Archie’s case underlines the growing crisis over the lack of trust many ordinary people have in medical professionals. Nobody wants to go back to absolute deference to doctors, but is there an alternative to furious hostility and judges having to rule on care decisions? Doctors and patients also need to wrestle with a new participant in these vexed and fraught conflicts – the public, newly involved in these cases via social media and online campaigns. But is it helping to have activists turning these unique and tragic stories of deeply sick children into grist for the culture war mill?

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

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

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

Twelve-year-old Archie Battersbee died on 7 August, after months of legal wrangling between doctors who believed he was brain dead and wished to end life support, and his family who resisted this. This tragic case has captured a lot of media attention, and in this episode we try to unpick some of the complicated medical and ethical challenges thrown up by the story. Why is it so much harder today than in the past to actually determine if a person has died? How can, and should, the courts overrule the wishes of a child’s parents regarding medical treatment (or its withdrawal)? And can Christians be pro-life and anti-euthanasia, while still supporting the doctors’ wish to allow Archie to die?

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

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

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

In this episode we pick up our conversation with clinical geneticist Melody Redman to talk about a new NHS programme in England which is piloting whole genome sequencing of newborn babies. Why are scientists and doctors interested in collecting a child’s entire set of genes and storing them for the rest of their life? What medical benefits might result from this, and what ethical challenges does it throw up? Just because we can now do this, should we? We also consider some of the risks of our increasingly geneticised world and how as Christians we can hold onto our identity in Christ rather than lapsing into genetic determinism.

Find out more about the Newborn Genomes Programme here - https://www.genomicsengland.co.uk/initiatives/newborns

The group Unique helps support people and families affected by rare chromosomal and genetic disorders - https://rarechromo.org/

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

Each of us carries around in our cells about 20,000 different genes – a unique set of biological code which shapes how our bodies develop. As scientists better understand genes and how they work, genetics is becoming a more and more important field of modern medicine, particularly in diagnosing conditions. But this comes with a brand new set of ethical challenges to think through. In this episode, we interview Melody Redman, a clinical geneticist working in the NHS, about her work, and her perspective on it as a Christian doctor.

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

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

Subscribe to the Matters Of Life And Death podcast: https://pod.link/1509923173  

Resuming our conversation about suffering, we think through some faithful Christian responses to evil and loss. How can the church reintegrate the deeply Biblical tradition of lament into its corporate and individual life, picking up on the psalms and ultimately Jesus on the cross? And what might a resilient and hope-filled fellowship of believers look like in the light of this?

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

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com 

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

The problem of suffering has been one of the most intractable and painful theological debates for centuries. But is it perhaps not a problem to be solved, but a deeper mystery to be journeyed through? Is suffering solely a consequence of human sin since the Fall, or were we made to be fragile, dependent and broken? And how does knowing Jesus's death and resurrection are not simply a response to pain but God's Plan A from the start change things? 

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

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com 

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

In the second half of our conversation with theologian Andrew Davison, we ask what the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for Christian faith and teaching. Whether it is single-celled organisms or fully-fledged intelligent sentient life, would its discovery change how we think about God as creator? Are aliens also made in the image of God? And if so, do they have their own Jesus and incarnation and redemption story, just as we do?

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

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

In the week the first images from the new James Webb Space Telescope were beamed back to Earth, we are joined by theologian Andrew Davison to consider the spiritual value of cosmology and astrophysics. Andrew is a theologian of the sciences and especially interested in the deep questions about life thrown up by new developments in space exploration. We consider what the telescope might discover, how Christians can reconcile themselves to our smallness in the universe, and if there is spiritual value in spending billions on this kind of far-sighted scientific endeavour in the first place.

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

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

Hello, and welcome to Matters of Life and Death. Today we’re going back to our conversation about simulation for part two of this re-broadcast. Last week’s episode discussed the growth of deep fakes and other digital technologies which allow us to simulate human faces and speech with increasing accuracy. We thought about how these developments had been presaged for decades by sci fi, such as Philip K Dick’s iconic novels, but also by the influential yet eccentric French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard sketched out four phases of simulated reality, beginning with a first phase of accurate, faithful representation where an image acted as a sacrament. We’re going to pick up the discussion as John explains the next phase in Baudrillard’s analysis.

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

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

For the next two weeks we’re dipping back into the Matters of Life and Death archive to bring you an episode we first broadcast last year. It’s all about simulation. We live in an era when digital technology is making it increasingly easy and cheap to create fake but compelling images or videos of people, or even entirely artificial human-like personalities. Machine learning tools and progress in artificial intelligence software means we are closer than ever to things previously only imaginable in sci fi: computer programs which can speak to us like a human or, androids which are indistinguishable from real people. In this episode we discuss examples of this kind of tech already in the world, what impact it may have in the future, and how we as Christians should think about these forms of simulated images, relationships and personalities.

If you want to go deeper into some of the topics we discuss, find more resources to read, listen to and watch at John’s website: http://www.johnwyatt.com

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