Matters of Life and Death – Details, episodes & analysis

Two major Supreme Court rulings here in the UK have given us plenty to chew over in this episode. In the first half we explore a judgement about doctors caught up in controversial and tragic life support legal disputes with the parents of deeply ill children. The judges ruled that there should not be automatic anonymity given to these doctors and that they can be named by parents angry that the hospital staff looking after their kids decided it was not in their interests to keep them on life support. Is this a victory for the conservative Christian campaigners who believe the NHS system is too quick to give up on terminally ill children? The same day the Supreme Court also handed down a judgement about the definition of a woman, ruling that sex in the pivotal anti-discrimination law the 2010 Equality Act meant solely biological sex. Therefore, trans women, even those who have been legally recognised by the state as having transitioned gender, do not need to given access to single-sex female spaces such as prisons, changing rooms and women’s refuges. In the second half, we discuss the implications of this ruling – is it a welcome return to embracing the bodies our Creator gave us? • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

‘Granny’s body remains, but she is gone’. The public narrative around dementia often presumes that as our ability to talk, move and think gradually withers away, so does our personhood and sense of self. But if we believe as Christians that our humanity and identity is inextricably bound up in our physical flesh and bones, how should we approach the heart-breaking challenge of caring for someone declining into dementia? In this episode from the podcast vault (we are away over Easter) we speak with vicar and theologian Jess Wyatt (yes, also Tim’s wife and John’s daughter-in-law, it’s a real family affair) about her research into embodiment, personhood and dementia, and think through different ways to care for and attend to those suffering from this increasingly prevalent disease. • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Due to illness, we weren’t able to record a new episode this week, so instead here’s one from the Matters of Life and Death archive you might enjoy. So-called memecoins – new cryptocurrencies launched solely as tongue-in-cheek speculative online investment assets – have boomed in recent months. Back in 2023 we were joined by Christian tech writer and Baptist minister Chris Goswami to try to unpick how we should feel as believers about cryptocurrencies. What is bitcoin, and is it any different to previous internet-based tech industries we could invest in which have boomed and gone bust over the years? Are they providing financial liberation for some of the poor and excluded communities in the developing world, or simply luring vulnerable under-educated people into shady scams? And how can we grow in wisdom and discernment as believers so that we can pick our way through this wildly accelerating field of technological advancement, avoiding what is harmful while pursuing the good? • Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173 • If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com • For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

The persecuted church today lives as it always has under the threat of arrest, imprisonment, physical attack, verbal threats and harassment, and even death. But today these traditional methods are supplemented by the technological revolution. Increasingly persecution comes via the internet, on social media platforms, and sometimes even via the smart devices Christians use themselves. How do oppressive regimes and anti-Christian extremists use modern tech to persecute believers? What impact does this new form of pervasive digital surveillance have on underground churches? And how can those of us worshipping in safety and freedom try to resist a future of global coercion and repression for vulnerable Christians facilitated by multinational tech companies?

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Today’s episode was recorded as part of the New Zealand Christian Medical Fellowship’s annual conference. Doctors there sent over two bioethical conundrums for us to chew over as part of a special episode of Matters of Life and Death. The first explores how Christians can work within a secular healthcare system while holding values which are entirely at odds with what their jobs require them to do. And the second relates to a real life story from New Zealand, where anti-vax parents refused to allow their baby to have life-saving heart surgery because they were worried about the blood of vaccinated donors being transfused during the procedure.

• You can read more about the real life story at the heart of the second question here: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/480297/high-court-takes-guardianship-of-sick-baby-at-the-centre-of-dispute-over-donor-blood
• Tim's article questioning the religious literacy of some of the media coverage of the Mike Pilavachi scandal: https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/poor-reporting-on-soul-survivor-is-damaging-for-everyone-alleged-victims-included/15515.article 
• Find out more about CMF NZ: https://www.cmf.nz/ 
• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A new kind of artificial intelligence software has swept through the internet over the last year. Many are thrilled by the potential and power of AI which can generate by itself impressively creative text, images, sound and video. But others are sounding the alarm. Does this new generation of generative AI really pose a dire threat to humankind? What are the commercial and political pressures forcing tech firms to keep rolling out this unpredictable yet powerful software at breakneck speed? Will the Church’s role solely be to pick up the pieces of our broken public square and broken lives, or can we get ahead of the curve for once? And is all this not just a huge over-reaction to a flashy but relatively insignificant computing breakthrough?

• The Centre for Humane Technology’s video on generative AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhYw-VlkXTU
• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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More quickfire initial thoughts in response to questions from listeners. This week we discuss whether introverts are marginalised in the church, or actually disproportionately likely in the pulpit? We also consider how spirituality might play a role in healthcare, and in particular how Christian doctors could appropriately bring their faith into their surgeries. And finally, we wonder if a recent call by tech figures for a six-month pause on all AI research will actually mean anything.

• The article Tim mentions about chaplains embedded in general practice is here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/doctors-order-chaplains-for-surgeries-r8xr2jgnk
• We’re going to start doing Q&A episodes like this a lot more often, in part to allow us to run the normal episodes in full over a single episode, rather than being split into two halves. So please do email us with feedback, questions, disagreements or any other thoughts to molad@premier.org.uk. Thank you!

 

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

The non-religious are an ever-increasing segment of the population, in the UK, the United States and across the Western world. But what do they actually believe, and indeed not believe, in? In this episode we’re joined by evangelist and author Glen Scrivener to discuss the different spiritualities we encounter, especially among younger generations. Are all non-believers Richard Dawkins style naturalistic atheists, or is there a more complex and contradictory set of belief systems out there for those who don’t call themselves Christians? How should the church’s outreach shift to reflect the contemporary mores of Gen-Z and the pick-and-mix spiritualities they often espouse? And are modern social movements, whether ‘woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ functioning like religions without creeds?

• Glen's book from last year is called The Air We Breathe: How we all came to believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress and Equality https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/the-air-we-breathe

   

   

• The Theos thinktank report on the non-religious: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/research/2022/10/31/the-nones-who-are-they-and-what-do-they-believe
• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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In this second part of our effective altruism conversation, we explore the Christian sub-community within EA and ask whether the movement’s fundamental ideas are compatible with Christian tradition on giving. Is Christian EA a welcome challenge to our increasingly sentimental and selfish modes of charity, or has it actually missed the point on the nature of God? What can we learn from Biblical stories about compassion and giving, and what does truly Christian wisdom look like in this arena?

• Find out more about EA for Christians on their website here: https://www.eaforchristians.org/learn-more
• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com
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A movement founded at the University of Oxford in 2009 has now captured the imagination – and the wallets – of some of the brightest and most successful across elite Western academic and business circles. Effective altruism, a 21st-century data-driven take on the philosophy of utilitarianism, claims we must give our time and money only to those causes which can be proven to increase the greatest amount of pleasure to the most people. Why has this eccentric community grown so fast, has it become unmoored from its original intentions, and what perverse incentives arise when we try to distil ethics into an algorithm?

• This Economist article asking if effective altruism has lost its way is well worth a read: https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/11/15/the-good-delusion-has-effective-altruism-broken-bad
• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173
• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com
• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com