Life & Faith

Professor John Lennox weighs up the benefits and potential pitfalls of AI and the implications it has for what it means to be human.

In this Episode of Life & Faith Simon Smart talks to Oxford Professor John Lennox about his new book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. Lennox poses some vital questions of the AI enterprise, offering some warnings that the technology is vastly outpacing important ethical considerations.

“I think any form of AI is like a knife. A really good knife can be used for surgery and it can be used for murder.”

Lennox believes that the implications of AI are such that it is vital that philosophers, ethicists, theologians, cultural commentators, novelists, and artists are involved in the debate.

He draws on the ancient Biblical text of Genesis in considering what is essential to human nature and what AI could mean for our futures. 

What happens when religious language reckons with racial injustice.

“The original sin of this country still stains our nation today,” said Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden in the wake of the police killing, in May, of George Floyd.

The phrase “America’s original sin is slavery” is so widely used in the United States that it is practically cliché. But what does it actually mean?

“When you call something sinful, you’re speaking to a transcendent moral norm. As a person of faith, I think that what America does isn’t simply wrong to other human beings. It offends God himself,” says Esau McCaulley, an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois, and the author of the forthcoming Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope.

In this episode of Life & Faith, we explore the crossover between the metaphor of ‘original sin’ in discussions of racial injustice and the Jewish and Christian idea of human brokenness found right at the beginning of the Bible. Not only does the metaphor invoke collective wrongdoing, but questions of justice and restitution.

We also invite Ray Minniecon, a descendant of the Karbi Karbi and Gurang Gurang peoples, an Aboriginal pastor and activist, to examine Australia’s complicity in a similar, but different, ‘original sin’: the dispossession of the indigenous people of Australia.

“We’ve been living these lies for far too long,” Ray said, citing the declaration, not overturned until 1992 with the Mabo Decision, that Australia was terra nullius or ‘empty land’.

“Until those lies are addressed, which are the sins of the nation, then how on earth can we start to work out a better future?”

—

Read Esau McCaulley’s New York Times opinion piece ‘What the Bible has to Say About Black Anger’

Buy Esau McCaulley’s forthcoming book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

Follow Esau McCaulley on Twitter

Listen to Ray Minniecon discuss self-determination and sacrifice on Speaking Out at the ABC

What happens when religious language reckons with racial injustice.

“The original sin of this country still stains our nation today,” said Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden in the wake of the police killing, in May, of George Floyd.

The phrase “America’s original sin is slavery” is so widely used in the United States that it is practically cliché. But what does it actually mean?

“When you call something sinful, you’re speaking to a transcendent moral norm. As a person of faith, I think that what America does isn’t simply wrong to other human beings. It offends God himself,” says Esau McCaulley, an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois, and the author of the forthcoming Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope.

In this episode of Life & Faith, we explore the crossover between the metaphor of ‘original sin’ in discussions of racial injustice and the Jewish and Christian idea of human brokenness found right at the beginning of the Bible. Not only does the metaphor invoke collective wrongdoing, but questions of justice and restitution.

We also invite Ray Minniecon, a descendant of the Karbi Karbi and Gurang Gurang peoples, an Aboriginal pastor and activist, to examine Australia’s complicity in a similar, but different, ‘original sin’: the dispossession of the indigenous people of Australia.

“We’ve been living these lies for far too long,” Ray said, citing the declaration, not overturned until 1992 with the Mabo Decision, that Australia was terra nullius or ‘empty land’.

“Until those lies are addressed, which are the sins of the nation, then how on earth can we start to work out a better future?”

—

Read Esau McCaulley’s New York Times opinion piece ‘What the Bible has to Say About Black Anger’

Buy Esau McCaulley’s forthcoming book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

Follow Esau McCaulley on Twitter

Listen to Ray Minniecon discuss self-determination and sacrifice on Speaking Out at the ABC

Oncologist and writer Ranjana Srivastava believes there is such a thing.

