The Science & Belief in Society Podcast

In this episode (our first recorded in-person) we talk with distinguished historian of science Professor Bernard Lightman. We discuss his wide-ranging contributions to the historical study of science and religion, from his early work on the origins of agnosticism, to his views on more recent shifts and trends in the field - and the differences between T.H. Huxley and Richard Dawkins. 

The Science & Belief in Society Podcast is back - but for how much longer? In this opening episode of Season 3, James and Will welcome Dr Hauke Riesch, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Brunel University, London, to talk about the end of the world... Narratives of the apocalypse - stories of how the world will end, and humanity's fate before, during and after these variously prophesied cataclysms, have been a central feature of many global religions.  From the threat of nuclear war via global pandemics to the onset of climate breakdown, these narratives are now increasingly prevalent in scientific discourses. We discuss Hauke's work in this area, which has traced the continuities and breakages in how these narratives are deployed in both religious and scientific contexts, the different forms they take and their existential and social function. We also discuss the lighter side of the end times, contrasting apocalyptic narratives with other communication strategies for engagement, including comedy.

Religious practices and their effects are increasingly the subject of scientific investigation. In the field of Contemplative Science, mediative practices drawn from Buddhist traditions are united with techniques of analysis from cognitive and neurosciences. In this episode, James and Will welcome Mareike Smolka, a PhD Researcher at Maastricht University in Science and Technology Studies and Fullbright Scholar at Arizona State University, who has ethnographically explored this community. Mareike’s work traces the development of Contemplative Science from fringe to mainstream interest, and demonstrates the tensions and trade-offs in play when exploring religious practices from within the boundaries of the neoliberal academy.

In this episode, Richard and Will talk with Professor Adam Chepkwony, a Full Professor of Religion at the University of Kabianga in Kenya. Professor Chepkwony's work covers a wide range of topics including African Religion, Inter-religious Dialogue, Science and Religion, and more. In this episode, Professor Chepkwony provides his perspective on how issues like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have affected, and are perceived by, people in Kenya. Additionally, Professor Chepkwony discusses the impacts of colonialism and missionary work in Kenya, including how rigid conceptualizations of Christianity, democracy, and science can sometimes lead Africans to feel like they are living "double lives".

In this episode, Rachael and Richard talk with Dr Sarah Qidwai, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Sarah’s work explores transnational and local perspectives on scientific disciplines during the long nineteenth century. In this episode, we discuss the focus of Sarah’s doctoral thesis, the Muslim polymath Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), and her latest project entitled ‘Scientism and Empire’ while examining how disciplines such as astronomy, geology, and evolutionary biology operated within the confines of Empire in the 19th Century.

Understanding public attitudes towards science has become an increasingly important area of research in recent decades, and the importance of this kind of work has only been heightened by the emergence of COVID-19, and the diverse and unpredictable public responses to scientific and medical advice during the pandemic. In this episode Will and Richard talk to Dr Baastian Rutjens, who investigates public attitudes to science around the world, with a focus on what he describes as ‘science scepticism’. Baastian explains how tools and methods from social psychology can help us to understand the motivations which underlie scepticism of science, and we discuss the wider social and political implications of these kinds of attitudes.

In this episode James Riley and Richard Grove talk with John Stenhouse, Associate Professor of History at the University of Otago, New Zealand.  John's research interests centre on the interconnections between science, religion, race, politics and gender in the modern world, particularly using New Zealand as the major site of study. We talk about the history of creationist and evolutionary ideas in New Zealand, and how a nation cannot be separated from larger complexities of empire and globalisation when thinking about the reception of scientific ideas.

In this episode, hosts Richard Grove and James Riley meet with Dr. Vivian Dzokoto, a Cultural Psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States, to discuss her work on the cultural differences in how people think about "the mind." Dr. Dzokoto has published research on a wide range of topics. However, one of the key characteristics of her research is the examination of culture and religion. Much of her research focuses on people from West African countries, such as Ghana. In this episode, Dr. Vivian Dzokoto chats with Richard and James about her research on emotions and Ghanaian understandings of the mind based on an analysis of Akan proverbs.

In this episode, hosts Rachael Shillitoe and Richard Grove, meet with Elaine Howard Ecklund, Professor of Sociology at Rice University and David R. Johnson, Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies at Georgia State University, to discuss their new book, Varieties of Atheism in Science, out now with Oxford University Press. Elaine and David reflect on the findings of their study which draws on surveys and interviews with atheist scientists in the UK and USA. Chatting with Rachael and Richard, Elaine and David, challenge some of the commonly held assumptions about the interrelation between atheism and science and by exploring atheist scientists’ diverse views of religion, their perspectives on the limits to what science can explain, and their views of meaning and morality.

New-age spirituality, wellness and alternative health practices have been cast in a new light as the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded. The relationship between these practices and established or mainstream science and public health has tended to be an uneasy one, and this unease has only increased during the pandemic, with online spiritualist and wellness communities providing fertile ground for the growth and spread of increasingly anti-establishment and conspiratorial ideas. To discuss these issues with James and Will is today's guest, Dr Anna Halafoff, Associate Professor in Sociology at Deakin University, Melbourne, who explores these issues in the Australian context. Anna dissects the rise and development of ‘(con)spirituality’ online, the shifting political make-up of these communities, and how, beyond the pandemic, these communities and the individuals participating in them can be seen as responding to the social and economic conditions imposed by neoliberalism.