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Call for Paper Deadline: January 31, 2023 CTNS welcomes papers for these conferences on three core questions. More details on the three core questions can be found in this link.   1) How and to what extent will AI influence human cultural evolution? 2) Can AI assist humans in the acquisition of virtue? 3) Is AI capable of virtue? If so, are those virtues shared with or distinct from human virtues?   If you are interested, please send your 100-word abstract and a 500-word description of the paper by January 31, 2023, to this link. You can find the same submission link and detailed...

Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas assumes the reality of the evolution of species. Their systems of thought, however, remain open to the new data, offering an essential contribution to the ongoing research concerning scientific, philosophical, and theological aspects of the theory of evolution. Many enthusiasts of theistic evolution willingly accept Aquinas' distinction between primary and secondary, and principal and instrumental causes, to describe theologically "the mechanics" of transformism. Is it right, however, to ascribe all causation in evolution to creatures--acting as secondary causes...

J.K. Russell Research Conference with Noreen Herzfeld, More than Information: A Christian Critique of a New Dualism " Dinner Board Room, Graduate Theological Union In light of quantum theory and advances in computer science many scientists have posited that information, rather than matter, forms the bedrock of the universe. Thus it follows that the essence of our selves as human beings is the information housed in the neural connections of our brain, information that, in principle, could be reproduced digitally. Such a "cybernetic immortality" forms one of the bases of a new transhumanist...

God, Information and the Sciences of Complexity, J.K. Russell Research Conference with 2013 Russell Fellow in Religion and Science, Niels Henrik Gregersen Information and complexity have become central concepts of our contemporary scientific world-view. In which sense can we speak of information and complexity also as part of the nature of God? It will be argued that traditional Logos Christology already offers important resources for speaking of aspects of information as inherent to divine life. The divine Logos is “in God”, while being both the wellspring of information (the...

Saturday, December 8, 2007, 1-5pm CTNS/GTU Conference and Celebration; Assessing the Work of Robert John Russell: "God’s Action in Nature’s World: Creative Mutual Interaction from Alpha to Omega" and Celebrating the public Campaign for the Ian G. Barbour Chair in Theology and Science. Graduate Theological Union, Richard S. Dinner Board Room, GTU Library For more than twenty-five years, Robert John Russell has been engaged in research and teaching focused on the creative mutual interaction between theology and the natural sciences. To celebrate the forthcoming publication of his new book,...

In Technology and Human Becoming, Philip Hefner posits the idea of the “techno-mirror,” a reflection of human understanding of human nature through the technologies we create. Artificial Intelligence research, from its earliest days in the work of Alan Turing, has reflected this more appropriately than perhaps any other technology. The goal of “Good Old Fashion AI” researchers like Marvin Minsky was to create a machine that thinks the way human beings do. Today, this legacy animates AI researchers and transhumanist entrepreneurs hoping to transcribe their brain patterns into computer...

The Doctrine of Atonement and Extraterrestrial Life If extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETI) exists, one of the greatest challenges to Christian faith will concern the doctrine of atonement. In fact, there are diverse models of atonement in the history of Christian thought. It will be very interesting to see which models of atonement could survive the discovery of ETI, and which turn out to be too anthropocentric and geocentric to be tenable. This thought experiment on the premise of the future discovery of ETI will shed light on several uncritical prejudices underlying traditional...