Suggested Learning Paths
Technology & Culture
Scholars Learning Path
Learning path overview.​
​PDF Download
Scholars Learning Path
Learning path overview.​
​PDF Download
Pros
Cons
Techno-Optimism
Techno-Pessimism
Techno-Realism
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Inspires confidence in human creativity and problem-solving.
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Highlights real successes (vaccines, renewable energy, medical tech).- Encourages innovation and investment.
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Sharp eye for hidden costs and systemic harms. Exposes how technology reshapes culture and values.- Warns against uncritical adoption.
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Balances hope with caution.
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Recognizes technologies as tutors that shape us.- Emphasizes discernment, design, and governance.
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Downplays unintended consequences.
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Ignores how technologies reshape desires and societies.- Risks naïve faith in “tech will save us.”
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Can lapse into fatalism or despair
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Underestimates human agency and capacity to redirect tech.- Risks nostalgia or paralysis.
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Underestimates entrenched economic and cultural pressures.
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Demands sustained attention and wisdom, which are in short supply.
Eight Recent Cases of Philosophical Failure
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Theranos (2015-2018)
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The Theranos scandal blurred showmanship into science, treating investor confidence as evidence. A philosopher would have asked: what counts as knowledge? Clear epistemic thresholds could have prevented years of deception.​
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​Facebook & Cambridge Analytica (2018)
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The Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed Facebook’s failure to ask its telos: what is the platform for, beyond engagement? Without that question, “community” collapsed into clicks, and democracy became collateral damage.
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Amazon “Just Walk Out” Stores (2024)
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Amazon’s checkout-free stores sold surveillance as trust, while hiding the human labor propping up the system. A philosopher might have pressed: what human good does this serve? The failure was not technical but conceptual.
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Google Glass (2013–2015; shut down 2023)
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Google Glass failed not because it didn’t work, but because it never answered the question of purpose. Without a clear telos—what human good it advanced—public trust eroded.
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UK Horizon Scandal (1999–2019, trials ongoing)
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The Horizon system treated machine logs as courtroom witnesses. This epistemology error mistook data for testimony. Hundreds imprisoned. Philosophy would have asked: who can bear responsibility for truth?​
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Microsoft Tay Chatbot (2016)
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Microsoft’s Tay learned to mimic racist and abusive speech in less than a day. The error wasn’t code but ontology: mistaking mimicry for understanding. A philosopher might have asked: what is a person, and what is not?
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AI Companion Apps (Ongoing)
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Apps like Replika promise intimacy but deliver simulation. They invert the telos of care: creating dependency instead of healing loneliness. Loneliness should never be a KPI.
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AI Mental Health Apps (Ongoing)
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AI therapy apps risk mistaking fluency for care. They cannot provide responsibility or accountable presence. The epistemology error: confusing patterned responses with therapeutic judgment. Vulnerable users pay the price.
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Substack
Launching September 17, 2025
Provoking
BABEl
A New Substack by Brandon Rickabaugh
Rethinking the Ideas and Technologies
that Form Us and Culture
Provoking Babel is a space for challenging the hidden assumptions behind today’s cultural renegotiation of what it means to be human. It stirs clear, creative thinking about mind, meaning, and AI, framed by deeper questions about reality, knowledge, and living a good life.
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If you're drawn to difficult questions and subversive hope, subscribe now to get the first issue early.
Am I Just what AI Can Do Better? What Makes Us Human?
If an AI can mimic your voice, your writing, your work, even your dating profile, what’s left that’s uniquely you? Imagine waking up to find your job description is rewritten for an AI system that sounds just like you. Or that you partner has been dating an intimacy app they claim is more attentive than you. I press a deeper question: what can’t be automated, and what makes human persons unique and irreplaceable.
You Are Not a Start Up: Rethinking Success in an Unstable World
Why do so many people who “make it” still feel like failures? We were told if we worked hard enough, long enough, and optimized everything, we’d find success. Instead, we found burnout. Now what? In this talk I invite audiences to rediscover ancient visions of the good life, where life is measured by the kind of person you are becoming in your context.​
Love, Loneliness, and the Illusion of Connection
If 10,000 followers can’t cure your loneliness can AI? A friend told me their AI chatbot “understood them better than their spouse.” That’s not science fiction. It’s happening now. This talk explores how love and friendship risk being hollowed out, and what real intimacy still demands. ​​
Truth in an Culture of Noise and Manipulation ?
