Those of you who read my articles or are aware of my relationship with religion of most kinds (I like Paganism and Hinduism / Buddhism) might be surprised to learn that earlier today I was guesting on a Chistian Radio show for London's Premier Radio station.
Even more strange, the producer Justin Brierley contacted me after following comment threads on some of my jousts with fundies here at Gather.
Well Justin's show "Unbelieveable" is a British production with a more moderate tone than U.S. evangelical Christianity, so after some discussion I decided the programme would be fun to do and managed to get my friend Jenni Hutchinson invited as my opponent, the Christian speaker. Did you know that satan is the Aramaic (ancient Assyrian language) word for opponent or adversary. Ha! Jenni is a little devil - she will love that.
Anyway we put together a really good programme, covering topics such as how the church may fulfil a role in modern society, the nature of faith, building bridges (we bridged the religious divide, the generation gap - Jenni is 24 I'm...not. OK, I'm yibblety-yibble. the geographical divide between north and south and the soccer supporters gap, Jenni follows high flying Arsenal, one of the big guns of European soccer - my loyalties are to lowly Accrington Stanley (the team that came back from the dead - reluctantly apparently.)
All in all we proved there can be dialogue between Christians and non believers.
It will be difficult to get the show on the air in America but there is an internet feed. Here are the details:
The programme airs at 2pm this Saturday here are the ways to listen "Live"1305, 1332, 1413 MW (Greater London) Sky Digital 0123 Virgin Media 968 Freeview 725 London DAB or online at http://www.premier.org.uk/
From (Usually) Monday you can listen to the archive edition of the programme online http://www.premier.org.uk/engine.cfm?i=680
Not of great spiritual interest to many of my gather friends maybe, as most share my attitude to organised religion, but a worthwhile demonstration of constructive dialogue between faith and non-faith, with some good points made on both sides.
OK, that's just a cynical ploy to boost the show in search engine listings of course. But you will excuse me one shameless self promotion item I'm sure. I promise to get back to more humour and controversy next time.
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The Charge Of The Anti-enlightenment Brigade
I don’t know if many of you remember London's Atheist Bus a few years ago. It toured the city bearing adverts that read: ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ and was a great success[ ... ] this demonstrates the Sheeple - like tendencies of those who claim they have reason on their side: the religious propagandist with the sandwich board saying ‘repent, the end is nigh' was always the subject of jokes. Why do the opposing side now feel the need to parade high tech sandwich boards saying, "no need to repent, the end isn't nigh'?
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