Episode 20 The Big Questions

Today on The Big Questions - are we facing the end of the world?

APPLAUSE

Good morning. I'm Nicky Campbell, welcome to The Big Questions.

Today we're back at Brunel University London, in Uxbridge,

to debate one very big question - are we facing the end of the world?

Welcome, everybody, to The Big Questions.

APPLAUSE

The Apocalypse, the Battle of Armageddon, the End Times -

this is the realm of eschatology, a theological study of where humanity

and the world is ultimately headed.

In Christianity, it's the final judgment, the last trump,

damnation for some, salvation for others,

and possibly a new world to come.

Nearly all religions have a prophetic vision

of the end of the world

and who will survive and who will not.

It's happened before.

Long before humans walked this Earth, there were five great

mass extinctions which destroyed most of this planet's life.

In the first, 443 million years ago,

85% of the creatures which then lived on the seas, were wiped out.

In the fifth, 65 million years ago,

the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction of plants and animals

saw the last of the pterosaurs, the end of ammonites

and the death of the dinosaurs.

And now scientists believe we're facing a sixth great extinction.

But this one is caused by us - by human beings -

destroying habitats, overheating the planet.

So are we now facing the end of our world as we know it?

Is this what so many religions foretold?

Well, to debate this very question, we've gathered together

environmentalists, eschatologists, economists, writers,

peoples of many faith and of none.

And you can join in too on Twitter or online by logging on to...

Follow the link to the online discussion.

Lots of encouragement, contributions for...are engaged,

but looking slightly concerned, our audience here in Uxbridge.

So let's just start off with some of the religious perspectives on this.

We have Adnan, who is a Muslim.

And we have Pastor Clement Okusi from the Eternity Church, London.

Eternity - I like the cut of your jib.

And we have got Taiwo Adewuyi, who is from Discuss Jesus.

So, what are the signs, Pastor?

You believe that this could come, it could come soon,

it could come in our lifetimes.

What signs should we look out for, what signs are you receiving?

Well, we get our understanding of eschatology

from Scripture, of course.

And, actually, from the mouth of Jesus himself.

Jesus on his Olivet Discourse,

he's approached by his disciples,

who ask him a number of questions about when will the end of time be?

For us, the end times is precipitated

by the return of Jesus Christ,

-the second coming.

-Right.

Jesus begins... He gives them a list of things to look for -

wars, rumours of wars, nations against nations.

Earthquakes, pestilences, diseases, etc, etc.

Do you see it now? Do you see that stuff happening now?

Those things have always been there.

Yeah, I was just going to say.

What we are seeing, we are seeing an increasing amount of them.

If I think about it in my lifetime, I mean, I'm still quite young,

when I consider the amount of wars

that I've seen in my lifetime - whether it's the Falklands War,

two Gulf wars, Rwanda, Bosnia, etc,

there seems to be an increase in wars.

Despite our growing wisdom in science and technology, aviation,

we still seem to have new viruses, new diseases for ever coming up,

we've had Ebola, got the Zika virus,

we've got all sorts of things happening.

So, yeah, so those words of Jesus seem to...

So we're turning in on ourselves in a way?

You say Israel is significant, is it?

Yeah, Israel's at the heart of it.

For us, as we understand end time theology, there is

a difference between the Church and Israel.

Armageddon that you mentioned,

is meant to take place at a place called Megiddo.

I've been there, or at least have been to that area,

where they reckon that all the world's armies are going to

converge onto Israel.

And Jesus is going to return, the second coming of Christ,

he's going to defend Israel,

rescue Israel and defeat her enemies.

Taiwo, is that how you see it?

Is that a similar theology going on here?

Yeah, to a degree. To a degree.

When is Jesus going to come back?

You think it's in our lifetime?

I believe the generation that has witnessed

the formation of the state of Israel,

will see the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What will happen when the Lord Jesus Christ returns?

What will our experience of that be?

I mean, he is coming back to judge the world

and to finish that which he started.

So when we look at the beginning, the whole idea was to create,

obviously, a Garden of Eden and populate it around the world.

The aim was not kind of to bring death and sin into the world.

So, what signs are you seeing?

So, there are four key signs which we should keep in mind.

So far we have seen 1.5.

There are four signs.

The first one is the sign in the Church.

The second one is the sign in the Earth.

The third one is the sign in the Middle East.

And the fourth one is the sign in the sky.

-All this is well documented in...

-What's the sign in the sky?

All, all... All this is documented well in Matthew 21...

But what is the sign in the sky?

The sign in the sky is the latter aspect.

So, I mean, the Bible talks about the sun being darkened,

the moon not giving its light, and so forth.

And prior to his imminent return,

we will see a sign of the son of man,

prior to his coming.

Pastor, could this be in our lifetimes?

Well... I mean, Jesus is very clear.

Jesus says, "No man knoweth the time nor the hour."

So we should be very careful about trying to predict the actual

return of Christ. In fact, there was a guy called Miller,

-who I think in the 18th century...

-Yeah, kept getting it wrong.

He predicted the return of Christ

and so people were climbing up mountains cos they

wanted to see Jesus before people would see him on ground level.

Lots of people have constantly made these predictions.

-Adnan, do you think there are signs?

-Absolutely, yes.

-What signs are there?

-According to Muslim eschatology,

which mainly comes from the Prophet Muhammad and his prophecies,

he talked about an increase in injustice.

Indiscriminate killing, inequality,

people will start to repress each other and despite...

This has always happened, though.

Of course, but near the end of times there will be specific signs

such as escalation in...earthquakes,

they will grow in their magnitude and numbers.

Environmental problems, wars.

Wars on a huge magnitude.

The 20th century is the bloodiest century in history of humanity,

for example. We start from the year 1900 to 2000.

Just calculate the amount of casualties we have had.

You know, all of mankind put together previously,

the 20th century was the bloodiest

and the most devastating century of humanity.

We have heard about the signs from the sky, what will happen?

