Jonathan Miller presents BBC series on atheism.

[Soapy Sam]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/atheism.shtml


The Beeb is doing a programme on atheism presented by Jonathan Miller, which would probably be worth watching if I owned a boobcube.

The website (above) has a simple poll- Do you believe in god?
As of Friday afternoon 2pm UK, of 9709 responses, 77% are "No".
I wonder what the figure would be in the States?

[Darat]

I tried the Disbeliever Test (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/quiz.pl?QUIZDATA=question_103.dat&WEBSITE=bbcfour) and I'm obviously not a very good non-believer, I got 8 out of ten, but guessed on two so an adjusted score of 6/10. Must try harder at disbelieving. :(

[Roboramma]

BBC Four: The people Jonathan Miller interviews in the programmes are very interesting. Did you want to include more excerpts from them?
RD: Yes, but in association with the series we've got six 30-minute interviews with some of the people who appear in the programme, like Arthur Miller, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg. These interviews are called The Atheism Tapes and will be going out while the series is broadcast. We've also included a Christian theologian called Denys Turner who doesn't appear in the series. Jonathan and he sat down and had a really good argument about whether there is the need to ask the question: "Why is there anything rather than nothing?"
Argh! I wish I could see this!

[Nucular]

These are repeats, right? I saw the Atheist Tapes several months ago, they were so good... my favourite, for explaining his position with depth and clarity, was the one with Colin McGinn; Dawkins was great too, and I think I somehow managed to miss Dennett. Arthur Miller was poignant, but his atheism turns on too personal a level for me to really connect with.

Jonathan Miller asks great, great questions - I normally spend these types of interviews shouting at the TV going "no, don't ask that! Ask this!", but I didn't find that with Miller. Good stuff!

[Soapy Sam]

These are repeats, right?-Nucular.

Quite probably. I don't see much TV.
I came across this by accident. there's a journalist also named Jonathan Miller who has a website opposing the BBC TV licence tax. I was actually looking for that.

[pjh]

Yep these are repeats but it's a great bit of TV.

Another recent documentary on the beeb had 7% of the UK population attending church on a regular basis.

[Pixel42]

They are repeats, but they are being shown in a prime-time slot on BBC2. The first broadcasts were on BBC4, which is not widely available and even less widely watched.

[Ririon]

...would probably be worth watching if I owned a boobcube....


Googling to confirm that this is some kind of slang for tv, I found that it has other meanings, too... ;)

[H3LL]

Excellent...Brilliant...Thoughtful....Educational. ..Amusing.

I haven't enjoyed a programme so much for ages.

If nothing else, I now know a lot more about Baron D'Holbach. Lovely quote from him this week:

"If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men."
Paul-Henri, baron d'Holbach - 1723-1789 - System of Nature - 1770


You can get his books free from Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8909 The System of Nature, Volume 1

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/8910 The System of Nature, Volume 2

a 'must read' one might say :)



.

[bob_kark]

I wonder what the figure would be in the States?

Well, in a Fox News Poll 92% of Americans believe in God:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99945,00.html

But, I think they only polled people going into or out of a church. I tried to find a more reliable source. Unfortunately, even the Washington Post, referenced the Fox News Poll. ABC even bothered to poll whether or not God was to blame for hurricane Katrina:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=1174220&page=1

What I love most about this poll is that 17 percent of "Non-Religious" people still believe God caused hurricane Katrina. Anyway, I would believe that out of all the polls I bothered to check, Harris Interactive has the most accurate poll on the subject:

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=408

They state 79% of Americans believe in God. I'd say that's about accurate. Which is why I can't buy Beer on Sundays...

[coalesce]

I'd be curious to see if the show makes it here to the States via BBC America.

And if the show is half as good as The Body In Question, then we're in for a treat.

Michael