Episode 22 The Big Questions

A Good morning and welcome to The Big Questions live from Patcham

High School in Brighton. I'm Nicky Campbell. This Tuesday, Ian Brady,

the Moors Murderer, will argue that he is no longer mentally ill. He

wants to be transferred from Ashworth secure mental hospital to

a prison, where he believes he will have the right to refuse all forms

of sustenance until he dies. Our first Big Question: Should Ian

Brady be allowed to starve himself to death? Gambling. Newham, in East

London is officially one of the poorest boroughs in Britain. Yet it

has 83 betting shops and, this week, despite the council trying to stop

it, the 18th betting shop in one street alone was allowed to go

ahead. Our next Big Question: Does the law need to be tougher on

gambling? And as Pope Francis warns of the dangers of mixing ideas

founded on the Holy Spirit with ideas from the wider world, the

Church of England appears to be doing just that. Training pioneer

ministers to tailor the message of Christ for spiritual seekers of all

kinds. Our last Big Question: Is it right to pick and mix religion?

Welcome, everyone, to The Big Ian Brady was jailed for life in

1966 for the murder of 12-year-old John Kilbride, 10-year-old Lesley

Ann Downey and 17-year-old Edward Evans. Brady and his accomplice,

Myra Hindley, lured five victims and sexually tormented them before

killing them and burying their bodies on Saddleworth Moor between

July 1963 and October 1965. The body of one victim, 12-year-old

Keith Bennett, has never been found. Hindley died in 2002 but Brady has

been held at Ashworth Hospital since 1985 because he is mentally

ill. Since 1999, he has refused all food and has been force fed via a

tube from his nose to his stomach. Next week, if the mental health

tribunal decides he is now mentally competent, Brady will be eligible

to return to the main prison system, where hunger strikers have been

allowed to die in the past. Should Ian Brady be allowed to starve

himself to death? David Cohen, Keith Bennett, his mum died last

year. You represented her. I remember interviewing her. I met

her. She was an extraordinary woman - a lovely person. Such sadness,

such tragedy. I remember interviewing her Ben. It was 1988.

She was going to write to Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. She was looking

for answers. There were never be any, will play question he is --

will there? He is a control freak. I was a solicitor and appealed for

Ian Brady to meet with me. I went along to Ashworth and I met him on

two occasions with my wife. I played the role of a hostage

negotiator. Many of you may criticise me for negotiating with

someone who committed some of the most heinous crimes in the 20th

century. It is so sad that before she died, she could not give a

Christian burial for her son. It is so sad. I think I was justified in

negotiating with him. I had the blessing of the Greater Manchester

Police and the Home Office. I had two meetings with him. It did not

workout. He lost his last opportunity to have that one human

right - to dictate how he should It is a power thing with him, is

it? I have sat in the same room as him. He sits at right angles to you.

He is extremely aware of his situation. He is an ace bargainer.

This is the pawn he keeps pushing forward in a game of chess. I am

convinced that he knew where the body was and he still does. If he

is shown to be sane, why should he'd be force-fed? Just listening

to that testimony, I feel quite sick actually. What Ian Brady did

was unspeakable. Why should he be force-fed? The thing is, if we

removed the food from him, the state is sanctioning suicide

effectively. The state is not in a position to sanction suicide.

is the situation now for prisoners in the system. If we allow him to

die, it is not about punishment or revenge. Where there is live, there

is always hope. This will sound fairly incredible too many beers

but we have to remember there is always the Christian message of

hope. Always redemption and always salvation. As long as he is alive,

he has the chance to repent and come to some reconciliation. He has

had ample opportunity. He has.USOC think there is hope of redemption.

