All Science articles – Page 8
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Prenatal screening 1: Peering into the unknown, less than 1/150, blood tests over the internet, and disability doublethink
Pregnant women today are offered a battery of tests and screening for their unborn child, looking for an ever-increasing range of conditions and risks.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Old people 2: Aging congregations, transcendence at the Arsenal, understanding life backwards, and honouring prayer warriors
Demographic trends reveal clearly the next century will be one increasingly dominated by older people. If God is giving us a lot more folk in their later years, what are they for in church life?
-
ArticleDebate Review: Richard Dawkins & Francis Collins on The Big Conversation
Apologist and former physician Erik Strandness reviews the encounter between the two high-profile scientists and what it tells us about God, design and morality.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Old people 1: The demographic transition, Reverend Thomas Malthus, Hasidic Jewish outliers, and the grey vote
The world’s population is rapidly becoming older and older, with many developed nations seeing unprecedented proportions of their citizens in retirement age.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Robot rights 2: Rejecting self-definition, the citadel of human uniqueness, rehashing ‘God of the gaps’, and evangelising at androids
In the second part of our conversation on robot rights, we explore three Christian responses to calls for robot personhood, spanning the spectrum of hostility to optimism about the development.
-
ArticleWhy Dawkins & Collins need God for our “hole-in-one” universe
Philosopher Peter S Williams thinks both Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins overlooked a design inference, within the realm of evolutionary biology, which would go hand-in-hand with the argument from “fine-tuning” (which Dawkins himself described as “a good argument” for God during their debate).
-
ShowsUnbelievable? Richard Dawkins & Francis Collins Biology, Belief and Covid: Can science and faith be reconciled?
The Big Conversation - Episode 1 | Season 4
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Robot rights 1: Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws, fauxbots, whimpering miniature dinosaurs, and inherent or conferred personhood
If and when autonomous and intelligent robots come into existence, should they be granted rights, or even personhood?
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Pregnancy crisis 2: Paternalistic gynaecologists, holding truth with grace, ambiguity in the ultrasound clinic, and refusing the culture war
Abortion is a flashpoint issue in both the church and wider culture, with the very language you choose used as a cudgel for either side.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: John Stott 2: Christians in the public square, an untried ideal, talking and living like Jesus, and the challenge of evangelical hagiography
This is part two of our re-broadcast of last year’s John Stott episode, to mark what would have been his centenary.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: John Stott 1: Double listening, a conservative radical, redefining ‘the ministry’ and salt as preservative
This month marks 101 years since the late John Stott was born, and his centenary last year prompted a flurry of events to mark the centenary of this highly influential vicar, Bible teacher and evangelical leader.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Palliative care 2: Resisting assisted dying, the ‘superskill’ of listening, DNAR discussions, and euthanasia-free-zones
In Britain as in many countries there is a growing campaign to legalise assisted suicide and to make doctors prescribe on request lethal drugs to terminally ill patients.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Palliative care 1: Dogs and Guinness on the wards, ‘living until you die’, deathbed prayers, and complicated grief
Over the past 60 years a new field of medicine has emerged – palliative care.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Climate anxiety 2: Listening to the Global South, alienation from creation, throwing pebbles into God’s river, and rediscovering lament
Following on from our discussion last week on the rise of climate fatalism, we discuss what an authentically Christian response to our environmental crisis would look like.
-
ShowsIs Intelligent Design advancing or in retreat? Casey Luskin & Adam Shapiro
Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute, and editor of ‘The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith’ argues that the Intelligent Design movement is gaining new converts and has never been stronger. Science historian Adam Shapiro, co-author of ‘Science and Religion: A very short introduction’ responds.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Climate anxiety 1: ’Delay means death’, media apathy, Extinction Rebellion, and fatalism among the young
The latest report from the UN’s climate scientists was both incredibly downbeat about climate change and almost entirely ignored by a media fixated on Ukraine.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Human enhancement 2: Techno-optimism returns, the yuck factor, cultivating our bodies, and the divinisation of humanity
In this episode we pick up our conversation from last week about transhumanism and how technology might redefine what it means to be human.
-
ShowsThe surrogacy industry: John & Tim Wyatt on the ethics of paying for pregnancy
This episode was recorded shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine. Prior to the outbreak of war, Ukraine’s lax surrogacy laws have made it a major destination for so-called ‘reproductive tourism’ for infertile and same-sex couples who wish to have a baby.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Human enhancement 1: Calico, the dragon tyrant, transhumanism, and monkeys playing Pong
Billions of dollars are currently being spent by a suite of private firms, mostly in Silicon Valley, pursuing radical research to enhance human capacities.
-
ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Relaunch: How we started, baby boomers and millennials, the pandemic as catalyst, and the signal to noise ratio
To mark our arrival on the Premier network, we recap how Matters of Life and Death began and what we hope our intergenerational conversations might achieve.
