Episode 5 The Big Questions

Today

on The Big Questions:

Sexual equality.

Do women hold themselves back?

And the problems posed

by evidence for religions.

Good morning.

I'm Nicky Campbell.

Welcome to The Big Questions.

Today we're live from Oasis Academy

Lord's Hill in Southampton.

Welcome, everybody,

to The Big Questions.

It's not

just at the BBC that the relative

status and pay of women has been

a hot topic in recent weeks.

At Davos, that gathering

of the world's rich and powerful

elite, only a fifth

of the attendees were female.

Mentoring schemes and ways to stop

women being talked over at meetings

or seeing their contributions

ignored or stolen by

men were discussed.

But there's nothing new there.

And last Sunday,

at the Grammy Awards,

only 17 out of 86 awards

went to women.

The Grammys' male president caused

a furore when he said women had

to step up if they wanted more

success in the music industry.

Are women holding themselves back?

Doctor Catherine Hakim, welcome. Key

issues in women's work. We are going

to address the

to address the whole #metoo

business, campaign that everybody is

celebrating at the moment. It is

celebrating at the moment. It is a

campaign, and you say that women can

hold themselves back. What are the

key ways in which women are holding

themselves back?

The key thing is

that women don't ask and that has

been shown in study after study.

Women fail to ask for promotion,

failed to put themselves forward for

promotion, fail to ask for pay

rises, and don't negotiate in the

way that men do. Studies showing

that men and women who graduate from

the same law school, they end up

with very different salaries in

their very first job, and that is

because young man right out of law

school did negotiate better salaries

and the women just said thank you to

whatever was offered. That is what

is happening throughout our careers.

Those women who are determined,

careerist,

careerist, committed to a lifetime

career, there is no problem for

them. Look at Helen Morrissey, CEO

of Newton asset management for

decades. One of the top earning

women in the country. But on the

other hand, there is the case that

even today, women who are achieving

in their particular occupation or

career are still judged more harshly

than men and the absolutely classic

example of that is the Vice

Chancellor of Bath university. She

doubled and tripled the size of the

university in terms of student

numbers and income and turnover, and

she was there for 15 years, and yet

she was criticised for having a

remuneration package that recognised

her achievement is.

If she had been

a man that would never have

happened.

That would never have

happened to a man. When men achieve,

they are not criticised. When women

achieve, they are subjected to a

degree of scrutiny and criticism and

fault finding that is completely

unreasonable and unfair.

Who's fault

is that, Professor Emma Rees?

I

think it is the fault of larger

social structures. The workplace is

a microcosm of society more broadly.

I do agree with one point that

Catherine made.

Just the one

question

question I -- just the one?

Just the

one. The individual can only exist

within social structures. If we are

conditioning girls and boys from

very young ages into certain modes

of behaviour as being appropriate,

certain occupations as being

potentially ones that they can

enter, then we are sending out a

very powerful message that becomes

absorbed to the point where it

appears almost natural. But actually

those gendered qualities, the kind

of language we use about men and

women in the workplace, he is

assertive, she is bossy, for

example.

He is ambitious and she is

ruthlessly ambitious?

Exactly that

kind of thing. Those are not about

innate qualities. It is about how we

regard from a very early age what we

think boys and girls are capable of.

If you say to a young girl what do

you want to be when you grow up? She

is unlikely to say astronaut,

firefighter, police officer, because

she has been conditioned into

believing that some occupations

simply will not be for her.

Who is

doing the conditioning? As the

French recognising, the word

socialised is a result of mothers.

Mothers are systematically treating

girl babies that boy babies

differently. It has been shown in

research, even women who are trying

really hard to treat them the same

and give them exactly the same

upbringing, we have found that

mothers treat their boys

differently.

Mothers are complicit

in this?

Mothers are the culprits.

You are complicit in this debate

because of your language. You said

that women fail in the workplace to

ask for promotion and they fail to

ask for more money. Are you not

complicit in your very use of

language itself? It sounds like

victim blaming to me.

That is the

easy reaction to research evidence

that women do not put themselves

forward for promotion. In the civil

service they actually had a scheme

to encourage women to put themselves

forward for a promotion each time a

competition was announced.

Why don't

they put themselves forward for

promotion?

The main reason is that

actually we talk about women as if

they are rolled the same and

homogenous. But actually there are

three very different groups in the

workforce. There are careerist women

who are really prioritising their

career over family and private life.

They are about 20%. It is not at all

surprising that in the figures you

were quoting just now, around 20% of

women are going to be in the top

echelons of any occupational ladder

or career, music, politics, etc.

Around 20% of women actually

prioritise family life. Yes, they

have jobs between leaving school or

university, whatever, getting

married and having children, and

they want those jobs to be good

jobs, well-paid jobs, they are not

in any way lesser jobs. But then

they probably drop out of the

workforce permanently after they

have children. And then in between

you have got the people who try to

have the best of both worlds. And it

is the people who want the best of

both worlds who are very often

ambivalent, divided in their

priorities. They want a career, they

want a good job, but they also want

to prioritise the family and that is

where they are split.