I don't know what my friend there is referring to, the sign in the sky,

but we have specific signs.

The Prophet Muhammad said

when these things happen, then wait for the hour,

-which is increasing injustice...

-You mean, Jesus will come? Yeah?

That's one of the signs.

That's part of Muslim eschatology - he will come back

and fight the forces of injustice, OK?

Now what are these forces of injustice?

He will be physically here, fighting?

He will physically descend. We Muslims believe that.

And he will fight the forces of injustice.

Will things carry on as they are at the moment, but he will have physically descended?

No, things will deteriorate.

As we speak right now, I think we all agree -

whether you are a religious person or not -

we all agree that the world is in a bad state today.

There is a lot of injustice.

We have environmental issues,

we have problems with our morality, for example...

What do you mean, morality?

Well, injustice. That's the biggest problem.

I know you're worried about morality and promiscuity.

-No, not promiscuity.

-I think earlier on, you were.

-No, not specifically.

When I say morality, lack of morality, I mean lack of justice.

But you said earlier on when we were talking that one of the signs

-is promiscuity.

-Promiscuity is part of injustice.

-It is injustice to humans.

-Right, promiscuity.

The serpent comes out the sea.

That's the four signs.

-Let me throw a few more.

-How many heads has the serpent got?

How many heads has the serpent got, is it seven or nine,

that comes out of the sea?

Well, Daniel Chapter 10 to 12,

talks about, um...

-you know, a man of lawlessness arising.

-Is this the Antichrist?

Yeah, this is the Antichrist. But one point I want to make...

I'll come back to you. I want to establish the Antichrist.

I just want to make this very quick point. Daniel Chapter 9

talks about a Messiah being cut off after a certain period.

Now this is the Messiah that, um, many sort of Jewish people, some,

have not accepted as the true Messiah.

We believe that the Messiah that came after

the destruction of the second Temple

is the Messiah.

Got you. It's very interesting. Those are the beliefs.

Justin, these are core beliefs, or not, of Christianity and Islam?

They're beliefs...

The seven-headed red dragon with ten horns -

they're beliefs that you can find recorded in the Book of Revelation,

written by, as Bernard Shaw said,

"a man sitting on Patmos who'd taken far too many drugs,"

those images of end times, being able to read,

if you like, the prophetic clock, you know, "Where are

"we in the history that is outlined in the Old and the New Testament?"

"We're here. OK, that means there are X number of years left."

But this is a very literalist reading of Scripture.

When I hear stuff about the skies darkening,

we understand how meteorology works, we know what a comet is.

In the 12th century, in the 16th century, we didn't really.

So anything that changed in nature was regarded as a providential act,

perhaps prophesying something.

Any Shakespeare play incorporates that sort of understanding.

Now we know what a rainbow is.

You know, in both the Old and the New Testament,

the rainbow is regarded as a miracle of God. Well, it's not.

It is refraction of light through water.

So I think the key question for me is, do people really believe this?

-Yes, absolutely.

-How? How?

I want to come back to a few of the other signs that you have dismissed.

One of the signs of the end times

is that man will run to and fro throughout the Earth.

Now, for thousands of years, man travelled by horse, donkey, camel.

Now at the time that was prophesied, they had no idea about aviation.

I've been to Australia nine times.

I have been able to get onto a plane and fly 11,000 miles

in less than 24 hours.

There's a prophecy that says knowledge will increase.

The amount of knowledge that we have today compared to

just 100 years ago is immense. I mean, you can have a flash drive.

My parents had Encyclopaedia Britannica on their shelf.

You know, a huge... About 30 volumes.

Knowledge is something that is heralding...

The internet is growing at an alarming rate on an hourly basis.

There's a number of things that Scripture has prophesied

-that have come to pass.

-Rabbi?

I have some problems with some of the things that have been said.

Probably not surprisingly coming from a Jewish perspective, yeah?

I think what we decided in Judaism,

and we decided it in the times of the Talmud -

you cannot predict, you cannot say, we have come to the end times.

There are passages which say,

look, we're going to come to a time, indeed,

of this chaos that we've heard from both

the Christian and from a Muslim perspective.

We're going to come to a time

when parents are not respecting their children,

children are not respecting their parents

and they kind of list it out.

And in the end of the debate, a rabbi called Rav, Babylonia,

third century says, "You cannot calculate the end times."

All this... One rabbi says, "2,000 years, 2,000 years, 2,000 years.

"6,000 years and it's all over."

Which basically in Jewish time means we have got 230 years to go. Yeah?

All over. And he says, "No, you can never do that."

All you can do is repentance, good deeds

and try and make the world better

-and that's what we're trying to do.

-APPLAUSE

-Justin.

-I...

-Just a second. Hang on, Pastor. Hang on, Pastor.

-I...

-Pastor! Pastor! Pastor, I will come back to you, I promise you.

I just want to spread it around a bit cos there's a point there.

Richard, I'll come to you on a point in a minute.

But, Justin, the pastor raised this, the Millerites

and other sects and other groups have made these predictions.

And everyone's run up the mountain

and marched very slowly back down again.

What is the impetus, what has been the psychological impetus,

whether it be control, whether it be for power, that has led to

these groups over the years to make failed predictions,

constant failed predictions?

It's an in-built assumption of human beings that we are all going

to die at some point.

Some people can come to terms with that

and live a life that is constructive and enables others to be happy.

Others panic.

And other religious figures, authorities, normally men,

very rarely women...

Joanna Southcott was a prophetess and her box

is still hidden away somewhere,

only to be opened by 24 bishops of the Church of England.

Lord knows what's inside them.

But I doubt whether it's going to be very helpful.

The sociological charisma that people like Miller or David Koresh or...

In the 1650s, there were more prophets springing up than there were almost believers.

And it was a time of crisis -

800,000 people died in the English Civil War.

There were comets whizzing across the sky.

Everybody thought, "It's all over."

A lot of people said, "We've got the crops to take in.

"I am going to write fantastic poetry instead."

