A person plans…and God laughs.

There’s still no reporting of any understanding of how emergent features such as consciousness comes from a group of brain cells firing electrical / chemical signals at each other.

An interesting question is whether machine consciousness (if it happens) modelled on our own will have a need for God!

An even then, the ethical teaching people get is slanted towards ethics that come out of “personal morality” – so sexual ethics and “what would Jesus do?” in my personal situation. Little in the way of social ethics.

If technology is the “air that we breathe” in Western society then a more widespread approach to thinking about that environment is needed. And the church *should* be able to draw upon not just theologians but its own practitioners at the coal face in health, business, politics, education and science/technology to raise issues and help educate the church (and church leadership and theologians etc.) about our world.

Still, most engagement seems to be at the level of building church web sites and how to use Powerpoint effectively in worship.

I’ve never seen anyone do a study, for example, on ethical issues relating to technology in worship.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

The novels “Prey” by Michael Crichton and “Blood Music” by Greg Bear also look at when it all goes wrong in the current or near future.

BTW – the Singularity relies upon exponential technological developent not linear development. This gives the Singularitarians their increasingly compressed time scale.

A related, but off the topic, theme would be how pastoral ministry interacts with decisions that ordinary people have to make in the face of emerging biotechnology and information technology.

For the academically minded, Karen Lebacqz’ paper “Bioethics—Eleven Approaches” in Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 43/2 (Summer 2004) looked at the pastoral implications for each different approach with respect to patients receiving medical care.