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

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Elon Musk, the mercurial billionaire who owns Twitter, is increasingly wielding his enormous political power via his social media network, interfering in politics in America and far beyond. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook, has tried to align his business with the new regime in Washington by abolishing fact-checking. Should we be alarmed at where social media is going in the 2020s, with populist right-wing movements leveraging their online influence in very real offline consequences? Can Christians continue to use their platforms, or should we join the progressive exodus to alternative sites? And how can we work out who to trust and where to get our news from in this confusing post-truth, post-legacy media world?

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Recent research by the abortion provider BPAS has uncovered a striking increase in the numbers of women who use fertility tracking apps as contraception, rather than the more traditional hormonal pill, coil or implant. And, perhaps most interestingly, there has also been sharp rise in women using no contraception of any kind. In this episode we revisit our last conversation on contraception (linked below) with Dawn McAvoy from the “pro-women pro-life” movement Both Lives, and reconsider why so many women today are turning away from hormonal contraception. Several generations on from the introduction of the Pill, what have been the consequences for society and the church? What are the ethical risks for Christians who believe life begins at conception? Do these fertility-tracking apps actually work, or are they just exploiting ignorance and vague notions of wellness?

BPAS research on contraception methods: https://srh.bmj.com/content/early/2025/01/01/bmjsrh-2024-202573

A BBC News article reporting the study: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c391nlxrv4vo and women’s responses: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93lq2w5n44o

Our last episode exploring contraception: https://www.johnwyatt.com/should-christians-abandon-contraception/

Dawn leads Both Lives, part of the Evangelical Alliance: https://www.eauk.org/what-we-do/initiatives/both-lives

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A recent Guardian article looked in depth at advances in neonatology – the care of extremely premature babies – and the complex ethical challenges now faced by parents and doctors alike. Modern medicine can now save the lives of babies born at just 21 or 22 weeks old, but does this come at too great a cost? How are we supposed to decide which babies to throw the full weight of neonatal intensive care at, and which ones cannot be saved? Can Christian parents ever countenance not trying to save a premature baby’s life and instead accept their inevitable death? And what are the Christian roots of the revolution in neonatology in recent years, and how might it be under threat from other competing worldviews present in medicine today?

‘Look, they’re getting skin!’: are we right to strive to save the world’s tiniest babies? – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/19/look-theyre-getting-skin-the-moral-challenge-of-saving-the-worlds-tiniest-babies The Guardian article which prompted this episode is well worth reading.

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• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Advances in reproductive medicine in the past half century have meant it is entirely possible for as many as five different adults to be involved in the birth of one child (sperm and egg donors, a surrogate mother who carries the fetus, and the commissioning parents who will raise them, and paid for everyone else). In this maelstrom of competing claims, the state and courts in many countries have been forced to step in and begin to regulate and define identity and kinship for these new children, as procreation gets messily broken down into its constituent parts. In this episode we consider a provocative essay by a legal philosopher who explores the troubling implications of this new reality, and ask as Christians where do we stand on the question: who do children belong to? What is lost when children come into the world not inescapably rooted in one family, but as the result of a commercial transaction? How does adoption, generally held in honour by most believers, differ from surrogacy arrangements increasingly pursued by wider society?

The essay by Jeff Shafer which prompted this conversation: https://mcrawford.substack.com/p/to-whom-do-children-belong

Our previous episode on surrogacy from 2023: https://www.johnwyatt.com/surrogacy/

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Since 2010 mental health problems among young people have exploded. At precisely the same time, smartphones and social media have become deeply embedded in the lives of children and teenagers. A growing body of evidence suggests these two things are connected. In this episode we consider the argument that a turn away from physical outdoor play towards spending endless hours scrolling and messaging via screens is hugely detrimental to the wellbeing of young people. And if this is true, why has it happened, and what can we do about it? What resources might the church and Christian faith have to bear on this problem? Do we need to radically retool our own church culture to become havens of disconnection and embodied in-person community? Or this just another moral panic at the advent of a new form of technology?

The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt - https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book

Haidt’s Substack newsletter After Babel is also worth reading, including his recent post using documents from court cases against TikTok - https://www.afterbabel.com/p/industrial-scale-harm-tiktok

Australia is trying to implement a world-first ban on social media for under-16s - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89vjj0lxx9o

Some towns are trying out shared pledges from parents to stay smartphone-free - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2r4rxjd9o

Our previous episode with Andy Crouch discussing Haidt’s research and Crouch’s own writing on how to cultivate tech-wise Christian households - https://pod.link/1509923173/episode/515cca3cfe50794d7e60d1e0d753f86a

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

A movement founded at the University of Oxford in 2009 has now captured the imagination – and the wallets – of some of the brightest and most successful across elite Western academic and business circles. Effective altruism, a 21st-century data-driven take on the philosophy of utilitarianism, claims we must give our time and money only to those causes which can be proven to increase the greatest amount of pleasure to the most people. Why has this eccentric community grown so fast, has it become unmoored from its original intentions, and what perverse incentives arise when we try to distil ethics into an algorithm? We then go on to explore the Christian sub-community within EA and ask whether the movement’s fundamental ideas are compatible with Christian tradition on giving. Is Christian EA a welcome challenge to our increasingly sentimental and selfish modes of charity, or has it actually missed the point on the nature of God?

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com

Every tap, swipe and click we make on our phones, tablets and laptops is being recorded by big tech firms. This is often called surveillance capitalism – a network of products and services we use every day which sucks up large quantities of data about us and then sells it on to advertisers at huge profits. It’s garnering increasing concern from citizens and regulators around the world, but should we care as Christians? Why have tech companies made their products so addictively hard to put down and stop tapping, swiping and clicking? In this episode we think through more of the implications of living in a non-private digital village in the 21st century, and we also ponder the implications of the more deceptive and destructive aspects of addictive digital technologies. What are some initial efforts believers have made to carve out space for family time and spirituality in our disembodied always-on world.

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

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While we are away over the Christmas break, here’s a classic episode from the Matters of Life and Death vault. There has been a flood of highly significant if poorly reported developments in embryo research in recent years, all of which raise new and confusing questions for Christians and non-Christians alike. Is it acceptable to use stem cells to create embryo-like structures to research on? Should we ban all efforts to perfect gene editing, even if that stops us effectively eradicating some horrible conditions? And would it be wise to extend the current rules on embryo research to let scientists go further in the lab, as many would like? In this episode we wrestle with how Christians can handle the dizzying pace and confusion of scientific development in this field, to continue to make good ethical choices even at some personal cost.

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Many evangelical Christians remain uncomfortable about engaging with the Biblical narrative, in both Old and New Testaments, around evil, Satan, spiritual forces and demonic power. And even more so in trying to identify their malign hand behind modern trends. But in this episode we reconsider what scripture says – and doesn’t say – about the nature of evil and ungodly spiritual forces, the powers and principalities of our world. How have theologians connected the “lordless” powers the Bible warns us against with modern institutions, technologies and ideas? Is it naïve to expect an industry as unprecedently wealthy and powerful as Silicon Valley to be immune from the deceitful and manipulative influence of personal evil? Are powerful new technologies like the internet or generative AI really just neutral tools, only as dangerous as the people using them? And, how can the church learn to be more sceptical and thoughtful about power and how it is exercised in our current societies?

• Subscribe to the Matters of Life and Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173

• If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, visit John's website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

• For more resources to help you explore faith and the big questions, visit: http://www.premierunbelievable.com