Working on Science and Religion: Update
“Who is Working on Science and Religion? Changes in the Last 20 Years.” That’s the title of the January 2025 blog post by Fraser Watts on the site of ISSR (International Soceity for Science and Religion). Sockdolager Fraser Watts is an Anglican priest and psychologist whose leadership for decades has sparked new insights and drawn scholars together for fruitful dialogue. Like a menu, Fraser lists the delectible research projects of his colleagues on multiple continents who serve up tantilizing ideas. Here is Fraser’s blue plate special.
“The field of science and religion looks very different now from how it looked when ISSR was founded in 2002. For one thing, there is less interest in harmonising science and religion, or in defending religious convictions against scientific objections. Instead, there is increasing interest in the converging contributions of science and religion to challenges in human flourishing, such as ecology and the environmental crisis…”
To my reading, this is not a change having taken place over the last 20 years. Rather, it has been a constant concern all along. Needless to say, dating it is of relatively little significance. What is worth emphasizing, however, is that some of the scholars working on science and religion have been quite devoted to public theology. One responsibility of the public theologian is to provide both scientific and religious resources to combat climate change and environmental degradation.
Right off the bat I think of Ian Barbour’s Technology, Environment, and Human Values (1980) as well as the prodigous works of Holmes Rolston III such as Environmental Ethics (1988) as well as my own modest contributions in Futures–Human and Divine (1977) and Fear, Faith, and the Future (1980). Then in May 1992 Ian Barbour and Rober John Russell teamed up with Carl Sagan and 147 other luminaries in Washington DC to draft and sign the “Joint Appeal by Religion and Science for the Environment: DECLARATION OF THE ‘MISSION TO WASHINGTON‘.” My point here is simply to show that scholars working on science and religion have given passionate attention to our ecological crisis for more than half a century. Not just in the last two decades.
With Fraser Watts’ precedent in mind, perhaps I could mention a few additional frontiers being crossed by those currently working on science and religion. ESSSAT, ISCAST, IRAS, CTNS, DoSER at AAAS, BioLogos, and Science for the Church have been busy, busy, busy. I simply want to add to Watts’ list.
Working on Science and Religion in Genetics, Bioethics, and Public Policy
Environmental science and religious ethics by no means exhaust the public concerns voiced by scholars working on Science and Religion. Beginning in 1990 we at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) in Berkeley began research into the Human Genome Initiative. This was followed by consultative work to both private and public sectors on human embryonic stem cell research. We confronted philosophical questions raised by genetic determinism along with moral questions raised by gene editing. Other scientists and theologians around the world joined us in Berkeley during this period to propose public policy as well as advise religious organizations. Our publications are too numerous to name, but we marked our contributions with articles in journals such as Zygon, Theology and Science, Dialog, and others.
Monitoring genetic science has continued down to the present day with a new publication just this year, The CRISPR Revolution in Science, Religion, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2025), which Arvin Gouw and I edited.
Working on Science and Religion in Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Amplification, and Transhumanism
In his farewell speech to America on January 15, 2025, President Joe Biden warned his nation and the world about the technology to come.
“Artificial intelligence is the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time. Nothing offers more profound possibilities and risks for our economy and our security, our society, for humanity. Artificial intelligence even has the potential to help us answer my call to end cancer as we know it. But unless safeguards are in place, AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation.”
Technologies surrounding artificial intelligence are about to inundate global civilization with overwhelming promise and peril, hope and fear, utopia and extinction. Might this be a subject worthy of those of us working on science and religion?
Nearly two decades ago, a small group of scholars in Berkeley begain meeting under the aegis of “Theologians Testing Transhumanism.” We joined the local transhumanist association and began to immerse ourselves in growing fields such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) with a special interest in Intelligence Amplification (IA). Transhumanists, as is widely known, plan to advance AI and IA technology to the point where, through genetic engineering, we achieve indefinite longevity or, through uploading our brain’s information pattern, we experience cybernetic immortality. Transhumanists have prophesied the coming of Singularity, a threshold crossing where superintelligence takes over and we evolve into a posthuman species. AI related technologies are dazzling, enticing, and irresistable.
Like us in Berkeley, scholars elsewhere working on science and religion such as Celia Deane-Drummond in the UK, Tracy Trothen in Canada, and in the United States Anne Foerst, Ron Cole-Turner, Gregory Peterson, Mark Graves, and Calvin Mercer have begun rendering analyses that take into consideration technical, philosophical, theological, and ethical concerns. The go-to-scholar on AI and related technologies, in my opinion, is hybrid computer scientist and theologian Noreen Herzfeld. See her stunning volume, The Artifice of Intelligence (2023).
The Christian Transhumanist Association was born recently. Some Buddhists, Unitarians, Mormons, and other religious devotees have become so charmed by the prospect of human enhancement that they give it eschatological meaning. A Berkeley cadre among the Theologians Testing Transhumanism — Brian Patrick Green , Arvin Gouw, and I — have put together an edited selection, Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics (Lexington 2022). This month I’ll be publishing a similar collection of essays, The Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF 2025). Caution: it’s so hot off the press you should be careful to avoid burning your fingers.