The best of

both worlds, what are you hearing?

I

am with Francesca absolutely about

how we have got to be alert to the

nuances of language. To say that

mothers are the culprits is

absolutely appalling.

Mothers bring

up their children in a certain way

and mothers are victims, as you put

it, or they behave the way that they

do because of the social construct

in which they have grown up.

Absolutely. It is about the social

construct and visualisation. It is a

terrible cliche but actually it is

wonderful because I believe that! If

she can't see it, she can't be it.

When she looks at the FTSE 100, she

will see only seven women CEOs

currently. When she looks at

Parliament is worldwide, she will

see only 19% of women involved in

those in a powerful way. We are not

giving her the message from our

broader cultural and social place

that actually more is able to be

achieved by her.

LO wants to come in

here. Professor, I will come back in

a moment.

To answer the question,

the majority of women don't hold

themselves back. The majority are

self assured and confident and know

what they want from life. To say

anything differently would be

insulting. I think what is holding

women back is not social structures

and sexism, it is not the

patriarchy, I actually think it is

the discussion about women's

equality. Unfortunately I think it

is a contemporary feminist movement

holding women back, in many ways.

This conversation sheds light on

what it is doing. It says women are

oppressed by language. It says when

they go into the boardroom, they

need schooling on how to speak up in

meetings, as you said in the opening

thing, they are weak flowers who

need a leg up, helping hand. Putting

out that message is far more

damaging than worrying about how

many women are in the FTSE 100. Most

of them don't care about the FTSE

100 because we are never going to

get to that position in life. The

great that you need to see it to be

it is really telling. It is this

focus on symbolism. A world that is

really different from the majority

of women's lives. Contemporary

feminists are very obsessed with the

pay gap, the myth of the pay gap,

women's language, sexist language,

all this stuff that bypasses most

women. Genuinely, unfortunately, it

is contemporary feminism and the

discussion around it that is mostly

holding them back today.

It has not

bypassed most women. It has a

material effect on their day-to-day

function in broader culture. Of

course it does. Those economic

decisions are coming from

predominantly men.

This is the

interesting thing. I am sure we will

get onto a discussion about the K

gap in relation to what has been

happening at the BBC and in

Hollywood. -- is the pay gap. The

panic over extremely rich women

earning varying degrees of hundreds

of thousands of pounds does bypass

most women because we are not having

a genuine conversation about the

lives of women and men,

working-class women and men.

Is it

the fault feminism?

I am not saying

it is a fault of feminism. I am not

saying that women are conspiring to

women over and that would be

ridiculous. The narrative, that

women are weak, that they are

oppressed by social structures, that

they are at a disadvantage to men,

and there are very few social

structures that oppress women any

more. The abortion law is the only

place where women are legally

discriminated against.

discriminated against.

So women are

fine essentially?

It is illegal to

discriminate against women on the

basis of sex. Women are more free

than they ever have been. That is a

fantastic fact. 100 years since some

women got the vote and we are in a

fantastic place and yet we are still

pretending that this is a terrible

world for us and I find that

depressing.

So many points to pick

up on. The rest of the front row is

wobbling! Professor, I will come to

you in a moment to talk about your

research but can I come to you?

Would you mind? You were nodding all

the way through what she was saying.

In the bowtie, just come forward.

She was saying part of the problem

is feminism. Why were you agreeing

so much?

Absolutely, I pretty much

agree with everything she just said.

I am a feminist myself and I do

think men and women should be equal.

I believe we have absolutely

achieved that. We have got to

remember that our Prime Minister is

a woman and we have lots of women in

the Cabinet and we have more women

in positions of power.

So we are

there, we have arrived?

We have. And

now it is just down to individuals

to work hard and achieve.

Your hand

went up.

It is OK to talk about the

FTSE 100 and it is OK to talk about

women in positions of power in

politics, but if you look at more

real-life examples, the teaching

profession is dominated by women and

general classroom teachers, but if

you go up to headteachers, a much

higher proportion are actually mail.

It is OK to look wider, but you can

see is that we do not have equality.

I will come to you, and you as well

because we will talk about the

#metoo thing as well. Professor, you

have done this research. Binna

Kandola, have women been conditioned

to be biased against their own sex?

Your question originally was why

don't women put themselves forward.

The response that came back was that

women fail to put themselves

forward, so it was a women's fault.

Where women do put themselves

forward, they are criticised for it,

so they are conditioned that if they

put their head up, they will be

criticised for doing it and they

will learn not to put themselves in

that position. In addition to that,

the work we have done on the

leadership prototype, whether we

realise it or not, when we think

about leaders, we think about a man.

Is there an unconscious bias in

women towards male leaders.

Yes, men

and women. When you think a better

leader, you think about a man.

Characteristics we associate with a

leader, dominance, assertion, they

are characteristics associated with

the stereotype of a man. The

stereotypes of women, compassion,

care, empathy, men can be

compassionate, caring and

empathetic, but those

characteristics are least linked to

the leadership prototype. There will

be a pro-male bias in men and women

when we think about leaders. It is a

generational thing. It just kind

of... That stereotype has been

around for a long time.