-- you seriously think. That is the Christian message. I think that it

is powerful and debatable and irrelevant. The question is, is

this man - regardless of whether he is Ian Brady or not - sane? If he

is, he goes into the prison system and he must be treated like all

other prisoners. That means, as things stand, he would have the

right to refuse food. If he is not sane, he would need to stay where

he is. Everything I have heard so far is very powerful. It is also

not the point. Not the point. disagree. You have a clash between

the practical and theoretical. When you are having a conversation about

what should and should not be done to somebody, you should say that

all prisoners should be force fed. The simplest way of putting it is

by saying that we hold human life in a much higher regard than Ian

Brady ever did. As a result of that, we do not take it away. It is

fascinating to have two people arguing on the same side as callous

and Clement. What is not great is that justice in this country is not

served by handing a multiple choice tick box along with a sentence. You

do not get to choose your punishment when you are convicted

of murder. He does not have the right. You believe he should have

been afforded the human right on what grounds - compassion? Purely

on Human Rights. There is many more than 50 shades of grey involved in

us. This system invites us to become binary. Should he or should

he not be allowed to die? Should he be allowed to commit suicide is the

question? In the UK, we do not have the justice system which says, I

sentence you to prison and its own that body. We do not have that

system in the UK. When we had Myra Hindley, who died from heart

complications following chest infection, we did not say, we are

going to why are you are and keep you alive and keep your vital

systems going. We can. I do not think we should promote suicide. I

do not think we should do anything to promote, support and enable

suicide. We should do everything we can to prevent it. I do not think

that you can say every day we can have so much control over you we're

going to prevent you. What we have done for Ian Brady, for a child

murderer, what we have actually done is turned him into an infant

in which we force-feed him. He gets mashed food through a tube. He has

no control over what is important. We should not single him out as

having special treatment. second. We should try and prevent

it. You'd have met him in your professional duties. Should he have

the right to effectively commit suicide? You do not have to agree

with what he has done in order to acknowledge the fact he should be

treated in the same way as other people with human rights. A lot of

people have a huge problem with extending compassion to Ian Brady.

The trouble with that is once you start making judgements about which

rights people get to keep, and whether they should keep rights

dependent on what they have done, you end up with places like

Guantanamo Bay. You have to take a very strong line. If you four-speed

somebody in circumstances where there is no necessity to do so, you

are torturing them. -- force feed. If you have ever seen somebody

force-fed, you would understand why that is. That is not quite true.

Ian Brady sometimes beats himself. He is not being force-fed on those

occasions, is he? Why are we arguing about the human rights of

Ian Brady? What about the rights of the victims - the people he

tortured, raped and murdered? What about the living families who have

this dreadful thing hanging over them for the rest of the pair lives.

The stepfather of Lesley Ann Downey - she lost her life as well to Ian

Brady. She is one of his victims. The stepfather is saying, for God's

sake, let him die so we can have closure and he is no longer there

for us to think about. That is a very good point. Winnie Johnson did

not get closure. Why should Ian Brady get closure? It is

fundamentally wrong to argue that Ian Brady was inhumane in the way

he behaved, which he was, and therefore we will be inhumane to

him. That is not what we do. Some people are of the opinion that if

he wants to die, we should let him. It is about the difference between

callousness and clemency. Rights are supposed to be absolute. There

is an absolute that supersedes all Rights. That should be where there

you are religious and call it sanctity or you are humane and call

it the over-reaching importance of human life. To take it away is

against many laws. There is an outstanding issue. You went and

tried to get this deal. We still do not know where the remains of Keith

Bennett bar. He still holds that. Till the day of his death, he could

depend. He could tell us where the remains are. That family would - it

would mean a lot to that family. Another attempt should be made to

ask him. Maybe even a deal. You can die but you letters have that

information. Morally, that is justified in trading research a

fiend, to give him that right. It is very important to respect the

rights of the victims. If we give him this right to take his own life,

isn't that reversing the sentence of the courts? He received three

concurrent life sentences. I underlined the word life. He should

serve those sentences. We are not depriving him of his life. He

should serve them. I will ask you a question, would you therefore think

it is justifiable to torture him in order for him to be forced to

disclose the information he is keeping from Winnie Johnson? No one

in this room can say that is justified. If he cannot be tortured

to disclose this information, what is the state supposed to do?

have to earn Human Rights. They are not automatically granted. I think

you have human rights by warrant of being a human being. I find myself

agreeing in that some of this debate is the relevant. If the law

says he can go... Which is the compassionate thing to do? We are

talking about different understandings of justice. In the

wider understanding of justice, we have compassion. He is that for? It

is for the victim and perpetrator. We're talking about retributive

justice. The idea that because the crimes are so he must, we really

want that person to suffer. -- keenness. -- heinous. Because of

actions, a prisoner no longer deserves a right to freedom. It is

a very difficult situation if what we are saying is the level of the

crime will, somehow give us the right to force another level of

cruelty in terms of the punitive justice that comes from that. That

becomes toxic for an Asian or for the victims to become part of that.

