Josep Ignasi Saranyana, full academician and president of the Section of Human Sciences of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED) presented last October 10 with the writer Arturo San Agustín the last novel of this renowned author, “El robot que cree en Dios” (The robot that believes in God), in which San Agustín tells how a future Pope, Innocent XIV, faces the existence of a robot that inexplicably crosses.
Member of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences, Saranyana considered that in the novel there is much of the legendary film “Blade Runner”, “although unlike Ridley Scott, who denies that his replicants feel emotions and have feelings, Arturo San Agustín does concede to his robot Talos feelings and emotions, so San Agustín is committed”. For the academician, the work raises two fundamental questions: whether androids can be able to feel and express religious emotions and feelings and whether the religious instinct should stand on the same plane or not as the supernatural revelation offered by Christianity.
“The novel also questions us about how little we question robotics, transhumanism and posthumanism,” added San Agustín, who considered as a mistake to leave science alone in the hands of scientists without often taking into account its moral consequences.
