Artificial intelligence has quickly become the defining technological development of our age. Questions that first appear technical soon return us to some of the oldest inquiries human beings have ever asked, about the nature of consciousness, meaning, freedom, and personhood.
Artificial intelligence has quickly become the defining technological development of our age. Questions that first appear technical soon return us to some of the oldest inquiries human beings have ever asked, about the nature of consciousness, meaning, freedom, and personhood.
To explore these questions with the seriousness and openness they require, Ralston College convened AI and the Battle for the Soul, a day-long symposium bringing together psychiatrist and philosopher Dr Iain McGilchrist, theologian and iconographer Jonathan Pageau, and physicist and computer scientist Dr Stephen Wolfram.
Across lectures and dynamic conversations, the symposium considers whether artificial intelligence represents just another technological advance or whether it marks a turning point in humanity's self-understanding. As our capacity to grasp and reshape the world continues to expand, so too does the responsibility to ask what kind of human beings and what kind of civilization we are becoming.
These talks and conversations make it clear that the deepest questions raised by artificial intelligence are not ultimately technological, but human, and that there has never been a more pressing moment to renew the intellectual traditions that sustain civilization. A free and flourishing culture depends not only upon knowledge and technological power, but upon wisdom, judgment, and the courage to seek the truth. By bringing philosophy, science, and myth into conversation, AI and the Battle for the Soul seeks to cultivate the habits of thought, moral imagination, and intellectual freedom that this moment demands.
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Lecture 1: Do We Really Understand Understanding?
With Dr Iain McGilchrist
In this opening lecture from Ralston College’s symposium, AI and the Battle for the Soul, Dr Iain McGilchrist traces a line of questions concerning the nature of intelligence, embodiment, wisdom, and the soul, ultimately asking us to consider, as deeply as we can, the essence of our humanity. By tracing a line of questions concerning the nature of intelligence, embodiment, wisdom, and the soul in an age increasingly defined by mechanistic thinking and the rise of large language models, Dr McGilchrist challenges reductionist accounts that diminish human consciousness to mere information processing. Moving beyond the computational framework, he draws on neuroscience, literature, theology, music, and myth to invite us to recognize the expansive and irreducible nature of our existence.
Lecture 2: Whom Does AI Serve? Sacrifice in the Digital Age
With Jonathan Pageau
Drawing on Scripture, ancient mythology, and poetry, he argues that the questions raised by AI directly concern human purpose and meaning. In this lecture, he asks the fundamental question: Who, or what, does AI serve? Through the stories of Prometheus, the Holy Grail, Moloch, and the Tower of Babel, Pageau makes the case that the questions raised by artificial intelligence go well beyond technological capability alone. Instead, they concern the ends toward which technological power is directed, the sacrifices such pursuits inevitably entail, and what our inventions ultimately reveal about ourselves. By recovering the symbolic imagination through which earlier generations understood the nature of power and purpose, he calls on us to recognize the moral and spiritual consequences of the civilization we are creating through them.
Conversation: What is AI?
With Stephen Wolfram, Iain McGilchrist, and Stephen Blackwood
After decades in physics, computer science, and the study of complex systems, Wolfram shares his vision through the lens of computation, looking for the simple rules underlying complexity in the natural world. Drawing upon decades studying philosophy, literature, and neuropsychiatry, McGilchrist makes the case that reality exceeds computation, suggesting that consciousness is grounded in embodiment, receptivity, and participation. The resulting conversation is less a debate than an encounter between two of the most ambitious attempts to understand reality in our time. Questions once confined to philosophical inquiry now play an increasingly practical role in the development of artificial intelligence. Conversations like this remind us that our technological future depends not only on the capabilities of machines, but on the ideas we hold concerning the human person, knowledge, and what is ultimately real.
Lecture 3: Cognitive Freedom in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
With Iain McGilchrist
The final lecture of Ralston College’s symposium, AI and the Battle for the Soul, asks a question that turns from the future of artificial intelligence to something far older and more enduring: What does freedom require? Weaving together neuroscience, philosophy, physics, and literature, Dr Iain McGilchrist examines free will, consciousness, and the forms of attention that compose our engagement with the world. Over several decades at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience, Dr McGilchrist’s contributions have transformed contemporary discussions of consciousness, attention, and meaning. At a moment so often dominated by mechanical explanations and computational models, he emphasizes the indispensable role of openness, receptivity, and participation in understanding, arguing that reality exceeds reductionist accounts.
About The Symposium
In early May of 2026, Ralston College convened with renowned thinkers and scientists for a symposium entitled AI and the Battle for the Soul. This day-long gathering confronted some of the most pressing questions facing technological advancement, education, and ultimately, civilization itself.
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This event was made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Ben Delo Foundation.
