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Beyond Belief

Religion & Ethics

Series exploring the place and nature of faith in today's world

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Beyond Belief: Immortality

07/03/2011

Immortality

BBC Radio 4 - Beyond Belief, Immortality

Ernie Rea and guests discuss ways in which individuals have sought immortality.

Ernie Rea and guests discuss ways in which faiths and individuals have sought immortality or eternal life. Can humans ever overcome death or are we defined by the brevity of life?

In the last in the current series, Ernie Rea invites guests from different faith and non-faith perspectives to debate the challenges of today's world.

Each week a panel is assembled to represent a diversity of views and opinions, which often reveal hidden, complex and sometimes contradictory understandings of the world around us. 

In this programme Ernie and guests discuss ways in which individuals have sought immortality either through belief in eternal life with God or through ever ingenious scientific methods. Why do human beings appear to want to believe in some sort of life after death? How is the meaning of this life shaped by a belief in the hereafter or a knowledge of endless existence? Are we ultimately creatures shaped by the destiny of our own death?

Joining Ernie to discuss immortality are the philosopher, John Gray, author of The Immortalisation Commission: science and the strange quest to cheat death; the theologian, Alister McGrath, professor of theology, ministry and education, and head of the centre for theology, religion and culture at King's College, London and the psychologist, Les Lancaster, professor of transpersonal psychology at Liverpool John Moores University. 

Producer: Karen Maurice.

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