God and the Machine 2: God, Tech, and the Care of Creation (Session 1)

God and the Machine 2: God, Tech, and the Care of Creation

Over the last two hundred years humanity has created and benefited from technologies that have greatly increased human flourishing, improved health, smashed the barriers of physical distance, and brought instant communication and access to information. However, these benefits have come with two enormous costs. The first cost is the damage caused as side effects of obtaining the needed energy and materials and disposing of the waste products of technology, especially carbon dioxide. These effects have grown to the point of threatening the existence of the very living things God made us stewards of. The second cost is the maldistribution of the benefits of technology. These costs cannot be considered separately, because the same people who receive the least benefit from technology are those that bear the brunt of the impacts on their immediate environment and health of its wastes and climate impacts. 

The purpose of these two panel sessions is to inform people who are thrice lay—neither specialists in theology nor environmental science nor technology) about the interplay and developments among these issues. We will do this by bringing together for conversation people with understanding of theology of creation care, of environmental impacts, and of new technologies or other developments that promise to allow humanity to continue to flourish whilst reducing our impact on the earth to sustainable levels. 

Host or Publisher St Stephen's Rochester Row