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In Whose Image?
Artificial Intelligence and the Imago Dei
Introduction: In Whose Image?
Despite a legacy of broken expectations, artificial intelligence retains a hold on the human imagination. Scarcely a month goes by without a news article reporting a new advance in the field – a machine that smiles, robotic pets for the elderly, an IBM machine that plays the game show Jeopardy. On the more practical side, search engines now recommend books, or recipes, or dates; computer-generated avatars guide us through online shops or attack us in a new generation of video games; robotic arms do delicate surgery; and vacuum cleaners scuttle about picking up crumbs and dog hair, plugging themselves into an outlet when their batteries feel a little low. While it is not yet the age of the Jetsons, so called “intelligent” computers are an increasingly common part of our lives.
While each of these “intelligent” computers accomplishes some task or amuses us in some way, the Holy Grail of artificial intelligence, a computer that truly thinks like a human being, one we can talk to or trust as we might another person, continues to elude us. Yet we still hold out hopes for such a machine. We desire a computer that is created “in our image” just as we see ourselves as created in the image of our God. Understanding ourselves as created in the image of God connects us to God, reassures us that God is not wholly Other, wholly different from or indifferent to the human condition. Computers that are as similar to ourselves as possible could better connect us to them and to the work they do, making them easier to interact with in an increasingly technological world.
We stand in the middle looking out toward God and toward our own creation in the computer. We see an image linking us in both directions. In this chapter we will examine what we perceive the nature of those images to be and how we can best use that imaging to understand ourselves and our relationship to both our Creator and our creation.
“In the Image of God He Created Them”
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.
(Gen. 1:26–27)
Genesis 1 culminates in the creation of humanity in the image of God. What constitutes this image, however, goes unsaid. This has left the image as a matter of interpretation, and these interpretations have varied widely through history, encompassing everything from the most prosaic, such as our ability to walk upright, to the more sublime, such as our capacity for self-transcendence.1 Most interpretations fit into three broad categories: substantive interpretations, which view the image as some individually held property that is a part of our nature, most often associated with reason; functional interpretations, in which the image of God is seen in action, specifically our exercise of dominion over the earth; and relational interpretations, in which God’s image is found within the relationships we establish and maintain.
David Cairns (1953, 60) writes: “In all the Christian writers up to Aquinas we find the image of God conceived of as man’s power of reason.” This follows from Aristotle, who described humans as the animal rational, the only creature with reason, which must, therefore, be our most Godlike faculty. Early Christian writers who discuss the image of God in terms of reason or the rational mind include Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis 5.14), Origen (Against Celsus 4.85), Gregory of Nazianzus (Orations 38.11), Gregory of Nyssa (On the Making of Man 5), and Augustine (On the Trinity 12–14). We find a similar approach throughout the Middle Ages and Reformation. We think, therefore we are like God and unlike the animals.
Among contemporary theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr remains closest to this classical view of what we share with God. He sees the divine image in a reason that encompasses rationality, free will, and an ability to move beyond the self. He (1996, 161–162) writes:
It will suffice to assert by way of summary that the Biblical conception of “image of God” has influenced Christian thought, particularly since Augustine … to interpret human nature in terms which include his rational faculties but which suggest something beyond them. The ablest non-theological analysis of human nature in modern times, by Heidegger, defines this Christian emphasis succinctly as “the idea of ‘transcendence,’ namely that man is something which reaches beyond itself – that he is more than a rational creature.”
Niebuhr sees this capacity for self-transcendence as both a consequence of reason and the defining arbiter of human freedom, for it is only this that allows us to view ourselves objectively and therefore to choose how to live. The divine image gives us the ability to see beyond our finite bodily nature, to think in terms of infinity, though we remain finite creatures, a paradox that Niebuhr sees as the root of the primary tensions of the human condition and, thus, the root of sin (1963, 42).
For all its intuitive appeal, this interpretation of the image of God has the drawback of being curiously inward and static. However narrowly or broadly reason or any other characteristic is conceived, all substantive interpretations presuppose that what makes us like God, and therefore most human, is found by looking within; the image of God is found in the human individual, irrespective of his or her actions or surroundings. And the actions that have stemmed from reason are not always Godlike. After all, Hitler and his minions thought the Final Solution to be eminently reasonable.