As you can see, the good news is that those working on science and religion are on it. ISCAST in Australia, to mention another example, is investing considerable energy in “Technology and AI.” The Seattle based “AI and Faith,” initiated by David Brenner, collects experts in AI technology as well as scholars from the world’s religions to engage each new challenge that arises. Click to see what’s happening.
Finally, thanks to a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, CTNS research is now underway on ““Virtuous AI?: Cultural Evolution, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtue.” Braden Molhoek along with Robert John Russell are heading up this study. Look for a collection of initial research papers to be published in May 2025 in the journal, Theology and Science.
Working on Science and Religion in Astrobiology, Astrotheology, and Astroethics
For three decades we at CTNS have enjoyed engaging colleagues at both NASA and SETI. NASA now counts more than 5,000 exoplanets within the Milky Way. Some of these in the Goldilocks Zone — not too hot and not too cold — may host life. Might we terrestrials share our cosmos with extraterrestrial civilizations? If so, what might this imply for the imago Dei? The fall into sin? Atonement? Eschatology?
Should we believe the Copernican Principle? According to CP, Planet Earth is marginal. Peripheral. No cosmic address. Does our miniscule size imply that we are unimportant? Insignificant? Expendable? Let’s ask a theologian. After all, Jesus was in the habit of celebrating the humble and marginal.
It is time for the science of astrobiology to engage with astrotheology and astroethics. We’ve sent up a balloon to test the wind direction for future discussions. It’s a book, Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Life (2018). Paul Davies wrote the foreword. The editors included Martinez Hewlett, Joshua Moritz, Robert John Russell, and yours truly.
We have found some thoughtful and stimulating colleagues in Islamic theology to work with. Iranian Shiite Medhi Goshani continues to update his book, Can Science Dispense with Religion?, now in its 5th edition. Two decades ago I teamed up with Muzaffar Iqbal and Syed Nomanul Haq to edit God, Life, and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives (Ashgate 2002). Today we have new scholars working on astrotheology. Shoaib Ahmed Malik has teamed up with Jorg Matthias Detterman to publish, Islamic Theology and Extraterrestrial Life (Tauris 2024).
Sending earthlings to live in off-Earth habitats has already appeared on our ethical horizon. So also has the weaponization of space and related matters. Can theologians contribute to public policy through treatises on space ethics? Brian Patrick Green at Santa Clara University thinks so. See his: Space Ethics (2021).
Working on Science and Religion: Post-Colonial Critique
One clear line of innovative thought developing over the last 20 years among those working on science and religion is the post-colonial critique. Four centuries ago, Enlightenment science augmented the industrial revolution to empower colonial Europe to gain global hegemony. European science and European religion together are responsible for the suppression of indigenous knowledge systems. Lisa Stenmark, Whitney Bauman, and Jennifer Baldwin among others are building on foundations layed by Critical Theory and Liberation Theology to critique the dominant Science and Religion Discourse (SRD). In their forword to the book edited by Baldwin, Navigating Post-Truth Alternative Facts (Lexington 2018), Stenmark and Bauman draw together “feminist, critical race theory, postcolonial, queer approaches within social sciences, and also legal theory and literary appraoches. All of these discourses help to challenge dominant understandings of the world in order that multiple perspectives and experiences might be heard” (vii-viii).
Conclusion
Thanks to the ISSR initiative in which Fraser Watts provides an update on those working on science and religion, I have taken the opportunity to add a few selected items for update. This is by no means exhaustive. Only suggestive.
Here in Berkeley at CTNS we see ourselves as heir to an earlier generation of pioneers such as Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, and Philip Hefner. Under the pioneering leadership of Robert John Russell, we have invested ourselves mostly in theoretical matters such as tracking divine action in nature’s world. Even with this emphasis on the theoretical, we have still given considerable time and energy toward analyzing public issues of speculative and moral interest. Even matters of global urgency such as the ecological crisis.
Those working on science and religion gladly mix together armchair speculation with public policy formulation.
Patheos SR 5022. Working on Science and Religion: Update
Can Science Dispense with Religion?
What is Truth in Science and Theology? Part One
What is Truth in Science and Theology? Part Two
Science for the Church? Greg Cootsona
Ecotheology when “It’s Time to Act”
Quantum Theory, God, and Carl Peterson
Astrotheology as Public Theology
Should Christians Dump Darwin?
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Ted Peters (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is a public theologian directing traffic at the intersection of science, religion, and ethics. Peters is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union, where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA. He recently co-edited Astrobiology: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (Scrivener 2021) as well as Astrotheology: Science and Theology Meet Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Cascade 2018). Peters is now publishing an updated version of his edited volume, AI and IA: Utopia or Extinction? (ATF 2019), retitled The Promise and Peril of AI and IA: New Technology Meets Religion, Theology, and Ethics (ATF 2025). Along with Arvin Gouw and Brian Patrick Green, he co-edited the volume, Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics (Roman and Littlefield/Lexington, 2022). His fictional spy thriller, Cyrus Twelve, follows the twists and turns of a transhumanist plot.
See his website [TedsTimelyTake.com].
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This post was originally published on here
