Saturday, January 23, 2010

The Bible: A History begins on Channel 4 today

If you're in the UK, don't forget that The Bible: A History begins on Channel 4 tonight, at 7pm. It's a seven part series and each week a different figure tackles a topic from the Bible (All posts on this topic). In the first episode, Howard Jacobson tackles the creation stories. Since I worked on this as Series Consultant, I am of course prejudiced, but I think this first episode is superb, engaging and nicely paced.

Channel 4 have added an a new interview on their website:

interview with Howard Jacobson

And the Telegraph have a piece on the episode:

Richard Dawkins pushing a form of 'aggressive atheism', says presenter
Professor Richard Dawkins has been accused of “parading his own failure of imagination” by failing to consider the possible existence of God in an attack by the author Howard Jacobson.
By Urmee Khan

Update: Doug Chaplin offers his thoughts on the first episode on Clayboy, Nutritious Religion? Creation and C4's Bible: a History.

Update (Tuesday): Matt Page has his thoughts on the first episode over on Bible Films Blog.
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3 comments:

  1. Steven Carr24 January 2010 at 03:47

    Atheism lacks the imagination of religion?

    Well, yes. Isn't that the point?

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  2. David25 January 2010 at 04:43

    A nicely balanced presentation. However, I did wonder why Richard Dawkins wasn't interviewed, since his name was taken in vain several times!

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  3. Chris25 January 2010 at 06:17

    The reason Dawkins wasn't interviewed was because 1. Dawkins might worry about being unfairly edited and 2. Jacobson would probably get ripped to pieces.

    Any credibility went out of the window as soon as said that Dawkins was as sure as the believers. Bullshit! Read the book. You follow the probabilites. There are no certanties in life. It's all explained in The God Delusion.

    You could see his atheist friend almost cringing when Jacobson revealed he wanted to believe even if it was a lie.

    Would you want to know the truth even it was worse? We know which pill Jacobson would have taken if he was Neo in The Matrix.

    He was also upset at atheists labeling whole populations as ignorant. I'm afraid it's simply true.

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