Even more telling is the argument that the image of God as reason is a bit of a stretch because reason is nowhere mentioned in the Genesis 1 text. This has led biblical scholars to an examination of the text itself in its historical and literary context. In a 1915 article, “Zum Terminus ‘Bild Gottes’,” Johannes Hehn introduced a new way of looking at the concept of the image of God. Hehn suggested that the image of God be understood as a job description rather than an attribute of human nature (1915, 36–52). Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad extended Hehn’s work into a dynamic, functional approach that locates the image of God not in an internal quality, but in the external realm of our actions. In his commentary on Genesis, von Rad argues for the translation “as the image of God” rather than “in the image of God.” Von Rad (1961, 56) notes:
Just as powerful earthly kings, to indicate their claim to dominion, erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire where they do not personally appear, so man is placed upon earth in God’s image, as God’s sovereign emblem. He is really only God’s representative, summoned to maintain and enforce God’s claim to dominion over the earth.
This understanding of the image of God as the human function of exercising dominion, in effect, acting as God’s deputy on earth, has been in the ascendancy among Old Testament exegetes throughout the twentieth century. There are several strengths to this interpretation. First, it emphasizes a holistic view of human beings. While substantive interpretations have frequently split the intellectual or spiritual capacities of the human from the physical, it is the whole of man, both physical and intellectual, that exerts dominion over the earth. Second, the phrase “image of God” is considered within its textual context; creation in God’s image is immediately followed by the commission to exercise dominion over all the other creatures. A third strength of a functional interpretation, not mentioned by von Rad, but crucial in light of the current ecological debate, is that a functional interpretation supports human responsibility for the environment by positing a universal divine plan in which humans are given not only dominion but responsibility for the wellbeing of the natural world.
However, a functional interpretation does not exhaust all the possibilities in the Genesis text. While the idea of human creation in the image of God appears in the context of human dominion, it is also closely followed by the phrase “in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.” These linked phrases raise the possibility that the image is found primarily in relationship. The most influential proponent of a relational interpretation is Karl Barth. According to Barth (1958, 184–185), the image of God “does not consist in anything that man is or does” but is identified with the fact that the human being is a counterpart to God. Barth begins, not with observation of the qualities or actions of human beings, but with the nature of God. He interprets the plural in “Let us make man” as referring not to a heavenly court but to the nature of God himself, a Trinity that contains both an “I” that can issue a divine call and a “Thou” capable of a divine response. This I–Thou confrontation, existing within the Godhead, forms the ground of human creation, thus rooting our very nature in relationship with an other. This relationship can take two forms, the human–God relationship and the human–human relationship. The image is in the relationship itself, not our capacity for relationship. Thus it is not a quality for Barth, nor is it held by humans as individuals. It exists first in our relationship to God and secondarily in our relationships with each other (1958, 182).
Since sexual differentiation and some form of relationship exist also among animals, in what way does Barth’s conception of the image of God distinguish humanity from the rest of creation? Barth admits that we share creation as male and female, at least in a formal sense, with the animals. He notes, however, that among humans, differentiation by gender is the only differentiation; while animals are divided according to their kind, humans are divided only by gender. Barth (1958, 186) writes:
This is the particular dignity ascribed to the sex relationship. It is wholly creaturely, and common to man and beast. But as the only real principle of differentiation and relationship, as the original form not only of man’s confrontation of God but also of all intercourse between man and man, it is the true humanum and therefore the true creaturely image of God.
Barth also finds evidence for a relationship as the center of our being and what we share with God in the character of Jesus, in whom he sees human nature as it was intended to be. What is significant about Jesus is his active giving of himself to others.
If we see Him alone, we do not see Him at all. If we see him, we see with and around Him in ever widening circles His disciples, the people, His enemies, and the countless multitudes who never have heard His name. We see Him as theirs, determined by them and for them, belonging to each and every one of them.
