The Atheism Tapes
The Atheism Tapes | |
---|---|
Genre | Documentary series |
Presented by | Jonathan Miller |
No. of episodes | 6 |
Original release | |
Network | BBC |
Release | 2004 |
Related | |
A Rough History of Disbelief |
The Atheism Tapes is a 2004
Programmes
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008) |
All six programmes were conducted in the form of interviews; the synopses below are summaries of the interviewees' responses to Miller's questions.
Colin McGinn
English philosopher McGinn speaks about the various reasons for not believing in God, and some of the reasons for. He gives a thorough treatment of the ontological argument. In addition, McGinn draws an important distinction between atheism (lack of belief in a deity) and antitheism (active opposition to theism); he identifies himself as both an atheist and an antitheist. Finally, he speculates about a post-theistic society.
Steven Weinberg
American physicist Weinberg talks about the effectiveness of the Design Argument, both in the past and today. He also discusses the reasons that people become religious, including the varying influences of physical and biological arguments against religion. Miller connects this to a higher likelihood of biologists being non-believers than physicists, which Weinberg finds surprising.
Weinberg goes on to distinguish between harm done in the name of religion from that done by religion and states that both of these are very real and very dangerous. He goes on to discuss the difference between religious belief in America and Europe, and about how he doesn't like the "character" of the monotheistic God. He ends by saying that science is very definitely corrosive to religious belief, and that he considers this a good thing.
Arthur Miller
American
Richard Dawkins
English biologist
Denys Turner
British theologian Denys Turner points out that being an atheist or theist depends largely upon what questions you ask yourself. He then shares his view that atheism can also suffer from its own sort of fundamentalism. They spend some time covering the issue of why or how something comes from nothing.
Daniel Dennett
American philosopher Dennett explains why he called one of his books Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and why many of Darwin's contemporaries, in particular, considered Darwin's theory of evolution to be dangerous. He goes on to deal with the question of consciousness (i.e., is the consciousness/soul distinct from the body), talking about Darwin's rejection of the soul and the possible origins and psychological purposes of a belief in an immaterial soul.
Next, he talks about his Christian upbringing and how he became an atheist. He goes on to ask why it is thought rude to criticise religious belief, and suggests that it is due to the influential status of the religions in question. He finishes by wondering whether we could live effectively in a post-theistic world.
External links
- The Atheism Tapes at IMDb
- The Atheism Tapes Archive of the official BBC page for the series
- Colin McGinn's blog Archived 11 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine