Is the internet helping to draw young people to the faith? This is the question Catholic convert Mahon McCann asks in his talk delivered at Saturday’s ⁠‪Iona Institute‬ youth⁠ conference called ‘God or the Machine?’. Among other things, Mahon describes how it was online faith-based material that initially led him out of atheism and into Christianity.

In an extremely engaging, original and ultimately positive talk, Mahon says:

• Yes, there are definitely terrible dangers online and especially on social media
• Yes, social media is creating a kind of race to the bottom where the worst behaviour often attracts the most attention
• Yes, social media is disorientating an awful lot of young people and scrambling their values
• But this is also causing a growing number of people to seek a safe harbour
• That safe harbour can’t be secularism or relativism because they only disorientate people further
• Christianity does provide a safe harbour. It offers meaning, purpose, transcendence, community, a proper set of stable values
• Ultimately and ironically, it’s not religion that is being doomed by social media, AI and virtual reality, it’s secularism.

Mahon presents a regular podcast that examines the intersection between faith and philosophy. He is a philosophy PhD researcher and lecturer. On his YouTube channel ⁠he⁠ explores Christian solutions to the meaning crisis, philosophy beyond reductive materialism, meaning and manipulation in the machine age and bridging the gap between the secular world and Christianity. His Substack can be found at: www.mahonmccann.com.

Mahon’s talk can be found here on YouTube.