Shaping a Digital World

Faith, Culture and Computer Technology

Integration and Worldview within Computer Science

In a sense, integrating faith and computer science is somewhat of a misnomer. The truth is, there is always some presuppositions, beliefs, and a worldview at work when one working in computing. In the words of an April 2021 CACM paper: “Researchers and practitioners ought to be intentional and explicit about worldviews and value assumptions — the systems they design will always encode some belief about the world.”¹ Hence integration is already implicit in our computing work, the question is what beliefs are at work? Connecting the Christian faith with computer science then becomes a matter of being “intentional and explicit” about being informed by a Christian worldview. Basic worldview assumptions can be uncovered by posing the questions like the following:

What has independent existence? What is divine?
What is the nature of the world around us? Is the material world all there is?
What is wrong with the world? What is the remedy?
What does it mean to be human?
How do we tell what is right and wrong?

To gain insights into these questions, it is important to discern the historical movements and philosophical roots of computing. These in turn will help to discern the motivations that drive current research trends.

Christian Worldview within the CS Curriculum

The core courses in a standard computer science curriculum provide many touch points to discuss perspectival content along the way. Here are just a few examples of perspectival concepts that arise within a variety of standard computer science courses:

Course	Perspectival Concepts and Topics
Liberal Arts Core courses	reinforces the notion of coherence and diversity in creation
Intro programming	connecting bytes and beliefs; programming as a way of “loving your neighbor; writing “hospitable” code; coding and aesthetics; intro to history of technology; introduction to faith and technology
Data structures and algorithms	Limits in computing and creations; shortcomings of models and abstractions from reality, frugal use of computing time and space resources (stewardship norms)
Computer Organization	creational limits in hardware; stewardship in hardware design
Web programming	care norm and accessible websites; Justice and personal information and privacy; aesthetic norms and human interface design; social networks
Computer Networking	norms relating to privacy, hacking, reliability of a network (trust norm)
Operating Systems	complexity and humility, stewarding hardware resources well, security and ethical norms
Data Science and AI	justice and data science; faith and AI
Senior Project course	students are required to consider all design norms, practice teamwork and humility in challenging projects
Ethics and issues in computing	philosophy and theology applied to contemporary issues

Christian Faith and CS Pedagogy

We should go beyond what we teach to explore how we teach. Our pedagogy can be informed by Christian thought and practice. For example:

Treating the classroom as “an arena of hospitality”
Cultivating space for virtues like respect, wonder, humility, longing for shalom, repentance, patient reflection, truth-telling, celebrating excellent craftsmanship and beauty
Judiciously planned time with students outside of the classroom: learning communities, office conversations, conferences, chapel, etc.
Attention to physical space (like arrangement of desks and chairs) also have implications for the classroom community

For further explanations of this, see On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom by David Smith.

Sorelle A. Friedler et al, “The (Im)possibility of fairness: different value systems require different mechanisms for fair decision making”, Communications of the ACM, April 2021. 136–143. https://doi.org/10.1145/3433949↩︎