Authors:Beth Singler Abstract: This introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Implicit Religion on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and religion will explore the some initial but important reasons why the interplay between these two fields should be of interest to the religious studies scholar. After introducing AI as well as elements of its cultural history and narratives, this article will lay out three arguments for researching AI and religion. First, that the potential disruption wrought by AI will effect society, and as religion and society are intrinsically intertwined these changes will have implications for religion. Second, that AI is potentially reinvigorating for contemporary religion, and may also incite the creation of new religious movements. And third, that AI’s uncertain status as a potential new intelligent being raises questions about personhood that religions have traditionally attempted to resolve based upon their theological understandings of the person, and that the continuing debate in this area will be of interest to scholars of religion. PubDate: 2018-02-26 Issue No:Vol. 20 (2018)
Authors:Jonathan Tuckett Abstract: For phenomenology the questions “What is man'” and “Who are Others'” are one and the same. While these might seem questions of decisive importance to either social science, more broadly, or religious studies, specifically, the purpose of this paper is to consider that how these questions are answered determines the “world” we live in. And depending on how “we” constitute this “world” determines what does or does not get counted as “religion”. From this arises the question whether AI and robots are included in this “we”. In this paper I will explore how robots and AI would be included in this consensus by looking at the way the video game The Talos Principle (2014) explores questions of philosophical anthropology. PubDate: 2018-02-26 Issue No:Vol. 20 (2018)
Authors:Beth Singler Abstract: In 2010 a thought experiment speculating on the motivations and aims of a potential superintelligent Artificial Intelligence, sometimes known as the ‘Singularity’, caused uproar and anxiety on the forum board where it was initially posted. This paper considers that thought experiment’s debt to older forms of religious argument, the reactions from among the community, and how expectations about the Singularity as a being with agency can be considered to be an example of implicit religion. This is significant as the thought experiment appeared in a field of research, AI, considered by many to be secular due to its technological focus. The communities under discussion also explicitly express their aim of ‘perfecting’ human rationality, and place that ability in opposition to ‘religion’ as a derided object and the aims of ‘Goddists’ in general. This tension between overt atheism and secular communities’ return to religious tropes and narratives is relevant for the wider study of religion in the contemporary era. PubDate: 2018-02-26 Issue No:Vol. 20 (2018)
Authors:Scott Midson Abstract: When considering posthuman figures such as robots, artificial intelligences, or even dramatically enhanced human beings, it is not uncommon to regard them as godlike, owing to their superhuman strength, power, and abilities that may transcend the human condition in pursuit of ‘perfection’ with traits such as immortality or omnipotence. Equally, though, there is a celebration of the human creators of this posthuman progeny, as it is human interests that such robots are made to serve. Thus, there appears to be also an elevation of humans: in religious language and motifs this corresponds to hubris or idolatry; in non-religious terms this raises concerns about the future evolution of the species. Both discussions prompt reflection on our powers and abilities, thereby raising the question of playing God, which this article attends to. The question of posthuman theology, though, is rarely asked or is shunned, which may reveal something about our own sense of religiosity and conceptions of divinity that are transposed onto our creations and our relationships with them. What does it mean to consider a posthuman theology – as affirmative but also disruptive of our own theologically-rooted ideas; and as concealing but also revealing of notions of God' PubDate: 2018-02-26 Issue No:Vol. 20 (2018)
Authors:Ting Guo Abstract: The remarkable defeat of Lee Sedol, an international Go champion by AlphaGo, a computer program, raised again the question of the future of humanity vis-à-vis increasingly competent machine intelligence. Exploring the origin of Go in East Asia, we find that the rational capacity emphasised in the Go game was traditionally associated with spiritual meanings while the etymology of spirituality in English reveals a connection with rational humanity. The cultural paradigms of intelligence invite us to rethink the dichotomy between ‘spirituality’ and ’intelligence’, so as to abate the alienation we feel towards AI-based technologies that are simulated upon our own intelligence. The contextualization of intelligence and spirituality further provides a model of resistance against the homogenizing forces and assumptions of globalization without succumbing to cultural stereotypes, which also renders a framework for the development of AI philosophy and technologies beyond universalism while addressing the future concerning the human collective. PubDate: 2018-02-25 Issue No:Vol. 20 (2018)
Authors:Michael Morelli Abstract: In 1936 Walter Benjamin observed the ‘fading of [art’s] aura’ as it underwent mechanical reproduction. According to Benjamin, technological advances had initiated a shift in art as a medium of ‘cultic value’ to art as a medium of ‘display value’ (Benjamin 2008, 9, 12). Eighty years later, do his observations retain their validity in a world on the brink of discovering the singularity and changing the genetic makeup of humanity, or, is art’s aura beginning to burn brightly again with the joining of science, art, and liturgy in operating room theatres, mythical labs, and magical tech companies which produce chimeras, clones, cyborgs, transhumans, and intelligent robots—all which inspire religious awe' Theorist Paul Virilio ask a similar question: ‘After all great periods of art, after the great schools such as the classical and baroque, after contemporary expressionism, are we not now heading for that great transgenic art in which every pharmacy, every laboratory will launch its own “lifestyles,” its own transhuman fashions'’ (Virilio 2003, 61). Virilio does not seem to suggest that this new school of art produces any cultic value or authentic aura, but much of his observations about this transgenic art warrant exploration in this regard. For that reason, this paper explores the return of art’s aura in the paradigm of techno-science, and in the process, develop an ethic that respond to this new art’s aesthetics and its curious liturgies. PubDate: 2018-02-25 Issue No:Vol. 20 (2018)
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