Isaac Newton said, "Let's do the maths."

-And spent...

-He wasn't entirely a rationalist, though, was he?

No, no. He spent millions of words trying to calculate the number

and the name of the beast.

He was obsessed with the Book of Revelation.

And we like to forget that.

Science isn't the product of some divine authority

mediated through Scripture.

Scripture is a book.

That guy behind you, you have been shaking your head. I think you...

Do you want to bring the microphone to this gentleman here,

very quickly?

I think the analogy, especially when you made the comment about the rainbow

-being, how can I put it, obviously...

-A refraction of light.

Yeah, a refraction of light, Scripture doesn't say that.

Scripture says it was a sign that God won't flood the world,

won't destroy the world with a flood.

Do you think the end is soon?

Yeah, I do believe the end is soon, yes.

How soon, in your lifetime?

Like the pastor said, Jesus said,

"No man knows the hour or the time or hour."

But the signs are there.

What's the biggest sign for you?

I think it's lawlessness. The rise of selfishness, greed...

There's always been selfishness, there's been always greed.

Yeah, but I just think it's at a scale whereby, you know...

-You know...

-I going to put that to you, Richard,

because you're moving in your seat like you want to say something.

I know you very well. We heard earlier from the pastor.

And you can come back here by all means.

We heard from the pastor that an unprecedented amount of wars,

unprecedented amount of diseases, we have had lawlessness,

we have had immorality.

Are we at the worst point in our history?

Absolutely not.

I've got no beef against religion and they may have a hotline,

but I think the business of the signs that are cited.

No, the signs are pretty good.

We've got an enormous human population, perhaps too big,

but it's extraordinarily doing...

It's doing much, much better than anybody

thought that it would -

Literacy up, life expectancy up,

child survival at birth up.

And the bottom... I'm sorry.

Have you been to Africa, have you been to Africa?

-Yes, yes.

-South America? India?

Yes. Sorry, no, not India.

The majority of the world is living in poverty. Utter poverty.

APPLAUSE

-Wait a minute, let Richard in.

-Then I can shout easily.

Just to say that the bottom 10%, the bottom 20%,

the bottom 30% are, in our time,

in spite of extraordinary pressures, doing much better than

they could ever have believed or their grandparents could ever have believed.

APPLAUSE

-To me, this is part...

-Adnan, do you want to come back here?

I believe the minority in this world...

are very, very huge in terms of financial capacity.

This minority is very, very rich,

is well off, the rest of the world is actually suffering.

I've been to Africa, I have been to many countries around the world.

I work with charities and I've seen how people live.

They live in boxes! In Kenya...

Is that because there are too many people?

Possibly. Or due to injustice, financial injustice.

Because we're not distributing the wealth

we have to the rest of the world.

We need to distribute our wealth equally

so that we get rid of this poverty we are facing right now in the world.

Are there too many people, Will?

Are there too many people?

There may not be too many right now, but there certainly will be too many

-in my view, by...

-SMATTERING OF APPLAUSE

At the end of this century, the UN predicts that the human population will rise from 7.4 billion,

which is where it is roughly now,

to 11 billion by the end of this century.

Can you imagine?

For every seven people alive today,

11 people alive at the end of the century.

And I look at it from a non-theological point of view and

I look at the evidence of desperate people travelling halfway around

the world to try and find a living that makes some sense to them.

Enormous amounts of corporate and institutional corruption.

Politicians that we no longer trust to actually deliver a better life

for our own citizens, let alone for the citizens of the world.

And I am sorry, and the final point is,

whether you believe that the world is coming to an end, I think

the natural world is coming to an end.

I think we will end up in a sort of spinning top, full of people

all fighting each other, reaching a malfeasant limit

and then destroying ourselves.

But long after we've got rid of the natural world

if we don't take action now.

APPLAUSE

-Richard, you don't...

-I have a riposte to that to say that 30 or 40

years ago, people thought exactly that was going to be true.

And goodness me, it has been a tight squeeze,

but we have had that prediction exactly before.

We have extraordinarily risen to the challenge

and there is a perfectly good reason to suppose

that we will rise to the next half of...

How have we risen to the challenge

when there's still 2.5 billion people

living below the poverty line?

How does that represent rising to the challenge?

That living standards for the bottom ten

and 20% on this planet have risen, not fallen.

Only because the UN moved the figures.

Only because the UN moved the figures.

Well, I look at the data pretty carefully

and I don't see this fiddling going on.

What I see is pretty amazing improvement

and fair prospect of that continuing.

And I do not see this descent into violence.

It will be a tight squeeze. That is the human nature, that we push on.

It will be a tight squeeze with all those people.

Even that can be exaggerated

since we're looking at a population peak

by the United Nations' own view.

We have already seen this curve flattening out

and it will fall thereafter.

Lady there has been trying to come in.

Don't worry, I will be with you, everybody.

I just want to acknowledge the

fact that there is lawlessness, there is violence.

There is a reduction in morality.

All the things that were said on that side, yes, they are true.

But to say that we have risen up to the challenge is to be

living in a cloud cuckoo land.

Now, I've worked with food banks, I said food banks,

across London for the past seven years. I didn't have to do that.

It was because there was a need.

If you're living in this country,

you'd realise those numbers have done nothing but keep rising.

But if you'd been living in Victorian times,

it would've been a whole lot worse.

The question is, is the world coming to an end?

Yes, it might lead us to fear and to sort of say,

"Let's throw in the towel and do nothing."

What we do have to do is, first of all, ask ourselves,

"Where will we end up as individuals?"

And also to do the best we can to make it a better world.

But we're not there yet. We are not there yet.

APPLAUSE

Justin, very quickly, is there... has there been a rise in immorality?

Are we are more immoral world than we ever have been?

This is the clarion call of the religious voice

since about the year dot.

The world is in a state of decay, we are immoral.

What really peeves me about the debate that we are in

a catastrophic time now, is that I don't see the gathered churches

of the universe, of the world, doing very much about it at all.

