Religion, Science, and Technology in the Post-Secular Age

This essay explores the role of technoscience in contemporary society by showing the connection between technoscientific trans/posthumanism and the trope of the 'post-secular.' In section 1, the essay situates trans/posthumanism in contemporary culture and explains why we need to pay attention to it. Section 2 shows how the discourse on trans/posthumanism relates to the discourse on the 'post-secular.' The section explains the emergence of the 'post-secular' out of the debate on the Secularization Thesis and the various meanings of the 'post-secular.' Section 3 argues that the Secularization Thesis took for granted that technoscience has functioned as a secularizing and modernizing force, because the Secularization Thesis presupposed a necessary conflict between 'science' and 'religion.' Although historians of science have dismantled the Conflict Thesis, the perception that science and religion are necessarily in conflict has continued to inform public perception. The essay accounts for this development in the context of the post-secular resurgence of religion in the public sphere. In section 4, the essay presents trans/posthumanism as a case study of the post-secular moment, demonstrating how a presumably secular technoscience is invested with religious and even salvific meaning: Technoscience is said to deliver transcendence within the 'immanent frame.'