麻豆约拍

Richard Holloway, the writer and the former Bishop of Edinburgh, continues his series of 20 personal essays in which he explores the relationship between faith and doubt over the last 3000 years. He takes the listener from the birth of religious thinking, through the Old and New Testaments, to the developments in subsequent centuries and their influence on thinkers and writers, up to the present-day.

In today's programme Richard Holloway asks when the religious mind was born and looks at one of religion's earliest doubters.

When did religious thinking emerge and what was the first religious theory in Judeo-Christianity? Was it a way of explaining the ways of the world or a defence mechanism against the terrors of nature and human suffering? And who was among the first to challenge God?

With contributions from psychiatrist and poet Professor Norman Kreitman, American poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht and author and former Anglican priest Professor Don Cupitt, Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Producer: Olivia Landsberg
A Ladbroke Production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.