Religion & SpiritualitySociety & CulturePhilosophy

God Forbid

ABC Australia

Religion: it’s at the centre of world affairs, but profound questions still remain. Why are you here? What happens when you die? Does God matter? God Forbid seeks the answers.

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22 episodes
weekly
Avg 54 min
English

Episodes 22

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Friday · 54 min
Will science ever explain the self?
Neuroscience is now spectacularly good at explaining how brains work. But there’s one thing it still can’t explain: why having a brain feels like something. Like anything at all! Philosophers call this the Hard Problem of consciousness. Is this gap in our knowledge something that science can never fully understand? Something intangible, even unknowable? Some say it's a life force, an essence, a soul. What, if anything, can religion offer this intangible? GUESTS: Rev Antonios Calda
August 21 · 54 min
Voluntary assisted dying: more than a matter of life and death
The Northern Territory is set to become the final Australian jurisdiction to legalise voluntary assisted dying (VAD). While thirty years of arguing comes to an end, God Forbid examines the wider conversations that are essential, but so often overlooked when it comes to voluntary assisted dying. GUESTS: Christoper Dudfield, Spiritual Care Practitioner, clinical leader and researcher. Jodie Clarkson, retired teacher and community worker, palliative care outpatient in Mparntwe (Alice Springs).
August 14 · 54 min
The Good Mother standard: Can anyone live up to it?
Mother Earth. Mother Mary. The "good mother." Is there a more impossible standard than motherhood itself? Every culture seems to believe in a mother who is endless. Endlessly patient, endlessly giving, endlessly present. In Christianity she's Mary, the sinless virgin, the giving and eternal mother of the church. In psychology she's the "Good Mother", always available and calm, never faltering. In real life, she's the woman who looks like she's got motherhood handled, but who, if you asked
August 7 · 54 min
The History of Time
Your phone will tell you the time, and that number has an extraordinary history. And hasn't always been there. Time used to be whatever the church bell said it was. Time was rung, sung and prayed. It belonged to God. Then we put time in a box on the wall. Then on our wrist. Now in our pocket and on our satellites. Yet – there’s no expert consensus on whether time even flows from past present to future. GUESTS: Kristie Miller is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney and
July 31 · 54 min
The History of Reality: What is real and is God behind it all?
Every civilisation that's ever existed has asked the same question: what's actually real? Plato made the point that it's more than we can see with our own eyes. Then came Newton, and reality became a clock with time. Then came Einstein, and time started to bend. Then came quantum mechanics — and reality gets stranger still! Two astrophysicists go back to the beginning of humanity to ask "what did humans even mean by "real", before anyone had the maths to check?" And is there a creator
July 24 · 54 min
The History of Emotion: Were feelings always felt this way?
If you hit your finger with a hammer, would you feel it the same way a medieval carpenter did, doing exactly the same thing? Well, apparently not. We think of our feelings as the most private and immediate things we own. Hit your thumb, and YOU know pain when YOU feel it. But historians of emotion say that's a modern conceit. Pain, grief, love, loneliness — none of them are fixed. They're made, by religion, by culture and science, and most of all by the stories we tell each other abo
July 17 · 54 min
Is racism about skin colour, colonialism or wealth?
Is racism about the colour of your skin, the history of colonialism, or the size of your bank account?
July 10 · 54 min
What does God expect of fathers?
The White House has a cage fight on the Whitehouse front lawn while, somewhere, a father rose at 3am to feed a crying baby. In 2026, what does it mean to be a good father, or a good man? Does God, or any religious tradition, see men as something distinct? Or is “be a good man” just “be a good person”? The manosphere claims religious sanction. Is that a corruption of these traditions, or an expression of them? Three fathers, three frameworks. What do you or can you actually hand onto y
July 3 · 54 min
Why do animals matter?
Do to a dog what we do to a factory-farmed pig, and you’d be arrested. Do it to ten thousand pigs in a shed, and it’s breakfast. Most of us say cruelty to animals is wrong. And then most of us are happy to have them killed and eat them. Both our panellists think the way we treat animals is a moral catastrophe. But they get there by opposite roads. One says animals matter because they suffer. The other says they matter because they’re God’s creatures. GUESTS: Peter Singer Emeritus
June 26 · 53 min
How old do you feel?
We are, it turns out, a species that refuses to believe its own birth certificate. Australia is ageing, fast. This is not new here, or in Europe and North America where the trend has existed for decades. But even in China and now India, the fertility rate has dropped below replacement levels – even the two most populous nations on earth are getting older. Yet we’ve built a world — our economies, our cities, our pension systems, our cultures — around the young and the productive. So, what
June 19 · 54 min
The pleasure we take in others' misfortune and what it says about us
