The long border dispute between science and religion

In 1927, a Catholic priest told Albert Einstein the universe was expanding. Einstein though that was a crazy idea. But the priest was right. 

And when the Pope claimed this as proof of creation, the tables were turned again. The priest told the pontiff, keep your religion out of my physics. 

There’s the simple idea that we had religion to explain the world, until we upgraded to science, which did the trick far more effectively.   

But as the priest and Einstein anecdote illustrates, that simple idea does not explain the very complex story: the relationship between science and religion. 

Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at the London think tank Theos. His latest book is The Landscapes of Science and Religion – What are we disagreeing about? 

Peter Harrison is Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame Australia and Emeritus Professor at UQ. His latest book is Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age 

They’ll both be Keynote speakers opening the 2026 ISCAST biennial Conference on Science and Christianity. 

This program was made on the lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.