How do you

break it?

It takes a long time. You

can break it. Discussions like this

help.

Delighted to be of assistance!

There are things we can do when

making promotion decisions, we need

to think

health fair we are being in

the decisions were making. Give us

an extremely simple things we could

do, if we could be bothered, and we

are not bothered enough.

Something

that was done in the civil service

and was very effective was they had

a new rule that every single

selection panel, whether for a new

job or promotion, had to have at

least woman on it. Better to have

more than one because, of course,

these panels have five, six or seven

people. As soon as they had one

woman on every panel you were not

allowed to have a panel with no

woman. You couldn't say they were

not available or she was on holiday

or

or whatever, you had to have a

woman. Immediately the promotion

rate for women change.

That is

fascinating. John Evans, should we

be pushing through quotas,

affirmative action? In the

workplace, on the boards,

parliaments, wherever? 50/50?

The

short answer is yes. You had to

understand the context, we all do.

There has been 1000 years or more of

male dominance in this country.

Unravelling all of that so women get

a fair deal is enormously difficult.

A lot more than 1000 years.

Francesca is a biblical scholar, she

will tell you! A long time.

They

have built up all sorts of things,

strange things have been mentioned.

When you go for appointments, men

characteristically talk about what

they are going to do, in normal

parlance this is called boasting.

This is what I'm going to do. Women

talk about what they have done. And

we have talked ourselves -- taught

ourselves that what is important is

not achievement but what some people

might call EXPLETIVE or boasting for

the future, that is very much a male

characteristic. We sustained male

dominance by giving these strange

things. You have to breakthrough.

That is the unconscious bias.

You

have to breakthrough by giving

things like Luiters. There has been

positive discrimination for men for

1000 years and more, let's have a

bit of positive discrimination for

women as a corrective action to give

a bit of fairness.

Honestly, if I

thought I had been asked here to

talk today because I was a woman, I

would have walked out. I think it is

deeply insulting to suggest that

gender should come into the question

of a woman's position in her

appointment. Lego 's and quotas are

basically saying that women need an

extra helping hand to get to the

position that men are in. Mutch

leg-ups and quotas. With greatest

respect to the professors, this

quack psychoanalysis about men and

women as if men and women act in

certain ways, it is straying into

biological determinism. Women do not

show signs of empathy, they are not

scared of being bossy. I know some

of the other panellists were saying

this, we are doing women a

disservice. I genuinely think we do

women a disservice. Policy of

discrimination, women do not want

that -- positive discrimination,

women do not want that.

But men are

in control. Mill values decide who

will be appointed. Male values

decide who will be a leader and a

follower. You had to do something to

correct that. It is built in from

young. Even kids of six and seven,

the girls are taught to say, even as

young as that, that the boys are

more important. Try and buy a

birthday card for a young girl and

you will find every one of them has

a particular view of young children.

Don't laugh, don't try.

People

always go to the pink/ blue debate,

it bores most of us, with the

greatest respect.

APPLAUSE

It is not pink or blue, it is

activity or passivity, it is who

should lead and who should follow.

We have to break that particular

mould.

You are of different generations,

maybe you have a different

experience, a different life

experience. Ella, you are under 30.

A brief response?

We are celebrating

100 years since some women got of

the vote, we have come a long way.

The whole narrative of women being

held back by language or the pink or

blue debate denies the fact that

women have come a very long way

through struggle and battle and

political debate and winning, and

being powerful. The idea that

language will hold us back now is, I

think, frankly, historically

illiterate.

We have a lot further to go and I

think...

John, can you allow Clare

to talk? Honestly, typical male

behaviour!

Male behaviour in a

feminist cause.

Don't you be

assertive with me!

I think we have come an awful long

year in the 100 -- an awful long way

in the 100 years since some women

got the vote, but that does not mean

that women's outcomes are

necessarily any better. Women are

more likely to live in poverty than

men, we have heard stories about

harassment in the workplace, that is

not equality. I think it is really

important that we think about how to

change things, I am with John in

thinking about how we make a big

change.

Grab a and push it forward,

quotas?

Grab it and push it forward.

Quotas are a useful tool to push for

progress. They have been used in

businesses, parliament. Even when

appointing Cabinet, choosing

ministers. David Cameron, before the

2010 election, he said if I am

elected a third of my Government

will be women. That is an informal

quota. It is getting at an

expectation that we need to look a

bit more representative.

That some

people watching will say it should

be about the best person, you have

heard this argument before, the best

person for the job. That is in the

interest of the company.

I think it

is a strategy to maintain the status

quo. 150 years ago when women were

campaigning for the votes, the

arguments would be they have the

wrong disposition or we should

keep... They are too emotional for

politics. You need the best person

for the job, that is a strategy to

keep things as they are. When you

look at Cabinet, when we did our

research on how do you become a

minister, you say how do you

become... What is the best way to

become a Cabinet minister? People

say you had to be a trusted and

loyal ally to the Prime Minister.

