Wednesday Forum – 06 April 2022

In this talk I would like to talk about the role that AI can play regarding religion. Since I come from a Buddhist culture, my example will be mostly from Buddhism, but I intend that my talk will be applicable to AI and other religions too. Among the questions that I will be addressing are: With the advent and rapid development of AI, what kind of impact will AI have on religion? There are many aspects of the impact that we can discuss. AI can be used to help the practicing of religion in various ways. An example of this is the robot monk in Japan. The robot can recite Buddhist sutras and practitioners can gather around it to listen to the sutra. Secondly, AI can be used to help with analyzing religious texts, such as doing concordances and searching for passages. This can be of great help to those who have to go through a large amount of texts everyday. Thirdly, AI can be used as an engine inside apps that aid with meditation. There are several apps that claim to do this. I will then reflect on these developments and will ask what do AI’s increasing roles in our religious lives and practices actually mean. Can AI itself become religious? If so, what does this signify in terms of our religions? read more

International Board Members and Executive Committee of Globethics.net

Written by Jekonia Tarigan

Globethics.net is a global network of teachers and institutions with the vision to embed ethics in higher education. Founded in 2004, Globethics.net strives to educate and inform people, and especially leaders in society so they can contribute to building sustainable, just, and peaceful societies.  Therefore, Globethics.net believes that equal access to knowledge resources in the field of applied ethics enables individuals and institutions from developing and transitioning economies to become more visible and audible in the global discourse is pivotal. Globethics.net maintains the conviction that the transformative effect of ethics is not just for the individual, but for society as a whole. For this reason, Globethics.net develops its resources and programs to meet the following goals: empowerment (developing talents), transformation (placing common good before self-interest), a holistic approach (understanding of in-depth correlations), integrity (making values-based decisions and behaviors), competence (focusing on innovative and collective proficiency), and sustainability. read more

Written by Jekonia Tarigan

In the social sciences, specifically related to Asia, there has long been a distinction between South Asian Studies and Southeast Asian Studies. However, there is a link between the two, the small, Indian Ocean Island known through history as Sarandib, Lanka, and Ceylon. This island was a site of banishment throughout the 18th century for members of royal families, convicts, servants, and others sent there from across the Indonesian archipelago. Descendants of these exiles who remained on the island continued to speak and write in Malay, the archipelago’s lingua franca, and to adhere to a collective Muslim identity for several centuries and into the present. Ronit Ricci’s research examines if and how earlier religious and literary traditions of banishment tied to the island, those of Adam’s fall from paradise to Sarandib and Sinta’s abduction to Lanka, played a role in the lives of the early exiles and their descendants. [i] Ricci presented her findings in Wednesday Forum, a weekly discussion forum hosted by the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) and the Center for Religious and Cross-Cultural Studies (CRCS) on April 26, 2022. Ricci is a lecturer in the departments of Asian Studies and Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since 2013, she has been developing Indonesian Studies at the Hebrew University, the only Israeli university to offer this field of study. Her research interests include manuscript cultures of Javanese and Malay, translation studies, and Islamic literature from South and Southeast Asia. read more

We are proud as UGM announced that ICRS and CRCS UGM were ranked number 47 in the world and number 1 in Indonesia for the Theology, Divinity, and Religious Studies category by Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS WUR) by Subject. We would like to extend our deepest gratitude and appreciation to all who have been supporting us to obtain this achievement.

As reported in Kompas, Universitas Gadjah Mada achieved the 47th ranking in the world and the first nationally in the category of Theology, Divinity and Religious Studies. The Graduate School of UGM offers a Master of Arts degree in Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS) and a doctoral program in Inter-Religious Studies (IRS). The latter is part of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS), which consists of Universitas Gadjah Mada, Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana and Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogykarta. read more

Written by Athanasia Safitri

Religious leaders have the gift of relating sacred texts to the reality and transferring them to the community. The way the leaders interact with their religious followers is pivotal; his/her ideas must be in line with the community to succeed. Therefore, it is crucial to be consistent in what they believe and teach while bringing coherence to their message. This kind of relationship plays a key role for religious leaders as they provide guidance to their followers in their daily lives. Dr. Ismail Fajrie Alatas argues that authority in the sense of religious leadership means that the leader’s opinion is accepted and followed without coercion. read more