What we need is radical social change that redistributes

the wealth of the very few to the many, and that will change life.

We are inheriting, at the moment, the consequences of a long

form of decolonisation.

The British Isles, throughout the 18th and 19th,

and most of the 20th century, colonised the world, raped it in

one sense, and we are now confronted with the consequences of that.

Tell me how... OK, the Pope accommodated 12 families,

that's a good start. But 12 families, this is poor.

Tell me how worrying about end times is going to resolve those

problems when human beings can do something.

What about population?

Caroline, you heard your fellow Christians here.

We look forward to hearing from them again,

and also from Adnan, who are basically saying

we're up the proverbial creek without a proverbial paddle...

for want of a better phrase, whatever, the water's rising.

You don't have to be sentimental about species.

I believe you would be, I care passionately about it.

You don't have to be sentimental about the natural world to know that in practical terms, you know,

if animals die, forests will die.

If forests die, they are the lungs of the planet,

they are part of the ecosystems, it's very bad for the planet,

and as their habitats...inroads are made upon those habitats,

that becomes even worse.

We'll lose the poetry of the natural world.

We'll lose beautiful, wonderful things.

But apart from that, it is because there are too many people.

Over to you from Catholic Voices.

Hello. It was interesting,

you were talking about the UN population figures.

I was just reading, on the way here, there is a new model,

new research, done by the University of Madrid,

who have been looking at the UN population figures, who say

that actually they are going to peak and stabilise in the next 50 years.

And they have the world's population as peaking

and stabilising at around seven million.

This hasn't... Sorry, seven billion.

-This hasn't...

-For one moment I thought we were back in the...

-12 century.

-Now this hasn't garnered major headlines.

But there is a demographic crisis.

So, are there too many people now?

No, there aren't.

But what we do have, which is a real problem and very problematic,

is we have population implosions.

So we see it in the Asian areas.

We see it in Italy. The US, Japan, around Europe.

Basically, people are not having enough children to replace

those who are dying. We've got an ageing demographic

and we haven't got enough people, enough of the population

who are productive enough to help pay for our ageing population.

This is... this is a proven phenomenon.

Does it mean we are in the end times? No, I don't think it does.

We're in difficult times.

We're in difficult times and we need to take action.

But we've had a lot of talk about signs in the Book of Revelation...

You know the Catholic Church gets a lot of flack for this

because of the Pope's view on birth control.

It's not the Pope's view.

It is the doctrine of the Church.

But the doctrine of the Catholic Church asks people to

consider being generous in terms of their families.

And it says sex is about...

Procreation is one element and bonding...

I'm talking about condoms and pills and effective protective birth control.

The Pope also said recently, the relatively new Pope,

he said recently that protection of the environment is vital

and protection of animals is absolutely vital.

And yet you can't have all those people,

exponentially expanding populations, AND do that.

They're irreconcilable.

No, they are not, though, Nicky.

Because there is no method of contraception that is 100%

fail-safe. And actually, if we are talking about the environment

and stewardship, actually, when we produce massive amounts

of synthetic hormones which we're then sort of excreting into

the atmosphere and ecosystem, that's not environmentally-friendly either.

It is completely possible.

And lots of women now are discovering that,

actually hormonal contraception is not right for them.

It is damaging them. And in fact, yes, you can regulate your families.

Nobody is saying that every time you have sex, you need to have a baby.

Of course not.

And of course people need to be responsible

when they think about parenthood.

They need to think about, you know, have they got enough resources?

OK, so you're not quite so pessimistic about population.

Let me bring in you now, Fiona.

It is not so much Book of Revelations for you.

Environment correspondent at the Guardian.

Perhaps in your terms, we are

a little bit more down to earth as you would see it. End of the world.

We are talking perhaps, in your mind,

about the end of our way of life. Is it sustainable?

Is population, at its current rate of exponential growth, sustainable?

I think it is very difficult to pin down future

projections about population.

We've just heard a very, very low future projection there.

Projections that have a great deal of credibility would

suggest that we will have about 12 billion people by mid- to later

this century, and that represents a doubling

since the mid-1990s, which, you know,

by any reckoning is pretty huge.

So how you actually get enough food and enough water and a decent

way of life for all of those people is a really, really key question.

But going further than that, what we seem to be missing in this

debate is that this planet will carry on quite happily without us.

We will not destroy the planet.

We can destroy a lot of the natural world.

We can destroy the forests, we can pollute the oceans,

we can denude them of fish, we can destroy biodiversity and wipe out

species, but we will never actually end the life of this planet.

WE will be destroyed before the planet is.

This rock will continue spinning in space

and will continue to regenerate life long after we are gone.

And that, I think, is a key point here.

Because we're not just talking about what happens to this whole

natural world that we live on, we are actually

talking about our way of life and is our way of life sustainable?

APPLAUSE

Long after we are gone, there will be cockroaches

and rat-like creatures crawling around, won't there?

Is our way of life sustainable?

Yes, our way of life is sustainable.

But what I would... The whole population question

in a way unites the religious view of the end of times

with what became a scientific view,

that civilisation is not sustainable.

It was first popularised by the Reverend Thomas Malthus

-in the beginning of the 19th century...

-A famous man.

..who said, if you reproduce indiscriminately and wantonly,

your children and grandchildren will suffer.

We'll have war, pestilence and famine.

And there is obviously a religious sub-structure to all that

and we saw scientists adopt that in the late 1960s and early

'70s when they came out with all sorts of forecasts that,

that society was unsustainable, the economy was unsustainable,

growth had to be stopped.

And they turned out to be false prophets.

They turned out to be completely and utterly wrong.

So when we listen to this debate, it is worth knowing that these

people have been wrong before, completely and utterly wrong.

Will?

I completely challenge the notion, which you quickly

passed by there that, yes, our way of life is sustainable.

I absolutely don't think...

It is if we want to retain a sort of an elite.

A third of the planet living off the backs of the other two thirds

of the planet, which is broadly where we are going at the moment.