That is how a lot of ministers get

their job. That is not the best

person for the job. We need to get

rid of bad language.

The most

compliant person. Theresa May get

criticisms for being emotional is,

robotic, the Maybot. If she were a

man, would that be levelled at her

in the same way?

I think there is a

double standard when it comes to

women and women leaders. Theresa May

for example can be criticised

because she does not have children,

because she does not know about what

it is like to be a mother, she can

be criticised for everything.

By

other women, Andrea Leadsom, for

example.

There is a certain state

that if you are a woman in the

public eye you will be criticised,

it goes back to antiquity.

Catherine, respond to the quotas?

I

do not think they were, they

automatically lead people to think

she is only there because of the

quota. They have backfired in India.

The Untouchables, the policy was to

try to raise the Untouchables by

having a quota system, it backfired

in India, it does not work. We know

it does not work. It is not a good

idea. Helena Morrissey, one of the

top finance officers in the country,

she was against quotas and she

insisted that the way forward was a

voluntary way with the 30% club

which they initiated and has

achieved astonishing results. The

voluntary by far the best. Quotas as

far too rigid and blunt and not

politically acceptable to most

people.

The difficulty with targets

and quotas, if you establish targets

and quotas on gender, why not race?

Then how would you manage that?

Then

you get yourself into the

middle-class BM e-mail against the

white working... Then we start

shipping ourselves up.

On one topic

it sounds sensible, but if that

favours whites, then you have an

issue with race.

I am desperate to

correct a couple of things.

You

should come here more often.

Women

do not need a leg up, men have had a

leg up by having the shoulders

tapped. It happens in the clubs, it

happens all the Gulf, we are not

there. Men have had a leg up for a

very long time and we do not need

special treatment, we need equality.

And since when are we talking about

women being the only parents and

families? We are quite regressive in

a number of statements we have made.

That is changing, we are talking

historically but things are

changing.

Dads have careers.

The

inference is that result and Lee

things are changing. Audience? Good

morning.

morning.

Ella made the point that

language is not so significant any

more, but we have had a lot in the

news about Cyrille Regis and his

significance and impact on football

related to race. There is also to

language that you can't use that was

used in the 70s and 80s when he was

playing, and there are similar terms

used to keep women down, the whole

bossy/ strident, that kind of

language used about women.

What if a

woman is strident?

Then she is

criticised much more than an

assertive... Or it is taken as

natural for a man to act in that

way, but when women do it they are

criticised.

This whole idea about things that

are counter-productive, Catherine,

you believe

you believe that the #metoo movement

has been and is counter-productive.

What you mean?

The workplace is a

social environment as well somewhere

to get work done, there are always

social events or social time over

the coffee machine or whatever where

people are interacting in a

completely separate, private way.

Flirting and sexual interaction will

be an inevitable part of almost all

workplaces.

Which we discussed a

couple of weeks ago, but

specifically this growing #metoo

campaign, are things being

conflated?

What is happening is that

anything remotely sexual is treated

as completely out of bounds.

People

are talking about rate.

Rate is

occasionally part of it, but the

vast majority of the complaints are

things that are really quite minor

and trivial like a hand on a knee or

a date that did not go as well as

somebody wanted to.

-- people are

talking about rate.

Rate is

occasionally part of it.

occasionally part of it.

By

conflating rape with bad dates and

incompetent seductions, it is a

mess. What do you mean by things

that did not go as well as you would

have hoped?

have hoped?

There is an example of

the bad date, Aziz Ansari. She went

out of her way to leave her

boyfriend, seduces Manning get a

date with him and it did not go the

way she had expected to go in her

imagination. They didn't in fact

have six, but she decided because

they had been kissing anyway she did

not particularly like that it was

sexual assault. -- they didn't in

fact have sex. She only decided it

was sexual assault after a

discussion with her girlfriends

after the date and she posted this

on social media. This is the kind of

thing that is bringing the whole

movement, which originally had a

very good point, like Harvey

Weinstein, into disrepute. It is

just women grumbling about bad

dates. It is weakening the message,

ignoring the C of E -- the serious

problem to focus on trivia.

One of

the examples you gave, one of the

things she found objectionable from

what a report said was that he kept

sticking his fingers down her

throat. Whether you want to call a

sexual harassment, it is still a

very aggressive and invasive action

to take. Whilst I can understand

some of the points you are making, I

do not necessarily... I think it is

well worth some women who may feel

they have been sexually harassed or

sexually abused, it does not matter,

if it gets more people talking who

have been sexually abused or

harassed, it is worth it.

What about

telling people what I am going to

do, not what I have done...

Somebody

having their hands but many, she

said was a little thing, I find that

offensive, when you have it done ten

times at work, then you go to a new

job and your bottom is patted, these

little things add up.

Do you

understand the art and about #metoo

is counter-productive?

Not

massively.

-- do you understand the

argument?

Yes, I think #metoo has

not done much good for women. I

question the idea it is a movement.

If we took a poll on the streets of

Southampton, there are very few

women who would tell you they are

part of the #metoo movement. It

exists online, it is a hashtag, it

is not a feminist upsurge, people

are not signing up to parties.

How

does it portray women? About the

question is whether women hold

themselves back, I think the message

buying #metoo is

telling women to

hold themselves back, via sexual

interaction, CMN, telling them and

they had to define every negative...

The Aziz Ansari example is great, it

is a bad sexual experience, all of

us are probably had one at one

point, it has been told is a

traumatic event. We are encouraging

women to see the very minor

awkwardness in times of sexual

interaction as traumatic. That is

doing a disservice to the

seriousness of rape, sexual assault

and also women's power and strength.

There is nothing good about #metoo,

I think, and I think most women

would agree.

It is a good thing that so many

women are saying that happen to me

as well. That is a very powerful

thing. Many men and women are now

saying that the way I have been

treated in the past is not

acceptable. That means that we need

to change the culture in our society

in a really big way. One woman we

interviewed for the book we have

just done said it is like water

torture. It is dripped after drip

after drip of little sexual remarks,

little jokes, little nasty remarks,

insults, jokes that only men laugh

at. It is hateful.

Nobody here, I

don't think any sensible person

would defend bad behaviour, would

defend the idea that women have got

to put up with jokes and comments,

anything like that. We're not saying

it is part of life and get on with

it. But comparing the low level

behaviour we are talking about to

water torture shows the extreme

nature of this debate. #metoo has

blown wide open what we mean by that

term sexual harassment, for example.

Actually most women do not subscribe

to the #metoo thing. I have called

it a middle-class women's club. It

is journalists and celebrities

subscribing to this. People on

Twitter and not representative of

the nation.

Do you subscribe to it?

I think I do. I think we are in

danger of throwing the baby out with

the bath water if we say that these

minor, what people are referring to

as minor problems, discount the

entire campaign. Whatever it is that

you think about a hand on the knee,

if we say those things don't matter

and the whole campaign is

ridiculous, that is an error.

Anybody else want to comment over

here? Claire?

Thank you. I think it

is a movement and it is a movement

because it is changing things. What

was really interesting about the

whole incident with the Presidents

Club, for the first time since I can

remember, a whole load of really big

organisations just backed away from

it and said it is not something we

want to do. What that says to me is

that the mood is changing and it has

changed.

So this is not women

holding themselves back but marching

forward. It is of the unions have

changed, smoke-filled rooms full of

men

men protecting pay differentials on

their own self-esteem and women in

the workplace challenging their own

positions. Things have changed at

the TUC.

Things have changed. The

general secretary of the TUC is a

woman. Most unions have women as

general secretaries. The big ones

don't but many do.

It was a day of

the dinosaurs before.

We have all

been called that!

Have you been

called that?

Oh, yes. The fact of

the matter is that in the traits you

movement, equal rights, whether it

is to do with racist behaviour or

sexual behaviour, is now taken very

seriously. -- in the trade union

movement. A very large proportion of

people in trade unions are now

women. And they are now making the

policy, making the way forward. I

think this might be the basis of a

great surge of trade union

membership, which will be good for

women. And good for the country as a

whole.

How do we move forward,

Kevin?

I agree with much of what

John is saying, however the

policymakers who made the decisions,

the laws about gender equality, you

talk about the lived experience of

women in the workplace, that is

entirely different. I will give one

simple example, which is a woman I

know applying for therapy, who works

for a major unionised organisation,

a major UK employer, and she did

voluntary overtime at work, as a

result of which, in the canteen, her

chair was accidentally kicked over

while she was sitting on it, her

tray was accidentally knocked off

the table, people accidentally

bumped into her, her car was

accidentally bashed by another

vehicle, because over time it was a

province of men. What was a woman

doing taking them's work?

When was

this?

Last year. There is insidious,

invisible behaviour going on. I

agree with the drip drip notion that

goes on. I want to say something

very quickly about the work of

Professor Ryan. They said CVs to

businesses for executive roles. All

they did was change the name of the

person. When we talk about language,

the very name a person has is

crucially important. They said CVs

and they changed the name of the

person, and when the perceived name

was male, there were more likely to

get an interview than a female. And

finally, the work on the glass cliff

that they did, when they looked at

board level appointments, and they

looked at FTSE 100 companies with

women on the board, and they found

that women were more likely to be

appointed as director into a failing

company that was destined for

failure than on boards which were

thrusting forward and striving

forward. There is an in-built

unconscious bias. I believe we need

to change the behaviour of men.

Last

word, Professor, very quickly. One

sentence. If we need to change, as

Kevin argues, is that the way ahead,

taking the behaviour of men?

The

bias in leadership roles is in men

and women, so naturally we need to

talk to men but we need women in the

room as well. We need to look at all

of our bias is towards men for

leadership roles.

Final word,

Catherine?

I agree with you. The

problem is not men, it is women as

well. Women are just as prejudiced

against women as men are and that

has been shown in loads of research.

Thank you all very much for your

participation. And you're fine

thoughts and contributions and

exchanges.