You may think that will make us even if this man does have human

rights, why is the human rights to die? That has never been decided, if

rights are given by God, then God doesn't allow you to die. If they

are chosen by society, why should society allow people to die? Why

does anyone have the right to die? The thing is, nobody... You would

carry on for speeding? We all have a right to life, but nobody has a

right to die. This is feeding into a euthanasia issue. People seem to be

arguing that he has a right to die at the time and place of his

choosing, because it is a human rights. That is not a basic human

rights and should never be. Suicide is not against the law. Death is

inevitable. We do not have a right to die, we have an inevitability.

The question is, do we have a right to choose where and when? My uncle

is dying, he is in his early 80s, he has in operable cancer, and he has

taken the choice not to have treatment, no chemotherapy, no

radiotherapy, and he says, I am going to die somehow, now I know

how, I feel more in control. There is nobody on his case saying, you

must not die, you must let us treat you, you must let us operate.

that is silly. He is allowed to make that choice. The thing is, there is

a very different... What your uncle is doing is allowing nature to take

its course, OK? He is refusing treatment. But Brady wants to refuse

food. But food is not treatment. We need food and drink to keep us

alive. What we are talking about here is a right to die, and if we

introduce that, it becomes a duty to die. We have a right to choose what

is done with our bodies. If we are suffering from a terminal illness,

we can say, I don't want any more treatment, but we also have a right

to say, I don't want you to pin me down and force me to have food and

water. If I am confident to make that choice, mentally competent,

that is the issue that is being decided in this case. But if he is

mentally competent, he should have the same right. There are so many

behaviours in prison where you surrender the rights to your own

body, you will be physically restraint, they locked the doors, by

the way, that is a denial of freedom and choice, a denial of bodily

liberty, and by locking the doors, they tell you what you can and

cannot do with your body. Your uncle, for whom I have nothing but

sympathy, has freedoms that Ian Brady does not, and that is because

he is a convicted murderer. We pay prison guards to go into the prison

is a convicted murderer. We pay prison guards to go into the prisons

to keep people alive and safe, not to watch them start themselves to

death in the manner of a concentration camp victim. We read

in the risk of turning ourselves into executioners. His sentence is

what you said, to have the doors locked and the keys thrown away.

There was not a bigger sentence, and we are going to put tubes into you.

I'm afraid there was, if he tried to hang himself, we would cut him down.

The gentleman here, �300,000 per year to keep them in Ashworth

prison, a consideration for some of the newspapers. Many would say that

is relevant. It is absolutely irrelevant. The Government strive to

save money, but the moral principles are far more important than saving

money. And we knew moral and ethical normative process hear of both

sides, should we not look at Brady himself, and his E not manipulating

everyone? The problem is that he is, but we have got 60 million

psychiatrists in Britain who have an opinion on his illness. There is a

whole spectrum of whether he is actually mentally ill. Does a

personality disorder constitute mental illness, is psycho bothy --

psychopathy a mental illness? emerged from Ashworth after a very

harrowing experience on two occasions, the first thing we said

outside the walls, what do you think? We said that he is completely

rational, lucid. He may have been ranting at us, but he is not insane.

He is just a cold-blooded murderer. Not insane? Not insane at all!

are some very high functioning, very able people in society who have very

severe mental illnesses, and you and I would meet them. Jon Ronson wrote

a very good book about this. Absolutely, and we would not go,

that person is barking mad, they are rational. There is another issue I

want to make. When I was a boy growing up in Liverpool, this is

showing my age, the year that Elvis Presley was top of the charts with

Wooden Heart, there were over 100 people in the UK taken to court and

charged with the crime of attempting to commit suicide. That was 1961

when it was decriminalised. So within the current generation, we

are moving away slightly from our attitudes about the criminalisation

of suicide and our attitudes to the right to live, the right to life and

everything else are changing. We are on the cusp of that. Brady has more

than 50 shades of grey and has challenged us right into that area.

What is our view on life, death and morality? He has taken us right into

that area, and that is what clever, manipulative areas delayed aggro

criminals do. Thank you very much for taking part in that debate,

thank you. Go to the website if you have got something to say to that.

