On the podcast this week, Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the think tank Theos, talks about how the science v. religion debate has developed since the New Atheist movement came to prominence more than 15 years ago.

Nick is the co-author, along with Hannah Waite, of a new report Science and Religion: Moving away from the shallow end, produced by Theos and the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Read our story about the report here.

In a Comment article for the Church Times this week (29 April), Nick writes: “People — in particular, certain kinds of atheist — do claim that science and religion are in complete tension. But it is not always clear where this alleged tension lies. To put it another way, there is a great deal of smoke hanging about the science and religion debate, the fog of an allegedly ancient war. But, beneath the smoke, where exactly is the fire?”

Nick Spencer hosts the Reading Our Times podcast, produced by Theos, which explores the books and ideas that are shaping us today. In 2019, he presented a three-part series on Radio 4, The Secret History of Science and Religion (Comment, 21 June 2019, Radio, 28 June 2019)

His next book, Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and religion, will be published by Oneworld Publications in March next year. His previous books include The Political Samaritan: How power hijacked a parable (Bloomsbury, 2017), Mighty and the Almighty: How political leaders do God (Biteback, 2017), and Evolution of the West: How Christianity has shaped our values (SPCK, 2016).

Click the play button above to listen to this podcast. You can also listen to the Church Times Podcast on the Church Times app for iPhone and iPad, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most other podcast platforms. Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.