If you have something to say

about that debate log on

to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions,

and follow the link to where you can

join in the discussion online

or contribute on Twitter.

Next at Oasis Academy Lord's Hill,

here in Southampton,

we'll be debating if evidence

is a problem for religions.

But before that, make a note

of this email address.

It's [email protected]

if you'd like to apply

to be in the audience at

a future programme.

We're in Oxford next Sunday,

Leicester on February 18th and Bath

the week after that.

70 years ago, an amazing

discovery in the Qumran Caves

by the Dead Sea was

announced to the world.

Ancient manuscripts,

written between 200 years BC and 68

years CE were found,

some in pottery jars,

some in thousands of fragments.

The scrolls turned out to be

the very earliest group

of Old Testament and other religious

writings ever found.

Some were written in Hebrew,

some in Aramaic, some in Greek.

They threw new light

on the Second Temple period

of the Jewish religion.

They revealed some of the day to day

prayers and religious rituals

of a specific community

which believed in ideas of end

times and a coming apocalypse.

Some of the writings

are about the times and places

when Jesus and his disciples

are said to have existed, but none

makes any reference to them at all.

Is evidence a problem for religions?

Francesca, on Google scholar.

Excellent! Very often there is a

problem that some people of faith

can start with their conclusions and

cherry pick the evidence to fit with

their conclusions and ignore the

evidence that contradicts them.

Absolutely. This has been the case

with the Christian Bible. We like to

think that the books collected in

that particular binding are somehow

authoritative, historically reliable

and coherent in their theology,

their ideology, etc. But actually we

have got numerous different Bibles.

The Roman Catholics have a different

Bible from eastern orthodox

Christians from Roman Catholics from

Protestants. The same thing was true

in the ancient world. There was no

such thing as a Bible at the time of

the Dead Sea scrolls but we did have

very diverse Jewish communities who

has usually diverse ideas about what

religious writings were

authoritative. The Dead Sea scrolls

are shown is that many texts that

later Jewish groups and Christian

things we didn't think were

authoritative very important to some

communities. The scrolls came all

over the southern area of what we

now call Israel Palestine. Some are

libraries in major cities. It shows

that they were very diverse but more

importantly it shows that some of

the things that Christians say about

Jesus, that he exclusively brought

to bear, the coming apocalypse, the

kingdom of God, they were views that

were very much mainstream to

different sort of Jewish groups than

people previously realised.

There

are 27 books in the New Testament?

Someone not included and somewhere.

In the books that were not included,

what do they say about Jesus? It

paints a different picture of Jesus

from that evidence.

Give us the

other Jesus. The other Jesus

includes cheese is being a right

little monster when he was a kid.

Some of the apocryphal Gospels that

were written not very long after the

new test -- New Testament Gospels,

they talk about him killing his

playmates, striking his teachers,

and Jesus that is so anti-sex that

he appears in the bedroom of a newly

married couple and tell them not to

perform this filthy intercourse. He

tells them that they must take their

families and parents. It is a very

different Jesus to the one that most

Christians in the west like to

promote.

The spin doctors got hold

of it and they created the Jesus

that is far more compatible.

I don't

think you have got to start with the

conclusion and then look at the

evidence.

Did you know about that

Jesus?

I did. I will speak a bit

about my story.

With the time we

have got, just address that point.

Most scholars, as Francesca will

know, think that the Gospel of Saint

Thomas is the only one outside the

canon that we have in the New

Testament that contains any

historical information about Jesus.

Most scholars in New Testament

scholarship will say that things

like the cross gospel, the gospel of

Peter, these are the apocryphal

Gospels, have no real historical

content but... This is mainstream

scholars. There is a Jewish scholar,

and he thinks the gospel of Thomas

has some accurate historical

information but he doesn't think any

of the others have historical

information. He goes with the

synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and

Luke, and the Gospel of Thomas as a

supplement to that. I don't think

you have got to start with the

conclusion and go with the evidence.

My story is a looked at the evidence

before I was a Christian, the

evidence for Jesus's life, his

claims and his resurrection, and I

found that convincing. During my

time to medical school, that

convinced me further.

The historical

evidence for his resurrection?

There

is plenty of historical evidence for

his resurrection. These are things

we would expect to see if he was

raised from the dead that we would

not see otherwise. Appearing to his

disciples gone his sceptics, people

who persecuted Christianity like

simple and then converted. This is

relevant to the Dead Sea scrolls in

the following way...

Is this

evidence or stories?

I think your

definition of historical evidence is

different to mine.

This is

mainstream scholars.

I am a

mainstream scholar and I have a

different idea of evidence.

Not

really. If we look at New Testament

historians, they pretty much all so

that Jesus's disciples, like simple,

had ostensible appearances of Jesus

after his death.

But by his own

claim, he never met Jesus when he

was alive. Most of them agree that

his team was empty but scholars

doubt this.

He was a crucifixion

victim, and he wouldn't have been

buried. What the Dead Sea scrolls

show ask if you look at the Temple

scroll is that crucifixion victims

in the first century were

nevertheless buried, which supports

what the Bible says.

