The Cover Stories
‘Well may we walk in blacks, but not complain.’ (John Donne, To the Praise of the Dead, and the Anatomy) The term “cover story” has two…
Second Realities in the Machine Age: A Structural Rereading of Eric Voegelin
The modern world has become difficult to understand on its own terms. Since 2008, Western institutions have drifted into symbolic governance, managerial abstraction, and large‑scale projects that…
Iain McGilchrist on Determinism
The bottom line on determinism is that were it to be true, we could never know it was true because we would not be conscious – or,…
The Promise of Waiting: Spiritual Maturation in The Sycomore Fig Tree
Nature is an active participant in Christine Norvell’s new work, The Sycomore Fig Tree: Biblical Botany and Scriptural Truth. The book opens by discussing the literary and…
A Tale of Two Buildings and Two Types of ‘Intelligence’ – Reflecting on Magnifica Humanitas
Long before the publication of Magnifica Humanitas, many believed Pope Leo XIV's inaugural encyclical document would address artificial intelligence; those hopes were not in vain. Long before…
Technological Religions
One of the underlying assumptions of the modern world has been the association of science and technology with disenchantment. From this perspective, the advance of science and…
The Problem of AI and Churchill’s Scientific Optimism
In our time, people react to questions of the nature of consciousness and the factor of Artificial Intelligence in the same way that previous generations reacted to…
J.M.W. Turner, Victor Frankenstein, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness
In 1818 while visiting his friend and patron Walter Fawkes, artist J.M.W. Turner was requested to make a painting of a British war ship by Fawkes’ young…
Demons, Technology, and the Fall
Peter Thiel’s recent obsession with the Antichrist seems uncannily appropriate to our times. The ascription of demonic influence to things and people was once relegated to a…
Preserving our Authentic Humanity: The Vatican’s Meditation on Artificial Intelligence
The Vatican’s recent meditation on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Antiqua et Nova, brings a sense of measured calm to a subject that has caused strong and varying reactions,…
Artificial Intelligence Cannot Replace the Soul of Writing
A few years ago, I was employed as a U.S. economist on the Economics team at Bloomberg LP. One morning, in a team chat on the IB…
Artificial Super Intelligence and the AI Apocalypse
Apparently, there are competitions to see who is better at predicting the future. Normally, the answer is that no one is better at predicting the future. There…
We Are All Victor Frankenstein: Our Romantic Dream of Artificial Intelligence
Life Imitating Art If ever there were a time in which one would be justified in repeating the old saw that life imitates art, it might be…
AI-dolatry — Imitation by Any Other Name?
We bounced off the tree in the middle of the woods, and I knew right then our Humvee would come out of our practice nav session with…
Voegelin and our Technological Moment: “Don’t Immanetize the Eschaton—Technologically”
If Americans recognize the name Eric Voegelin, it is probably for his critique of utopian political visions, encapsulated in the phrase, “don’t let them immanentize the eschaton.”…