Humans, Other Animals, and Anthropocosmic Futures: Editorial for the June 2025 issue

Posted by Arthur C. Petersen on 2025-09-05

In this Editorial for the June 2025 issue [click here browse the issue online; click here to view and download a PDF of the entire issue; and to order a printed copy for $9.70 (no-profit-to-journal price) through Amazon, choose for instance one of the following market places: US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, PL, SE, JP, CA or AU], you will find a brief overview of the articles included in this issue, both in the general section and in three thematic sections, including one Book Symposium, as well as an overview of books reviewed in the latest edition of Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology.

Article

This issue contains one general article. Francis Umesiri reflects on George Lemaître’s contribution to the dialogue between science and faith; he shows that Lemaître’s approach is more expansive and nuanced than is generally acknowledged.

Habitability for Your Cosmic Future: AstroAnthropology Meets AstroEthics

This thematic section contains three contributions from the 2024 IRAS Conference “Habitability for Your Cosmic Future: AstroAnthropology Meets AstroEthics.” Ted Peters, co-organizer of that conference, introduces the articles from Lucas Mix, Shoaib Malik, and Andrew Davis.

The Significance of Humans and Other Animals
(by Finley Lawson)

The animals and religion dialogue has grown significantly over the last few decades, with this increasingly leading to new branches of theological and philosophical enquiry such as ecotheology and animal theology. Whilst the move away from strictly anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, stewardship and/or human animal relations has moved the academic discussion forward, there are contrary concerns that placing humans “amongst” the animals risks losing sight of their soteriological status within the Abrahamic faiths.

In the Autum of 2023 members and delegates at the Science and Religion Forum’s annual conference came together in Cambridge to discuss these issues and the broader implications of scientific and interdisciplinary approaches to non-human animals in what was a wide-ranging conference. The breadth of approaches (if not faiths) that were considered are highlighted in the collection of articles within this thematic session. The articles here represent the development of keynotes and short papers from the conference as well as winner of the Peacocke Student Essay Prize. Across the thematic section, authors examine the evolving moral, spiritual, and philosophical relationships between humans, animals, and machines. The articles invite us to consider the challenges and theological benefits to reinterpreting the significance of “other animals” (and ourselves) in an age of technology and ecological crisis.

Broadly the articles in this section fall into three themes: ethics, technology, and creativity. The first set of articles examining ethics open with Celia Deane-Drummond’s Gowland lecture. Deane-Drummond’s article argues that human morality is not a unique overlay on a brutish nature, but a co-evolved trait shared with other socially complex species. This provocation is continued in Eva van Urk-Coster’s article which reinterprets the imago Dei as a spiritual calling to affirm the worth of all life in the hope of furthering ecological wisdom. The final article addressing ethical concerns is Alan Furic’s bold challenge to the “dominion” narrative which argues the interconnectedness of reality evidenced in quantum theory should be taken as an ethical imperative. This article addresses Huayan Buddhism, but the provocation applies across faiths.

The second set addressing the relationship between humans, animals, and technology includes two distinctive contributions. Louis Caruana’s article forms a bridge between ethical and technological concerns if the future leads to the rise of a super humanity: can Teilhard de Chardin’s work on cephalization and socialization provide a map to ensure the rest of the biosphere is not left behind? Luca Settimo explores brain–machine interfaces and the evidence for freedom of action (over freedom of choice) in non-human animals; he suggests that moral agency and responsibility may impact on our conception of the imago Dei.

The final set considers wisdom, worship, and creativity. Peter Altmann’s article prompt us to consider the significance and implication of non-human animals’ connection with the divine and invites us to reflect on animal intelligences. Anne Solomon’s article provides a bridge into matters of creativity and our perception or imposition of religion/worship onto historical artefacts through a case study of the changing attitudes to human–animal relationships seen in prehistoric rock art. Finally, Gavin Hitchcock’s article draws analogies between human, animal, and AI creativity, framing co-creativity as a divine gift and challenge, linking back to Altmann’s considerations of diverse intelligences.

The last article in the thematic section falls outside the overall theme. Each year, students are invited to submit an essay on any issue in science-and-religion, Andrew Proudfoot’s 2023 winning essay concludes the thematic section engaging with Martin Buber’s relational theology and the “Other” of conscious machines to ask whether they might one day become a “Thou” to our “I.”

These articles provide a snapshot of just some of the diverse questions we must engage with as our understanding of animal consciousness and creativity continue to develop, alongside the risks and opportunities of anthropo¬morphizing other beings.

Book Symposium
(by Mladen Turk)

The Book Symposium in this issue features Arthur Petersen’s Climate, God and Uncertainty: A Transcendental Naturalistic Approach beyond Bruno Latour (2023). It has four commentators: Josh Reeves, Whitney Bauman, Gijsbert van den Brink, and Lisa Sideris. Petersen responds to the comments.

Books reviewed in Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology

Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology is a quarterly joint publication of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) and the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) and is distributed free to all members of ESSSAT and ISSR. In order to give readers of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science an overview of recent publications, we include the list of books reviewed in the latest Reviews issue (in this case, March 2025):

- Doru Costache and Geraint F. Lewis, A New Copernican Turn: Contemporary Cosmology, The Self and Orthodox Science-Engaged Theology, London: Routledge, 2025
- Beth Singler, Religion and Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2024