Reason and faith in Vancouver: the World Congress on Logic and Religion meets in September

The relation between reason and faith is one of philosophy's oldest arguments. Along a line running from Plato and Aristotle through Avicenna, Aquinas and Kant, the same question keeps returning: does belief require reason, or is there a domain of faith beyond reason's limits?

That argument convenes in Vancouver this month — and artificial intelligence is now on its agenda.

The 5th World Congress on Logic and Religion (WoCoLoR 2026) takes place in Vancouver, Canada, from 23 to 27 September.

Sessions are spread across three institutions: Simon Fraser University's Harbour Centre campus downtown, University Canada West and the Robson Square building of the University of British Columbia.

The deadline for abstracts and posters was the end of June, with extended abstracts collected in mid-August. It is also possible to attend without presenting.

Beyond theology#

What distinguishes WoCoLoR is that it does not confine the relation between logic and religion to the classical debates of natural theology.

The congress describes itself as an international forum for academics, researchers, students and the public who want to investigate the relations between logic and religion, reason and faith, rational inquiry and divine revelation.

The list of participating disciplines shows the same breadth: logic, philosophy, mathematics, computer science, psychology, linguistics and the cognitive sciences — joined by researchers from different religious traditions.

Three notable strands#

Artificial intelligence, faith and epistemic coherence. The most current item on the programme. The question: what does a belief system gain by being internally coherent? And could an AI system audit that coherence?

The logic of profit and of faith. The programme's most unusual heading. It takes up the relation between the logic of profit under capitalism and the ways religious belief produces value — reopening, with the tools of logic and philosophy of religion, a question that has belonged to sociology since Weber's Protestant Ethic.

Non-Western traditions. The conceptions of logic and virtue in the Jain, Sikh and Chinese traditions form a working group of their own. This is part of a tendency that has strengthened in comparative philosophy in recent years — and it touches on a risk discussed on Daily Nous this month: translating non-Western thinkers into domesticated versions of our own concepts.

The programme also makes room for religious paradoxes, feminist thought and mysticism.

Why it matters now#

A single question stands at the meeting point of all these headings: under what conditions can a person believe rationally?

That is not only a question for the philosophy of religion. It is the question of the present crisis of knowledge.

Artificial intelligence has begun to produce knowledge. Algorithms play a growing part in decision-making. And people with access to the same information believe in entirely different realities.

Philosophy of religion brings a historical advantage to that argument. The question of when belief is legitimate in the absence of sufficient evidence has been worked on in this field for centuries. William James's "The Will to Believe" is its best-known statement.

The Vancouver congress is therefore not only an academic meeting: it is a ground on which to rethink what we mean by "reason" in the twenty-first century.