(Barth 1958, 216)
Although many theologians have differed sharply with Barth on the details of what constitutes authentic relationship, or whether the male–female differentiation mentioned in Genesis 1 is an adequate model for all human relationships, a relational model of the image of God has become the dominant approach among systematic theologians in the mid- to late twentieth century.2 The relational approach is not, however, without its critics. Alexander Altmann notes that although he begins with an exegesis of Genesis 1, Barth bases his exegesis on an a priori assumption regarding the nature of the Trinity, an assumption based on Christology and thus alien to the text of Genesis, a text which is, in its origin, not Christian, but Hebrew (1968, 235).
Each of the substantive, functional, and relational interpretations of the image of God arises out of a different methodology. For Niebuhr, the question of the image of God in human beings is considered in the context of a study of the human condition. He begins The Nature and Destiny of Man with an examination of human experience. Von Rad begins with the text of Genesis, and uses the exegetical methods of literary and historical criticism. Barth begins with the nature of God, considering the text through the lens of Trinitarian theology. These differing approaches result in three different analogies between God and humankind. The substantive interpretation posits an analogy of nature, that God and the human being share some trait or quality that is essential to our being. The functionalist interpretation posits an analogy of function. We need have nothing in common with God’s nature; we image God when we perform actions in God’s stead. The relational interpretation finds an analogy of relationship, that there is a relationship within God that we mirror when we are in relationship with God or with one another. Each of these approaches locates the core of humanity in a radically different sphere. These three approaches also differ on whether the image of God is expressed individually or corporately. The substantive approach finds the locus of the image in the individual, while the functional and relational interpretations find the image corporately.
These three interpretations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Niebuhr, though he interprets the image of God in a substantive sense in The Nature and Destiny of Man, also highlights the importance of dialogue with self, God, and others. Similarly, Barth presupposes a degree of rationality in noting the importance of speech in establishing relationship. Many authors today see the image of God as a composite made up of aspects of each of these interpretations. Elizabeth Johnson, in making a case for the divine image in women, states that women express the image of God in their exercise of stewardship over the earth, in their kinship with holy mystery, in rationality and intelligence, in their social nature and their communion with others, and in their bodiliness. For Johnson, the image of God is roughly akin to the concept of personhood, the whole of women’s being that is created and blessed by God (1992, 71). As Paul Ricoeur has said, the concept of the image of God contains a “wealth of meaning” not exhausted in a single interpretation. “Each century has the task of elaborating its thought ever anew on the basis of that indestructible symbol” (1965, 110).
In the Image of Humans
As we turn now to the field of artificial intelligence, similar questions to those we addressed regarding the image of God arise. In our quest to create artificial intelligence we are creating in our own image. Is this image some inner trait or capacity that we hope to share with the computer, do we simply want machines to do certain tasks for us, or do we hope for machines with whom we can enter into relationships? If, through artificial intelligence, we are looking for a true and viable image of ourselves, is this image the same as what we perceive to be God’s image in us?
The first approach to creating in our own image by designing artificially intelligent computers assumed that what mattered was strictly mental. Like rationality as the image of God, the image of the human was seen as intelligence, loosely understood as problem-solving. This assumption fits our intuitive notion of intelligence, based as it is on the model of activities that we consider indicative of highly intelligent people, such as the ability to play chess or solve complicated equations in mathematics or physics. AI researchers, following rationalist philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Whitehead, believed that human thought could be represented by a set of basic facts which could then be combined, according to set rules, into more complex ideas. This approach to AI has been called symbolic AI. It assumes intelligence is basically an internal process of symbol manipulation.
Symbolic AI met with immediate success in areas in which problems are highly rule-based. Game-playing is an obvious example of one such area. The game of chess takes place in a world in which the only objects are the 32 pieces moving on a 64-square board, and these objects are moved according to a limited number of rules. In 1997 the computer Deep Blue beat then reigning world chess champion Gary Kasparov, a victory that was greeted with both amazement and fear as computers seemed poised to take over many of the mental functions of human beings.