Yes. Of course we can do that.

And you can sustain that model up to your 12 billion, 11 billion,

whichever figure you want.

But keeping that 7, 8 billion people...

feeding, clothing and providing resources for...

-It is happening in America right now.

-That is rhetoric.

It is... It is completely devoid of data.

What is your scientific basis for proving that we are sustainable?

The last 20 or 30 years have seen the biggest uplift

out of poverty the world has ever seen.

You have seen massive decrease in poverty in China, for example.

I mean, China, over the last two or three decades, has been transformed.

Not to say, there are about 200 million people in poverty.

And it's denuding Africa of all its resources and its wildlife, it is eating Africa.

Go on. Richard.

This denuding Africa of all its resources and wildlife.

I don't think there have been that many extinctions

in Africa of large mammals, let's say, that we

have been worrying about really for 100 years.

And I hope to goodness that there never are.

But they are not being denuded at this moment.

The species are doing well.

With any luck at all we will have vast amounts of rainforest

alongside this large population.

I don't get that this is an inevitable crunch that we

cannot avoid.

-Will, then Adnan.

-So, west Africa's first palm oil plantation wipes out

2,000 square kilometres of rainforest and turns it into palm oil.

When you say there is loads of wildlife left.

Well, 400,000 African elephants,

175,000 western lowland gorillas, 3,500 eastern lowland gorillas,

1,000 mountain gorillas, and you keep on going.

You want to look at lions, do you want to look at rhino,

do you want to look at pangolin,

do you want to look at... Where do you want to...

That is a very charismatic and telling and important list.

But if we decide that palm oil is really not the way to use

what used to be rainforest, then I think we will,

only in the nick of time, stop using so much palm oil.

Hurry, hurry, hurry!

Why do we have to get to the brink before we make sensible decisions?

I also think that it is very likely that there will be less pure

wilderness than we inherited and our grandparents inherited.

And that won't necessarily matter to the extraordinarily vital

services that good habitat provides.

There is a difference between absolutely fabulous virgin

habitat, and goodness knows we want plenty of it.

But we can probably have as much as we inherited.

And what remains can be pretty decent stuff.

Secondary forest, forest which is not perfect but isn't bad.

Fiona, this is actually right on the broader

issue for our friends from the church,

from our friend from the mosque.

Because it's about actually habitat loss, species loss,

the deforestation. It is about our greed, and it's about selfishness.

And that is where everybody - certainly on this side

of the debate, and quite a lot on that

side of the debate, are in total and utter agreement.

It is symptomatic, isn't it?

Yes. Well, one of the problems that we have got is that, you know,

habitat loss is something that we could deal with.

We could stop habitat loss now.

We could save all the animals that we want to save.

We could stop these extinctions.

We could also bring billions of people out of poverty.

We could stop climate change.

We could stop polluting our oceans, we could stop overfishing.

The problem is we need to stop all of them at once.

And that is where we run into difficulties.

Is that mission impossible?

Yeah. Because problems that are soluble in themselves, you know,

climate change, we know what to do,

we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

You know, overfishing, we know what we need to do.

We need to leave some areas as conservation zones where

they can regrow.

Every single one of the problems that we have heard about and that we're facing as a planet,

we have solutions to.

The difficulty is that we cannot just do them one by one.

We need to solve all of them.

That is what religion does.

Religion is a way of agreeing that we must do things to change things.

Because we know there is the risk of losing what we have.

The Jewish doctrine of Tikkun olam, of repair of the world,

is all about that.

We should be doing that because, well, in the Jewish idea,

because we have no idea when the world to come is going to be,

so therefore repair the world where we are.

But I think all of our religions have that idea of stewardship.

So we could do that. We have the symbol...

Do you think religion is the answer?

I think it does. I really do think it does.

The rainbow covenant, for example,

so we have this idea of the rainbow as the symbol, yeah?

Yes, OK maybe about refraction, not refraction, I don't think so.

It's about a symbol of the rainbow which says that God says,

God will never destroy the world.

But that doesn't mean we can't.

We CAN destroy the world.

By a doctrine which all religions share, of stewardship

of the world, and if we could only get our message across better

and better, and using the fact that in this world right now we are at

the point where we can communicate with each other on a global way.

We know what's happening in Africa, we know what's happening in China.

A point at which we have got the technology to make these

things work, perhaps we can make better times, not end times.

Fiona - religion, is it the answer?

This is quite a debate, this particular one, isn't it?

That is a very positive outlook.

But I think that you have to look at the other side of that.

That if there are some religions or some people in some religions

who believe that we are at the end time,

then what on earth is the point of stewardship?

We are missing a point. We are missing a point.

There is an important point.

The point that we are nearing our end doesn't mean that we give up.

It means we fix our affairs.

Can we give ourselves a stay of execution?

-What we do is...

-Can we extend it?

No. No. It is not about extension.

It is about fixing your behaviour.

You are clearly not behaving right,

there is something wrong with the world. We need to fix that.

We need to basically escalate the good work we are now all doing.

Can we delay the end? That is what I mean.

It is about delaying the end, yes.

To put it... The world, even scientifically speaking,

will come to an end.

-The solar system will collapse.

-A couple of billion years.

Whatever happens, it will eventually end.

How can we actually delay that process?

Right now, we are facing global warming, we are facing poverty,

we are facing destruction on an astronomical magnitude.

What are we doing about it? That is the question.

So, believing in the end of the world doesn't mean that you give up

and sit back and say, "OK, I am going to be destroyed now.

"Any time, this roof will collapse on me." It is not that attitude.

Rather, we need to do something about it, fix our affairs

-and do something.

-Well, let's talk about our standard of life,

let's talk about whether we need to adjust that.

Let's talk about whether some religions think it is inevitable.

I will be with you in a second to get the Ba'ahi perspective.

A very quick question, do you want the world to end?

-Do I want the world to end?

-Yeah.

-It is not my decision.

HE LAUGHS, APPLAUSE

-I'm not God.

