Denis Alexander


Denis Alexander is the Emeritus Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St Edmund's College, Cambridge, a molecular biologist and an author on science and religion. He is also an editor of Science and Christian Belief. He is an evangelical Christian.

Scientific work

Alexander was an Open Scholar at Oxford, where he studied Biochemistry. He studied for a PhD in Neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry.
He spent 15 years in various university departments and laboratories outside the United Kingdom, establishing the National Unit of Human Genetics while an Associate Professor of Biochemistry American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
He worked at the Imperial Cancer Research Laboratories in London and subsequently headed the Molecular Immunology Programme and the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge.

Science and religion

Alexander has written on the subject of religion and science since at least 1972, when his book Beyond Science was reviewed by Hugh Montefiore, then Bishop of Kingston upon Thames in the New Scientist, in which Montefiore noted that Alexander never came out in that book explicitly in support of evolution.
Alexander has stated that he believes "that the Bible is the inspired Word of God from cover to cover" and that this position is consistent with his support for evolution. Alexander is a critic of intelligent design, arguing that is not science and should not be taught as such. He gives an overview of his position in his article, "Creation and Evolution" in The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity.
Alexander responded to Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design by stating that "the 'god' that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing", adding that "Hawking's god is a god-of-the-gaps used to plug present gaps in our scientific knowledge." "Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative".
Alexander has been quoted in such books as by biochemist and theologian Alister McGrath. He also makes an appearance in the documentary film The Trouble with Atheism, where he discusses his views on science and religion.