You heard that someone had come unstuck. A rival. A bully. Someone overconfident, or two-faced, or just a bit too pleased with themselves. And something in you was glad. You won't say it out loud. You might barely admit it to yourself. But the Germans have a word for it. And it turns out, so did the ancient Greeks. Schadenfreude. The pleasure we take in others' misfortune. Is it a moral failing? A sign of deficient character? Or is it a window into what we actually believe about justice,
June 12 · 54 min
The ideas that inspired American Christian Zionism
Whether or not you believe in - or even know about "the Rapture", "the Tribulation", "the End Times", and "Armageddon", your life is influenced by the idea that Jesus Christ will not only return, he’ll go to Jerusalem, and from there, for exactly one thousand years, he’ll rule the world. Yet, this concept is not in the Bible...at least not directly. But a bible, published in America in 1909, and written by an American made it the most influential concepts in American Christian fundamentalism
June 4 · 54 min
How should we view our relationship to work?
Most of us spend most of our waking hours working, paid and unpaid. From housework to paid work, most of our lives are dominated by work. It's so ingrained that losing our true selves in work can feel unavoidable. Yet, many also find purpose, value, and joy in work – even if it's not their dream job. Work is less a place and more a concept, the line between work and home can be blurred. And younger Gen-Z workers are repelled by the hustle culture and burnout that comes from increased casu
May 29 · 53 min
The seen and unseen: Belief in Jinns, Marian apparitions and Japanese yokai
Halloween, in the western Christian tradition, remembers the dead – saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed. But why do so many believe the departed return? Regardless of the place on earth, or time in history, people say they see strange apparitions and ghostly figures. And as for things unseen, even more profess a belief in genies, spirits, angels and supernatural entities. All these ideas and feelings are traditionally laid bare in this realm of the supernatural, the boundaries o
May 22 · 54 min
Home economics: waking up from the Australian dream
The government has removed favourable tax settings for investors to make home ownership just a bit more achievable for Millennials and Gen Z’s priced out of the market. The Prime Minister has spoken about the importance of giving young people access to housing so they have “a stake in the economy” Is tinkering with, or even an overhaul, of the housing market really the only answer to growing wealth gaps in Australia? What if we can move towards a totally different economic structure that se
May 14 · 54 min
Doomsday or just good planning? The ethics of prepping
From climate disasters to economic collapse, pandemics to political unrest — some people prepare for the worst long before it happens. But is prepping a sign of prudent foresight or a loss of faith in society? And how do ethics and religion shape ideas of survival? In this episode we explore the growing culture of preppers and survivalists, from community resilience to billionaire bunkers. Are preppers visionaries, doomsayers, or just realists? And in a crisis, what do we owe each other?
May 6 · 54 min
Can we truly love AI? And can it love us back?
Falling in love with a machine is supposed to be the stuff of science-fiction. About a decade ago, Spike Jonze made the film Her, about a lonely man Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falling in love with his operating system, Samantha. And the world renowned psychoanalyst Esther Perel recently counselled a man and his romantic partner, a chat bot! Is romantic love just in our hearts and heads, or does it require another human to be real? If an AI lover is always patient, understanding,
May 1 · 54 min
Addiction, God, and the origin of the twelve steps
Since the Stone Age we’ve used, and abused, drugs and alcohol. And some cultures believed their mood-altering effects brought you closer to God. But if you go to an Alcoholics Anonymous or AA meeting today, you’ll be told that getting closer to God means getting away from the drink. AA also welcomes atheists, of course, as the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. But as part of the program, surrendering to a higher power is essential. Not necessarily God, but somethi
April 24 · 54 min
Christian leaders talk war, the Pope, getting arrested, courage and empathy
Pope Leo XIV has recently slammed the use of God's name to justify what he terms as the "absurd" pursuit of war, specifically challenging military leaders who describe operations in Iran as a holy war "in the name of Jesus Christ". Is a "holy war" antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ? Sister Brigid Arthur, Rev Tim Costello and Rev Michael Woolf certainly think so. All of them have been at the forefront of contemporary societal battles about some of the most pressing issues of our
April 17 · 54 min
Why do adults still need fairytales?
Fairytales are among the oldest forms of human storytelling, with their roots in the oral traditions of pre-literate societies. Over centuries, these tales have been reworked to suit the religious, moral and political order of the day. They are instructive, entertaining and sometimes terrifying. Why is there this ongoing appeal – indeed a revival – of fairytales among young and old alike? Guests: Marguerite Johnson, classicist, historian and Honorary Professor at the University of Queens

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