-Are you looking forward to it ending?

-My understanding, God created...

-You are, aren't you?

-Let me finish.

My understanding, God created the world.

God ultimately will destroy it in his own time.

But you will be quite happy when it happens because...

Well, I don't imagine I will be here on Earth when it happens.

That's not to say that we shouldn't be good stewards of the Earth.

-My understanding is...

-But when it comes you'll be pleased,

cos it'll mean the new Kingdom, yeah?

Yes. I mean, Jesus Christ is coming back - we believe that.

We believe that Jesus Christ is coming back to right

some of the wrongs that have happened in the world.

We believe that Jesus Christ will come back

to establish his Kingdom on the Earth.

Justin, is this a problem, that there are those who think,

"You know what? It is going to come. It is inevitable. Embrace it.

"Let's go with it."

It's a major problem.

Historically, there's absolutely no evidence that religion has ever benefited society at all.

-Nonsense!

-AUDIENCE: Ooh!

-Come on!

It was nice seeing you, I'll see you later on. OK?

What happens to all the universities, all the hospitals, all the charity...?

Religious people are the most charitable people on the planet.

Yes, we have these debates a lot.

Another series next year, we will have you back.

The Crusades.

Be quiet, everyone. Be quiet, everyone. Please!

Wow. That was divine.

Let's talk to... We have had a debate before and it's always fantastic.

And we nearly had it again there.

It's a little side road in the highway that we are on

at the moment.

Fidelma Meehan from the Baha'i National Spiritual Assembly.

It's an absolutely fascinating religion and worldview,

yours, or universal view,

can you explain your position on our road to destruction,

what we can do about it, and whether it is inevitable?

Is there another way?

Absolutely another way.

Baha'u'llah, our founder of the Baha'i faith

explained what is happening really in the world in a very rational way,

in a way that I think satisfies the scientific mind,

the religious mind, if I can put it like that.

Baha'u'llah said that we are going through a transition,

a big change, where the world is changing, where it's being

seen as maybe all of these separate countries at each other's throats,

seeing, you know, the... Based on self-interest.

Can I just stop you there?

We have always had separate countries, separate tribes,

separate nations, separate groups at each other's throats.

Nothing has changed.

And that is what Baha'u'llah said.

To reflect on this idea,

to see the Earth as but one country and mankind, its citizens,

to actually have a world embracing vision.

I was really taken by how Fiona depicted all of these problems

and saying we can find solutions.

According to the Baha'i faith, the solutions will not be found

unless we first of all see the world as one planet.

We can still celebrate diversity, it is very much

about unity in diversity.

And Baha'u'llah said the wellbeing of mankind,

its peace and security are unattainable

unless and until its unity is firmly established.

So, these problems we are facing, that we have heard this morning,

are economical, environmental, security, to name but a few.

-Are they not global issues that need a global response?

-Richard?

No, I think lots of the problems that Fiona

and Will talk about, and they're extraordinarily important problems,

are mostly governmental problems within countries.

If countries are better governed

they can better get a grip on deciding...

Will's agreeing with you.

Why not? They won't knock down their forest for palm oil.

They might even come up with a rational policy

about climate change, but that is extraordinarily difficult and a different matter.

But it is not we all need a new world vision.

We probably don't even need a United Nations.

We don't need some big socialistic view about this stuff.

Mostly what countries mostly suffer from is poor government

-country by country.

-It is not socialistic, it's cooperative.

Yeah, and that can get very, very bossy.

If it knocks capitalism back,

then it will almost certainly do more harm than good.

But I stick with good government by countries can solve a huge

amount of these problems.

OK, a bit of audience in a second. But then over here, Fiona.

If the problem is we have climate change,

we have the problems of population, we will have

migration on a scale that we cannot even imagine at the moment.

We will have instability, we will have tensions.

We will have war and then the whole cycle will go on again

and get worse and worse and worse.

We all go faster and faster and faster. It will spin out of control.

Massive famines are predicted for next year. Save us, Fiona.

What can we do about it?

What are the practical steps that we can take,

apart from sitting in a studio and talking about it?

I think that good government would help.

Although what you seem to be describing is

a sort of political vacuum.

So I don't see how getting rid of things like the United Nations would help.

But I think what we need to do is to look hard at the solutions,

grasp the solutions and grasp the fact that they will require changes to our lives...

changes to our lifestyle.

They will require us to use less stuff,

to use stuff more efficiently.

Um, to live, perhaps,

less glamorous lives, in the case of the famous 1% of the population.

And they will require us most of all

to actually cooperate with one another.

It's not just something that single governments can do.

Single governments can do very well within their own confines.

But we have seen with big challenges like climate change,

big challenges like pollution, which, you know, crosses borders,

big problems like biodiversity, desertification, water scarcity,

all these issues are ones in which we need to cooperate.

Do we know that we need to do this?

If you went to the streets and said, "Do you know what we need to do?

"Do you know how bad it is?" Would the ordinary Joe and Josephine know?

-All of these are...

-Do we know?

-It is well documented...

Is this not just a middle-class conceit?

I think that people may know about it,

but are they willing to do something about it?

And the single...

Nicky, one of the single biggest challenges is, while British

citizens expect a standard of living as we currently have it, they

use nine times the global resources of their equivalent in Africa.

And while we have that disparity of resource use,

we will never get the kind of common sense that

so many people around here have been talking about.

Caroline, then the audience.

Put your hands up and I will whizz round you.

What I find really interesting about this debate is

I'm listening to Fiona and I am agreeing with most of what

she is saying, if not almost all of it.

And I am agreeing with you too about, you know,

about, I think, population figures.

But what is interesting is that there seems to be a really

false dichotomy being set up here between science and religion.

So we have got science telling us this.

Actually it's not, it is the free market and environmentalism.

That's the dichotomy, really.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that actually,

none of what you are saying is incompatible with religion.

Faith and reason are completely compatible.

