CANTON -- St. Lawrence University will host Robert Geraci as the guest speaker for the 2016 Kathryn Fraser Mackay Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20, in Eben Holden. The event is free and open to the public. There will be a book signing and refreshments served.

Geraci, professor of religion at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, will deliver his lecture, titled “Four Technicians of the Apocalypse: The Futurist Blend of Religion, Technology, and the End of Time.” Based on his research as a Fulbright-Nehru scholar in the United States. and India, he will present a new vision of the apocalypse that has accompanied the rise of powerful computers.

Key figures in robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality now believe that machines will soon reach god-like levels of power and intelligence, and that we will join them in a heavenly realm of computation by uploading our minds into robotic bodies.

Geraci earned his Ph.D. in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Mackay Memorial Lecture lecture is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and honors Kathryn Fraser Mackay and her inquisitive spirit through religion and philosophy.

For more information, contact 229-5224 or visit www.stlawu.edu/philosophy.