So far, we have organized six public lectures and one two-day conference. They are presented here with the most recent events first:

Monday, 28th of April 19.00 – 20.30 Central European Time.
“Machines, Minds, and Metaphysics: A Conversation with professor Andrew Davison about Artificial Intelligence” This event can be listened to as a podcast.

This evening, Stefan Lindholm (lecturer in philosophy of religion at Johannelund School of Theology) talks with Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, about artificial intelligence.

The conversation focuses on a newly written article (“Tools are for the worker: Machine Learning as an Instrumental Cause”) by Professor Davison, where Davison uses Thomas Aquinas’s analysis of instruments and tools and applies it to artificial intelligence.

Davison argues that we should develop artificial intelligence as instruments or tools for humans and not the other way around so humans become instruments for machines. We also discuss another recent article by Davison where he suggests that Aquinas doctrine of analogy can be a resource in evaluating artificial intelligence.

Articles mentioned above:

“Tools are for the worker: Machine Learning as an Instrumental Cause“

“Machine Learning and Theological Traditions of Analogy“

Monday, 31st of March, 19.00 – 20.30 Central European Time.
“God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering” A lecture and conversation with dr. Bethany Sollereder, lecturer in Science and Religion at the University of Edinburgh and author of the acclaimed book God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall.
This conversation was not recorded, but a similar lecture can be seen here:
A Spectrum of Christian Approaches to Animal Suffering | Dr Sollereder

18th of November 2024 (online conversation): Can be seen on Youtube.
“Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion”
A conversation between Nicholas Spencer, author of Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion and Andreas Nordlander, lecturer in systematic theology at Göteborgs universitet.

It is also available as a podcast.

Andreas Nordlander wrote an essay (“Understreckare”) in Svenska Dagbladet about Spencer’s book: “Så uppfanns konflikten mellan tro och vetande“.

10th of September 2024 (Live lecture)
“Evolutionary Coooperation and Its Contested Meanings: Insights from John Henry Newman on the Continuing Possibility of a ‘Natural Theology‘” Can be seen here.
Sarah Coakley, Norris-Hulse Professor at Cambridge University (Emerita)

In this lecture Sarah Coakley is concerned, critically, with the way that evolution has been purveyed in the last generation as ‘selfishly’-oriented genetically, yet also rendered devoid of either positive meaning or discernible structure.

Yet the evolutionary phenomenon of ‘cooperation’, when mathematically understood, she argues, suggests otherwise; and indeed it may, by a series of steps, lead inexorably to the question of a ‘natural’ basis for ethics and thence to the God question.

Drawing creatively on the thought of Newman in the last section of this lecture, Coakley ponders whether his notion of the ‘illative sense’, along with his own responses to Darwin’s theory of evolution, may help chart a way forward in assessing the ongoing possibility of a contemporary ‘natural theology’.

Sarah Coakley is the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, emerita, University of Cambridge (2007-18), and earlier in her career held positions at the Universities of Lancaster, Oriel College, Oxford, and Harvard Divinity School (Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity, 1995-2007).

18-19th of April 2024 (two-day conference):
“Nordic Dialogues on Science, Theology, and Worldviews: Reflections on Emergence, Causality, and Directionality“

Public speakers at the conference were:

• Professor Stephen Mumford on: “Dispositionalism: A New Philosophy of Nature“
• Professor Mariusz Tabaczek on: “Emergence: A New Ontology for a Scientific Age” and “Theistic Evolution: A Contemporary Thomistic Perspective“
• Associate professor Joanna Leidenhag on: “What is science-engaged theology?”
• Professor Ulf Jonsson on: “Dispositionalism and Divine Agency“
• Professor Tobias Uller on:“What is the extended evolutionary synthesis?”

For full program, please see: http://www.nordicdialogues.wordpress.com

13th of February 2024, lecture (online and in-person):
“Rationality of scientific beliefs and philosophical worldview-beliefs”
Winfried Löffler, professor of Christian Philosophy at Universität Innsbruck.

6th of February 2024 (online lecture):
Dispositionalism: A New Theory of Causality and its Relevance for Philosophy and Theology Stephen Mumford, professor of philosophy at Durham University.

30th of October (Inaugural lecture online)
Evolution: A Theistic Interpretation
Mariusz Tabazcek has written several books in the areas of emergence, dispositionalism, divine action – and his latest book is called “Theistic Evolution: A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective“.

In this lecture, Tabazcek presented his book, and received a response by professor Celia Deane-Drummond, who is a biologist and theologian, currently director of the Laudato Si‘ Research Institute in Oxford.