Dr. Robert M. Geraci

Robert M. Geraci, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College.
 
Robert studies the power of religion in contemporary culture, particularly with regard to the interaction between religion and technology. Other interests include the history of science, anthropology of science, contemporary art, literature, Christian history, and economics.
 
His past research focused upon the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and religion (primarily the Singularity, mind uploading, & sentient machines, but also Shinto and Buddhist ideas as they relate to the development of Japanese robotics). He is the author of Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality and Human Nature and the Ethics of Progress: Power and Purpose in 20th Century Religion, Science and Art.
 
Robert’s papers include: Cultural Prestige: Popular Science Robotics as Religion-Science Hybrid, Apocalyptic AI: Religion and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence, Spiritual Robots: Religion and Our Scientific View of the Natural World, Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence, Laboratory Ritual: Experimentation and the Advancement of Science, and Signaling Static: Artistic, Religious, and Scientific Futures in a Relational Ontology.
 
Robert earned his BA, Plan II Honors in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his MA and Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His Ph.D. dissertation was The cultural history of religions and the ethics of progress: Building the human in 20th century religion, science, and art.
 
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