Nick Spencer

* Will AI ever attain emotional intelligence? * What would it mean to find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? * Did our human ancestors, or do our mammalian cousins, have a sense of the spiritual? These and other cutting-edge questions are where the action is in the field of science and religion, and this book brings you bang up to date with both the latest thinking and the direction in which current research is taking us. Emerging from a partnership between the UK’s leading religion and society think tank, Theos, and The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, and incorporating the results of interviews with over 100 leading figures in the field, this is a book for all who are ready to gain a better grasp of contemporary topics that are often bypassed in science and religion conversations, including: aliens and astrobiology; the opportunities and threats of AI; Neanderthals and the origins of morality and religion; the hard problem of consciousness; the complex boundary between natural and supernatural; the promise of human genetic modification; the challenge of climate change; health and well-being; the rise of (post-)truth; and politics, our common life and public reasoning. These are all complex and fast-moving areas of enquiry, but Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite have produced a survey and analysis that will enable you to firmly grasp the issues at stake as well as tracing the main contours of research and debate as they are now developing.

The first arc of Nick Spencer's revitalized series featuring a modern take on Archie Andrews and the whole Riverdale cast of characters. Spencer (Amazing Spider-Man) and Marguerite Sauvage (DC Bombshells) begin a brand new era of our flagship series as they take a trip to Riverdale and bring the town along for a wild ride complete with new mysteries, new relationships, and much more

What has Christianity ever done for us? A lot more than you might think, as Nick Spencer reveals in this fresh exploration of our cultural origins. Looking at the big ideas that characterize the West, such as human dignity, the rule of law, human rights, science - and even, paradoxically, atheism and secularism - he traces the varied ways in which many of our present values grew up and flourished in distinctively Christian soil. Always alert to the tensions and the mess of history, and careful not to overstate the Christian role in shaping our present values, Spencer shows how a better awareness of what we owe to Christianity can help us as we face new cultural challenges.

Religion and politics ought not mix, we are often told. But they have always done so, and sometimes with great success, notably in the development of welfare states in the early 20th century, when Christian churches and theologians were constructively, if sometimes critically, in supportive of such initiatives. Today, however, economic and demographic pressures have conspired to place the state under immense pressure, with calls to 'rethink' the welfare state becoming more common. Rethinking, however, demands that we ask some big questions: What is welfare for? What kind of good are we trying to achieve? What kind of being is it whose good we are trying to serve? In this study, Nick Spencer steers the welfare debate away from technocratic concerns. Drawing on the work of four major, twentieth-century theologians, he offers a fresh, concrete, and realistic vision for the vision of welfare at a time when it is badly needed.

The relationship between science and religion has long been a heated debate and is becoming an ever more popular topic. The scientific capacity to manipulate and change humans and their environment through genetic engineering, life extension, and AI is going to take a huge leap forward in the twenty-first century, provoking endless debates around humans “playing God”. But what do we mean by this? Asking this question is surprisingly hard work. Attempts to 'essentialise' science, let alone religion, quickly run into trouble. Where are the boundaries? Whose definition of science is definitive? Which concept of religious is the authoritative one? Ultimately, neither “science” nor “religion” can be pinned down to one single meaning or definition. Rather, they encompass a family of definitions that relate to one another in a complex web of shifting ways. Drawing on extensive research with over a hundred leading thinkers in the UK — including Martin Rees, Brian Cox, Susan Greenfield, A. C. Grayling, Ray Tallis, Linda Woodhead, Steve Bruce, Adam Rutherford, Robin Dunbar, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, and Iain McGilchrist — The Landscapes of Science and Religion takes the much-needed step of asking what science and religion actually are, before turning to the familiar question of how they relate to one another. Building on this, by paying particular attention to those who sense some form of conflict here, Spencer and Waite explore where the perceived conflict really lies. What exactly are people disagreeing about when they disagree about science and religion, and what, if anything, can we do to improve that disagreement and bring about a fruitful dialogue between these two important human endeavours.

Could science one day 'defeat death'? What would alien contact mean for humanity? Has medicine finally found a cure for sadness? Will AI replace us? 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.