You Tube Theology

A conversation with Dr Nick Spencer, Senior Fellow at Theos, a think tank based in UK. The pretext of this conversation is Nick's latest book (2025), authored together with Dr Hannah Waite, The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What Are We Disagreeing About? (They published together also Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity, 2024.) The discussion begins with Doru showing several articles and book reviews published in Christian Perspectives on Science and Technology, whose object was his magnum opus, Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion (2023). From there, the conversation moves to the main point of Landscapes, that we need a view from below, from the ground, of science, religion, and their multiple forms of interaction. Nick explains the importance of the new approach as a way of overcoming widespread misunderstandings about science, religion, and their relationship, misunderstandings pertaining to both academics and regular folk. He gives useful examples of misunderstandings as well as pathways for moving on, beyond the current impasse. The discussion brings about the importance of anthropology, considering the human being, as a fertile ground for science and religion. The last word is about the need to pay attention to the media biased representations of science, as a positive and constructive undertaking, and religion, as a negative factor that undermines the social fabric.

Nick's profile
https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/authors/3/nick-spencer
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/nick-spencer-1085967
https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk/about/people/nick-spencer/

The Landscapes of Science and Religion
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-landscapes-of-science-and-religion-9780198878759

For whoever is interested in reading the CPOSAT articles on and book reviews of Nick's work
https://journal.iscast.org

3 April 2025

Host: Doru Costache
https://scd.edu.au/team-members/associate-professor-doru-costache/

#nickspencer #scienceandreligion