"We live by the work of our hands and also have some left for helping out those who are maybe less fortunate," says the abbess of St. Mary's, Ireland's only Cistercian monastery for women.

In the brave new world of social media, says communication professor Stephen O'Leary, church authorities from pastors to the heads of denominations "no longer have the kind of control they once did."

“When we’re using missiles that kill but place no risk,” suggests Yale law professor Stephen Carter, “that means it’s easier to fight, which means it’s more likely we’ll fight.”

"Computers will match us in emotional intelligence, which includes our whole moral system," says inventor and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil.

Biological and technological evolution "is a spiritual process," says this famous futurist. "Entities become more godlike, never reaching that ideal but moving in that direction exponentially."

Purposefulness and self-sacrifice in human life "can never be reduced to a machine," according to this bioethicist.

Author and consultant Rushworth Kidder says there can be unintended ethical consequences when people use powerful new social media without "a moral compass."

MRI technology is currently used to gain insight into how behaviors and thoughts function biologically, and might one day lead to the ability to predict future behavior. However, the potential for such technology leads to troubling ethical questions.