Ezra's Bookshelf

God, Human, Animal, Machine

by Meghan O’Gieblyn · 305 pages

Meghan O'Gieblyn explores what it means to be human in an age when technology increasingly mimics and mediates consciousness. A former evangelical Christian who lost her faith, O'Gieblyn finds in artificial intelligence echoes of the theological questions that once structured her worldview: What is the soul? Can it be replicated? What survives death? The essays move between personal memoir--her education at Moody Bible Institute, her subsequent deconversion, her work writing advertising copy for tech companies--and philosophical inquiry into transhumanism, embodiment, and machine consciousness. O'Gieblyn examines how Silicon Valley's dreams of uploading consciousness into computers recapitulate Christian hopes for immortality, and how algorithmic prediction mirrors divine omniscience. She visits laboratories where researchers attempt to create artificial general intelligence and conferences where enthusiasts anticipate the Singularity with evangelical fervor. The book is neither a celebration of technological progress nor a technophobic jeremiad but something rarer: a genuinely uncertain investigation that takes seriously both scientific possibility and existential meaning. O'Gieblyn writes with the precision of someone trained in systematic theology applied to the scattered landscape of contemporary techno-philosophy. The result is essential reading for anyone grappling with how digital technology transforms not just our tools but our self-understanding.