I think we need to kind of move away from this idea that,

you know, we are looking for signs in the sky

and this is happening, and sort of apocalyptic fundamentalism.

Certainly from my Christian perspective,

although I do believe that Christ is going to come

back in a blaze of glory at the end of the world, I don't subscribe...

You know, the Catholic Church doesn't believe

in all this sort of apocalyptic visions.

And the most important thing we can do is appreciate that actually

we could die leaving the studio. We could be run over by a bus.

Are we ready for that?

So make the most of it while we're here.

The lady there, in the middle with the black jumper on. Good morning.

Morning. I have two points.

So first, I think it is important we don't ignore

the fact that the Western world is draining the world's resources.

So I don't think it is a matter of too many people

being on the Earth, because we are human.

I think it is our right to reproduce.

But I think the issue is the standard at which the Western

world is living at is draining us and making it difficult for us...

It's our right to reproduce, but there are seven billion of us

and there's 20,000 lions. Give them a chance.

So, yeah, I just think that the standard of living will have

to change in the Western world so that the rest of the world can...

can live at a decent standard of life.

The second point is across the different Abrahamic faiths

they all have similar opinions on how the world will end or

what signs will come about.

And I think they are just simply, for me,

metaphoric predictions for what will happen. It is cause and effect.

It is action and reaction.

If we keep, you know, making plastic, you're going

to lose... Do you see what I mean?

It is predictions people made or what will happen with nature's resources?

Anyone else across here? You, sir. A quick point from you. Go on.

I think, firstly, I think

rainbows are beautiful however they are derived.

We know how they are derived.

But in terms of solving this problem I think faith is actually very,

very important.

Whether your faith is religious or human,

we have to get away from this idea of believing in ourselves -

as in our ability to buy iPhones and cars and have everything

and have the most amazing life at the detriment of others,

and start realising that happiness lies not in what

we have individually, but what we have together.

It is also evidential. If you look at what is happening

in the world and then infer from that.

Pastor, we have had massive extinctions before.

We had the late Devonian. 360 million years ago.

We had the Permian Triassic extinction 200 million years ago.

We had the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago.

Why does God keep doing it?

I wasn't around back then, so I can't talk very much about what happened.

A few hundred million...

Was it just mistakes? Why does he keep doing it?

OK, I am not so sure that all of us

would agree with some of those timelines that you have just given.

-AUDIENCE MEMBER:

-No, no, no, no. No.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

OK. Good luck with the Nobel Prize.

I will give you the website and you can win the one for science.

Why does God keep doing it?

Well, I don't know. Again, I can't look backwards.

I'm looking forwards.

For me, knowing that Jesus Christ is coming back makes me

-reflect on my life.

-These are facts.

Why, if it is God's plan,

we are about... We are in the sixth great extinction.

Why have there been five already? Why has that been God's plan?

Well, I don't know about what I don't know.

I know about what I do know.

And you keep asking me about things I don't know.

You know Napoleon existed.

-So as a Bible believing...

-That's the same thing.

As a Bible-believing Christian, as I understand Scripture, I understand

that Jesus Christ - there has been prophetic revelation -

that he will return and certain things will happen when he returns.

I mean, if we take this literalist approach to Scripture,

we really are going to end up in some very peculiar places.

APPLAUSE

James Usher, the great Bishop of Armagh, a devout Calvinist,

looked at Scripture

and he claimed with absolute honesty

and sincerity that the world was,

in 1656, only 4,004 years old.

The world was created, in the afternoon, on November 22nd.

Now, everybody...

That's not in the Bible, is it?

He was using the chronologies of the Bible.

To be honest with you, this debate is over, it ended 170 years ago.

That particular debate.

But let's move on to what we can do about it.

Will, you say that we need a new way of living.

I want to get back to the point about people

aren't going to shift, are they?

We like our mobile phones, we like our way of life.

What's... How's it going to change?

Well, I believe in a grassroots driven society.

I think our political leaders

and our business leaders, to an extent, have badly let us down.

And we look around ourselves and there aren't great

figures in history that are setting an agenda that we can all buy into.

In fact, it is more divisive now than it seems to have

been for a very long time.

The rise of radicalism is an example of that.

And as I said before, the desperate...

millions of desperate people who are fleeing parts of the world just to

try and scrape a decent living is very, very significant in my view.

I don't think we should ditch the United Nations, by any means.

I think we should...

I think that the United Nations has got to grow up.

And I think the United Nations has got to be part of the solution.

-Richard.

-I think it is really important that we hone in on what this business is

of the lifestyle change that we wicked Westerners need.

It is not giving up our mobile phones,

which are not hugely energy expensive and are transforming

Africa, as a matter of fact, because that is the communicating world,

and that is great and I am all for it.

We may have to travel less, use less jets, etc.

We may be ought to consider being vegetarian

because that's much more food efficient.

There are various things we can do that don't at all stop the hugely valuable...

Wait, wait. What is going to make us do it?

What is going to...? You don't want to stop the beautiful exciting

human adventure. But what is going to stop us over-consuming?

Well, at this moment we are trying to work out

how to use less fossil fuel.

And some of the things we have done have been a tad irrational,

but we are slowly and decently, fairly decently, getting there.

But we could do the same about food.

What we would need to be seeing is Will making a serious

connection between a thing - I know you can make connections -

what I am saying is those connections get made,

they influence consumers, they influence politicians.

We do get there.

And better government in the country that has got the land, that has

got the palm oil, and make sure that they sort out better land control.

I'm going to bring Rupert in here.

A lot of the pressures for growth of palm oil plantations

is from environmentalists saying

we need renewable fuels, we don't want fossil fuels,

so we grow palm oil to use in for motor transportation...

Look at what happens to our cousins the orang-utan.

..to the jungles and Far East Asia and so forth.

In fact, environmentalists are to

blame for a lot of the destruction that has been happening,

because they insist fossil fuels are bad, we need renewables.

Similarly the wind farms scattered all over the Scottish hillsides,

killing raptors and migrant birds.

