To mark one year since Matters of Life and Death joined the Premier Unbelievable network, we have a special one-off episode answering some questions emailed in by listeners. We discuss everything from whether Christians should lean into the culture wars to resist growing social liberalism, to how far we might go in suffering to care for elderly family members, and even whether it would be ethical to create lifelike child-sized sex robots to give to paedophiles in an effort to deter actual child abuse. Thank you to everyone who sent in questions, we’re sorry we couldn’t answer them all!

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There are two strong Christian traditions when it comes to robust political or industrial action such as strikes. One argues for enduring oppression and unfair employment in the manner of Jesus and points to Paul’s teaching in the Bible on slaves and masters. But a second position throws its weight behind efforts to challenge injustice and protect the vulnerable, noting Jesus’s clear teaching on care for the widow, orphan and stranger. In this episode we consider these two strands of Christian thinking and how they end up being applied, sometimes poorly, to the question of public servants going on strike. And is there a third response to the paralysis and conflict which has erupted in British society – the distinctively Christian virtue of reconciliation?

The Christian Medical Fellowship blogs by junior doctors on whether to strike can be found here:

- Should Christian doctors strike? No https://www.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/content/?context=article&id=26387

- Should Christian doctors strike? Yes https://www.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/content/?context=article&id=26386

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The UK is currently gripped by a wave of strikes from public sector employees – nurses, teachers, postal workers, train drivers, paramedics, and soon junior doctors too. But this raises complex ethical questions. Few Christians would deny it is legitimate for private employees to withhold their labour in order to demand better pay or conditions, but it is not the governmental employers who will suffer in public sector strikes but patients, students and ordinary citizens. In this first part of our conversation we discuss the origin of striking as a tactic, the history of how British law does or does not permit certain professions to go on strike, and the complexities of healthcare workers in particular walking off the ward, while maintaining (or not) their legal duty of caring for vulnerable patients.

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If surveillance capitalism permeates all of modern society, how on earth can we step back to think critically about what it may be doing to us? In this episode we think through more of the implications of living in a non-private digital village in the 21st century, but is privacy even a Christian virtue in the first place? We also ponder the implications of the more deceptive and destructive aspects of addictive digital technologies and think through some initial efforts believers have made to carve out space for family time and spirituality in our disembodied always-on world.

Some extra reading:

Surveillance capitalism: the hidden costs of the digital revolution, Jonathan Ebsworth, Samuel Johns, Michael Dodson, Cambridge Papers June 2021

The Question of Surveillance Capitalism, Nathan Mladin and Stephen Williams, in The Robot will see you Now: Artificial Intelligence and the Christian Faith, ed John Wyatt and Stephen Williams, SPCK, 2021

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff, Profile Books, 2019

Atlas of AI: Power politics and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence, Kate Crawford, Yale University Press, 2021

Irresistible: The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked, Adam Alter, Penguin, 2017

Hooked: how to build habit forming products, Nir Eyal, Penguin, 2019

Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil, Penguin, 2017

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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? What impact is this system having on once flourishing industries such as journalism or bookselling, let alone on us as human beings? And why have tech companies made their products so addictively hard to put down and stop tapping, swiping and clicking?

Some extra reading...

Surveillance capitalism: the hidden costs of the digital revolution, Jonathan Ebsworth, Samuel Johns, Michael Dodson, Cambridge Papers June 2021

The Question of Surveillance Capitalism, Nathan Mladin and Stephen Williams, in The Robot will see you Now: Artificial Intelligence and the Christian Faith, ed John Wyatt and Stephen Williams, SPCK, 2021

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff, Profile Books, 2019

Atlas of AI: Power politics and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence, Kate Crawford, Yale University Press, 2021

Irresistible: The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked, Adam Alter, Penguin, 2017

Hooked: how to build habit forming products, Nir Eyal, Penguin, 2019

Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil, Penguin, 2017

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In the second part of our discussion with Chris Goswami, we dive into some of the ethical arguments for and against cryptocurrencies. 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? What does properly Christian investment look like and could putting our money into crypto be an example of this? 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?

Find more of Chris’s writing on tech and faith at his website – www.7minutes.net

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Recent news headlines have been full of discussion of the current ‘crypto winter’, a season where the value of cryptocurrencies has plummeted causing financial devastation and destroying what looked like thriving crypto institutions. This week we’re joined by Christian tech writer and Baptist minister Chris Goswami to try to unpick how we should feel as believers about cryptocurrencies and their dramatic fall in recent months. 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? Is crypto just a Ponzi scheme, a 21st century version of Tulipmania, or is there something useful and transformative being built on the blockchain?

Find more of Chris’s writing on tech and faith at his website – www.7minutes.net

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In our second conversation on Canada’s euthanasia regime, we chat with a Canadian doctor about the troubling expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying to those only suffering from mental illness. Can the families of mentally struggling patients be confident their loved ones will be met with compassion and a commitment to long-term treatment from their doctors, or will they simply be shuffled off to the quick and easy assisted suicide programme? How easy or difficult is it for doctors, including Christians, who reject euthanasia to continue to practice within Canadian hospitals? And what might the future look like if Christians in healthcare stood firm and demanded space to continue to practice pro-life, hope-filled medicine?

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Since 2016, Canada has offered assisted suicide through its public healthcare system. And the criteria for Medical Assistance in Dying has steadily expanded year on year, and will soon include not just those suffering from terminal conditions, but also those experience mental illness too. This week we speak with a Christian psychiatrist from Canada who has been involved in both the campaigning against the spread of euthanasia, and also figuring out on the ground how to care well for patients in a system which offers them the chance to take their own lives instead of receiving treatment. In particular, what can we in other countries yet to introduce such laws learn from the Canadian experience of sliding down the infamous slippery slope since 2016?

We briefly discussed Canadian euthanasia in a previous episode in 2021 about assisted dying, which you can listen to here - https://johnwyatt.com/2021/10/08/assisted-dying-the-meacher-bill-radicals-in-the-lords-canadas-slippery-slope-and-fragile-conscience-protections/

(Correction: Our guest on a few occasions accidentally says the expansion of MAiD to those with mental illnesses was due in 2022, when it was in fact originally scheduled to begin in March 2023, although it has now been delayed again.)

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In the third and final installment of John’s discussion with Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, they discuss Martin’s views on the future of space travel and astronauts, and whether some robotic future progeny of humankind will eventually replace us in exploring the universe. Would this be any bad thing, or should we resist efforts to gradually supplement and even supplant our biology with novel biotech? And without any Christian belief, how can we justify our ethical reservations about transhumanism or explain the correspondence between our minds and the cosmos we are understanding better every year.

This discussion was first broadcast as part of the Big Conversation podcast, hosted by Justin Brierley, which is also part of the Premier Unbelievable network - https://www.thebigconversation.show/

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