Research on Christianity and the challenges of the postmodern, cyber era
The primary focus of the research group is to highlight upon the various new phenomena and examine its challenges and interactions with Christian beliefs and values featuring the special era of the last half century, also labelled as postmodern (Lyotard, Nealon) or cyber age (S.Cray). These new trends tend to affect the social, intellectual, political fabric of the increasingly secular western societies to their core, with significant implications to the prevalence of Christian paradigm.
The interdisciplinary research project aims to cover such significant topics and disciplinary areas of social studies and political philosophy as identity policies, gender and related studies, various critical theories, which have recently become basically mainstream theories with global outreach in the Western academic and religious life alike.
Besides the impact of the new secular religious substitutes (Lindsay), the so-called progressive secular theories upon Christianity, there is another research field seemingly neglected by academic projects, so far. Namely, the impact analysis of the new digital solutions and technology-based trends upon society and religions, in particular. The prevalence of artificial general intelligence, smart devices and human-machine interface is becoming an undisputable fact and part of 21st century society, with unprecedented effects and unexplored impacts on society and classic religious beliefs, as well. The rise of new forms of technologic beliefs and various secular religions is also on the horizon with the technologic singularity looming. The cult of the new machine-based digital tehcnologies poses one of the greatest challenges for transcendental religions based on divine relevations (Molnár Tamás), which must be properly examined and tackled with both by common believers and scholars, too.
Research project leader: Zsolt CSUTAK, PhD candidate, ORCID,