ABOUT
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Founder and CEO, NOVUS​
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Cultura Fellow at the Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture.
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Public Life Fellow at The Center for Christianity and Public Life.
I'm a philosopher and creative working at the intersection of human nature—mind, body, and soul—with AI, emerging technology, and spiritual formation, all in the Wisdom and Way of Jesus.
Through writing, research, consulting, and public speaking, I engage universities, churches, and organizations that are wrestling with the ethical and spiritual challenges of technological acceleration.
My academic work explores how consciousness reveals the deeper structure of reality and what it means to be a human person in an age increasingly shaped by machines.
My focus isn’t just critique—it’s reimagining. I work with leaders to design new implementations of technology that serve a flourishing life, church, and culture. Because the real question isn’t just What can we build? it’s Who are we becoming?
Spiritual formation isn’t optional. It’s happening all the time. The question is whether it’s intentional or automated, whether it's in the image of Christ or someone else. In a world seduced by efficiency, scale, and surface, I help people slow down, think deeply, and recover the sacred work of becoming fully human in the Wisdom and Way of Jesus.
UPDATES
Book Award Announcement
I'm honored to share that The Substance of Consciousness received the 2024 Dallas Willard Book Award from the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and the Dallas Willard Research Center.
This award recognizes original work that carries forward Dallas Willard’s conviction that invisible realities, such as the soul, spirit, and the Kingdom of God, are not only real but also accessible through direct, lived experience.
To receive this recognition in light of Willard’s intellectual and spiritual legacy is deeply meaningful. Thank you to the MIDWC for your commitment to scholarship that nurtures both the mind and the soul.
NEW VIDEOS
Grace for the Afflicted: Mental Health
& Spiritual Formation
With the Soul Unseen, We Turn to Machines: Jesus' Philosophy of Technology
In The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism, two distinguished philosophers deliver a unique and powerful defense of contemporary substance dualism, which makes the claim that the human person is an embodied fundamental, immaterial, and unifying substance. Multidisciplinary in scope, the book explores areas of philosophy, cognitive science, neuroscience, and the sociology of mind-body beliefs. The authors present the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and rigorous non-edited work on substance dualism in the field, as well as a detailed history of how property and substance dualism have been presented and evaluated over the last 150 years. Alongside developing new and updated positive arguments for substance dualism, they also discuss key metaphysical notions and distinctions that inform the examination of substance dualism and its alternatives.
Reviews
"This book is a tour de force on the topic of consciousness. The authors offer a depth of analysis that interacts with the latest and best work on this topic in recent years."
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Joshua Rasmussen, PhD
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Azusa Pacific University
“Rickabaugh and Moreland have written the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and sophisticated defense of substance dualism available today. They tackle quite successfully every anti-dualist argument in the literature, demonstrating both the variety of options available to dualists and the fruitfulness of the dualist framework for future research, both scientific and philosophical. Especially impressive is their skill in drawing on Aristotelian, scholastic, and 19th century sources (Brentano, Husserl) to develop an attractive synthesis of dualism with hylomorphism. They bring to philosophy of mind theoretical resources, including the metaphysics of mereology, that are badly needed in today’s debates.”
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Robert Koons, PhD
Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin
“Rickabaugh and Moreland have produced a tour de force in this brilliant, systematic case for substance dualism. It is a treasure trove of arguments, objections and replies that should be required reading in philosophy of mind today, challenging the current, ingrained prejudice against dualism.”
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Charles Taliaferro, PhD
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, St. Olof College
Member, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism, Cambridge University
"Moreland and Rickabaugh's monograph is a first-rate treatment of the important issues concerning the existence and nature of the soul. The book will be of interest to philosophers and theologians alike. I highly recommend it."
Stewart Goetz, PhD
Professor of Philosophy Ursinus College