Speaker: Ilia Delio
In the past, religion dominated culture because it stabilized society and advocated unity. Has technology now come to replace religion?
Ilia Delio: Hi, my name is Elia Delio I'm a Franciscan sister and Catholic theologian who works in the area of science and religion. And I'm very interested in the questions of artificial intelligence and human becoming. I know that we are concerned today whether or not AI will overpower us, overtake us. Will we lose our humanity? Certainly, religion has played an important role in the past in identifying the human person and giving us a reason for getting up in the morning. Do those reasons remain, or are things changing with technology? I do think there is a certain way that technology has come to supplant religion, and so far as cyberspace is the new place of the infinite, the realm of infinite possibilities, infinite longings. Even if religion is the quest for our ultimate concerns or what we're ultimately passionate about, we can, in a sense, realise some of those concerns or at least begin to visualise them with technology. And that does, in a sense, raise the bar on technology, as in some sense, if not adhering to religious principles, it's in some ways, replacing religion at times. On a practical level, I think young people would rather go online than to church. But let's put this in a different framework. The French Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin thought that the name 'God' points to this power of life, a power of love at the heart of unfolding life or evolution, and that power of life can come into more explicit unity and consciousness, through technology. So he thought that technology, he foresaw that computer technology could link to a greater sense of interdependence global mind and maybe we could, maybe realise our capacity for ultimate values of unity and justice, .. together more. So, technology is not a foe to religion by any means. It's how we bring technology and religion into a unified field of knowledge and the way we act with technology in the world. Will it replace religion? I doubt it. I think religion will always be a matter of ultimate concern and the passions of our lives. I don't think technology can really quench those passions. I think that passion is the fire of God, the fire of love, which I take God to be and so technology can enhance that love. It can actually enkindle that love towards more love. How we use technology and how we build technology in the future will be vitally important to how religion develops in the 21st century. There's so much work to be done here to forge a new synthesis between science and religion and in particular, technology and human evolution. We're still working with categories from the past. We need new categories for the future. It's part of my work, and I hope you will be thinking in this direction as well.