From deepfakes of politicians to AI-written news, we’re living in a world where truth and fiction blur at the speed of a scroll. The reality is that we can reclaim the nature of truth and knowledge. And forgeting this has made life unsatisfying. Cultivating attention and discernment is now a survival skill.​
The Consciousness Question: Can AI Feel or Explain You?
We can build machines that out-calculate, out-analyze, and out-predict us. But can they ever be conscious? Can we ever explain the origin of consciousness by building AGI. This talk uses recent work in neuroscience, AI development, and philosophy to analyze questions AI cannot answer: Why do you experience anything at all? Does consciousness point to something beyond matter? And what does that mean for the future of minds, souls, and God in a world run by machines?
Where to Start
First Steps for Beginers and Scholars
Books For Beginers
1. #####
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Books For Scholars
1. ######
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Suggested Learning Paths
Technology & Spiritual Formation
Beginers Learning Path
Learning path overview.​
​PDF Download
Scholars Learning Path
Learning path overview.​
​PDF Download
Philosophy of Technology
Introductory Study Guides
The Heart
of My Work
My academic work explores the nature and relationship between God, mind & machine.
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The nature of consciousness.
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Knowing and being known by God, the self, and one another.
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The promise and limits of artificial intelligence.
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How technology shapes culture and each of us within this context.
My public work applies my research to two urgent areas:
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Spiritual formation: Understanding and practicing how to live in the Way of Jesus as a whole life of deep, ongoing transformation.
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Technology: Identifying and understanding the ethical and spiritual challenges of creating and using AI technologies in new and creative ways for the good of us all.
I help reimagine how we can live, lead, and love in the context of what God is already doing in culture.
Grace for the Afflicted
Westmont College, CA
2025
Philosophy of Mind
Consciousness, the mind-body problem, intentionality, philosophy of psychology, how the nature of consciousness impacts and informs epistemology.
Epistemology
Evidence, interpersonal knowledge, introspection, knowledge by acquaintance, self-knowledge, moral knowledge.
Philosophy of Religion
Religious knowledge, divine hiddenness, natural theology, religious experience.
Spiritual Formation
Developmental sanctification, empirical methods for formation evaluation, philosophy of sanctification (especially the works of Dallas Willard, Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and Ignatius of Loyola).
Philosophy of Technology
Ontology of human persons, the nature of the soul, embodiment, neo-Aristotelian metaphysics.
The Question I Ask
The ###########
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“What does it mean to be a person in an age of simulation?”
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“Why do we feel more distracted, less whole, and quietly disoriented in a world of constant connection?”
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“What kind of formation does it take to stay human when everything around us trains us to be efficient instead of present?”
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The nature of consciousness.
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Knowing and being known by God, the self, and one another.
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The promise and limits of artificial intelligence.
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How technology shapes culture and each of us within this context.
​
Philosophy of Mind
Consciousness, the mind-body problem, intentionality, philosophy of psychology, how the nature of consciousness impacts and informs epistemology.
Epistemology
Evidence, interpersonal knowledge, introspection, knowledge by acquaintance, self-knowledge, moral knowledge.
Philosophy of Religion
Religious knowledge, divine hiddenness, natural theology, religious experience.
Spiritual Formation
Developmental sanctification, philosophy of sanctification (especially the works of Dallas Willard).
Metaphysics
Ontology of human persons, the nature of the soul, embodiment, neo-Aristotelian metaphysics.
The Heart
of My Work
My academic work explores the nature and relationship between God, mind & machine.
​
-
The nature of consciousness.
-
Knowing and being known by God, the self, and one another.
-
The promise and limits of artificial intelligence.
-
How technology shapes culture and each of us within this context.
My public work applies my research to two urgent areas:
​
-
Spiritual formation: Understanding and practicing how to live in the Way of Jesus as a whole life of deep, ongoing transformation.
-
Technology: Identifying and understanding the ethical and spiritual challenges of creating and using AI technologies in new and creative ways for the good of us all.
I help reimagine how we can live, lead, and love in the context of what God is already doing in culture.
AI and the Reality of God
Technology & Culture
Neuroscience and the Soul
Formats
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Keynotes and lectures
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Panels and conversations
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Spiritual retreats and leadership gatherings
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Workshops for churches, universities, and organizations navigating change
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If your community is asking questions these questions, I’d be glad to be part of that conversation.
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Public Facing Philosophy
Podcasts​