Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion

At the end of a dinner party, Winston Churchill spots a fellow guest surreptitiously pocketing an expensive silver salt-cellar. To avoid an undignified contretemps, Churchill has to think quickly. He picks up a silver pepperpot and places it in his own coat pocket. Then, approaching the gentleman in question, takes the pepperpot out of his pocket and sets it down in front of him. “I think they’ve seen us,” he says. “We had better put them back.” Dumbfounded, the would-be thief returns the stolen salt-cellar to its rightful place.

That’s a small example of the creative, split-second negotiating skill that characterises extreme persuasion. On the larger stage of international conflict, industrial relations, business deals and even fraud, it’s a technique that can transform the world. Some show great talent for it. These are the extreme persuaders.

In this programme, we look at the evolutionary and psychological roots of extreme persuasion. Game theory shows the selective advantage of cooperation through negotiation; brain science reveals how we are wired to take mental short-cuts, discarding the irrelevant to get maximum advantage from minimum effort. Some learn the skills, in others they seem innate. We meet professional persuaders and gifted amateurs to learn their secrets.

Published 150 years ago, Charles Darwin's seminal work, On the Origin of Species, continues to cause debate between scientists and some people of religious faith for whom the idea that man evolved from more primitive animals remains controversial.

Bridget Kendall chairs a debate about evolution and faith from a conference at the famous Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt.

She is joined by an audience of students and academics and a panel including: John Hedley Brooke from the Theology Department of Oxford University; Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates; Salman Hameed, Professor of Integrated Science and Humanities at Hampshire College in Massachusetts; Eugenie Scott, Director of the US National Centre for Science Education in California; and Samy Zalat, Professor of Biodiversity at the University of the Suez Canal.

They discuss how Darwin’s ideas were received around the world in his own time, and how attitudes vary today, from the Christian fundamentalist heartland in the USA to faith schools in the Middle East. Will there always be conflict between evolution and religion? Do they apply to different, non-overlapping worlds? Or can science live in harmony with faith?

Related Links

Darwin Now
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
British Council Conference on Evolution and Society

Petersburg, Kentucky, is in the middle of North America. It is supposedly within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the US population.

For the rest, it is just 10 minutes from Cincinnati International Airport. That is why it was picked as the site for a new museum, due to open in a couple of months.

We enter the landscaped grounds through gates flanked by wrought iron stegosaurs.

The lobby is modelled on a cliff in the Grand Canyon. But this is no ordinary museum of science and geology.

It is the dream of Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry that promotes the idea that the Biblical book of Genesis should be taken literally in describing the creation of the world, life and humans as carried out by God over a six-day period a few thousand years ago.

We get as far as the museum bookshop—already well-stocked with creationist titles—but no further.

Officials tell us that state regulations forbid it. It is still under construction and closed to visitors.

Is this, I wonder, because I am accompanied by Eugenie Scott, director of the National Centre for Science Education and a polite but determined campaigner against attempts to teach creationism alongside evolution in American school science classes.

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In scientific circles over the last 150 years, Charles Darwin‘s theory of evolution by natural selection has become the accepted explanation for how we and all other living things evolved from primitive, single-celled ancestors. Most biologists in most respected universities support that explanation and most agree that that process has taken hundreds of millions of years. Geologists now have evidence that our planet‘s history dates back about 4.6 billion years and cosmologists will tell you that our universe came into being through a process known as the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago.

In spite of that, many people are guided by a different set of beliefs, based on scripture. In the United States the incidence of such beliefs is particularly high. In a recent survey, more than 40% of Americans said they thought that humans and other creatures had been created in their present forms and have not evolved. Of those who did accept evolution, a third thought that it was guided by some supreme being.

In two editions of Heart and Soul, the BBC World Service explores the controversy in the United States between creation and evolution and investigates a spectrum of beliefs.

To gain insights into the minds of the personalities involved, the BBC gave microphones to two of the key players from very different

It‘s called the anthropic universe: a world set up so that human beings could eventually emerge. So many physical constants, so many aspects of our solar system, so much seems to be finely tuned for our benefit. But was it? We hear from Professors Martin Rees, Paul Davies, and Frank Tipler, as well as many others, about one of the ultimate questions.

I’ve been asking a few friends who are neither journalists nor scientists— nor, for that matter, Americans— what they understand by the term “intelligent design.” “Isn’t that the slogan of that German car company?,” one said, in a remark typical of what I often hear. In Europe, intelligent design is nowhere near the big issue that it is in North America. Serious newspapers have been giving brief coverage to the Dover, Pennsylvania court case on their inner pages, but in the popular press and on television there is not a mention made.

It’s interesting to reflect on why that might be. After all, according to the U.S. Constitution, church and state are separate whereas over here, the queen is both head of state and head of the Church of England. And many schools are church schools with religious education a small but significant part of their curriculum, and a brief act of worship is an almost daily event. But it is hard to find anyone here who thinks that intelligent design is serious science or that it should be taught as such in schools, or at least who is prepared to say so in public. The Church of England, for the most part, seems to be on the side of the biologists, and even the Catholic Church has gone on record as saying that evolution is more than just a theory.

Sixty years ago this month, in October 1945, the magazine Wireless World published an article by a relatively unknown writer and rocket enthusiast. Its title was: "Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World Wide Radio Coverage?" Today, the author's name is known throughout the world. He is the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, and his prediction of satellite communications has come true in ways even he never imagined. To mark the anniversary, Heather Couper travels to Sir Arthur's home in Sri Lanka to hear his own story.

It was 60 years ago this month that the popular magazine Wireless World published an article entitled Extra-terrestrial Relays: Can rocket stations give worldwide radio coverage? The author was a young writer by the name of Arthur C Clarke. His "rocket stations" are today known as communications satellites.

Eighty-seven years and the after-effects of polio have left Sir Arthur in a wheelchair and somewhat forgetful of past events; but as a science visionary, he is as sharp as ever, looking forward to the time when other predictions he has made come true.

He is convinced that we will become a space-faring species.

That people have not been back to the Moon for more than 30 years he regards as merely a temporary glitch.

As he points out in a special documentary on BBC Radio 4 this Wednesday, some of the greatest explorations in history were not followed up for decades.

He is sure that we will journey to Mars and eventually on to other solar systems; first sending robot probes, then humans, perhaps in suspended animation or even with their thoughts and consciousness transferred into a machine.

"When their bodies begin to deteriorate", he says, "you just transfer their thoughts, so their personalities could be immortal. You just save their thoughts on a disc and plug it in, simple!" he says, with a characteristic grin.

'Crazy' idea

Clarke grew up on a farm near Minehead, Somerset. His memories of that time are becoming hazy, but his younger brother, Fred, who still lives in the area, remembers the times well.

Arthur, he says, used to slip out from school in the lunch-break to search for copies of science fiction magazines, such as Astounding Stories.