You can contribute on Twitter as well. We are also debating, live

from Brighton, does the law need to be tougher on gambling? And is it

right to pick and mix religions? Tell us what you think and any

general comments about the programme preserve of devotees of the Racing

Post studying form, now you don't need to know anything about sport to

stand a chance of winning on gaming machines, fixed odds betting

terminals. You can place up to 100 quid on a casino game every 20

seconds if you want, and you can win up to �500. Research shows that the

odds of finding a machine to play on our best in the poorest parts of

Britain, the sort of place where the high street is run down, and many of

the locals work in low status, poorly paid jobs. Does the law needs

to be tougher on gambling? Matt, you are a campaign on the issue, you

have played these machines, you have a problem when you were younger,

tell us about the machines and the seductive nature of them. They are

incredibly addictive, incredibly fast-paced. The ability to control

the speed and state is quite potent. Does the law need to be tougher on

gambling? The current law needs to be properly enforced. The gambling

act has three objectives. Gambling needs to be fair and open, not

associated with crime and disorder, and it cannot harm young or

vulnerable people. And these machines, fixed odds betting

terminals, are in breach of all three. Do you think they inevitably

are? I think they are highly addictive, and there are two pieces

of secondary research on the British gambling prevalence surveys which

show that they are most addictive form of gambling. We recently polled

501 people, and 87% of people said they were addictive, 76% have spent

more than they planned to do, and 62% have gambled until all the money

was gone. These are all signs of addiction. What is the most you

lost? In one sitting, about �2500. The machines are designed to distort

your cognitive function, to make you make decisions you would not

otherwise make. So you do not make rational choices that you would

otherwise make if you are doing any other activity. They have been

described by some as the crack cocaine of gambling, do you endorse

that description? I do, yeah, they are the most addictive form of

gambling. How did you fund it?I had a part-time job at the time, I was

working while I was in sixth form, so I studied gambling when I was 16.

Here, I should not have been allowed in, really, and young people are

particularly at risk, Professor Johnny Grant is an addiction and

psychologist, and he said the brain develops back to front, developing

desires before the ability to develop control behaviour.

Christopher Snowden, what about that description, the crack cocaine of

gambling? Do you buy that? No, not at all. I wrote about this a few

months ago, and we looked into the origins of this phrase, and it is

very rare that you will see a news reporter writing about these

machines without hearing it said that they have been dubbed the crack

cocaine of gambling. Every form of gambling since the mid-1980s has

been dubbed the crack cocaine of gambling, casinos, scratch cards,

lotteries, everything. It is a catchall term. Are we finding

stronger...? These are pretty intense, �100 every 20 seconds.

Potentially, that is your maximum state. You can put �10,000 on a

horse if you want to. But that is not a 22nd event. You can bet in

play on football, a yellow card, a corner. What is interesting about

the crack cocaine of gambling, the fact that it has been applied to so

many forms of gambling is an indication that this current panic

about the fixed odds betting terminals is just the latest in a

number of ongoing... They have been getting more intensive. It is

reminiscent of the panic about super casinos, online gambling. You can go

back 50 years to when bookies were licensed in the first place. People

have been predicting mass gambling addiction ever since bookies were

opened, ever since casinos were opened, and it just hasn't happened.

