Word on Fire's Wonder Conference dives into AI, gender and evolution

(OSV News) -- People often avoid talking about the quintessential hot topics -- evolution, gender and artificial intelligence, to name a few. But not Bishop Robert E. Barron and his apostolate Word on Fire, which is hosting its second annual Wonder Conference to dive headfirst into those topics, among others.

Roughly 750 priests, religious and laypeople are set to gather in Rochester, Minnesota, for the Aug. 2-4 conference.

Organizers say they hope the conference equips Catholics to discuss these topics in a world that often regards faith and science as incompatible.

"Science doesn't turn us from God, it orders us to God," Bishop Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester said at his keynote for the inaugural Wonder Conference in January 2023.

This year's conference takes up "nature and the body" as its theme, a topic that is "of great general concern," said Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute.

"In the broad cultural conversation, at many different levels, the meaning and nature of the human body has really come up for a great contestation right now. There are ideologies that are prevalent in big parts of the culture that have totally redefined the meaning of the body to the detriment of a lot of people in some very destructive ways," Petrusek told OSV News.

He said that he hopes the conference will refute the belief that there must be a "moral choice between either being a faithful person or being a person who respects and is guided by the scientific method."

"It's (about) retrieving the church's understanding of the natural law's understanding that we are not just bodies and not just souls, but body and soul," Petrusek said.

The conference boasts a line-up of world-renowned speakers. Jesuit Father Robert J. Spitzer, president of the Magis Center of Reason and Faith and host of the weekly EWTN program "Father Spitzer's Universe," will deliver a keynote titled, "The Transcendent Body." The lecture explores the transcendence inherent in the Christian understanding of the body, especially with regard to the resurrection of the body, Petrusek said.

Other speakers include Jonathan Pageau, liturgical artist and host of "The Symbolic World" podcast; Abigail Favale, author and professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame; Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington; Heather Heying, a renowned evolutionary biologist; and Obianuju Ekeocha, founder and president of Culture of Life Africa.

Heying was featured on Bishop Barron's podcast with her husband, Bret Weinstein, in 2022 to discuss her book, "A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life," which was a New York Times bestseller. Although she is not Catholic, Heying believes evolution is compatible with a religious understanding of creation.

"After introducing my evolutionary perspective as one that is not inherently at odds with a religious understanding of the world, I will briefly define what a body is, and show a tree of life, before taking the audience on a journey through some of the ways that our bodies can be understood to be ancient, flawed, and exquisite, with a focus on hearts, brains, and limbs," she said about her talk, titled "Grounded in Nature: An Evolutionary Framework for the Body."

"Bishop Barron impressed me with his honesty, integrity, and intelligence, and I am honored to be included in the conference," said Heying, who earned her doctorate in biology from the University of Michigan and was a fellow at Princeton University.

Ekeocha, a biomedical scientist and pro-life activist, will deliver a keynote address on "Ideological Colonization and the Body." She said the lecture presents the "battle against the body" that is unfolding in Africa, where the aid Western nations provide is often accompanied with ideologies that support abortion and gender fluidity. She calls this phenomenon ideological neocolonialism.

"These Western nations have now partnered with third-party organizations, organizations like International Planned Parenthood. ... They call themselves reproductive rights groups, but they are actually abortion organizations at the heart of their work. They've sent them into African countries, into African capitals, where the body is really the battlefield for a lot of these things," Ekeocha said.

Ekeocha said that while she has seen this pattern play out in African countries, the same organizations are working within the United States to "inject (ideologies) right into the bloodstream of your society." Her keynote aims to make attendees aware of both the problems in Africa and in the U.S. while calling them to action, she said.

"You have to really put your own effort, even if it's that one vote, and even on the school board level, to make sure, as far as your own voting power is concerned, to get the right people in office," said Ekeocha, who has spoken at the White House and European Parliament.

Ultimately, she said her call to action is a call to prayer.

"We must begin on our knees to confront the problem, to pray about it, to begin to have the courage to even rise to the challenge," she told OSV News.

Attendees are gathering for the conference from all over the nation. One of them, Faith Pawl, an educator at St. Agnes High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, said that conversations about AI and gender from the perspective of the church are sorely needed.

"We, the church, need to be at the forefront of conversations about human nature and human agency because if we aren't smart about figuring out what humans should do and what we can outsource to computers, then we're going to lose really important aspects of our humanity," said Pawl, who earned her doctorate in philosophy from St. Louis University and now teaches humanities to high-schoolers. Her work in education has made her acutely aware of the dangers of AI to education.

"In a way it (the use of AI) is just allowing these algorithms to think for them, and the algorithms aren't designed for discerning the truth. They're designed for finding patterns of association on the Internet, which is full of wonderful information, but not necessarily always grounded in reality," she said.

Pawl said she hopes the conference equips her to better navigate the advancements of AI in the classroom. She also looks forward to how the theme of nature and the body can help inform her conversations with her four daughters and one son.

"As a mother, especially to daughters, I want my children to understand that their bodies are a gift from God and that our bodies themselves are meaningful," Pawl said.