Issues in Science and Theology: Are We Special?

Part I. Reflections on Cosmology

1. Being Human in a Cosmic Context
David Wilkinson

2. Is Life Unique? Perspectives from Astrobiology and Synthetic Xenobiology
Elisabeth Loos

3. Are We Special? Humanity and Extraterrestrial Life
Alfred Kracher

4. The Cosmic Christ’s End: The Cosmological Meaning of Christ in an Interreligious Perspective, with a Focus on Jewish-Christian Eschatology
Andreas Losch

Part II. Reflections on Biology and Evolution

5. Darwinian Evolution of the Human Body and Culture
Jerzy Dzik

6. What Are Human Beings (That You Are Mindful of Them)? Notes from Neo-Darwinsim and Neo-Aristotelianism
Jonathan Jong

7. Is Homo naledi Going to Challenge Our Presuppositions on Human Uniqueness?
Rubén Herce

8. Does Religious Behavior Render Humans Special?
Lluis Oviedo, Jay R. Feierman

9. Do Only Humans Sin? In Conversation with Frans de Waal
Ernst M. Conradie

Part III. Reflections on Anthropology, Technology and Culture

10. Theology Looking at Culture through the Lenses of Science
Ivan Colagè

11. Strong Artificial Intelligence and imago hominis: The Risks of a Reductionist Definition of Human Nature
Sara Lumbreras

12. Human Uniqueness and Technology: Are We Co-creators with God?
Victoria Lorrimar

13. Boundless Riches: Big Data, the Bible and Human Distinctiveness
Michael Fuller

14. Human Uniqueness or Anthropocentrism? Semantic, Anthropological and Theological Clarifications in Dialogue with Damasio’s Neuroscience
Luis O. Jiménez-Rodríguez

15. Aren’t We Animals? Deconstructing or Decolonizing the Human – Animal Divide
Angela Roothaan

Part IV. Philosophical and Theological Reflections

16. How May We Justify the History of the Universe?
Michael Heller

17. Human Uniqueness and the Normative Conception of the Rational
James Henry Collin

18. Special? Oh, Please! And Yet …
Roland Karo

19. Uniqueness and the Presence of the Image: Towards a Pneumatological Foundation for Human Uniqueness and the Image of God
Joanna Leidenhag

20. ‘What Is Man That You Are Mindful of Him?’ (Ps 8:4) How Theology Can Help to Answer the Question: What Is It to Be a Human Being?
Johanna Rahner

21. Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato si’: Ecological Concerns and a Shift of Theological Approach to the Problems of Humanity and the Earth
Jacek Poznański

22. Are Humans Special? Examining John Haught’s Idea of ‘Information’ and the Daoist Idea of Qi in the Zhuangzi

Jaeho Jang

Keywords: Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Anthropology, Philosophy of Mind