Those fears have not been realized, however. While the field of artificial intelligence continues to produce machines that excel in mental calculations and problem-solving, we have come to a much broader understanding of intelligence and its different forms. Just as theologians moved from a disembodied rationality as God’s image in us to seeing that image actively, as our functioning as God’s hands in the world, so scientists also have come to see intelligence as the ability to act within an environment. This means that, first of all, intelligence must be embodied. Of course any intelligent agent would be embodied in some way. Deep Blue did not have what we would think of as a body; it could not pick up the chess pieces and physically move them. However, the program was embodied in a bank of supercomputers. So the question is not whether intelligence requires a physical body, but what kind of body.
One thing it does seem to require is mobility. A recent example is the development of mobile robots used in hospitals to help doctors who may not be on-site give diagnoses or recommend changes in treatment. While these robots might be seen as a simple advance in videoconferencing, their ability to roll right up to a patient’s bed seems to give both doctor and patient a new level of trust and wider options in exchanging information. This is one example of how our physical makeup determines how we interact with the world. Philosopher John Haugeland (1997, 26) explains how this shapes our intelligence:
Think how much “knowledge” is contained in the traditional shape and heft of a hammer, as well as in the muscles and reflexes acquired in learning to use it – though, again, no one need ever have thought of it. Multiply that by our food and hygiene practices, our manner of dress, the layout of buildings, cities, and farms. To be sure, some of this was explicitly figured out, at least once upon a time; but a lot of it wasn’t – it just evolved that way (because it worked). Yet a great deal, perhaps even the bulk, of the basic expertise that makes human intelligence what it is, is maintained and brought to bear in these “physical” structures. It is neither stored nor used inside the head of anyone – it’s in their bodies and, even more, out there in the world.
According to Haugeland, much of what we consider to be human intelligence is not an internal quality of the mind. Our designs and behaviors arise through and out of interaction with the environment.
One might argue that interaction with the environment is needed for the kind of intelligence that allows us to do things, but that there are other forms of intelligence – making plans or decisions, ruminating over events and ideas – that are ruled by the conscious mind alone. Recent experiments in neuroscience tell us that the situation is more complex. In 1983 Benjamin Libet conducted a series of experiments in which the subject was asked to make the simple decision to move a finger and to record the moment this decision was made. Sensors recorded the nerve impulse from brain to finger, and found that the impulse was on its way roughly half a second before persons consciously registered their decision. The subconscious mind and the body had things underway before the conscious introspective mind knew anything about it (Libet 1999, 46). Even that most abstract of fields, mathematics, has its roots in our interaction with the environment. In the book Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being, authors Lakoff and Núñez (2000) argue that mathematical ideas are metaphorical in nature, grounded in our everyday experiences of the world. The concept of number requires experience of objects that can be numbered.
Computers that move and act much like humans in the world have been a mainstay in science fiction books and movies. In recent years prominent AI researchers, such as Rodney Brooks at MIT, have moved away from a more abstract mental version of AI toward the field of robotics as well. Brooks has noted that to be truly intelligent, computers must learn as we do from the continuity and the surprises of the real world. Brooks, and others at a variety of AI labs, have built a series of robots that act within the world on the basis of data acquired through sensors.3 Brooks began with a series of insects, later moving on to the humanoid robots Cog and Kismet, which acquired a few of the rudimentary skills of a baby through interaction with human beings. None of these robots come close to human-like intelligence, but some seem to have a niche in their environment. Consider the Roomba, a vacuum cleaner that navigates around a room looking for dirt, avoids furniture and stairs, and plugs itself in when it needs to be recharged. One might argue that Roomba shows as much intelligence as many animals, in its ability to navigate in a local environment, avoid hazards, and forage for sustenance.
We take Roomba’s abilities as a minimal form of intelligence. Hardly our image. Even Deep Blue does not express what counts in human intelligence. After all, after their famous match, Kasparov went on to play a major role in Russian politics. Deep Blue did nothing. Roomba interacts primarily within a static material environment. Humans do not. We find ourselves continuously in new environments, interacting with new situations and, especially, with each other. Just as theologians came to realize it might be relationships that ultimately matter, computers cannot be intelligent if they cannot move easily within the realm of relationships.
