News & Blog

Read exclusive essays from Ilia Delio and follow news from the World Institute for Science, Religion and Culture. Sign up for our newsletter to get notified about new posts and upcoming events.

Intelligence Was Never the Point: Interior to Interiority in the Age of AI

By Ilia Delio | August 5, 2026

From where I stand, we are having the wrong argument about artificial intelligence.The debate almost always runs along one axis. Can machines think? And if they can, what is left that belongs to us alone? For a long time, we did not have to ask the deeper question, because we had a comfortable answer to the surface one. We identified humanity with a set of distinctive capacities—reason, language, creativity, symbolic intelligence—and took these to define what it meant to be human. As long as those capacities remained uniquely ours, the question of personhood could stay politely closed. Intelligence seemed measure enough of human uniqueness.Artificial intelligence has unsettled that confidence. Machines now compose music, generate language, recognize patterns, and perform reasoning...

Religious life in a post-human age

By Ilia Delio | September 23, 2019

I recently returned from a retreat at San Alfonso Retreat House in Long Branch, New Jersey, where 110 sisters gathered each day for liturgy, prayer and presentation. The sisters were…

“Birth of a Dancing Star” Book Review on NCR

By WISR Institute | September 19, 2019

Sr. Ilia Delio’s ‘Birth of a Dancing Star’ memoir is about discovering God in the chaos of life by Nichole Carrubba for NCR Birth of a Dancing Star, Franciscan Sr.…

The Narrow Door

By Br. Ivan Nicoletto | September 3, 2019

Twenty-First Sunday OT/C 2019 Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30 Responding to a believer eager for salvation, Jesus answers: “Strive to enter through the narrow door,” choose to actively…

The Future of Tradition

By Ilia Delio | September 3, 2019

Q: How do we hold the value of Religion’s past yet create communities of deeper Spirituality. Ilia: Our question for this week is a good one. Many people fear the…

Webinar: Seeking Wholeness in an Age of Fragments

By WISR Institute | August 28, 2019

Join us for upcoming webinar: Seeking Wholeness in an Age of Fragments September 28th, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm ET The news distracts us from our true reality; yet, nature…

The Omega Challenge: On Sex, Gender and Personhood

By Ilia Delio | August 20, 2019

The Omega Challenge: In a recent post, Ilia answers questions about Sex, Gender and Personhood. On your own or as a group we invite you to reflect on the following…

On Teilhard and “Teilhard’s Fire” (a song)

By Don Viney | August 12, 2019

Listen to “Teilhard’s Fire” by clicking on the player below Few life stories can match that of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) for drama, passion, and intellectual ferment. The…

An Omega Conference Invitation

By Ilia Delio | July 31, 2019

Dear Friends of the Omega Center, We are in the mist of summer, but time is an arrow that points to the future. Hence, we are now preparing for our…

The Omega Challenge: Immigration, Evolution, and Wholeness

By Ilia Delio | July 29, 2019

The Omega Challenge: In a recent post, Ilia answers questions about Teilhard and white nationalism. On your own or as a group we invite you to reflect on the following…