Religion And Artificial Intelligence (an Introduction)

This engaging book is essential for anyone considering the relationship between religion, science and technology, and interested in the questions raised by transhumanism, posthumanism, and new religious movements.

International Society for Science & Religion''s 2025 Book Prize recipient, in the category of books for professionals and educators

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rarely out of the news or the public imagination. Images of red-eyed Terminators illustrate press accounts of incremental advances in medical diagnosis, facial recognition, natural language processing, and robotics. Such advances are transforming society through measurable impacts on people’s decisions and opportunities.

Religion and Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction explores an emerging field with a religious studies approach, drawing on cultural and digital anthropological methods to demonstrate the entanglements of religion and AI, our imaginaries of these objects and our ideas about their utopian or dystopian futures. It addresses key topics, including the following:

• What AI is and is not.
• How religions are reacting to AI with examples of rejection, adoption, and adaptation.
• How established religions understand creation and place human-like AI within that.
• How overtly secular and even ‘new atheist’ groups understand AI as a tool for liberation from human evolution and religion.
• Religious visions of superintelligent AI.

This engaging book is essential for anyone considering the relationship between religion, science and technology, and interested in the questions raised by transhumanism, posthumanism, and new religious movements.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under A creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1. Introduction 2. Rejection 3. Adoption 4. Adaptation 5. AI, Religion, and Transhumanism 6. AI New Religious Movements 7. Religion, Creation, and Posthumanism 8. Entanglements, Imaginaries, and Futures. Index

"Beth Singler has crafted a comprehensive yet highly readable survey of religion and AI that includes a wide range of religious traditions and thoughtful discussion cues to get the most reluctant student talking. As either a textbook or as an introduction to the entanglement of religion and AI for the curious reader, this book offers a wide variety of ‘case studies’ to raise questions and challenge our ideas about religion and technology that the reader will find compelling. Singler takes the time to explain and problematize certain terms early on and is rigorous in her scholarship yet manages a narrative-like quality that is very gratifying. This book is an important contribution to the rapidly growing discourse on artificial intelligence." - Juli L. Gittinger, Georgia College & State University, USA

"There is currently both great excitement and widespread social concern about AI, including its implications for religion. In this dispassionate and informative book, Singler approaches the relationship between the two as a social scientist, and examines their complex “entanglements”, including rejection, adoption, and adaptation. She has provided a much-needed educational resource on one of the most pressing current topics at the intersection of religion and science."

- The International Society for Science and Religion Awards, Winner, Books for Professionals and Educators Category

"Beth Singler has crafted a comprehensive yet highly readable survey of religion and AI that includes a wide range of religious traditions and thoughtful discussion cues to get the most