We have not seen a dramatic proliferation... Did is not just the

person in front of the machine, it is the kids on the partner at home,

the knock-on effect. Sure, there may be a few people who would say that

we should ban gambling entirely, but most people would accept we need to

have a well regulated gambling industry. We do not live in the

1970s, the days of the football. Michael I are there so many of these

machines? -- why are there? It is technology, internet gambling,

mobile phones. In new, 83 betting shops in the borough, 18 on one

street. -- Newham. The borough, 18 on one street. -- Newham. That you

upload that? It is the demand and football in those areas, but I would

also like to say... It is not in Highgate. That is not relevant. We

betting shops have been on the high street for over 50 years, and they

have been heavily regulated, investing in town centres, creating

jobs. We must not forget that they go to Newham Council and have to get

a licence, go to the gambling commission for a licence, and since

the gambling act no licences have been referred whatsoever. Local

authorities have sufficient powers already... Newham tried to overturn

the licence. It is important this is not an argument about whether

gambling should be banned outright, but your arguments ignore

psychology. Even sitting in a pub watching bells and whistles on an

old-fashioned fruit machine, you are being seduced. No.So why do the

lights flash, then?! I am not seduced by them at all. Well done,

you! What are you doing in a pub, anyway?! The traditional libertarian

arguments, freedom of choice. I would agree with you if you spent

the same amount of money explaining the dangers to people as you do on

tempting them in. If it said that this machine has made a clear profit

of �30,000, more people will lose, you are a mug, then I have got

Not the pay-out, the profit. Why are they limited to two machines per

shop? They have to keep opening more shops. They have to keep opening new

shops to stick the machines in! you are suggesting that they allow

more machines in, that would be one solution. Have you finished? Can we

keep it in perspective? 73% of the adult population is gambling, and

problem gambling has remained relatively low. That includes

lottery, less than 1%... We are not arguing about gambling. This is the

crack cocaine, the lottery is like Ovaltine. The recurrence of the

phrase about the crack cocaine, it is overused, but even a stopped

clock is right twice a day, and perhaps this technology has gone too

far. We take it more seriously than that. Of course you do, it is your

wages! Our staff take it seriously, they know their customers, often

they are delayed us, -- they are regulars, and they offer support to

people who have a problem with gambling. Collectively, the industry

raises more than �6 million on voluntary donations to support

research, education and treatment of Gambling in itself is the crack

cocaine. We have known since the 1950s how behaviour works. How it

has supported, reinforced and modified. Chubby will send is a

prime example. If you do not give him a treat every time, you give

him a treat every so often. Gambling is a variable rate of

reinforcement. People keep putting money into the machine in the hope

that once an hour while they will get a payout. There is a bigger

issue about this. Nick Leeson was a professional gambler. We have built

a society on industrialists and business people who were

professional gamblers. He brought Barings Bank down by gambling on

what the Tokyo's Stock Exchange was going to do. Quoting from the

Gambling Commission, they are saying that proper gamblers would

gamble on a variety of products. It is product lead -- it is person

scented and not adapt related. the audience. A young gentleman

here. I think we do need to get tougher on gambling. This time last

year, Nicklas Bendtner for Paddy Power advertise after he scored a

goal on the football game. It is that ambushing of advertising which

has a negative impact. If you look at the �10 free play, you can

compare it to crack cocaine. Even worse maybe because no drug dealer

gives you free cocaine because you have to start paying for it. --

before. You can come back. This is interesting. It says in their Koran

gambling is the work of Satan. It is Satan's work, is it? Indeed. It

is about making responsible choices. We are all adults. People have the

choice. They can donate to charity and they can pay taxes and

government can make money. There are three main problems. Gambling

is a parasitic industry. It does not contribute any resources,

products or enriching services. It is a vulture industry. In a session,

gambling is up almost recession- proof. -- recession. It is

increasing in Newham and that his family are having this discussion.

It ruins lives. That 1% of the population averages about �17,500.

Alcohol ruins lives as well. I did not approve of that either. What

about freedom of choice? Mohamed can say, we do not put

anything back into the community, I am sorry to hear that. The facts

speak for themselves. We pay �1 billion in taxes. We are part of

the community. In Newham we provide 400 jobs. It is the rancid machines

that are designed by intelligent people... Wait a minute! As was the

attack on super casinos and the online industry and so on, a good

deal the people criticising machines would see the rest of the

gambling industry. It is not about making money. That is about

allowing people to do what they want to do. It is a business. Why

do you need so many in one place? As you mentioned, there is a limit

on a number of machines. What was the rationale behind the Lynette? -

- limit. Hands have shot up. There is a lady in a yellow. This

gentleman is saying gambling is good for everyone and it is a

freedom of choice. I am affected. My father was a gambler. We lost

our house and were made homeless. The fact our whole life... How can

you clarify gambling? You cannot say that. -- glorify. A my

experience is similar to the last speaker. My father was a gambler

back in the 50s and 60s and it affected our family life

tremendously. Later on, he entered up working in a bookmaker's. Then

he realised what a mug's game it was. Seeing it from the other side

and all these hundreds of people losing money. Most people do it

without a problem. Most people do. I have no problem with pubs. Most

people go to pubs and had a drink with no problems. Some people

become alcoholics. I do not think we can talk about gambling without

talking about Ollie Scott. He is a young man of 18, in Birmingham,

last year, who committed suicide. He did that because he had pay-day

loans he had taken out. He had taken that out to support his

gambling addiction. That was down to online and machine camping. It

was fast and uncontrollable. -- gambling for so when we talk about

gambling and should be controlled it, we should look at him and say,

What we want to know is, how many people who play these machines have

a problem with them? The last Labour government might have

legitimise these machines on the gambling at that they were put on

probation. They said there might be a problem and evidence that the

machines are addictive. We have that evidence. Professor Jim Orford

has estimated 23% of profits came from problem gamblers. That is �1.4

million they made. That was a sample based on 25. Surveys have

been done since the gambling Act was brought into force and a so

that machines do not cause a problem gamblers. -- and they say.

