Life & Faith

Margaret Somerville is originally from Australia but works in Canada as a bioethicist at McGill University. She’s sympathetic to those who see euthanasia as a way of easing suffering - but also strongly disagrees with them. Simon Smart talks to Professor Somerville about what’s happening with euthanasia around the world, how we make ethical choices, and what kind of society we want to leave for future generations.

Australia is rightly proud of its rich ethnic diversity but whether people of varied cultural backgrounds actually share their lives with each other is another matter. Parkside Church in Edensor Park, however, brings under the one roof people of over 50 nationalities to do life together. We speak to its Senior Pastor, Mathew Kuruvila, on the unity that is greater than cultural differences.

Ross Gittins is an Australian institution: he’s been writing economics columns for Fairfax for 40 years and has had a ringside seat to 40 budgets, 16 federal elections, and the coming and going of 13 treasurers and 8 Prime Ministers. Here he speaks to Simon Smart about his memoir, Gittins: A Life among Budgets, Bulldust, and Bastardry. Among other things, they cover the seismic changes he’s seen happen in Australian politics and society, the enduring influence his Salvation Army upbringing has had on him, and what the future of journalism might - and should - look like.

Is faith reasonable or does it strain the bounds of credibility? Life and Faith explores this question in relation to Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, a documentary about Scientology, and CPX Fellow Richard Shumack’s recent sparring with atheist philosopher Peter Boghossian.

Asylum seeker policy is perpetually controversial at the political level. On the ground, though, there are all kinds of initiatives underway to help asylum seekers settle in when they do arrive. Simon Smart and Natasha Moore speak to Brad Chilcott about his organisation Welcome to Australia and how it’s grown over the last four years since it started - and hear from a few other volunteers involved in welcoming and looking after new arrivals in important and creative ways. 

The Congo is one of the world’s most troubled places on earth, riven by war, conflict and poverty. But it’s also home to the HEAL Africa hospital, which doesn’t just seek to cure the sick but to bring healing to a ravaged nation.

On this episode of Life and Faith we speak to Dr Jo Lusi, who founded HEAL Africa with his wife Lyn, and Dr Justin Paluku, CEO of the organisation.

The age-old conflict between science and religion gets a lot of air-time - but is it really age-old? Or does it belong more properly to the realm of myth and legend than to history?

Professor Peter Harrison was formerly Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford, and is now Director of the Centre for the History of European Discourses at the University of Queensland. He’s written extensively on the topic of the true history of science and religion, and delivered CPX’s 2015 Richard Johnson lecture, entitled “The End of Faith: has science made religion obsolete?” 

This episode of Life and Faith collects some of the highlights from a conversation between Professor Harrison and CPX Director John Dickson.

The 2015 Sydney Writers’ Festival ran from 18-24 May and offered over 300 events, with writers and speakers from all over the world. The theme was: How to Live?

In this Life and Faith, Justine Toh and Natasha Moore discuss some of the festival highlights - including Anne Manne on narcissism, Paul Dolan and Hugh Mackay on happiness, and American mortician and death acceptance activist Caitlin Doughty, whose book Smoke Gets in Your Eyes recounts her motley experiences working in a crematorium.