They were called into place by environmentalists

who are perpetrators of environmental-impacted destruction.

-Fiona?

-I don't think the environmental movement has been

perfect by any means.

But the charge that you are levelling that they

are destroying the world through pursuing biofuels, that is not true.

The environmentalists have called out biofuels for more than

a decade now and been very, very wary of the expansion of them.

So I think on that particular issue,

I don't think we can blame the environmental movement.

I don't think that we have done enough environmentally.

I think that environmentalists have not really articulated

solutions sufficiently.

I think what they have done is... is berate people

and talk about problems, problems, problems

without talking about solutions.

And I think that's been a real issue, because everyone

has got environmental fatigue, because of that.

Rabbi, but Adnan, first.

We have to really rethink how we live, you believe in the West, yeah?

I believe all over the planet.

The Arabs, Western countries, wherever people are wealthy,

they need to rethink, because their mobile phones, their cars take fuel.

And this oil money which is coming from the Middle East,

there are wars caused because of oil.

There are wars caused in Africa because of resources, OK?

We need to rethink our living in that sense. We need to be more just.

We need to distribute the wealth we have.

We all enjoy nice cars, nice food, nice living standards,

we need to share this with the rest of the world.

And then we will stop this...migration

my friend here talked about.

All these millions of people trying to get to Europe,

why are they coming to Europe? What is the problem? Why?

Because they actually believe there is injustice.

No, no. They think we are doing better and they want that.

No, that is very true.

To be fair, they actually do believe that the living

standard on the other side of the Channel is better.

So why don't we take that living standard, even 10% of it,

to the other side of the Channel so that we stop this migration?

-How about that?

-How do we do that, Rupert?

Well, the reason why we are better off

is because, as Richard has said, is partly to do with governments,

it is markets and so forth, all the things

-that...

-So you are ignoring all the political problems we're

causing around the world just because we want to live happily?

Are you ignoring the politics?

Because your assumption or presumption

-that our consumption means someone is worse off...

-Our greed.

-..this is wrong.

Our greed is causing problems in the world. It is clear.

-It is completely wrong. That is completely wrong.

-OK, we disagree.

But what unites the environmentalists

and religious folk is the sort of mankind is over-consuming,

consumption is bad, we should therefore take on a vow of poverty.

And that is a big driver for this debate.

But what it is also,

the corollary of that is, it's not going to happen because people

want a better standard of living for themselves and their families.

-Rabbi?

-It's a vow of poverty, it is a vow of self-discipline.

And that actually, it is not about a new way of living.

It's an old way of living.

It is one where...where you have a Sabbath where you have a day

when you are not consuming.

Where you have Ramadan when you have a time

when you are not just feeding yourself.

I'm sure there must be a Christian equivalent to that.

-Lent.

-Lent, there we are.

All of the religions have this idea that we have got to

discipline ourselves. You said earlier, Fiona, it is grassroots.

You said that as well, Will, it is grassroots. It is from people.

The government side of it, yeah, fine.

But you need people underneath it actually changing what they want

if you're going to change this world and give us a future.

Fidelma, we have only heard...

Fidelma wanted to come in here.

I really feel it is about attitude change.

It is about seeing the Earth as one country.

And seeing how we can work together.

As I said earlier, Baha'u'llah said, "The Earth is but one country

"and mankind its citizens."

This is a statement of reality.

Reciprocity and cooperation works in the universe.

It works in the human body. Could we give it a try?

Could we not give it a chance?

Starting at the grassroots, as I think this debate is going, to the

grassroots, with all of us

reflecting on what are the attitudes that are going to help us

in this world to build a better world, a more sustainable world,

most importantly, a more just world.

What is that world going to be like for our grandchildren's children?

Will?

I think it has been said many times,

actually just recently that the next generation is going to be the

first generation for many that will be worse off than their parents

in our Western world

and I think that is likely to come to pass.

If we are going to survive, they will have to be.

You have been calling for that.

Indeed. So in other words, what I would suggest is,

the UK, I think, is the only one of the big five economies

in the world that puts 0.7% of GDP into overseas development.

Now some people think that overseas development is a mistake.

-I fundamentally believe...

-We debated that last week.

Yeah, so what we need is we need,

like a Marshall Plan for the world, we need to build capacity,

resources and opportunity in countries that

currently are deprived of those, so that we can share,

as my friend here says, the world in a more equitable way.

APPLAUSE

Caroline?

You did want to come in, didn't you?

It is interesting, because this all comes back to a really

fundamental and interesting question which is, why are we here

and what are we on this planet for?

Earlier you talked about, you know, the extinctions, you know,

the mass extinctions and why did God create dinosaurs?

Why did God get rid of dinosaurs?

Well, my answer to that is, God created the world to give

glory back to him. Why did he create the dinosaurs?

Because they are cool. Why not?

It wasn't very glorious for the pterodactyls when they bit the dust.

Well, you know, the Earth is cyclical.

But what we as Christians believe,

and I am sure actually Muslims and Jews would agree, we are

all here to reflect and to give glory to our Creator.

And we need to get away from, you know, selfish consumerism,

where the individual is king.

I think what we are...we are...

We are scraps of stardust that

produce consciousness and we're about to be able to reproduce probably

the means of powering ourselves the way the sun started it all for us.

And what the future generations will almost certainly find,

unless things go very, very, weirdly wrong,

is that human life goes on being extraordinary, fabulous,

fascinating and very, very interesting to be around.

But in a great span of time - 4.5 billion years -

we are just a tiny pinprick in the ocean, aren't we?

But we are consciousness.

Out of all those billions of years, what happened was us.

And I find it very hard not to celebrate the fact that

a piece of stardust becoming consciousness, and it's global.

Thank you all very much indeed.

As ever, the debate will continue on Twitter and online.

It may not be the end of the world, it's the end of the series

of The Big Questions. Back in January. God willing.

Until then, goodbye.

From everyone here in Uxbridge, have a great summer.

APPLAUSE