Bridge of Reason

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Web site defines an “affinity fraud”: “Affinity fraud refers to investment scams that prey upon members of identifiable groups, such as religious or ethnic communities, the elderly, or professional groups. The fraudsters who promote affinity scams frequently are — or pretend to be — members of the group. They often enlist respected community or religious leaders from within the group to spread the word about the scheme, by convincing those people that a fraudulent investment is legitimate and worthwhile. Many times, those leaders become unwitting victims of the fraudster’s ruse.” You don’t have to be a believer of any kind to fall prey to affinity fraud but if you are a person who is daily looking for the “leading of God”,  who believes that God is bound to have a hand in the minutiae of your every day life, that there is no such thing as a coincidence and that God is “wanting to bless you” as part of his great plan then you  ...

C4 Sunday 16 August 2009 7pm Revelations: How do you know God exists? Written and produced by Anthony Thomas An arresting opening image: a burning effigy on a busy western city street. We try to figure out what it is- some religious protest against the Mohammed cartoons, perhaps? As it turns out, it's a model of a banker. In commencing his contribution to the Revelations series, Anthony Thomas may be trying to show how materialism has failed as a concept, and that as western capitalism turns on itself, religious solutions to man's dilemmas may begin to reemerge. Thomas chooses five leaders from major world religions (Judaism, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism and Hinduism) to explain to him and the viewer how they know there is a God. The five men (and they are men, as my wife dryly observes) are Jonathan Sachs (chief rabbi of Orthodox Jews in the UK), Rowan Williams (Church of England Archbishop of Canterbury), Vincent Nichols (Catholic Archbishop of Westminster), Tari...