Item Detail
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32946
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0
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51
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English
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Machines for Making Gods: Mormonism, Transhumanism, and Worlds Without End
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New York
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Fordham University Press
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"The Mormon Transhumanist Association (MTA) believes that God intended humanity to achieve Mormonism’s promise of theosis through imminent technological advances. Drawing on a nineteenth-century Mormon tradition of religious speculation to reimagine Mormon eschatological hopes as near-future technological possibilities, they envision such current and possible advances as cryonic preservation, computer simulation, and quantum archeology as paving the way for the resurrection of the dead, the creation of worlds without end, and promise of undergoing theosis―of becoming a god. Addressing the role of speculation in the anthropology of religion, Machines for Making Gods undoes debates about secular transhumanism’s relation to religion by highlighting the differences an explicitly religious transhumanism makes.
Charting the conflicts and resonances between secular transhumanism and Mormonism, Bialecki shows how religious speculation has opened up imaginative horizons to give birth to new forms of Mormonism, including a particular progressive branch of the faith and even such formations as queer polygamy. The book also reveals how the MTA’s speculative account of God and technology together has helped to forestall some of the social pressure that comes with apostasy in much of the Mormon Intermountain West.
A fascinating ethnography of a group with much to say about crucial junctures of modern culture, Machines for Making Gods illustrates how the scientific imagination can be better understood when viewed through anthropological accounts of myth." [Amazon summary]
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"A Mother There" : A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven
An Experiment in Progressive Legislation : The Granting of Woman Suffrage in Utah in 1870
An Introduction to Mormonism
As a Thief in the Night : The Mormon Millennialist View
A Tale of Three Primaries : the Gravity of Mormonism's Informal Institutions
Conflict in the Quorum : Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith
Decolonizing Mormonism : Approaching a Postcolonial Zion
Desert Patriarchy : Mormon and Mennonite Communities in the Chihuahua Valley
Discourses of Brigham Young : Second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Disenchanted Lives : Apostasy and Ex-Mormonism Among the Latter-day Saints
Early Mormonism and the Magic World View
Hands Raised Up : Corruption, Power, and Context in Bolivian Mormonism
In Heaven as It Is on Earth : Joseph Smith and the Early Mormon Conquest of Death
Joseph Smith and the Plurality of Worlds Idea
Joseph Smith : Campaign for President of the United States
Joseph Smith, Jesus, and Satanic Opposition : Atonement, Evil, and the Mormon Vision
Joseph Smith : Rough Stone Rolling
Joseph's Temples : The Dynamic Relationship Between Freemasonry and Mormonism
Keeping the Sacred : Structured Silence in the Enactment of Priesthood Authority, Gendered Worship, and Sacramental Kinship in Mormonism
Make Yourselves Gods : Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism
Minding Business : A Note on 'The Mormon Creed'
Mormonism and Anthropology : On Ways of Knowing
Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy : A Crisis Theology
Mormon Polygamy : A History
One Heart and Mind: Communal Life and Values among the Mormons
"One Soul Shall Not Be Lost" : The War in Heaven in Mormon Thought
Polygamy in primetime :
Media, gender, and politics in Mormon fundamentalism
Queer Polygamy
Religion of a Different Color : Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness
Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology
Signifying Sainthood, 1830-2001
Sociological Perspectives on the Mormon Subculture
Sustaining Charisma : Mormon Sectarian Culture and the Struggle for Plural Marriage, 1852-1890
Terrible Revolution : Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse
The Blood of Abraham : Mormon Redemptive Physicality and American Idioms of Kinship
The Book of Mormon Girl : A Memoir of an American Faith
The Discursive Construct of Virtual Angels, Temples, and Religious Worship : Mormon Theology and Culture in Second Life
The King Follett Discourse : Joseph Smith's Greatest Sermon in Historical Perspective
The Last Shall Be First and the First Shall Be Last : Discourse and Mormon history
The Lost 116 Pages : Reconstructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories
The Mormon Culture of Salvation : Force, Grace, and Glory
The Mormon World
The Next Mormons : How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church
The Politics of American Religious Identity : The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle
The Truth, The Way, The Life : An Elementary Treatise on Theology
Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology
Transfiguration: Parallels and Complements Between Mormonism and Transhumanism
Waiting for World's End : Diaries of Wilford Woodruff
What is Mormon Transhumanism? And is it Mormon?
Women of Principle : Female Networking in Contemporary Mormon Polygyny
Wrestling the Angel : The Foundations of Mormon Thought : Cosmos, God, Humanity