Beyond Belief

Last year Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division, gave a speech in which he said the law of this country is secular, and that Christianity no longer informs its morality or values." Happily for us," he went on, "the days are past when the business of judges was the enforcement of morals or religious beliefs." Ernie Rea is joined by Sir Mark Hedley, Joshua Rozenberg and David McIlroy to...

In the trailer for the final run of Desperate Housewives, viewers are seduced into watching the series with a variety of tantalising images. Four beautiful women in provocative poses, attracting the longing gazes of their easily led men. Snake like belts draped sinuously around their waists are provocatively removed or loosened. And there's an apple, red and luscious, newly plucked from a tree. A...

Late last year a team of archaeologists who had been working on a site in Nepal announced that they had uncovered the earliest known Buddhist shrine, a discovery which leads them to place the date of the Buddha's birth three centuries earlier than previously thought. In the first of a new series of Beyond Belief, Ernie Rea and guests discuss the impact that archaeological discoveries have on the s...

40 years since the death of J.R.R. Tolkien many people remain as spell bound as ever by the richly detailed world he created in his epic works of fantasy fiction. The books are among the nations most loved and 150 million copies have been sold worldwide. The Peter Jackson films, first 'The Lord of the Ring' series and now 'The Hobbit', have been among the highest-grossing films of all time. What u...

What causes religions to change beliefs or traditions which have been in place for hundreds of years? For centuries the Jewish people offered animal sacrifices daily in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Catholic Church condemned Galileo for teaching that the sun, rather than the earth, is the centre of our universe. Soon we may have female Bishops in the Church of England and some churches in the UK ma...

At times in history religion can appear to be a destructive force. Today the current conflict in the middle-east is increasingly defined along sectarian lines. From Iraq where a thousand people were killed in sectarian violence in July, the highest monthly death toll for five years according the UN; to Pakistan, where the minority Shia community has experienced repeated attacks by hard-line Sunni...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. Near-Death Experiences often seem to include bright lights, the presence of benevolent spirits and a sense of peace - in other words a very positive experience. However, more unusually, there are others wh...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. The late Christopher Hitchins wrote that "The mockery of religion is one of the most essential things". Certainly if you go to any Comedy Club today, you can expect to find that religious belief is an open...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. Its fifty years since Martin Luther King addressed an immense crowd in Washington and told the world that "I have a dream." His words galvanised black people across America and paved the way for the passag...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. Buddhism is generally portrayed in the West as a religion of peace and non-violence. The first of Buddhism's 'Five Moral Precepts' states that it is wrong to take the lives of others. But recent clashes be...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. Three people die every day in need of an organ transplant while only 31% of people in the UK have joined the Organ Donor Register. Technological advancements mean there are ever more advanced ways of succe...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. We live in an age of doubt. We have been taught to question everything. But it is the religious traditions which major in certainty which are on the increase. Fundamentalism is gaining pace, even in an age...

Margaret Thatcher's funeral in St Paul's Cathedral was attended by thousands of world leaders and watched by millions more around the world. In death, as in life, Margaret Thatcher shaped the occasion: she dictated the order of service and chose the hymns and readings. She was probably the most overtly Christian Prime Minister of the twentieth century up to the time of her leaving office. So where...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. The role of celibacy differs cross-culturally among religious traditions, with some insisting on it and others prohibiting it. Obligatory celibacy for Catholic priests in the West was introduced in 1130, y...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. It's 200 years since the birth of the Scottish missionary, David Livingstone. His legacy was to shape missionary work in Africa and elsewhere, right through to the present day. His supporters point to the...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. The Queen is preparing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of her Coronation on 2nd June 1953. The Coronation is an occasion for pageantry and celebration, but it is also a solemn religious ceremony. The for...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. In Edinburgh a modern festival has grown up around the ancient pagan festival of Beltane, traditionally marked on May 1st, where fires are lit. But does fire have both negative and positive connotations ac...

Beyond Belief debates the place of religion and faith in today's complex world. Ernie Rea is joined by a panel to discuss how religious beliefs and traditions affect our values and perspectives. Pope Francis is the first Pope from a religious order for 200 years. Many were surprised by his appointment. But what will his Jesuit formation give him as he grapples with the many complex issues facing t...

When Justin Welby was appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury there were two things we quickly learned about him. The first was that he has a business head on him and used to work in the oil industry - that's significant for a country grappling with issues of financial morality. The second was that he is an Evangelical - that's important for the wider Anglican church which is battling splits between...

Addiction to alcohol costs the UK around £22 billion per annum in health, welfare, social care and prison costs. The expectation is that more than 200,000 people will die prematurely in this country of alcohol related liver disease in the next 20 years. Is addiction a disease or does it signify an absence of will power? Alcoholics Anonymous famously claims that the cycle of addiction can only be b...

Restorative Justice schemes are increasingly playing a role within the Criminal Justice System. They are designed to confront the criminal with the consequences of his or her actions. Sometimes they involve a meeting between the victim and the offenders, where victims can give their perspective on what has happened and offenders can seek forgiveness. Many religious groups believe that Restorative...

The revelation that horse meat has found its way into supermarket products, and that Muslim prisoners have been fed meals containing pork has highlighted again the way food is produced and animals treated. Joining Ernie Rea to discuss the place of animals in the religions of East and West are Shimon Cohen, Director of Shechita UK, an organisation which defends the Jewish method of slaughtering ani...

As the bill to allow same sex marriage makes its way through Parliament, Ernie Rea and guests discuss whether homosexuality is compatible with Islam. The Muslim Council of Britain has voiced its opposition, but what does the Koran say about homosexuality - is the prohibition unequivocal and absolute? Ernie's guests are Ibrahim Mogra, one of Britain's leading Imams; Pav Akhtar, Muslim politician an...

To most people the word Rastafarian conjures up images of dreadlocks, the smoking of ganja, and Bob Marley. But Rastafari, as it's more correctly known, is a movement with a complex belief system. It has its origins in Jamaican society in the early 20th century, when black people rose up in protest at oppressive systems imposed by white rulers. But is it just a passing phenomenon? Has it continuin...

"No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" The brilliant Monty Python sketch was able to use an historical reference because the very mention of the Inquisition conjured up images of dark dungeons; cruel monks wielding instruments of torture and consigning thousands of alleged heretics to the flames. The Inquisition has had a bad press. But in fact there were several Inquisitions, some more cruel t...