We are

delighted to have another scholar on

the show. It is vital that we do. Do

you think that some scholars are

subject to confirmation bias and

they see something that fits their

picture and decide to have it and

they see Jesus is approving of sex

and killing other children and

bringing them back to life in some

bizarre childhood trick and they

discard that? Is something going on

here?

I can tell you something that

is particularly amazing about

scholars working on the Dead Sea

scrolls. You can find scholars of

different kinds beating each other

out but what is amazing about

scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls, we

are Christians, Jewish,

non-believers, men and women, and

because the material is brand-new,

we are just taking delight between

us in puzzling what it might mean.

It is completely new evidence. You

find it is much more a case of

teamwork and a lot less polemics

against who has got the true

interpretation. And that makes it

very exciting.

Why are using it is new? It has been

out since 1947.

That is not true,

much of it has only been out since

the 1990s. The earliest publications

were in the 50s.

The Damascus

document from Egypt. It is the same

of some of the dead Sea Scrolls. The

dead Sea Scrolls give your picture

2000 years ago the reality...

Why

wasn't Jesus mentioned?

wasn't Jesus mentioned?

He is kind

of mentioned. He seems to know about

what was going on in Qumran and the

dead Sea Scrolls. You get the terms

sons of a are used by the

Qumranites, lots of phrases in the

dead Sea Scrolls appear in the new

Testament. He was aware of Qumran,

he might have been a member.

We have

no evidence.

We have.

That he was

there? No. Most of the first

Christians were Jewish, it came out

of a Jewish background.

They knew

the dead Sea scroll material.

That

is not what I said.

No, what I'm

saying is that Paul knew about the

writings of the dead Sea Scrolls but

the problem is we all seem to rely

on the dead Sea Scrolls as if they

were gospel, they were not.

I never

said anything of the kinds. I am

saying that we are misleading

ourselves if we think the Dead Sea

Scrolls are...

I know you have your

own views on the subject?

We will

never understand the Dead Sea

Scrolls or the Bible is unless you

understand the Egyptian factor.

I

suggest we look at the Dead Sea

Scrolls in order to understand the

dead Sea Scrolls.

The Egyptian

factor, ITV, Saturday night, I like

it.

You cannot understand the Dead

Sea Scrolls unless you looked Egypt.

That is your view.

I think you on

your way to saying something?

What I

want to say about the Dead Sea

Scrolls as we found copies thereof

what we now call the Bible, the Old

Testament part of the Christian

Bible and the Jewish Bible that over

1000 years earlier than the first

complete copies we have had. In

itself, it is fantastic. On the

whole, we can't really speak about

the Bible or the Dead Sea Scrolls

like Francesca was mentioning

because they are Scrolls, if you're

interested in texts, collecting

Scrolls, you can collect as many as

you want. You do not need to decide

what goes between the covers of a

book and what order it goes into.

What is a very important point to

make is that a lot of that text is

pretty similar to what we have now,

but there are also some small

differences between the text as we

have it now.

But Charlotte, does

evidence, hard evidence, really

matter? Are the deeper truth is not

the point?

I find when it comes to

the deeper truths about the Hebrew

Bible...

The deeper truths about

love and how to treat your fellow

humans, the general message?

The

general message I take from the

Hebrew Bible that the whole story is

a bit of a mess, it all went badly

wrong, the promises made to the

Kings and the priests were not

coming true, the country was lost,

the Excel...

Did Moses exist?

I do

not think in that form, no. As a

literary figure, yes.

But as an

actual person, you do not believe

Moses necessarily existed?

I don't.

Moses?

Yes.

I have studied one of these

Scrolls intensely, the copper

scroll, there are Greek letters

which spell out a name, there are

Egyptian hieroglyphics. You have not

looked at it, you don't know.

Excuse

me, how do you know I have not

looked at it?

If you looked Egypt,

they were waiting for three

messiahs, two messiahs.

Two messiahs mentioned in the Dead

Sea Scrolls, and a prophet.

Did

Jesus say he was the son of God?

We

don't know anything Jesus said.

Everything credited to him has come

to a severe texts. All sorts of

words...

According to some scholars

there is no evidence, he said he was

the son of man, quite a common

phrase.

A common phrase, it could

mean human, but it is quite a loaded

phrase. The proffered Ezequiel talks

about a high state is human. The son

of God was a royal title, it was

used of Kings, the Kings of

Jerusalem and the Kings of many

other ancient West Asian cultures.

It was a claim to semi-divinity.

One

example that most historians think

Jesus said, historians take a

critical approach and think Jesus

said some things in the gospel but

not others. Pretty much all new

Testament historians think that when

John the Baptist sent his followers

to Jesus and said are you the one

who is to come? You see the blind

see, the deaf hear, the dead raised,

go and tell them. He is quoting

Isaiah and Sam is coming he has

quoted that a little, rearrange that

a little. -- he is quoting Isaiah

and psalms. But there was another

passage which said God will send a

messiah whom heaven and earth will

obey, and when he does you will see

the dead raised, the lame walking,

the blind seeing and the deaf

hearing. This is Jesus is the

understanding he had of himself, he

thought of himself as God's Messiah

whom heaven and earth will obey. How

do you explain that self conception?

