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Welcome to the last Infinite Monkey Cage in the series. The title is Infinite but Radio 4's requirements of us are finite.

I'm Robin Inc. and over the course of the last four weeks I've been more surprised I imagined about how little I know.

It turns out the universe is really big. And I'm Brian Cox and I am become death, the destroyer of worlds by which I mean I used to work on an STFC Science funding committee.

And as it's Christmas week today we'll be discussing science and religion. And do remember you get a prize if you got the STFC funding committee Oppenheimer gag there.

So that's the last of the science funding jokes out the way and I think they went down tremendously well. Radio times a rave review.

Thank you. Anyway to help finally solve this eternal quandary in under 28 minutes science versus religion science and religion we are joined in the monkey cage by Chris Addison actor writer and best known perhaps as Oli in the BBC hit committee the thick of it.

And he's on the side of possibly the recently fallen. And we also delighted to have the right Reverend Victor stock Dean of Guildford.

Hello.

What an excellent. We haven't had a hello like that in the series at all. Let's get Dean should sound like hello.

Chris you have done various shows specifically about science. Yeah one about evolution and then I think possibly what I to me would be the trick is one you did a so low standup show about the periodic table.

I did yes. Yeah. Do people love the dead. Yes. Yes. So you can do it. It's possible. And I the but there was one point in the show where about sort of 10 minutes in.

I didn't like to do it straight away because people you know you have to warm them into this kind of thing. I pulled on a string which revealed the periodic table and every single night you could hear.

As people saw this thing you know this wall of impenetrable nonsense that had tortured them as children.

Do you have a gag for every element? I mean I was thinking is it thoolyum that might be a tough one. They're all quite tough. I don't think I had a gag for every element.

I did try the very first preview I did of the show which is in York. I had no structure and so I went through the periodic table doing the jokes about the elements and written in order and that turned out to be no way to do a show.

The show itself was called atomicity and it was about how we are with science and what our response to the universe is which is that we attempt to control it and that we've used it to understand and investigate further and further control what we're doing.

But any shows that I've written about science or history or what have you that a comedy shows the rule has always been the jokes come first. So what actually happens in the writing processes I end up with the best jokes I've got and then I find a way of stringing them together.

So we met in this gray area between science and religion didn't we because I met you at York Cathedral. I was the token atheist on the panel and I think we found more common ground than either of us at the imagine and then you came to Sun.

I did but your invitation that was fantastic and I remember you taking me around it and we went around that underground bit the size of a circle line and I was supposed to respond and you know like all kind of people don't anything about science I just went oh goodness huge isn't it.

Wow I said it's ever so long that's really kind of informed you know high educated response and then mercifully I found a bit I said look is that held together with baking foil and everybody went because it actually was and I have a theory that that's a bit of fell off and stopped the whole experiment from working am I right about the normal.

That's surprising. Anyway it was great wasn't it I hugely enjoyed it well yeah you know it's it's often reported there should be some tension between the scientific world view and the religious world view I mean there's obviously Richard Dawkins as Christopher Hitchens so did you find that there was anything there about exploring you know the very early universe about the scientific project in general that caused you to think there must be attention there's something inherent there absolutely not.

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