Science and Religion: the sane enter the debate

Cambridge is a rare city in that (as well as cinema multiplexes and the odd theatre) you can attend free lectures many days a week.

The Faraday Institute, based at St Edmond's College and, I suspect, newly flush with funds from the (very rich) Templeton Foundation, is an organization set up to provide some coherent and sane thinking about Science and Religion. Thank goodness. As an ordinary punter you get fed up of the they-just-don't-get-it 'Intelligent Design' and Creationist lot in the States and equally fed up, though more entertained, by the as-zealous-as-a-convert Richard Dawkins in Oxford. I think they should all be locked in a room together forever and the resultant warm air used to heat a nursing home or something.

Enter the Faraday Institute, made up of people whose science and thinking would be respected whatever their views: Cambridge-based discoverer of the pulsar, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, for example, Theoretical Physicist turned Anglican priest John Polkinghorne; superstar theologian Alister McGrath, and a bunch of alpha-males who can strut their Chairs and Fellowships and CBEs with the best of them. Oh, it's great.

Better still (and the reason for this blog) is all their courses and lectures are now available as podcasts. Like living in Cambridge only without the house-prices. Here's the link:

www.faraday-institute.org