(2004) In this BBC-TV documentary series of six half-hour episodes, physician, playwright, and lifelong atheist Jonathan Miller (whose The Body in Question, a 1978 TV series of 13 episodes of the human body and the history of medicine, is another fascination) engages in witty and profound discussions with five atheists and a theologian. In each episode Miller questions each of his guests, except for the theologian, about their personal history of disbelief; occasionally he pulls away from the interview, watching it on his laptop screen to comment upon the intercourse or to introduce a fresh topic.

As for myself, in case anyone's interested, I'm not an atheist, rather I'm a devout agnostic moving towards a precipice, for I see believers and atheists as opposites of the same coin, which eventually I'll toss into the air.

In the first episode Miller has a colloquy with Colin McGinn, an English philosopher, who begins by saying that while he holds deep views and feelings about ethical ideals and political causes, he doesn't believe in God or anything supernatural or godlike - "nothing of that type." In fact, he asserts that among his deepest beliefs is that God is both a bad and a harmful idea. Miller interjects that to many people one's not having spirituality is akin to "vitamin deficiency."

Though McGinn's interest in philosophy arose from his divinity studies, he eventually found no use for religion, taking Bertrand Russell's essay "Why I'm Not a Christian" to heart. However, if one were to keep the good bits of high ethical ideals and discard the strange (miraculous and supernatural) elements from scripture, then one might have a secular platform for practical reference. He adds that while he'd like for there to be immortality with rewards and punishments - since this life lacks true justice - the intellectual self-deceit isn't something he can bring himself to perform.

At Miller's urging, McGinn enumerates arguments against a belief in God - (1) no positive, objective evidence without an alternative explanation; (2) no reason to believe in any particular God as opposed to other deities; (3) an omnipotent, omniscient God who permits evil and refrains from intervening in human suffering is a contradiction, though apologists insert free will (like an obstacle course, Job-like tests of the faithful) - along with counterarguments to the contentions for such a belief; (4) the clever but convoluted pilpul of ontological reasoning isn't well-defined; (5) a declaration that life is meaningless without God ignores what gives meaning to God's existence, for if God may possess intrinsic value so may life by itself; (6) similarly the pronouncement that for morality to have an absolute quality it requires a divine foundation doesn't take into account that God isn't necessary to validate morality, for God can't make something morally right unless it already has intrinsic rightness. (For example, if God were to say that murder is righteous, most people would find such a commandment abhorrent.)

Finally, religion is corrupting in its bribing adherents to perform good deeds rather than expecting moral conduct as a natural inclination of humanity. In the end people feel a need for God because of their "cosmic loneliness," their yearning for direct conscious contact with something outside themselves. McGinn looks forward to a post-theist society in which there's "not much need of inveighing against" those who insist on God's existence.

Episode two treats the "pernicious effects of religion," with the American Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg as Miller's guest. The universe to the untrained eye presents an impression of design, but with billions of planets, life's chance of success somewhere appears far more probable than not; thus humans are merely "winners in a cosmic lottery."

Admittedly, Weinberg says: "There is a mystery," but we are in the tragic position of not being able to comprehend this insuperable riddle. Far more than metaphysical speculation about first causes, Weinberg believes that death provides the driving force for religion, which provides reassuring rituals within a "framework for life."

Following Galileo and Newton, science made irreligion possible, especially the "wounding influence" (interjects Miller) of Darwin and Wallace. Unlike Hinduism, the "universalist ambitions" of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism directly confront the scientific world view. Weinberg expresses some hostility toward religions that lead people into terrible acts dictated by their God; the sincerest believers are the most dangerous: "Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing."

Unlike other countries, in the US an association between patriotism and religiosity has taken root, so that religion becomes "useful" to certain groups without necessarily inspiring good behavior. On the other hand, says Weinberg, quite opposite to scientists such as himself: "For most people truth is not as important as good behavior."

Citing President George W. Bush's comments on Muslim terrorism, Weinberg observes that people appear to employ their moral sense to distinguish what is valid religion from what isn't, which contradicts the view of the pious that religion determines one's moral sense.

