Date/Time: Thursday 7 March 2024, 5.30pm

Venue: Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building, Newcastle University

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All our events remain free and open to all, but pre-booking is required. Bookings for this lecture will open at 10.00am on 28 February. To reserve your place click the booking link below or telephone our booking voicemail line 0191 208 6136.

Psychological ‘naturalness’ makes certain technologies likely to spread broadly and deeply impact individual lives. Applying this way of viewing new technologies to digital social media and contemporary artificial intelligence tools, reveals that many social media platforms deserve great caution, and many new uses of AI merit measured adoption. This sort of analysis can make even stronger predictions about the promise or peril of new technologies when integrated with theological considerations concerning human thriving.

Biography

Justin L. Barrett is President of Blueprint 1543 and honorary Professor of Theology and the Sciences at St Andrews University’s School of Divinity. Barrett previously taught in Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Psychology, in the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, at the University of Michigan, and at Calvin University. He is author or editor of over 100 scholarly publications. Much of his work concerns scientific approaches to the study of religious thought and its philosophical and theological implications. Science-informed perspectives on human nature and purpose is another of his scholarly concerns. Examples of Barrett’s books are: Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (2004), Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology: From Human Minds to Divine Minds (2011), Born Believers: The Science of Childhood Religion (2012), and Thriving with Stone Aged Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing (with Pamela King, InterVarsity Academic, 2021).