Renovatio 11: The Incoherence of Modernity's Messiahs

In Renovatio's Spring 2024 edition, "The Incoherence of Modernity's Messiahs," our writers take aim at the totalizing ideologies that plague our world today. Chief among them remains scientism, including its strands such as machine "consciousness" in today's AI forecasting; the reduction of the human to the brain; and the fantasist notions of transhumanism. Marxism also stubbornly persists as a defining ideology of our time, especially through an absolutism that ignores the cautions of sacred traditions about inviolability of innocent life, even under conditions of extreme provocation. As Renovatio's writers demonstrate, these ideologies seek—but inevitably fail—to fill the void left by the absence of religion in modern society.

Contents
The Incoherence of Secular Messiahs ~ Faraz Khan
Suffering and Character ~ Sophia Vasalou
The Importance of Being Earnest about Islamic Philosophy ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Hamza Yusuf
On the Mind’s Devotion to Reality ~ Mark Damien Delp
The Climate Emergency ~ Rosabel Ansari
Alfarabi’s Political Teaching ~ Charles E. Butterworth
Justice, Nonaggression, and Military Ethics in Islam ~ Asma Afsaruddin
Islam as One Thing, Anything, or Nothing ~ Caner K. Dagli
When Technology Becomes Theology ~ Carl R. Trueman
We Are Not Our Brain ~ Muhammad U. Faruque