When Science Meets Faith

Dr Alexander Borman completed his PhD in engineering while training to be a priest in the Church of England. This talk will consider how faith can shape people's scientific and educational journeys. We'll cover ideas from research in explosive initiators, to how we communicate our knowledge and engage with others, with personal influences from priests, bishops and a convent of nuns.

Surely theology and science must be in conflict? Can you have theism and natural philosophy? Scientific investigation of universal laws was based on the belief that they were the product of God. As a science mad teenager, the question of why the universe is here drove me to being a philosophical theist after watching programs like Carl Sagan's Cosmos (not an outcome he would have approved of!) - with my Christian faith coming rather later. In this talk we’ll consider why thinking of science and faith in conflict can be a mistake, with science investigating how the universe works and faith exploring why the universe exists at all, and why it has the particular characteristics that we observe.