"I don't like God," says the physicist, condemning the Almighty as a terrible character of literature. He concludes to Miller's delight that science's being "corrosive of religious belief" is a good thing.

Speaking of literature, the third segment of the series features American playwright Arthur Miller (who died in 2005 at 89 shortly after the series aired, though he appears fit and feisty for his age during the interview), who having been married to the 'Fifties' sex goddess (though no mention is made of Marilyn Monroe) ought to know something about divinity.

While he was raised in a Jewish household, Arthur Miller says that during the Depression of the '30s religion seemed irrelevant; besides, he concedes: "I don't have the talent to believe." Religion, according to the writer, arises from a desire for permanence, for consistently decent, moral behavior, and for revenge, none of which is possible in this life.

The "death of consciousness" is the ultimate perplexity, completely unacceptable to most people; but the author of The Death of a Salesman asserts that he can see no hope for a soul's continuing beyond death other than through one's work or legacy.

The discussion largely focuses on anti-Semitism: the justification for the social and economic mistreatment of Jews was for their not believing in Christ, making them heathens or atheists in the eyes of Christians. This denigration and denial of rights as citizens by the political right pushed Jews into embracing a leftist ideology. In contemporary American society the right continues to associate atheism with skepticism, implying an unpatriotic attitude.

One can discern among many conservatives "an aching for an Ayatollah," for an official church and a theocratic government: such a "lethal mixture of religion and nationalism" cannot abide other viewpoints, whether religious or nonreligious, since tolerance for other religions is antithetical to the foundation of faith, and therefore all other views must be combated and eventually destroyed.

Part four brings English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author of The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist and humanist, into Miller's circle. (Since this series aired, Dawkins has written The God Delusion, further provoking heated controversy.) The conversation begins with the Iraq war and the attention both George W. Bush and Tony Blair paid to its being a metaphysical battle between good and evil, which managed to muddle up in people's minds any distinction between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

They transition to Dawkins's story of how he at the age of nine began having doubts about his Anglican faith - allowing that everyone shares a predisposition toward belief - because he'd realized that his religious identification was merely an accident among so many other religious possibilities; by sixteen he'd discarded religion altogether, concluding for himself that "design" was a bad explanation with the need for an infinite regression to explain a Creator, but even more for the church's emphasis on original sin (illogically attributing disease to sinful behavior rather than to bacteria or viruses) instead of on the marvelously beautiful universe he was discovering through biology.

In response to Miller's request for a description of Darwinism, Dawkins complies by saying that this "deeply satisfying explanation" of how life has expressed itself in such variety and abundance is the result of gradual, imperceptible change by generation with natural selection alone as the guiding force. All organisms contain a digital code of instructions in which random genetic variations (though most mutations are bad) produce novelties.

Those novelties, which have eventually become feathers, opposable thumbs, or eyes, had to pass through intermediate stages, each of which was beneficial to the creature. Similar to Weinberg's view that billions of planets provide sufficient opportunities for life to arise somewhere in the universe, Darwin's theory employs billions upon billions of random chances over a few billion years to produce an "illusion of design" along with intelligent life. (From the history of the universe to the history of life to each individual life, all that there is has had to pass through a series of beneficial intermediate stages, each stage requiring some adaptation, making the most of opportunities or overcoming obstacles, that by chance alone confer advantages toward future development.)

To some extent, Dawkins admits, this theory, as is any theory, to some extent is "a matter of faith." Those who abandon the scientific investigation, who give up, allowing defeatism to decide for them that God must be responsible for whatever their imaginations cannot supply, find comfort in relying upon a supernatural intelligence.

Such an Overmind that remains forever outside humanity as a scientific hypothesis is acceptable so long as one grants the premise, even if there isn't a possible method for testing its validity, that it can be either true or false. Miller brings up "the leap of faith." What cannot be entertained seriously is an internalized, unshareable revelation of a deity (in effect a mental delusion) who interferes with the world - an imaginary fiction which cannot be proved one way or the other.

