On Dover beach the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold found an image of the decline of Christianity - the 'melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of the Sea of Faith'. Twenty years later the German philosopher
Nietzsche was proclaiming the death of God. Today many people don't know what to believe any more. In this series of six programmes Don Cupitt ,
Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, explores the revolution in ideas that has brought us from the secure world-view of the Middle
Ages to today's crisis of faith.
1: The Mechanical Universe In Galileo's villa at Arcetri, refurnished from the original inventory, Don Cupitt reconstructs the experiments which threatened the entire cosmology of Christendom. The most creative response came from Blaise Pascal. Working as a scientist in 17th-century Paris, he came to see the very emptiness of the physical universe as the springboard for a new approach to Christian faith. Film cameraman JOHN MCGLASHAN Produced and directed by PETER ARMSTRONG (R)
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