“Having watched countless people die, I do think that there are ways that you can make the end more peaceful for yourself and for those you love. I do think that there are better ways of dying.”

How often do you think about your own death? 

Ranjana Srivastava is a cancer specialist and the author, most recently, of A Better Death: Conversations about the art of living and dying well. She sees a lot of death - and the ways that our tendency to avoid talking or thinking about death serves us badly.

In this conversation, Natasha Moore talks to Dr Srivastava about what the process of dying is actually like, what she wishes people knew about it, and what she’s seen religion do (or fail to do) for people at the end. 

Natasha also speaks with Anglican minister Andrew Katay about death at a funeral, and what it means to be “ready” to die.

“I think a good death is one when you're ready to die. You can put that more strongly and say: it really is one of the core central purposes of being a grown-up person that your death doesn't come as some kind of weird surprise to you. I cannot tell you the number of old people that I meet and talk with who are surprised by the reality of death.”

---

Read/find out more: 

Ranjana Srivastava, A Better Death: Conversations about the art of living and dying well

WeCroak app

Natasha Moore, “What does it mean to die well?”, ABC Religion & Ethics

We’ve all been learning some things about ourselves in lockdown.

“There’s this other layer from my experience where there was this emotional exhaustion of video calls. I’ve never wanted to miss catching up with people, I’ve always loved it. And so the experience of having catch-ups with people and feeling really emotionally exhausted at the end of that was new. Potentially it’s the experience of an introvert more consistently! So feeling drained by catching up with people was surprising and in some ways disappointing and confusing.”

Over the last decade or two there’s been a “quiet revolution” going on, in the words of Susan Cain, introvert and deliverer of one of the most watched TED talks of all time, “The power of introverts”. Where there was once a bias in favour of extroversion - in social settings, and in the workplace - now the pendulum seems to have swung the other way, and introversion seems to get a lot of the attention.

In this episode, Simon and Natasha wander into the minefield that is personality typing, reveal their own complicated relationship with the introversion/extroversion distinction (and what it “actually” means), and ask people how their experience of self-isolation has been during Covid. And Robyn Wrigley-Carr, a lecturer in theology and spirituality, takes us back 500 years to unpack the inner life - and outward impact - of Teresa of Avila. She urges us all - introvert and extrovert alike - to be attentive to our own lives.

“I think diversity and uniqueness of response is huge here, because there's no one way to live an effective life, and each of us works out how to do it from being in the nitty gritty of life and through engaging, and suffering, and hard stuff.”

---

In this episode:

How to Care for Your Introvert (language warning)

The Power of Introverts

A candid conversation with Former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on career, politics, religion and leadership.

'I really do believe in collective leadership. And I know a lot of people say that I've got a very high opinion of my own opinions... I do have a higher opinion of my own opinions, but I've always believed my opinions can be improved and advanced by listening to others... And it would get criticised sometimes by people in the press who would say, “Oh he's indecisive.” I said, “Where's the indecision?” What they're complaining about is that I didn't make every decision flying from the seat of my pants.'

We honour another class of “essential” workers during COVID: teachers. 

“What I’d really love parents to know is that most of us, we’re invested in your children. This is such an important job because you’re developing human beings. We’re here to develop the most important thing in your life, your child.”

Nigel was discouraged from becoming a teacher, but discovered it was the right fit for him. Sarah didn’t want to be an English teacher like her dad, but was hooked from the first time she stepped into the classroom. 

When you’re a student, teachers can seem remote. But, as it turns out, they share the pain of their students. Evan says the death of a child is crushing for the whole school community. Marcel tells us the difference a kind word can make to a struggling student. 

At face value, teachers instruct students. But many invest in students in ways that go far beyond the classroom - and they tremble at the impact they can have on young people’s lives. 

In this Life & Faith, we pay tribute to another class of “essential workers” during COVID: teachers.