May 2026 Blog

The Boyle Lectures and the Brain: Concerns about ISSR’s Public Sphere Claims about Human Minds and Intelligence Michael Spezio, Ph.D., M.Div. Associate Professor, Psychology, Data Science, Neuroscience, Scripps College, Claremont, CA USA Minister of Word and Sacrament, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Presbytery of San Gabriel, Temple City, CA USA The public sphere of pluralistic liberal democracy is in danger of collapse due to sustained attacks on sound, coherent, evidence-based discourse, thinking, and the corrigibility of claims. Anti-vaccine campaigns are reshaping public health. Anti-evolution advocacy is reshaping science education. Climate denial is reshaping energy policy. The institutions themselves are now being directed by commitments that contradict the scientific consensus they were built to apply. None of this is incidental to the work of science and religion. Our field exists, in

By |2026-05-15T23:00:46+01:00May 15th, 2026|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |
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November 2025 Blog

Technodao and the Moral Grammar of AI Heup Young Kim Rethinking AI ethics from control to formation by aligning design with dignity through East Asian virtue and Christian humility. 1) From Control to Meaning Debates about artificial intelligence often circle around capability and control—who builds, who commands, who benefits. These are necessary questions. Yet underneath them lies something quieter and more decisive: What kind of beings are we becoming through our technologies? If ethics is only a set of rules applied after the fact, it will always trail the pace of innovation. What we need is not merely additional regulation but a renewed sense of moral grammar that shapes our practical reason, our imagination of the good, and our life together. Here, the philosopher Charles Taylor is a

By |2025-11-16T16:10:56+00:00November 16th, 2025|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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April 2025 Blog

International Symposium on Developments in Artificial Intelligence & Humanoid Technology by Job Kozhamthadam   Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), accompanied by humanoid technology, are arguably the greatest achievement of human ingenuity to date. Thanks to these breath-taking breakthroughs, the claim is made that it is only a matter of time when human scientific prowess will have produced in its laboratory not only living beings, including humans, but also superhumans or posthumans. Recent amazing achievements like the humanoid Sophia, which was awarded Saudi citizenship in 2017, the humanoid Ameca, the world’s most advanced robot so far, the Chinese humanoid SEO1 with its ability to have a natural, human-like gait, and many others – each with its own specialties – seem to assure us that contemporary science’s claim is

By |2025-04-16T23:12:48+01:00April 15th, 2025|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , , , |
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July 2024 Blog

Science, religion, and health Lluis Oviedo, OFM Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome Studies on religion, health, wellbeing and flourishing have proliferated in recent years to the point of becoming unmanageable. Theologians are unsure what to make of this vast body of research. On the one hand, the results clearly point to a moderately positive effect of religion on these human dimensions; indeed, they arouse a certain renewed interest in religion and its function or utility. On the other hand, their methods (mostly empirical) and approach (typically pragmatic) surprise theology as something quite alien to its own tradition. A question worth exploring further is whether the sub-discipline of science and religion is better equipped and could provide a better framework for receiving and managing this research. After all, health sciences

By |2024-07-15T20:28:46+01:00July 15th, 2024|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , , |
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October 2023 Blog

Spiritual Conversation with AI The development of Open AI (GPT-3 and its successor), has generated huge public interest in the capacity of AI. There is a mixture of excitement about what AI is now capable of, but also alarm about the consequences of these new capacities. One interesting question, especially for those concerned with the interface between science and religion, is the capacity of AI for spiritual conversation and counselling. Even before the machine learning approach of Open AI, there were indications that automated spiritual conversation might be possible. The early work of Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s, using a simple Chatbot methodology, suggested that computers could perform passably in providing non-directive counselling. The computer simply picked up verbal cues and responded appropriately. So, for example, if the

By |2023-10-15T15:34:17+01:00October 15th, 2023|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , , |
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March 2023 Blog

IISR Delhi International & National Symposiums AI-Robotics Revolution & Science-Religion Dialogue Job Kozhamthadam, SJ.   Ever since its inception 25 years ago, IISR (Indian Institute of Science and Religion) Delhi has been organizing much-appreciated international symposiums on cutting-edge developments in science and technology and their impact on human society and religion. These megaevents have been IISR’s attempt to translate into practice its ambitious vision of blending harmoniously the latest findings of modern science and the deepest insights of religions to build up a better humanity, a richer world and a more humane India, particularly in the multireligious, multicultural and multiracial fabric of India. In the past it has organized 13 international symposiums on epoch-making scientific breakthroughs like the discovery of the God-Particle (Higg’s Boson) in 2012, discovery of

By |2023-03-16T01:07:48+00:00March 16th, 2023|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , , , , |
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February 2023 Blog

Spiritual Intelligence by Fraser Watts The apparently simple little adjective, “spiritual”, is more complicated than it looks, and there are significant issues about what it means. It is currently being used in a variety of contexts. I will focus mainly here on spiritual intelligence, but also briefly note parallel discussions about spiritual healing, and the spiritual turn. There is talk of “spiritual healing”, but what is “spiritual” about such healing? Some years ago Sarah Coakley and I jointly led a consultation on spiritual healing. In subsequent publications we have both grappled with how to conceptualise spiritual healing. In her recent book, Spiritual Healing: Science, Meaning and Disenchantment, Coakley makes a distinction between healing that is not strictly physical and healing that is framed in terms of God. In

By |2023-02-16T15:32:16+00:00February 15th, 2023|Categories: Blog|Tags: , , , , , , |
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