The average bet purse been in Newham - bearing in mind it is

every 20 seconds - is �20. The average inserted in a machine is

�55. It does not necessarily make them a problem gambler. Someone who

puts on a �2 stake could have a problem with gambling while someone

who put some �100 could have no problem with gambling. You need to

keep it in perspective. If you need to look at the survey from the

Gambling Commission. The number plainer machines has dropped in

2012. -- playing on machines. not against gambling. Members of my

family are involved in the gambling industry. If people were putting

the same amount of money into a bookmaker's hand and making the

same bet every 20 seconds, would they be betting as much? They would

not. The reason why people get into trouble with computers and

gambling... Stop shaking your head at bay. That is because there is no

personal interaction involved. -- at me. We see this with porn and we

see this with crime. If you had to give money to a bookmaker... You

know that he is true. The facts are, the average spend in terms of time

is 40 seconds. The average spend in terms of money is the �10. Keep it

in perspective. Thank you very much for that. You can join in by

logging on. Following the link to the online discussion. Send us your

views about our last Big Question. Is it right to pick and mix

religion? This is the final show of this series but we will be back in

January 2014, so e-mail if you would like to be in one of the

audiences next year. The Summer Solstice on Friday brought 21,000

people to Stonehenge to watch the dawn. And they weren't all New Age

travellers, ageing hippies or latter-day druids. There were many

Christians there too, and people from other mainstream faiths

seeking something spiritual amidst the crystals and the Tarot cards.

Is it right to pick and mix To an extent, having thought about

this, religions pick and mix religions. There is lots in the

Bible and the Koran. Who knows what other pre- Christian, Preet Jewish

myths were involved as well? Unless people are looking at Prix

authoritarian communities, we live in an individual world. People make

choices. In a religion, not everyone does everything. They

choose things that are meaningful to them. It is about meaning. It is

about a search for meaning. What we should be doing is to become a

uplifted by the fact that people are on searches and they are

interested in exploring different things because they are searching

for meaning in their lives. There may be things within that own

traditional community. You might find a lot of things in our own

traditional community. They may find other things are needed. For

example, more contemplation. There are a lot of Jewish Buddhists. If

people are genuinely open and interested in spiritual matters,

why wouldn't they explore other religious parts which also holds

the truth? The issue of Jews for Jesus is slightly different. Only

because, if people believe that Jesus is God, that obviously is

contradictory to the idea there is only one God. It is picking and

mixing to an extent. To an extent. I am not talking about Jews for

Jesus. I am talking about people who are genuinely interested in

exploring and binding out what different Christians believe, what

a Muslim believes. They want to read the Koran. They want to find

out and not be in a closed position where they're only going to believe

in what they are told to believe them. I hope people will come along

to the interface session this afternoon which is happening at the

Church of the Good Shepherd. will be busy now. A Hindu speaker

and myself and a Quaker speaker talking about our believes.

goes way beyond religion and religion is kind of humankind's

cack-handed efforts to fathom the unfathomable. The Catholic Church

is interesting as a way of picking and mixing. Contraception -

intrinsically evil - according to popes. And yet, according to one

survey, 69% of Catholics used contraception. That is picking and

mixing, isn't it? The reason why pick and mix - what is religion? It

is not about us. It is about a search for the meaning of life and

got an truth. Were they cannot pick and mix religion, if we have a

genuine faith, we have a search for the trees. There will always be a

point where there is intellectual conflict. If, as a Christian, we

believe Jesus was the son of God, it is a revealed religion and we

believe this is the truth, why are we going to believe there is Buddha

and bits of Islam and Hinduism, it makes no coherent sense? There have

been so many apologies. Copernicus was reburied, the African slave

trade. They did not apologise to Charles Darwin but, you are right.

