God Forbid

What does living simply mean in 2025?  With an increasingly complex world, it is becoming harder and harder to detach from Earthly possessions.  But what if we don't need to, in order to live an awakened and spiritual life? The monks of today don't look like the ones you might picture from your childhood. They carry iPhones, have social media, and catch planes across the world.  From Hare Krishna...

Is a cult a misunderstood religion? Or something much more dangerous? The line between high-control religions, new religious movements, and 'cults' is as grey as ever. But the fascination we have with these groups is only getting stronger. What counts as a 'cult'? Is it your highly controlling tech workplace? Your gym with a forever-binding contract? Or does the casual use of the word 'cult' do a...

If God says that man is fallible, and man wrote the Bible, then how can we know that the Bible is the true word of God? 

For most of history, body size has been about more than just health — it’s been a tool of control.  From colonial ideals of “discipline” to modern-day diet culture, our ideas about fatness and thinness are deeply tied to morality, power, and profit.  But are we getting it all wrong? Why do we see fatness as a personal failure rather than a natural variation in human bodies?  How have our ideas of...

Looking towards the heavens for meaning doesn’t always mean looking to God.  UFOs (and the modern moniker UAPs) have long been the food for thought of sceptics, theologians, and astrobiologists alike.   But what does belief in these mysterious phenomena have in common with religion?  And what implications does life outside Earth have for the existence of God?  GUESTS: Bill Chalker, UFO researcher....

The big news for Christians is that this year we had BOTH a new Pope and – for the Anglican communion – the announcement of a new Archbishop of Canterbury. For Catholics, of course, Leo was the surprise choice at the papal conclave in May.  The first pope from the United States. And the first from the  Order of Saint Augustine . And Dr Sarah Mullally will be the first woman to be enthroned as the...

A bohemian journalist who found God in the slums — and built a movement that unsettled both Church and State. Born in Brooklyn in 1897, Dorothy Day lived many lives: radical writer, suffragist, single mother, and eventually Catholic convert.  In the midst of the Great Depression, she co-founded the Catholic Worker movement, opening houses of hospitality for the poor and protesting every war Americ...

A street hustler turned minister whose faith transformed Black politics — and himself. Born Malcolm Little in 1925, Malcolm X rose to fame as a fiery preacher in the Nation of Islam, calling for Black self-determination “by any means necessary.” But after his pilgrimage to Mecca, he embraced Sunni Islam and a universal vision of justice that transcended race. Weeks later, he was assassinated.  Was...

A French lawyer-turned-theologian who split from Rome — and built his own city of God. John Calvin fled Catholic France to lead a new Protestant movement in Geneva during the 1500s. His ideas about predestination and the absolute authority of Scripture reshaped Christianity and inspired the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. Yet under his rule, dissenters were exiled, imprisoned, and violently...

A Persian poet and scholar who tore off her veil — and announced the dawn of a new religious age.  In the 1840s, Táhirih became one of the first women to preach in public in Iran. As a leading figure in the Bábí movement — a precursor to the Bahá’í faith — she argued that revelation had not ended and that women should be free to study, speak, and lead.  Her defiance of clerical and royal authority...

A former Dominican friar who dared to say the universe had no centre — and paid with his life. Born in 16th-century Italy, Giordano Bruno broke with Church teachings to imagine an infinite cosmos filled with countless worlds. To him, God was not confined to heaven or hierarchy but alive in every corner of creation. The Inquisition saw it differently. After years of imprisonment and interrogation,...

A teenage peasant who claimed to hear the voice of God — and changed the course of European history.  At just seventeen, Joan of Arc convinced the French prince to let her lead an army against the English, turning the tide of the Hundred Years’ War. But her victories came at a price: captured, accused of heresy, and burned alive at nineteen. Was she a divinely inspired saviour or a dangerous fanat...

What’s on the other side of the near-death experience?

Only half of all Australians understand Jesus to be a real person who lived at a time and place in history, according to the latest Australian Community Survey. Two in 10 Australians said Jesus was a mythical or fictional character while three out of 10 didn’t know. Their doubts stand in contrast to those of ancient historians, classicists and New Testament scholars, who universally accept that Je...

What separates humans from other animals? It’s not our brain hardware.  It’s our always changing brain software. For so long, humans believed our brain power separates us from animals: since the earliest human species, our brain size has tripled. But our brains haven’t grown for 30,000 - probably 300,000 years. So, why are we the ones who build cities and fly to space?   Michael Muthukrishna calls...

In the Pacific Ocean right now grey, humpback and southern right whale populations are increasing. This is important for us all ecologically. But for some of us, even more is at stake. Because around the world, from the equator to the Arctic, from Russia to New Zealand, throughout history and today, humans revere whales, as spiritual ancestors and as harbingers of fortune and protection. And as we...

Two days prior to the assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, a group of writers at US-based feminist magazine, Jezebel , published an article stating that they 'Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk’. The magazine has since pulled the article , on the advice of their lawyers, so as not to cause any confusion about their stance on political violence of any kind.   Is it...

The art of marking the body, by piercing the flesh and pushing ink into the wound, the tattoo, has had an uneasy relationship with religion. It's sometimes seen as a desecration of the body, but equally, the tattoo is venerated as a rite of passage and as a form of worship. Then there are tattoos in the secular context. They are so common in Australia now,  it’s actually hard to find a body under...

Two thousand years ago, Christianity was an obscure movement with no wealth, power, or friends in high places. Yet within a few centuries, its radical commitment to human dignity, charity and non-violence transformed the Roman world and helped shape the civilisation we live in today. How did a powerless sect became the most influential religion on Earth? From ancient plagues and persecution to tod...

It’s hard to believe that one in three young Australian adults go regularly to worship services – more than any other age group. But it’s true and men are leading the charge. It’s a puzzle, because it breaks two longstanding rules of religion: believers are typically female and old. Remember back in 2000. Even the most optimistic priest wouldn’t have predicted that would change.  The Cold War was...

We live in a universe that sustains life – but what are the chances of that?  And scientists now believe that if the laws of physics were different by just a fraction – our universe would be either empty, simple, or long ago extinct. If the strength of gravity or the mass of an electron was different by even the tiniest amount, the universe as we know it would not exist. So tiny even that the diff...

Truth used to be something we argued about.  Now we can’t even agree on what it is.  In a world of fake news and alternate facts, we each claim our personal truth, our own competing version of reality. So, how does science, religion, and philosophy help us navigate truth when certainty is elusive? What does it mean to live in a time when truth itself feels fractured? When the world is so complex –...

Can celibacy actually make us purer and closer to God?   What is it about sex that gets in the way of our divinity? What do some of the world’s major religions say about celibacy or even require of it’s devotees? And, with the very noticeable global decline in the birth rate, are we already seeing a trend towards a more chaste life?  If so, can abstinence draw us closer to our spiritual selves? GU...

Can we know God through machines?  Can machines know God?  And could machines, one day, become godlike themselves?  While AI is still in its infancy, it is evolving at lightning speed, and ingraining itself in our lives. From writing our emails, creating our budgets and  even serving as our therapists, society is embracing AI as part of our everyday lives.  But what about faith? Our spirituality,...

With the Coldplay "kiss cam" fiasco and two corporate careers in tatters we ask the question: Should leaders be held to a higher personal standard than the rest of society?  Beyond the memes and outrage, what does this moment reveal about how we expect leaders to behave — not just at work, but in public and online? And what does ethical leadership look like in an era where CEO pay is high, but tru...