God Forbid

ABC Australia

Religion: it’s at the centre of world affairs, but profound questions still remain. Why are you here? What happens when you die? Does God matter? God Forbid seeks the answers.

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Will science ever explain the self?

Neuroscience is now spectacularly good at explaining how brains work. But there’s one thing it still can’t explain: why having a brain feels like something. Like anything at all! Philosophers call this the Hard Problem of consciousness. Is this gap in our knowledge something that science can never fully understand? Something intangible, even unknowable? Some say it's a life force, an essence, a soul. What, if anything, can religion offer this intangible? GUESTS: Rev Antonios Caldas Coptic Orthodox priest and lecturer at St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College Prof Neil Levy philosopher at Macquarie University and Oxford University
21 ago

Voluntary assisted dying: more than a matter of life and death

The Northern Territory is set to become the final Australian jurisdiction to legalise voluntary assisted dying (VAD). While thirty years of arguing comes to an end, God Forbid examines the wider conversations that are essential, but so often overlooked when it comes to voluntary assisted dying. GUESTS: Christoper Dudfield, Spiritual Care Practitioner, clinical leader and researcher. Jodie Clarkson, retired teacher and community worker, palliative care outpatient in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). Professor Charlie Corke, Senior Intensive Care Specialist, Barwon Health. Further reading:Christopher Dudfield reflects on our obligations to the dying, even when we cannot endorse their choices, on ABC Religion and Ethics (18 August 2026). WARNING: This episode of contains discussion of suicide, death and dying. Further informationHelp and support is always available. Helplines (24 hours/7 days a week): Lifeline on 13 11 14 or 13YARN on 13 92 76. For bereavement support visit Compassionate Friends or call their National Grief Hotline on 1300 064 068. This program was recorded on the lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.
14 ago

The Good Mother standard: Can anyone live up to it?

Mother Earth. Mother Mary. The "good mother." Is there a more impossible standard than motherhood itself? Every culture seems to believe in a mother who is endless. Endlessly patient, endlessly giving, endlessly present. In Christianity she's Mary, the sinless virgin, the giving and eternal mother of the church. In psychology she's the "Good Mother", always available and calm, never faltering. In real life, she's the woman who looks like she's got motherhood handled, but who, if you asked her, would tell you she falls short like everyone else. Where does that ideal come from? What does it cost the women who try to live up to it? And what does it cost the women who, by choice or by circumstance, never become the good mother at all? GUESTS: Cristina Lledo Gomez Senior Lecturer in Catholic Systematic Theology at BBI – The Australian Institute of Theological Education. Author The Church as Woman and MotherDr Bronwyn Harman Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Edith Cowan University where she researches Australian motherhood and the "Good Mother Syndrome"Sheree Joseph Sydney writer, Author of the new memoir Juicy
7 ago

The History of Time

Your phone will tell you the time, and that number has an extraordinary history. And hasn't always been there. Time used to be whatever the church bell said it was. Time was rung, sung and prayed. It belonged to God. Then we put time in a box on the wall. Then on our wrist. Now in our pocket and on our satellites. Yet – there’s no expert consensus on whether time even flows from past present to future. GUESTS: Kristie Miller is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney and co-director of the Centre for Time, and author of Out of Time and Does Tomorrow Exist?Matthew Champion is Associate Professor of History at the University of Melbourne and author of The Fullness of Time: Temporalities of the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries This program was recorded on the lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation Its the third in our History Of... series History of Emotionsand History of Reality
31 jul

The History of Reality: What is real and is God behind it all?

Every civilisation that's ever existed has asked the same question: what's actually real? Plato made the point that it's more than we can see with our own eyes. Then came Newton, and reality became a clock with time. Then came Einstein, and time started to bend. Then came quantum mechanics — and reality gets stranger still! Two astrophysicists go back to the beginning of humanity to ask "what did humans even mean by "real", before anyone had the maths to check?" And is there a creator behind it all? GUESTS: Geraint Lewis, Professor of astrophysics at the University of Sydney, has spent his career hunting dark energy and dark matter — and doesn't believe in a God at the end of it. His new book is The Shortest History of Reality.His old friend and former student – now astrophysicist himself at Western Sydney University is Dr Luke Barnes, who works on the very same equations — and continues to believe it points to a creator.
24 jul

The History of Emotion: Were feelings always felt this way?

If you hit your finger with a hammer, would you feel it the same way a medieval carpenter did, doing exactly the same thing? Well, apparently not. We think of our feelings as the most private and immediate things we own. Hit your thumb, and YOU know pain when YOU feel it. But historians of emotion say that's a modern conceit. Pain, grief, love, loneliness — none of them are fixed. They're made, by religion, by culture and science, and most of all by the stories we tell each other about what a feeling is supposed to be. Lets look into the history of feeling itself. Were the emotions of the past even the same species of experience as ours? GUESTS: Professor Katie Barclay is a Future Fellow in the Department of History and Archaeology, and author of Loneliness in World History and Caritas: Neighbourly Love & the Early Modern SelfProfessor Stephanie Trigg, a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Melbourne University. Among her near a dozen books is "Weeping Like a Beaten Child: Figurative Language and the Emotions in Chaucer and Malory."A/Prof Rob Boddice a historian of science, medicine and the emotions, based at Freie Universitaet Berlin and McGill University, Montreal, is author of Knowing Pain: A History of Sensation, Emotion, and Experience, and Research Fellow at the Uni of Helsinki in Finland.
17 jul

Is racism about skin colour, colonialism or wealth?

Is racism about the colour of your skin, the history of colonialism, or the size of your bank account?
10 jul

What does God expect of fathers?

The White House has a cage fight on the Whitehouse front lawn while, somewhere, a father rose at 3am to feed a crying baby. In 2026, what does it mean to be a good father, or a good man? Does God, or any religious tradition, see men as something distinct? Or is “be a good man” just “be a good person”? The manosphere claims religious sanction. Is that a corruption of these traditions, or an expression of them? Three fathers, three frameworks. What do you or can you actually hand onto your son? GUESTS: Rev Dr Michael Jensen is an Anglican minister, an Oxford theologian, and a father of four. He’ll tell you God has a design for men — but hear him out, because I reckon it’s not what you’re expecting.A/Prof Adis Duderija is a scholar of Islam and gender at Griffith University — an expert on how his own tradition understands the rights and responsibilities of manhood. That too is more nuanced than its given credit for. And a father to two teenagers.Zac Seidler is a psychologist who studies what young men actually watch online. He’s professor at Orygen, Australia's Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health. And, as of this year, a brand-new dad.

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Religion: it’s at the centre of world affairs, but profound questions still remain. Why are you here? What happens when you die? Does God matter? God Forbid seeks the answers.