What we are getting out here is the Catholic church, along with other

churches, has, in the past, not always behave quite as it should

have done. Fundamentally, the belief of God, the Barber, the son,

the Holy spirit has never changed. Christian, a Muslim or a pagan, I

have to respect that they have their own troops. Your approach is one

which denies the truth of other beliefs. But there can only be one

truth. There can only be one truth? As in we can have universal ethical

truth, but, Nikki, are you wearing, I don't know, a black suit or a red

suit? Which is true? Something is either true... I can list about 200

Christian institutions across the world who believe that their truth

is the truth, among those the Catholic Church, and the Catholic

Church's idea of truth has evolved considerably over the years, and

taking Italy between 300 and 400 AD. If we think we are here now, there

are about 900,000 people in churches, about 2 million people in

other kinds of churches across the country on a Sunday, on a regular

Sunday. If you look at all the surveys dragging of my favourite

statistic, if you ask people if they believe in God or any kind of

firepower, and you strip out the ones who go to church, temple or

mosque, 26 million people in Britain who say they believe in God but do

not belong to an institution. Is it right to pick and mix? The fact is,

the majority faith in Britain is pick and mix. It is all part of

scrabbling away and this confusing world towards truth. I must speak to

Kevin, how are you doing? I am very good this morning. You are looking

absolutely resplendent. There you go. The has dressed up for us, in

his which Lee robes. Basically, paganism in the modern age is about

looking into oneself. I believe that a god and goddess we are all part

of. We worship the universal forces. The believe in God? Not as a

concept, if you mention religion, it means war. 300 years ago, I would

not have been allowed to sit here, I would have been burned at the stake

- or hung in England. And still people sitting here, like the lady

over there, looking very lovely, I must say, but she said, there can

only be one. I am not here to preach or dictate my belief system. I am

here to say, this is what I believe in, as do other people. At the end

of the programme, hopefully we will agree to differ, we can all go home,

worship our own deities, and even your viewers, even if they just

worship watching East End is... Allen used to say that, God go with

you. There is a very interesting point, Exodus, suffer not a witch to

live. You have picked and mixed that bit out. Absolutely not. As a

Christian, we believe that Christ is the new covenant, so his law

supersedes the old Testament. ignore the old Testament.

appreciate, we say that Christ fulfilled the old Testament. Why do

you ignore the bits in your Testament about homosexuality? Why

not? Because it is very clear, Jesus talked very positively about

marriage and what marriage is. Jesus was such a radical person, he was so

radical! If Jesus wanted... People say that Jesus never talked about

homosexuality... Jesus was Jewish, by the way, not Christian. If Christ

wanted it, and I don't mean this in a bridge orotund sense, if you

wanted to set out a bit of homosexuality, he would have done

so. What did he say about witches, then? Did he invalidate the witch

thing? Christ came and... Jesus has died. He came and said, love one

another, you're two main commandments are to love the Lord

your God with all your heart and soul, and stemming on from that is

to love your neighbour as yourself will stop what if your neighbour is

that goes to the heart of this. This is the arrogance of organised

religion is saying, we have the truth, and we are in search of the

truth. Critical thinking and rationality says, what you want to

do is develop your appropriate morality for the society in which

you live. Pick and mix is great, but religion is bigger than Woolworths.

The 4200 identified religions in the world today, 4200, and that is not

to mention the cults of intergalactic warriors and people

like that. Coming on to that in a minute! 4200, and organised

religion, the history of that is schism, split. For a while we are

together, then we split and split again. Is it all right to pick and

mix, a bit of this and that, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu? I it

