Robots, Aliens and Neanderthals: New Horizons in Science and Religion

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For too long, the ’science and religion’ debate has fixated on creation, evolution, cosmology, miracles and quantum theory. But this, argue Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite, is a mistake. Religious belief has survived, and thrived, under many different models of the universe. It was never intended to be a competing explanation for the science of any age. Where science and religion really do come together - sometimes furiously, sometimes fruitfully - is over the status and nature of the human. And that has never been more important than today.

Whether it’s the quest for immortality or the search for alien life, the treatment of pandemics or ’animal personhood’, AI or mental health, abortion or genetic editing, science is making advances that are posing huge questions about what it means to be human, whether we should change ourselves, and how far we should ’play God’.

These developments are only going to grow in significance. Playing God brings readers up to date with the latest developments but also draws out their moral and religious dimensions. In so doing, it shows how the future of science and religion is inextricably tied up with the future of humanity

Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at Theos, the Christian think tank. He is the author of a number of books and reports, including The Evolution of the West (SPCK, 2016), Atheists: The Origin of the Species (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Darwin and God (SPCK, 2009). Nick writes extensively for both secular and Christian media, and runs the popular Reading our Times podcast. Outside of Theos, Nick is Visiting Research Fellow at the Faiths and Civil Society Unit, Goldsmiths, University of London and a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion.

Hannah Waite is Science and Religion Researcher at Theos.