AI and Theology Reading List

I am starting a local reading group on the intersection of AI and theology. I thought it might be useful to share the list of readings as it is here. It is a work in progress, and the organization is provisional. If you have any further suggestions, please reach out.

October 09, 2026–October 09, 2026

in-progress

Contents

Foundational AI Readings

  • Turing, Alan M. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Mind 59, no. 236 (1950): 433–60.
  • Wiener, Norbert. God and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964.
  • Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974): 435–50.
  • Land, Nick. “Meltdown” (1994). In Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings, 1987–2007, edited by Robin Mackay and Ray Brassier. Falmouth: Urbanomic; New York: Sequence Press, 2011.
    • Further reading:
      • Land, Nick. The Dark Enlightenment. 2012.
      • Land, Nick. Xenosystems (blog), 2013–2017.
      • Land, Nick. Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings, 1987–2007. Falmouth: Urbanomic; New York: Sequence Press, 2011.
  • Bostrom, Nick. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Excerpt chapters on orthogonality and instrumental convergence.
  • Alexander, Scott. “Meditations on Moloch.” Slate Star Codex, July 30, 2014.
  • Andreessen, Marc. “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Andreessen Horowitz, October 16, 2023.
  • Altman, Sam. “The Intelligence Age.” September 23, 2024.
  • Amodei, Dario. “Machines of Loving Grace: How AI Could Transform the World for the Better.” October 2024.
  • Kokotajlo, Daniel, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean. “AI 2027.” AI Futures Project, April 2025. https://ai-2027.com/.
  • Excerpt the opening of Aschenbrenner, Leopold. Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead. June 2024.
  • Davis, Ginevra. “The Silicon Man: Biological Bootloaders and the Meaning of Life.” Arena, March 20, 2026. https://arenamag.com/articles/the-silicon-man.
  • The Possessed Machines. https://possessedmachines.com/.

Technical AI Resources

  • Chollet, François. “On the Measure of Intelligence.” arXiv:1911.01547, November 5, 2019.
  • Karpathy, Andrej. “Let’s Build GPT: From Scratch, in Code, Spelled Out.” YouTube video, January 17, 2023.
  • Karpathy, Andrej. “[1hr Talk] Intro to Large Language Models.” YouTube video, November 22, 2023.
  • 3Blue1Brown [Grant Sanderson]. Neural Networks, chaps. 5–7, including “But What Is a GPT? Visual Intro to Transformers” and “Attention in Transformers, Visually Explained.” YouTube video series, 2024.
  • Lindsey, Jack, et al. “On the Biology of a Large Language Model.” Transformer Circuits Thread, March 27, 2025.
    • Further reading:
      • Bricken, Trenton, et al. “Towards Monosemanticity: Decomposing Language Models with Dictionary Learning.” Transformer Circuits Thread, October 4, 2023.
      • Templeton, Adly, et al. “Scaling Monosemanticity: Extracting Interpretable Features from Claude 3 Sonnet.” Transformer Circuits Thread, May 21, 2024.

Foundational Christian Texts

  • Irenaeus. Against Heresies 5.1–14.
  • Athanasius. On the Incarnation.
  • Gregory of Nyssa. On the Making of Man.
  • Augustine. De Trinitate 9–10, 14.
  • Boethius. Contra Eutychen et Nestorium.
  • Hugh of St. Victor. Didascalicon.
  • Bonaventure. The Reduction of the Arts to Theology.
  • Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae 1, qq. 75–89, 93.
  • Luther, Martin. Disputation Concerning Man. 1536.
  • Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.11, 1.15, 2.2.12–16, 3.25.
  • Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education. Antiqua et nova: Note on the Relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence. Vatican City, January 28, 2025.
  • Leo XIV. Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. Encyclical letter. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 15, 2026.

Surveys

  • Bernstein, Anya. The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.
  • Gaudet, Matthew J., Noreen Herzfeld, Paul Scherz, and Jordan Joseph Wales, eds. Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2024. Selections; see esp. Herzfeld.
  • Hwang, Tim. Selected working papers. Institute for a Christian Machine Intelligence, 2026. https://icmi-proceedings.com/.
  • Krüger, Oliver. Virtual Immortality: God, Evolution, and the Singularity in Post- and Transhumanism. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2021.
  • Noble, David F. The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
    • cf. Hugh of St. Victor and Bonaventure
    • Further reading:
      • Burdett, Michael S. Eschatology and the Technological Future. London: Routledge, 2015.
      • Coeckelbergh, Mark. Artificial Religion: On AI, Myth, and Power. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2026.
      • Davis, Erik. TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information. New York: Harmony Books, 1998.
  • Patel, Dwarkesh, and Gavin Leech. The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019–2025. San Francisco: Stripe Press, 2025.

Monographs

  • Bostrom, Nick. Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World. Washington, DC: Ideapress Publishing, 2024.
  • Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.
  • Guardini, Romano. Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994.
  • Kingsnorth, Paul. Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. New York: Thesis, 2025.
  • Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943.
  • O’Donovan, Oliver. Begotten or Made? Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
  • O’Gieblyn, Meghan. God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning. New York: Doubleday, 2021.
  • Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
  • Quay, Grayson. The Transhumanist Temptation: How Technology and Ideology Are Reshaping Humanity—and How to Resist. Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2025.
  • Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre:
    • The Phenomenon of Man. Translated by Bernard Wall. New York: Harper & Row, 1959. Bk. 4, “Survival,” chaps. 1–2; and “The Christian Phenomenon.”
    • “The Formation of the Noosphere” (1947). In The Future of Man, translated by Norman Denny. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
  • Voegelin, Eric. “The Death of God.”
  • Wiley, C. R. Manmade: Saint Anthony’s Guide to Surviving the AI Apocalypse. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2024.
  • Youngren, Aaron. Wild and Glorious: Artificial Intelligence and the Battle for Future Christendom. Self-published, 2025.

Literature

  • Čapek, Karel. R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). 1920.
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AI and Theology Reading List