Seminarians, Popes and Evolution: A View from Brazil
By Marcio Antonio Campos Are seminarians who know what popes have said on evolution more likely to make peace with Darwin? When Pope Francis said in 2014 that God was not “a magician, complete with an all powerful magic wand”, parts of the press went mad, as if the Catholic Church had finally made peace […]
Science and Social Stereotypes
***This blog post originally appeared on the University of Birmingham website, 10 February 2021, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the University of Birmingham.*** 11 February was the United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science. To mark the occasion network members Carissa Sharp and Stephen Jones explore the reasons […]
Podcast Special: COVID, Conspiracies & Vaccines – Dr Tom Aechtner
Recently, we caught up with Dr Tom Aechtner, Senior Lecturer in Religion and Science at the University of Queensland, to record an episode for the Science & Belief in Society podcast series. That episode, on Tom’s work around persuasion tactics in science and religion mass media communication, will be launched in Summer 2021. Tom has […]
New Pew Report on the Intersection of Science and Religion in Southeast Asia
By James Riley Pew Research Center recently released a new report exploring the intersections of science and religion, based on new data from interviews with Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists in Malaysia and Singapore. The report’s authors said: “The discussions reinforced the conclusion that there is no single, universally held view of the relationship between science […]
The Pope is looking to scientists to find a cure for coronavirus – but so are Ricky Gervais and Richard Dawkins
By Alper Bilgili A cartoon, widely circulated on social media, depicts clergy of various religions in despair, begging a scientist to find a cure for COVID-19. In another, clergy are staring at a picture of a nurse who asks for silence with a “SHHH” sign. Those who share these cartoons seem certain that the ensuing […]
Darwin Day: Celebrating Without Deifying
By Alexander Hall Today, Friday February 12th 2016, is the 207th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Celebrated around the world as ‘Darwin Day’, events across 6 continents from Tel-Aviv to Tokyo will commemorate the English naturalist’s work, explore his legacy, and discuss the current state of affairs in the field of Evolutionary Biology and beyond. […]
Is the Danish Minister of Higher Education and Science a creationist? – The monkey business revisited
By Hans Henrik Hjermitslev During July and August 2015 the Danish public witnessed a heated controversy on science and religion in the popular media. The reason for this was that two historians of religion, Michael Rothstein and Jens-André Herbener, accused the newly appointed Minister of Higher Education and Science, the Liberal MP Esben Lunde Larsen, […]
Do we still have faith in science? Progress, the Pope and belief in things we can’t see
By Stephen H. Jones ‘What has become clear to me in recent years is that the old dream of progress, which used to be assumed, is being replaced in popular culture by visions of disaster, ecological catastrophe in particular’. So said Robert Bellah, one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished scholars of religion, in 2008. […]