lacks integrity and on standing of what faith is. I think, on the one

side... You can't all be right!No, and I would say, why is searching

for the truth seen as a bad thing? It doesn't have to be exclusive,

that is different to what you are saying. What I would want to say is

when you give yourself to a particular faith, worshipping a

particular God, practices come out of worshipping that particular God

that you worship, and sometimes it is pulling those things apart was so

we see practices that are inherent, for example, within Christianity or

Buddhism, issues or aspects of justice and peace. People look at

those practices and say, yes, I would like to shake my life around

those, those are things I want to do, and then they paste together

that they are Christian and somehow Buddhist. But if we look back at

what their beliefs are, that feed into those practices, those are

quite different things which are mutually exclusive. But that is not

to say you cannot learn and you cannot affirm that in another

person. James. When people say, I do not mean to be pejorative, if

someone has genuine faith, it does not matter how demurely once it's

there, you are being incredibly judgment blind arrogance. It is not

reserved in your right to cherry pick from other religions, it is

with having the right to exercise intellect that God gave me and

arrived at my own decisions. Last Sunday was the first Father's Day I

have had since my father died, and I went to church, because I feel

closer to him there, and I took my children with me. My children were

born using fertility techniques that the head of the church I visited the

leaves to be wrong and possibly satanically but I came out of church

feeling better, so did my children, and I felt more loving towards my

dad than I would have been if I didn't go to church. How can anyone

tell me I am less of a Christian or I don't have a genuine faith?

would be fascinated to know the answer to this question, so address

it. Jodie here feels, she feels a relationship with God, am I right in

saying that? Yes.You feel the power as well, don't you, Kevin? You

really feel spiritual. Caroline, you are a fantastic woman, strong

beliefs and faith, and you feel a relationship with Jesus, don't you?

Definitely. What are they feeling? The difference between truth and

sincerity... No, what is this?A person can sincerely believe that

their belief is the truth, just because they do that does not mean

it is necessarily true. But truth is external to the human being. We have

just heard... Assuming we are not nihilists, the truth... What

experience are they having? That depends on the individual, I don't

know those individuals, but there is a truth, and you cannot pick and

choose also dance troupe and makes it together. You believe in

something. This society, people believe in absolutes, human rights

as an absolute thing, and not everyone might share the liberal

definition of human rights. Also, there are minorities in this society

which are told what to believe and what not to believe. The one thing

that has not been highlighted here, we are all talking about truth, and

you know, I was really moved by what you said about going to church.

James, yeah. On Father's Day. I think it is not a question of what

we believe but why, and so when we are talking about critical thinking

and rationality, I think there is an automatic assumption that those of

us with a very deep faith are somehow brainwashed or we have lost

the power of critical thought or rational thinking. But actually,

particularly with Catholicism, everything is joined up, and if

there is an area of faith that we particularly have difficulty with,

and we know what the flash points are in the Catholic Church, for

example, we have to ask ourselves, which I did, why? Why does the

Catholic Church teach this? Why does is land each that? It is part of the

search for truth, why? Not just saying, this is challenging and we

have to ignore it. The one thing you do not need in this equation is... .

-- is God. When you look at the great philosophers, the great

writers, the great artists, scientists, you can't pick and mix

from all the things. -- you can. You do not need a God in there. When you

ask the question, Nicky, about what people are feeling, these people

where different roads and reality is, well, I feel my connectedness to

the people in this room. I wish everyone the best possible life they

can have and I wish they be a in a way that is appropriate to the

people around them. That is what I feel. You know, I am tempted to

bring in the British bookmakers Association! What is the best bet?!

Sorry, you wanted to come back. wanted to say this, that we have at

least half a dozen different versions of truth around this

meeting, but what is happening in the nation at there is that there

are all these people who don't belong to any of these particular

affiliations, who are making their own way and trying to work out their

own understanding. That is fine, but what James says, he put his finger

on it a little bit, because what those people and we lack is

community. We look for community in other ways. James founded in church

that day, other people find it in organisations like the Scouts, the

guides, whatever. But also in their local club, charities, the way they

subscribe. The legal parties. Political parties and football

clubs. People are looking for community and improvising an

alternative to the community they once found in their religion, their

default religion. So actually, really, there is no point in half a

dozen people in a marketplace shouting louder and louder to say, I

have the certainty, because people are not interested in that. They

want to be able to mediate their own experience of God. Is it okayed to

pick and mix religion? No, is it is not. The problem we have with this

is the person of Jesus, because we seek to follow Jesus. He was God

come among us, and not only, he said, I am the way, the truth and

the like, no one comes to the father but me. Will God punish you for

picking and mixing? What Jesus says is that the Bible speaks of humanity

in terms of being lost, in terms of, when it comes to eternity and

life after death, that we cannot find our own way there, and that is

why Jesus came, to show us the way there. So the way is through Jesus.

If you are lost and someone says, let me show you the way, you for

them. You might get mugged around the corner, though! If you decide

halfway that you are going to go somewhere else, that your