Is it because he is crazy? I have

done a lot of work in psychiatry and

that does not seem plausible. Is he

lying? You had no interest in

lying...

How do you know it was not

plausible he was crazy? I am not

suggesting for a second that he was,

but you dismiss that. CS Lewis talks

about this. There is no evidence he

was crazy? What is the evidence...?

I have walked... Worked with people

who have delusions that you are

Jesus.

He was always driving demons

out of people. What were they?

Scholars disagree. Some people think

it is their way of talking about

mental illness when they did not

have a strict job psychiatry, others

think there are such things as

demons. I am personally a little bit

agnostic on it. There are reputable

psychiatrist who believe in it.

In

Demons?

There are some.

Demons?

There are some.

You are a

psychiatrist?

Psychologist. We are

the living embodiment here of the

question, is evidence a problem for

religions? Clearly listening to

people... What is going on, it is a

major problem, because the

disagreements are so strong. One of

the questions for me is how do you

move from evidence to truth? One of

the things I observe is that people

of faith, religious people, tend to

move quite quickly from evidence

which is quite disparate to facts. I

recently watched Miriam Margulies in

America, a fascinating programme on

the BBC where she interviewed some

very fundamental people who had

absolute religious fact, I have

evidence that the Earth is only 5000

years old.

That is bonkers. I have

evidence which says evolution does

not even merit the word theory, it

is so papery and thin. They have

started with their conclusions.

The

problem with fundamentalists in

different religions is they move

from a very selective reading of a

select choice of cherry picked

information and say I have fact.

Sadly we live now in a world where

facts are so meaningless, so badly

abused, we are presented, as Kelly

and Conway famously said, with

alternative truths. Most people call

them lies but now you can say

evidence, facts, it is all

discredited.

With you in a minute,

Robert. Good morning.

Good morning!

I went to a catholic girls' School

in Southampton and I have to say

that a Catholic education is

probably one of the most confusing

things you can have. You go to your

science class and you are told you

cannot say anything unless you have

evidence for it, you go to your

history class and you are told you

had to think is that buyers, who

wrote it, why did they write it? You

have mass, and everything you have

learned in those lessons goes out

the window. You have to believe what

is there.

It is a different

evidential bar? I see, yes.

There is

not much space with the deeper

truths.

Robert, I know you are over

there. I do not think you have

spoken yet on the programme?

I

really do think that religion has

been around for a really, really

long time, there are so many

different religions going on, and I

think the evidence that has come up,

although it might disapprove certain

things and prove others, I really do

think that belief systems that have

been around for such a long time, I

really do think that the evidence

that is coming around to... I really

do not think it will make such an

impact that it will make much of a

difference.

Because they are too

solidified?

I think they are too set

in stone for them to change.

We had a mention of evolution and

how it works, Francesca, it evolves

under their religion is particularly

suited to a particular environment,

survival of the fittest, it survives

and flourishes and it is all about

what is happening at the time,

whether it is useful. Protestantism

and capitalism have been linked?

Absolutely. I think... The best way

to describe any kind of religion is

to say that religion is an aspect of

the sociality of what it is to be a

human being. Even the discussion we

had earlier this morning about

gender and feminism, all of these

debates are of their time in that

particular moment, religion is the

same.

The goddesses should have done

more to help themselves.

They help

themselves back.

It is the goddess

is

fault. You did a brilliant

programme on this, where did all the

goddesses go?

Monotheism emerged, we

ended up with a God in Judaism and

Christianity who is jealous and

intolerant and preferred the company

of circumcised men to his pantheon

of gods and goddesses, and with the

Protestant isolation of that

particular God than the roles of the

goddesses were almost written out of

the biblical traditions. They

re-emerge from time to time.

re-emerge from time to time.

Robert,

you agree with this, in some of the

Scriptures there is a lot of fake

news, we were talking about that

earlier?

Absolutely. Archaeology is

hard evidence that you can feel and

touch. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, in

the Temple scrolls which you know

about, and you, Charlotte, it

describes a temple 1600 qubits by

600 cubits wide. That is a huge

temple.

Was there a Ark?

No,

absolutely not. The Ark of the

covenant, different. The temple

scroll, why did it give those

dimensions? They are the dimensions

of the greatest temple...

Know, the

temple depicted as an idealised

temple.

Why? Why other measurement

is exactly the same as that of a

Temple?

I do not think they are.

Canales is a something about truth,

I was left hanging... Can I also say

something about truth? The Hebrew

Bible is a mess is not what I want

to be my main code.

30 seconds.

The

old Testament was written at

everything went wrong and it shows

that humans need to continue to

question how they have behaved and

what we are doing. There is no

truth, we need to reflect on our

actions.

We will continue to

question how we behave and reflect

on our actions next week.

Next week we're in Oxford,

so do join us then.

Thank you so much for watching.

But for now, it's goodbye

and have a great Sunday.