This has been recognized from the very beginning of the field of artificial intelligence. In his landmark paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” first published in 1950, Alan Turing asked how one might determine if a computer were intelligent and proposed a test based on a parlor game called the imitation game in which an interrogator questions a man and a woman and tries to tell from their written responses which is which. In Turing’s version, the interrogator’s subjects are a human and a machine. If the interrogator fails as often as she succeeds in determining which was the human, and which the machine, the machine could be considered as having intelligence. Turing predicted that by the year 2000, “it will be possible to programme computers … to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than a 70 percent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning” (Turing 1997, 29–32). This, like most predictions in AI, was overly optimistic. No computer has yet come close to passing the Turing Test.4
The ability to converse is not just a test of intelligence. It may also be a precondition. Winograd and Flores assert that cognition is dependent upon both language and relationships. Objects we have no words for do not exist for us in the same way as those we name. Without words to describe difference, distinctions cannot long be held in mind or shared with others. Conversation also binds us to one another: “To be human is to be the kind of being that generates commitments, through speaking and listening. Without our ability to create and accept (or decline) commitments we are acting in a less than fully human way, and we are not fully using language” (Winograd and Flores 1991, 68). Understanding, for Winograd and Flores, arises in listening, not to the meaning of individual words, but to the commitments expressed through dialogue. Thus understanding is both predicated on and produces social ties.5
Social ties bring us to a fourth aspect of intelligence – it is also emotional. To navigate the world of relationships, one needs to express and perceive emotions, to manage one’s own emotions, and to use emotions to facilitate thought. While we often think that our emotions obscure rational thought, they are actually necessary for cognition. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio describes patients who have had an injury to the parts of the brain that govern the ability to feel emotions and subsequently lose the ability to make effective decisions, even decisions as simple as what to have for lunch (1999, 133). There is also a tie between emotions and self-consciousness. We can only conceive of ourselves in relation some external object. Similarly, it is the gift of consciousness that allows us to feel emotions at all:
Consciousness provides us with a self enriched by the record of our own individual experience. When we face each new moment of life as conscious beings, we bring to bear on that moment the circumstances of our anticipated future, those circumstances that are presumed to bring on more joys or more sorrows.
(Damasio 2003, 270)
According to Marvin Minsky (1985, 163), “The question is not whether intelligent machines can have any emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without emotions.” This, however, is proving to be a difficult task. Computers can be programmed to recognize emotions in facial expressions or tone of voice, and a robot or a video avatar can be programmed to express a variety of emotions, physically or verbally. However, feeling emotion requires a level of self-consciousness current machines lack. This has led Winograd and Flores to assume that a human-like AI might be an impossible dream (1991, 123–124).
Who Are We?
While computers that act in the environment are here to stay as useful tools, Turing, Damasio, Winograd, and Flores all view the true image of who we are that we wish to pass on to computers as the ability to enter into relationships. Though they approach it in different ways, each suggests that the idea of an individual intelligence is meaningless, that intelligence has meaning only in encounter. Whether a computer could have the capability of entering into true relationship with human beings remains to be seen.
What is interesting is that interpretations of the image of God in humanity and the image of humanity we would like to pass on to computers have passed through similar trajectories. Both begin with mental experience, expressed variously as rationality or problem solving, but move to a more holistic approach, incorporating action within the world. And in contemplating which actions matter the most, both theologians and artificial intelligence researchers have settled on being in relationship.
Why this similarity? Perhaps these two images tell us more about our self-understanding than they do about the nature of either God or computers. They tell us what we value in ourselves – mind, agency, and relationality. In different times and circumstances we have held one of these three above the other, projecting it as what we must share with God and what we would like to share with our own creation. Yet the three stand in a dialectical tension. Without mind there is neither agency nor relationship. Yet without relationships there is no mind.
We think of this bestowing of an image as a one-way process, from God to us, from us to the computer. However, there is a risk. Theologians have long warned against our tendency to reverse the direction of the image between God and humans, to make God in our own image and likeness. This is idolatry, for when we project our own attributes and desires onto God we create a god who is our own fabrication, embodying our values and satisfying our narcissistic whims. There is a similar risk in the image connecting humans to computers. As we give computers more and more human traits we have a tendency to see them not as our tools but as our children. But we are infinitely more adaptable than our machines. Viewing our machines as fellow creatures is unlikely to change them, and more likely to subtly shape our image of ourselves, of what our lives and relationships are about. This, too, is a form of idolatry, for insofar as we allow computers to shape our lives we have made them into gods of silicon.
