TV and Radio

This programme is part of the BBC's Darwin Season and will be broadcast at 7pm on Tuesday 31 March on BBC TWO.

In the programme Conor Cunningham, who is a Christian and a firm believer in Darwin's theory of evolution, attempts to overturn the view that Darwin's ideas have weakened religion.

Follow this link to find out more about the programme: www.bbc.co.uk/progra...

The programme's Executive Producer, Jean Claude Bragard, will be available on this message board thread to answer your questions during board opening hours on Wednesday 1st April.

Religion Host

Of course he didn't. He killed Genesis. Phil Collins is a rubbish drummer anyway. lol.

But seriously the bible was a book written by mankind, not god. Don't know why creationists can't just believe god created evolution and then go on about their day. Or even read some Aristotle prime mover stuff..

He killed God of the Scriptures...

I was not that impressed. While I agree that Darwin didn't kill god he didn't set out to. Darwin also didn't kill elves , golblins and the tooth fairy.

I was also not impressed with the presenters view that christians had never taken the Genesis account literaly, when he got to the American Bible his argument seemed to be that no christians take genesis literally except for the millions that do.

I was also disapointed that he did not addrss what I thought were obvious problems with his view.

1. If man evolved in a Darwinian way did the human soul also evolve.

2. Why would a loving god decide to populate the Earth with its various life forms uing the cruelest method possible, Darwinian evolution.

3. If Genesis is not to be taken literally but interpreted for its deeper truth and that contradictions indicate that a non literal interpretaion is to be used where do you stop, Genesis, Exodus ... And are the gospels not to be read as literaly true given the differences between them

Superb. Great to hear someone on this subject who isn't from either end of the scale. I thought it was balanced and well researched and terrific food for thought. On a side note I thought he put a lot of professional journalists to shame. One of the best investigative pieces i've seen for some time.

Jean Claude

I enjoyed the programme. I thought he dealt with creationism very well, in showing its comparative modernity.

The question of a 'cruel world' hinges for me on its material nature. Everything material decays and dies, so a material world is bound to be full of suffering.

Sometimes, people say, why couldn't God create a material world without suffering, but for me, that is incoherent. It would be a magical world, and God, or at least the Christian God, is not a magician.

And of course the Christian story has at its heart the suffering of God. It is not dodged. If you like, God suffers by coming into existence. I think we get confused by the Greek notion of an unmoved God, whereas the Christian God is racked by suffering.

For me, the issue of literalism is a non-issue. If you read any of the early Christians, they are obsessed with allegorical and metaphoric readings of all texts. Our notion of the factual nature of texts just wouldn't have occurred to them.

I am reading something Conor has written online about the contradictions in materialism. Very elegant. It's a pleasure to see something so intelligent on TV.

The idea that a meme's survival has nothing to do with its truth is completely absurd and shows that the presenter either knows nothing about memes or is deliberately misleading viewers about them.

A meme's survival can absolutely be dependent upon its truth. The colonised person has every opportunity to test any meme that they are colonised with at any time during the colonisation process. Any meme tested and proven false can easily be destroyed within the mind, while any meme that stands up to rigorous testing, such as scientific experiment, will be allowed to survive and be reinforced by said testing. Any meme that cannot be proven either way can and should have big question marks attached to it.

All memes go through a process of natural selection just as genes do. The true ones will ultimately survive in the long run and the false ones will not. False and worthless memes take energy away from the individuals and societies they colonise and when the human race encounters extreme survival situations it will be those memes that are tested severely for their truth and worth and many false and worthless memes will perish forever when those events occur.

The fact that modern humans have not ever encountered an extreme survival situation has given rise to the perpetuation and dissemination of many false and worthless memes and this has clouded the theory. It does not as the presenter would have it, create an unanswerable problem with the theory.

hi jean claude.

i have 2 seperate points.

first i did not think the ID point of view was very accurate or very clear, and i only got a few words applied to it.

the ID web site gives a much clearer definition :www.intelligentdesig...

and the second point is :

that 9 years before darwin's book. -Andrew Jackson Davis already published an account of 'the origin of man' in the first volume of 'the great harmonia volume 1 (1850)'. availabe online as an ebook , there is even a very good illustration of the tree of life from minerals up to man.quod.lib.umich.edu/c...

i have the actual book , all the volumes.

if you dont know Jackson was known as the ' poughkeepsie seer ' and obtained all his information by psychic means. himself being at that time 'very unschooled'


www.andrewjacksondav...

can you make a documentory on him sometime., it would be very interesting

all the best

steven

I would like to ask Jean Claude this:If Genesis is not to be believed literally then Adam could not have 'literally' committed the first sin. Therefore Jesus's purpose of 'dying for our <Adam's> sins was meaningless. Conversely, if Genesis is to be believed, then 'man' could not have evloved.  On both counts, how can Christianity be compatible with evolution by natural selection?

I think dtpeurope is being too generous calling the programme facile. Whilst it certainly was, it was also extremely dishonest. The presenter made a number of claims about what "ultra-Darwinists" said, some of which may or may not be true, I don't know without research, but some of them were definitely not true. As for the editing, especially around the Dan Dennet interview - that was blatently dishonest. The presenter asked Dennet about "ultra-Darwinists" (what was it with this ignorant buffoon and this phrase? He obviously thought it sounded clever), then after a cut we saw Dennet answering a totally different question.

Besides all that, he never actually attempted to address any of the problems that accepting evolution by natural selection throws up for christians (or other believers in a creator god).

Whilst its only fair that "evolution accepting christians" get to put their point over during the Darwin season of programmes, I would expect them to at least attempt to do so in a way that shows them in a positive light. Last nights programme did the toal opposite, further showing that they are either ignorant or perfectly willing to lie to further their cause.