Playing God

* Will AI ever attain emotional intelligence? * What would it mean to find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? * Did our human ancestors, or do our mammalian cousins, have a sense of the spiritual? These and other cutting-edge questions are where the action is in the field of science and religion, and this book brings you bang up to date with both the latest thinking and the direction in which current research is taking us. Emerging from a partnership between the UK's leading religion and society think tank, Theos, and The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, and incorporating the results of interviews with over 100 leading figures in the field, this is a book for all who are ready to gain a better grasp of contemporary topics that are often bypassed in science and religion conversations, including: aliens and astrobiology; the opportunities and threats of AI; Neanderthals and the origins of morality and religion; the hard problem of consciousness; the complex boundary between natural and supernatural; the promise of human genetic modification; the challenge of climate change; health and well-being; the rise of (post-)truth; and politics, our common life and public reasoning. These are all complex and fast-moving areas of enquiry, but Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite have produced a survey and analysis that will enable you to firmly grasp the issues at stake as well as tracing the main contours of research and debate as they are now developing.