We stand in the middle, between our Creator and our own creation. We come to know what we value in ourselves through our understanding of these relationships. Ultimately we know more what God is not than what God is. We do not know the mind of God; we cannot ever be sure whether our actions are those God would ordain; we live in a relationship of love with God and each other, yet we all too often find these relationships as broken as they are whole. Similarly, with computers, we will never succeed in creating a machine that thinks exactly as we do; computers will function differently in our world; and we must ever be wary that we do not substitute relationships with machines, or even relationships with each other that are totally mediated by machines, for the real thing.
Notes
1 Some have looked for the imago Dei in a quality of the human being, such as our physical form (Gunkel), the ability to stand upright (Koehler), our rationality or intellect (Aquinas), our personality (Procksch), or our capacity for self-transcendence (Niebuhr). Others have thought of God’s image as dynamic, rooted in human actions such as our dominion over the animals (Gross, von Rad). A third approach defines the image as emergent in the interrelationship of two beings, human with human, or human with divine (Barth, Brunner). See Westermann 1984, 147–148, for a summary.
2 One finds similar interpretations in Brunner, Berkouwer, Pannenberg, and Küng, among others.
3 For descriptions of a variety of mobile robots developed at MIT, see Brooks 1990.
4 In 1991 Hugh Loebner began funding a yearly competition that offers $100 000 for the first program to pass a Turing Test. The first four years of the competition allowed the area of questioning to be restricted. Since 1995, the areas of questioning have been unrestricted. Judgments on the relative success of various programs differ; however, Loebner has yet to part with his money.
5 Winograd and Flores feel so strongly about the connection between knowing an object and being able to speak of it in terms of language that they baldly state, “Nothing exists except through language” (1991, 73).
References
Altmann, Alexander. 1968. Homo Imago Dei in Jewish and Christian Theology. Journal of Religion, 48, pp. 235–259.
Barth, Karl. 1958. Church Dogmatics, vol. 3. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Brooks, Rodney. 1990. Elephants Don’t Play Chess. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 6, pp. 3–15.
Cairns, David. 1953. The Image of God in Man. London: SCM Press.
Damasio, Antonio. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Company.
Haugeland, John. 1997. What Is Mind Design? In John Haugeland, ed. Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1–28.
Hehn, Johannes. 1915. Zum Terminus “Bild Gottes.” In Festschrift Eduard Sachau zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag. Berlin: G. Reimer, pp. 36–52.
Johnson, Elizabeth. 1992. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York: Crossroad Press.
Lakoff, George and Núñez, Rafael. 2000. Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New York: Basic Books.
Libet, Benjamin. 1999. Do We Have Free Will? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6 (8–9), pp. 47–57.
Minsky, Marvin. 1985. The Society of Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1963. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. London: SCM Press.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1996. The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. 1, Human Nature. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Ricoeur, Paul. 1965. History and Truth. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Turing, Alan. 1997. Computing Machinery and Intelligence. In John Haugeland, ed. Mind Design II: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 29–56.
von Rad, Gerhard. 1961. Genesis: A Commentary. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
Westermann, Claus. 1984. Genesis 1–11: A Commentary. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Press.
Winograd, Terry and Flores, Fernando. 1991. Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Further Reading
Cairns, David. 1953. The Image of God in Man. London: SCM Press. Provides a complete summary of how the imago Dei has been understood by theologians from the early Church Fathers to the twentieth century.
Damasio, Antonio. 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Company. Presents a very readable summary of current neuroscientific research into the origin of emotions.
Herzfeld, Noreen. 2002. In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Compares our understanding of how we are in God’s image with our desire to create an artificial intelligence in our own image.
Westermann, Claus. 1984. Genesis 1–11: A Commentary. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Press. Looks at the concept of the image of God through a historical/literary criticism of the relevant passages.