Life After God?
Soul of Britain, with Michael Buerk, 11th June 2000
Soul of Britain, written and presented by Michael Buerk was broadcast in nine episodes in June & July 2000. This BBC TV series explored what people in Britain today really believe. What is their attitude to moral issues? What do they think about Christianity? The BBC commissioned the largest ever survey of beliefs and attitudes for this series.
The first episode of Soul of Britain identified these major trends in the beliefs of British people:
- A sharp decline in over-all church attendance
- A loss of confidence in traditional Christian beliefs
- A continued place for religious rituals
- An increased commitment among the Church-going minority
- A rise in new forms of spirituality
Confusion and uncertainty
The second episode, titled 'Life After God' looked at the range of beliefs and ideas around now. Clearly we live in a world of tremendous confusion and uncertainty
According to the Soul of Britain Survey:
- Only 26% of us now believe in a personal God
- Yet 44% believe in some kind of spirit or life force - so nearly twice as many believe in the kind of force described in 'Star Wars', rather than in the personal God described in the Bible
- 48% of us say that we belong to a particular religion - a decrease of 10% in ten years
- And 31% of us believe that when we die, we cease to exist
- 12% of us just don't know what we believe
- 52% of us believe in heaven
- But only 28% believe in hell
- Yet 38% of us have some kind of awareness of God
- 29% of us have experienced a 'sacred presence' in nature
- 79% of us want a religious funeral
We are the first society in human history that does not have a shared worldview, a shared belief system about ourselves.
I think it was G K Chesterton, the author of the Father Brown stories, who said that when people stop believing in God, they do not just believe nothing. They believe anything and everything. We are surely seeing a remarkable rise in gullibility today, if nothing else. This theme recurs throughout Soul of Britain
The role of science
At the start of this program, Michael Buerk asks whether science has now displaced religion, and whether religious beliefs are nothing more than superstitions that we would be better off without.
- 22% of us believe that science has explained life's mysteries
- But 30% of us think that science may harm mankind
So there is a distrust of science and scientists. Buerk suggests that a scientific view of the world is not enough. It has been suggested that we still need a 'sense of the sacred' for the good of society.
But this kind of thinking is really very fuzzy indeed: Any kind of belief might be suggested because it is 'good for' society. The question is, what is true? Conversely, if society needs some kind of belief framework, does this suggest that there is something fundamental wrong with us when we abandon such beliefs?
We are unavoidably spiritual beings
This program illustrates the fact that we are spiritual beings by nature, and cannot get away from this- even though some of us try hard. We just cannot live with the idea that we are nothing but animals, or nothing but machines.
If we are just here as a result of a long process of blind chance, it is very odd that this process has thrown up creatures that are constitutionally unable to live with the reality of what they are. There seems to be a deep-rooted contradiction between the way we think about ourselves and the way we live in pratice. Could it be that there is something wrong with the way we think about ourselves?