Having feelings of wonder and awe about the evolutionary process and its multifarious expression as the world in which we find ourselves may be akin to mystical sensations, but Dawkins says it isn't religion. (While a pre-existing supernatural intelligence as the creator of the cosmos presents philosophical problems, what about a divine spore that evolves through a "slow, gradual, incremental process" into a Cosmic Consciousness?)

The only debate - deeply respectful and wholly rational - in the series takes place between Miller and Cambridge theologian Denys Turner in the fifth episode. To be a card-carrying atheist, which over the past few centuries has ceased to be intellectually interesting, Turner says, requires practice at making sure certain questions do not arise, most especially: "Why is there anything at all?"

If such disturbing interlocutions manage to enter the argument, an atheist must treat them as a "matter of indifference." Turner cites Ludwig Wittgenstein's cause for astonishment in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that there is anything at all. As for whether science and religion might abide one another in the same company, Turner believes God or evolution must be excluded. "I think everything does hang on whether God exists or not," he says.

When considering the contributions of theology and natural science to our understanding of the universe, Miller remarks that our comprehension doesn't seem to require anything more than mathematics and science. "I just think there is an argument to be had here," replies Turner. This opens the door - with the Frog Footman (as portrayed by John Bird) from Miller's own direction of Alice in Wonderland telling Alice that the only thing he can do for her is nothing - to nothing and everything: ex nihilo ("out of nothing") came the Creation.

God is not a "thing," says Turner, but "off the map of Creation." Referring to the "attenuated nothingness," Miller the "pious atheist" questions: "Why do we have to go back to Bethlehem" to marvel at this universe and our existence in it? For "aesthetic reasons," replies Turner: God's reveling in the simply joy of creation and its attendant beauty, not unlike Mozart's motivation (other than needing money to pay his bills) to compose The Marriage of Figaro.

On the one hand, according to Bertrand Russell, the world is a "given," on the other, rejoins Turner, it's a "gift" from a Creator. "To whom is the gift given?" inquires Miller, in addition asking why did the donor wait so long for a recipient to enter the scene. This also implies "intention" or "purpose," says Miller, which requires "interest," thus a biological system.

Everything reveals God, answers Turner, including catastrophic failure. (They don't get around to addressing the problem of evil, though "catastrophic failure" implies such.) In the end, says Turner, it is a question of faith (that same "leap of faith" of which Miller spoke with Dawkins) that no rational argument can resolve.

In the sixth and final interview, Miller's guest is another philosopher, Daniel C. Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Miller asks the white-bearded Dennett why Darwin's theory is regarded by his opponents as extremely dangerous rather than simply nonsensical.

Because it is relatively easy to understand (requiring no math), says Dennett, when compared to the theories of Newton, Einstein, and quantum physics, and because it describes our existence as "mechanical, blind, and purposeless." Darwin showed how to get the illusion of design without a Designer.

Further, with regard to consciousness, the soul or mind for Darwin appears not to be an immaterial, nondestructible wonderstuff that will out live us but robotically mechanical, nothing more than a series of ratchets. Unlike Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace made an exception for the human mind/soul. Our powerful sense that we shall continue beyond this life arises from our brain's natural functioning throughout our lifetime of constantly projecting a future for us.

However, we all cheat, says Dennett, since we really can't imagine a soul or its existence in paradise (playing harps while floating on clouds through eternity). According to Dennett, most people are believers in believing in God by going to church and participating in rituals, similar to believing in Santa Claus, since actually believing in God is extremely difficult and would require one's behaving abnormally.

Religions, while the source of most of the murder and mayhem throughout history, have given us great culture (artworks and music) and do provide millions of worshippers with succor, meaning, and comfort. (In a political context, terrorist groups have likewise provided social services that governments have denied to disadvantaged persons.) Dennett sees religion as "moral Viagra."

After observing that most people are unwilling to be as frank and direct about scared issues as they are about politics - because it's impolite - Miller and Dennett come to an agreement, especially with respect to the zealotry of rightwing Republicans' arrogant self-assurance of their being absolutely right about their Bible and their God, that they probably should join Dawkins in becoming more aggressive "to move the effective center."

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