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Nick Spencer and Steven Pinker: The future of humanity

Nick Spencer and Steven Pinker: The future of humanity

Theos’ Nick Spencer and Harvard professor Steven Pinker debate science, reason and humanism, recorded for the video series ‘Unbelievable?’

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Are science, humanism and ongoing moral progress the result of an atheistic Enlightenment philosophy, or the product of a Judaeo–Christian worldview?

Theos’ Nick Spencer and Harvard professor Steven Pinker have debated science, reason, humanism and faith for The Big Conversation, a video series from Unbelievable?, the flagship apologetics and theology discussion show on Premier Christian Radio in the UK.

Watch the full video here:

Watch clips of it here:

​Steven Pinker is professor of psychology at Harvard University whose work spans, sociology, evolution, language and philosophy. His latest book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress makes the case that human progress has never been greater and we need to guard against unscientific ways of thinking, including religion, to see it continue. 

Nick Spencer is research director at Theos and the author of books such as The Evolution of the West: How Christianity Has Shaped Our Values. He believes that while the story of progress may be true, modern thinkers fail to realise how indebted Western values of equality, democracy and science are to Christianity.

 

 Image from The Big Conversation.

Nick Spencer

Nick Spencer

Nick is Senior Fellow at Theos. He is the author of a number of books and reports, including Magisteria: the entangled histories of science and religion (Oneworld, 2023), The Political Samaritan: how power hijacked a parable (Bloomsbury, 2017), The Evolution of the West (SPCK, 2016) and Atheists: The Origin of the Species (Bloomsbury, 2014). He is host of the podcast Reading Our Times.

Watch, listen to or read more from Nick Spencer

Watch all episodes of Unbelievable? at https://www.thebigconversation.show/

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