Reuter Professorship of Science and Religion Books

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  The Artifice of Intelligence: Divine and Human Relationship in a Robotic Age

  Noreen L. Herzfeld

  AI is becoming ubiquitous. Whatever its arrival portends for our future, whether riches or ruin, it cannot be avoided. The Artifice of Intelligence explores two questions at the heart of a theological response to AI. Is it possible for human beings to have authentic relationships with an AI? How does the increasing presence of AI change the way humans relate to one another? In pursuing answers to these questions, Herzfeld explores what it means to be created in the image of God and to create AI in our own image. It utilizes and expands Karl Barth's relational understanding of the imago Dei to examine humanity's relationship both with AI and, through it, with one another.

  Barth's injunctions--look the other in the eye (embodiment), speak to and hear the other (communication), aid the other (agency), and do it gladly (emotion)--provide the basis for the main chapters, each of which concludes with a case study of a current AI application that exemplifies the difficulties AI introduces into human relationality. The Artifice of Intelligence concludes with an examination of the incarnation, one that points toward the centrality of embodiment for full relationality. [from publisher's website]

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  The Limits of Perfection: Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Goshen Conference on Religion and Science

  Noreen L. Herzfeld and Carl S. Heirich

  True religion should, in some sense, be perfect, or at least we seem to expect that. But we are dealing with humans and their limited understanding. Even if we accept that God is perfect, we must confront theodicy and realize that our concept of perfection is defined by what we encounter on the earth. The capacity for self-transcendence confronts human beings with a paradox. We have a vision of "what ought to be' that is limitless, while we ourselves are finite beings. We can imagine perfection, but can we attain it?
  
  Noreen Herzfeld is a mathematician, computer scientist, and theologian. A Quaker by choice with a Lutheran background, she teaches at a Catholic University. She has critically considered the limited nature of informational sciences and mathematics and now brings us to consider the limits of perfection in religion.

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  Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-Created World

  Noreen L. Herzfeld

  Technology is changing all the time, but does it also have the ability to change us and the way we approach religion and spirituality? In Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-created World, Noreen Herzfeld examines this and other provocative questions as she provides an accessible and fascinating overview of the relationship between religion and the ever-broadening world of technology.

  In order to consider fully a topic as wide as technology, Herzfeld approaches the field from three different angles: technologies of the human body—such as genetic engineering, stem cells, cloning, pharmaceutical technologies, mechanical enhancement and cyborgs; technologies of the human mind—like human and artificial intelligence, virtual reality and cyberspace; and technologies of the external environment—such as nanotechnology, genetically modified crops and new agricultural technologies, and energy technology. She takes a similarly broad approach to the field of religion, focusing on how these issues interface with the three Abrahamic traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Throughout, readers will find nuanced examinations of the moral and ethical issues surrounding new technologies from the perspectives of these faith traditions.

  The result is a multifaceted look at the ongoing dialogue between these two subjects that are not commonly associated with one another. This volume is the third title published in the new Templeton Science and Religion Series.

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  In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit

  Noreen L. Herzfeld

  In Our Image is the first extensive theological engagement with the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Herzfeld probes this new field, which seeks to replicate thinking in computers and more broadly to model human intelligence, for its theological depth. Offering a smart, accessible history and typology of research in AI, Herzfeld shows how its rival schools parallel competing options in the theological anthropologies. Herzfeld's exciting work further develops a relational model, in which she finds a needed corrective to the individualistic and narcissistic tendencies of much recent spirituality and the seeds of a human/computer ethic for the future.