God Forbid

Evolving digital technologies have supercharged our anxieties around privacy and surveillance. These concerns may feel new, but they have always existed. Privacy is central to human dignity, intimacy and wellbeing - but in a world of ever-evolving technologies - is privacy in its death throes?

Guests:

Anita Allen, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania

Hugh Breakey, Professor of Philosophy, Griffith University

David Vincent, Professor Emeritus, Open Universities UK, author of Privacy: A Short History

Constant images of suffering and trauma have been channelled through our digital devices for the past 12 months. With some people switching off in the name of self-preservation, the moral question remains as to whether this is an act of ignorant privilege or practical necessity.

Today, billions of people adhere to one of the “Big Five” major religions, but there are many more religions from history that have died out. Conquests, cultural change and conversions have all caused religions to shift, shrink and disappear. But when can we truly declare a religion “dead”? And could the religions of today die out in the distant future?

Guests:

Aslan Pahari, Video presenter/producer, ABC Digital Content and Innovation

Adam Bowles, Associate Professor in Asian Religions at the University of Queensland

Carole Cusak, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney

The federal government is unwilling to progress promised religious discrimination reforms unless it secures bipartisan support from the Coalition. Can a compromise be reached, or is this debate likely to be shelved again? Guests:

Chris Bedding, is Executive Officer of Faith Workers Alliance and a priest of the Anglican Church in Perth

David Robertson, Presbyterian minister, director of the ASK project of Evangelism and New Churches of the Sydney Anglican diocese

Dr. Renae Barker, lawyer and senior lecturer at the UWA Law School

In modern Australia, what does it mean to be born, to live and love, and then to die? Across the next three episodes, God Forbid will be exploring births, deaths and marriages. In the first episode we explore one of the most fundamental and defining moments: birth.